#034 Burned Air

In October of 1994, I was a freshman in college. I had a small group of friends, and one night we went into the computer lab to learn how to get onto talkers. My friends went on for an hour or so, laughed about it, and went about their lives. I did not.

Up until that point, I was pretty sure there was no place on Earth that I actually belonged. I partially knew this because I’d been on both sides of it—the US and Japan—and neither of them worked for me.

A talker is completely text-based. You can be whoever you want on a talker, and that gave people permission to be themselves.

That small group of friends who’d brought me to the computer lab that night drifted away. I made some new friends in the computer lab itself, but most of my friends existed on the talkers.

The only space held on a talker is the space between people. Everything else is blank. Most people would say that made it less real, but to me, that made it even more real.

I was in the computer lab around dawn when a girl came in and told me that the stairwell was full of smoke. I checked, and it was. She thought she should pull the fire alarm, but she was afraid of getting into trouble. I told her it would likely go off on its own. A minute later, it did.

It was dead of winter in Minnesota, and the air was so cold it burned as we piled onto the snowbanks and watched the fire trucks arrive. I’d never gone upstairs to my room that night, so I was still dressed and had my coat, but all of the other kids were in their pajamas. They were all groggy, but I was wide awake.

The firemen eventually let us back in. Someone had walked through the men’s side and had ignited everything that would burn, but the building never caught. The dorm was a converted convent that was made entirely of stone. Even the doors were all made of metal.

As we walked past the charred remains of paper decorations and school notices on the floor, I found it so odd that no one said a word about it, as if they’d already discussed it amongst themselves and had decided to keep it quiet.

I hoped the arsonist would be caught, for safety, but I also understood the impulse.

That summer, the staffer who managed that building hung himself in his attic apartment in that same building. I knew almost nothing about him. I’d seen him maybe once or twice the entire year. Who was he? Where was his family?

Again, no one ever said anything about it. Not to me, anyway.