how to get from east campus to the student center by Boheng C. '28

you don’t have to care
you don’t have to listen
you don’t have to read
you just have to notice

                                    — maya kaul, ‘19

you already know the fastest path, but you might not know all of them. and there’s so many cool things that you get to see if you don’t take the fastest one.

• start by walking out the entrance to the dorm. 
• enter building 66 through the doors on the east.
• go down the stairwell into the basement.
• walk forwards and down the ramp, down down down, and count the poppies lined along the wall, growing short medium tall

• stop at the end of the hallway.
• look to your right: a double door leading to a ramp, but the right door is propped open and doesn’t seem to be able to close. there’s a pipe jutting out of the ceiling which stops it from swinging shut. how odd.
• look to your center: another double door, this time sealed shut with one lock and one handle.
• look to your left.

• there’s something there, isn’t there?
• there’s something there which might help you enter new locations. look for it. look for it, on the ground, next to the elevators, in the long hallway; comb through the ceiling lights and doorframes and the vending machine. 
• did you find it?
• go back the way you came, back up the ramp, and continue past the stairwell.
• go forward until the end of the hallway.
• make a right turn.
• walk until you find a water fountain and drink from it, perceive the bitter cold sharp water as it ebbs into your mouth, and notice the fountain of youth to your left, dried up and exhausted of its former life.
• continue down the basement hallway until the first junction, and turn right there.
• turn left again.
• take a paper cup (you brought a paper cup, right?) and fill it up with hot chocolate at the vending machine, two dollars, and ponder your hot chocolate with foam in this unremembered corner of the stata center, five meters beneath the grandeur of an auditorium lecture hall, condemned to oblivion, for just two dollars.
• was this place forgotten on purpose or by accident?
• walk further along the corridor until you reach the door to a stairwell. enter it.
• watch the outlines of dirt footprints on the walls as they meander towards the top.
• go back out and go through the garage door nearby.
• turn left then right into the loading docks without descending into the parking lot.
• choose — choose between keyboards and desks and chairs and refrigerators with dark growths and cracked monitors leaking their blood of liquid crystal.

• go down the stairs at the end. 
• walk straight until you get to the car lane entering the parking lot.
• turn right and left on the sidewalk until the door, then walk through until you get to an odd vending machine and read the sign:

• go back, back through the loading docks silent basement vending machines fountain of youth, back and back until the south stairwell of building 26, and take it up to the first floor and smell the drunken scent of overripe bananas, imbibe the air, and realize that there’s a kettle and packets of hot chocolate in front of you, and that you didn’t have to pay two dollars at the basement vending machine earlier.

• head into building 16 and up the short stairs to building 8.
• just before reaching the infinite corridor, look up at the ceiling, past the network of dangling pipes. 
• it reads GULLIBLE.
• go forwards a bit and turn right, into the stairs down into the basement.
• make a right and soon after a left until you get to what looks like an elevator.
• is it an elevator?
• walk back into the long corridor going west.
• stop at the shelves full of old printers and books and manila folders and screws and cryptic circuit boards and pamphlets and water bottles.

• turn right and walk until you reach building 13.
• find a short door to the right of two vent openings. 
• notice that the bottom vent has three of its four screws missing, while the top vent is intact.
• continue forwards and turn left.
• look up at the pipes suspended from the ceiling, contorting and wrapping and dancing around themselves.

• go forwards through the hallway, notice behind you the surveillance camera mounted at eye level, bulbous shadowy lens watching through the cover.
• go to the end of the hallway in building 9, before it makes a bend.
• peer through the sliver between the double doors at the end of the hallway and look at the vastness on the other side, above and below, vast labyrinth of ducts and lights, and peer all the way until the end and maybe see a black rectangle on the wall adorned with white lettering, ornate flowing borders like the label of a bottle of bourbon.
• turn the corner in the hallway and find the elevator.
• go up the elevator to the ground floor and walk out the atrium of building 9.
• run straight across massachusetts ave. because it’s already late, the street and its cars long asleep, the world powerless to stop you.
• arrive at the front of the student center and join the cluster of other frosh already gathered there at 10 pm on this night,
  
  new to the scene,
  for now a little green.