WEBVTT 1 00:00:04.960 --> 00:00:08.039 Wednesday morning started beneath the blinkered hum of lobby fluorescence, 2 00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:11.480 exactly as it always did. The city's heavy gray summrise 3 00:00:11.519 --> 00:00:14.519 slanted through the plate glass, and the building's pulse delivery 4 00:00:14.560 --> 00:00:17.280 carts the aroma of burned espresso. The familiar shuffle behind 5 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:20.559 the security desk begun in its practice cadence. My job 6 00:00:20.600 --> 00:00:24.199 as maintenance super vesemant being half invisible, half indispensable, and 7 00:00:24.239 --> 00:00:26.399 I led my small team through the ground floor routines 8 00:00:26.399 --> 00:00:29.679 before traffic thickened and tenants fill the holes. That morning, 9 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:32.399 a crew of fiber optic technicians arrived their dark cases. 10 00:00:32.479 --> 00:00:35.399 Rolling behind one of them a shop faced woman with 11 00:00:35.479 --> 00:00:37.439 a note bad as which falls they be clearing for 12 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:41.159 cable runs. I barely glanced at my printer chiccklists before saying, 13 00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:44.200 you'll want eighteen nineteen and twenty main rise of closets 14 00:00:44.200 --> 00:00:47.359 above the service elevator north wind. My body was on 15 00:00:47.439 --> 00:00:51.159 automatic mapping routs I had followed for decades. We gathered 16 00:00:51.159 --> 00:00:53.880 around the central elevator station, where I checked each panel 17 00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:56.640 hall anew as the building had dated some liths lost spring. 18 00:00:57.200 --> 00:01:00.000 That's when the lead engineer squinted, then asked, almost by accident. 19 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:03.399 Hold on you sure about nineteen. She ran her finger 20 00:01:03.439 --> 00:01:08.200 down the buttons. There was eighteen a silent gap, then 21 00:01:08.239 --> 00:01:11.799 twenty polished flap side to plastic coal buttons. She checked 22 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:17.200 every lift, none had nineteen a passing guard. Tommy caught 23 00:01:17.200 --> 00:01:20.519 her confusion and grinned some buildings just scaped numbers. Bad 24 00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:23.560 luck or something, he jerked, settling down his coffee. The 25 00:01:23.560 --> 00:01:26.840 elevator God's frown on nineteen as much as thirteen, I guess. 26 00:01:27.439 --> 00:01:30.159 The tex shrug flipped over their building plans and discussed 27 00:01:30.159 --> 00:01:33.560 worker rounds. It was barely a blip, a routine oddity 28 00:01:33.599 --> 00:01:36.519 in old buildings. But I stood there blinking at the panel, 29 00:01:36.680 --> 00:01:39.959 strange heat rising through my scalp because I remembered the 30 00:01:40.040 --> 00:01:43.799 nineteenth floor, not in the abstract or from stories. My 31 00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:46.079 own boots had soaked its blue carpet after a pipe 32 00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:49.040 Boastin's wheat nineteen o six years ago. I had once 33 00:01:49.079 --> 00:01:52.120 spent an afternoon scraping a tisa from its corridor, staring 34 00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:54.319 up at the peculiar ancular artwork that made the North 35 00:01:54.319 --> 00:01:57.560 Foy so distinct, that leaky office in the northwest corner, 36 00:01:57.560 --> 00:02:00.920 where the ceiling tiles always sagged and dripped. Floor nineteen 37 00:02:00.959 --> 00:02:03.319 as specific to me as the biting chill of this abasement. 38 00:02:03.959 --> 00:02:06.480 I told no one, there's a rhythm to work, a 39 00:02:06.560 --> 00:02:08.439 pride in not being the one to make of us. 40 00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:11.960 But waves of discomfort washed up against my memory. If 41 00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:15.439 there's no button? Was I inventing those details? Had I 42 00:02:15.479 --> 00:02:18.120 simply confused my floor as a different building, a different year. 43 00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:20.840 Yet as the text filed into the lift, I saw 44 00:02:20.879 --> 00:02:22.879 in their glance as that moment of uncertainty, the blink, 45 00:02:22.960 --> 00:02:26.240 the pause. Evidently I wasn't the only one to feel it, 46 00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:28.360 even if they chose to let the building silence. One 47 00:02:28.960 --> 00:02:31.759 I crossed a lobby, passing the directory freshly laminated, no 48 00:02:31.879 --> 00:02:35.520 evident gaps, no awkward skip lines. In the admin office, 49 00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:38.479 I almost brought up the oddity to the office manager, Shannon, when, 50 00:02:38.639 --> 00:02:40.639 as if unk you, she caught the beginning of my question, 51 00:02:40.919 --> 00:02:43.960 something weird about the nineteen floor? She laughed a bit 52 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:46.280 too easily, the way people do when Eben legends float 53 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:49.280 to the surface. You know, we never had one. Karl 54 00:02:49.319 --> 00:02:52.599 skips from eighteen to twenty, like every high rise since forever. Right, 55 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:55.240 Maybe you're thinking of your old place downtown didn't that 56 00:02:55.319 --> 00:02:58.280 one have a weird numbering thing? I managed a faint smile, 57 00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:02.319 letting the moment pass. All afternoon, a simple puzzle followed me, 58 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:04.960 nothing outwardly alarming, just the ticklish sense of a rum 59 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:08.280 note in a familiar tune. I kept noticing the elevator panel, 60 00:03:08.319 --> 00:03:10.599 glancing at it whenever I passed, failing to let go 61 00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:12.240 of a question that the only grew shop of the 62 00:03:12.280 --> 00:03:15.879 longer every one else dismissed it. Somewhere between idle curiosity 63 00:03:15.919 --> 00:03:18.560 and personal doubt, I started to wonder what if anything 64 00:03:18.639 --> 00:03:20.840 was missing, not just from the panel itself, but from 65 00:03:20.840 --> 00:03:22.639 the shared story of a building. I thought. I knew 66 00:03:22.639 --> 00:03:25.159 fully at my age, I depend on the world to 67 00:03:25.199 --> 00:03:27.960 stay mildly unpredictable. The building's oddities are, in some small 68 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:30.479 way a comfort. But this wasn't like the time the 69 00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:33.280 fire alarm system mander Me sounded on all even flours, 70 00:03:33.520 --> 00:03:36.280 or where a winstorm took out the rooftop gardens traylis overnight. 71 00:03:37.039 --> 00:03:39.240 What I felt turning this problem over in my head 72 00:03:39.439 --> 00:03:41.639 was a different breed of discomfort, the quiet conviction that 73 00:03:41.639 --> 00:03:43.800 the absence was far more peculiar than a missing number 74 00:03:43.800 --> 00:03:46.000 and a button. It was as if my own memory 75 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:48.360 had been quietly edited, and the only evidence left was 76 00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:51.319 the uneasy echo of my certainty. I ended my day 77 00:03:51.319 --> 00:03:54.120 in supply bay, reviewing next week's maintenance schedule, but my 78 00:03:54.159 --> 00:03:56.400 mind hovered above an absent floor and certain whether I 79 00:03:56.400 --> 00:03:58.479 should be more worried by every one else's in difference 80 00:03:58.479 --> 00:04:01.120 of my own insistence that something is saidental and specific 81 00:04:01.439 --> 00:04:04.759 was missing. My routine is built on precision. I'm the 82 00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:07.039 kind of man who starts his rounds before the city's 83 00:04:07.039 --> 00:04:09.400 first commuter trained clatters underground, a habit formed in the 84 00:04:09.479 --> 00:04:12.280 late eighties when unpredictable heating Mendu had spot a failed 85 00:04:12.280 --> 00:04:15.360 boiler before tenants stomp that complains to the managers. I 86 00:04:15.479 --> 00:04:17.639 like those empty stretches before sun rise, the low hum 87 00:04:17.720 --> 00:04:19.839 of equipment, the gritty blue of early morning street lights 88 00:04:19.839 --> 00:04:22.879 sliding up the marble arby walls. Minha is always there 89 00:04:22.879 --> 00:04:25.920 by six, perched behind her high concierge desks since nineteen 90 00:04:25.959 --> 00:04:29.480 seventy four, presiding over deliveries, loss office keys, and weekly 91 00:04:29.519 --> 00:04:33.040 lunches for the tenant Association. Mina is short, sharp witted, 92 00:04:33.079 --> 00:04:35.199 and her gray hair is always clipped with something ornate, 93 00:04:35.240 --> 00:04:38.279 a comb a pin, sometimes a plastic flamingo left over 94 00:04:38.319 --> 00:04:41.600 from last year's failed tropical week. She can recite the 95 00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:43.600 birthdays of anyone who is held an office here, and 96 00:04:43.759 --> 00:04:46.759 according to her, she knows every tenant's dog spas and 97 00:04:46.839 --> 00:04:50.600 secret holiday snacks. Dash she stepped her cardam and t slowly, 98 00:04:50.680 --> 00:04:53.439 savoring the role of an official building historian. If I 99 00:04:53.480 --> 00:04:55.480 ever needed to know where a particular person hid a 100 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:57.519 holiday re or how to find the old manual for 101 00:04:57.519 --> 00:05:00.639 the freight elevator brakes, Mina was my first stop. Roy 102 00:05:00.680 --> 00:05:03.279 works nights, sometimes leaving notes for me on the whiteboard 103 00:05:03.279 --> 00:05:05.560 in the break room. Short and precise fan FEU six 104 00:05:05.560 --> 00:05:09.160 of blue coal fender replaced ree welding. He's been here 105 00:05:09.199 --> 00:05:11.360 only a few years, less than Meaner, but which she 106 00:05:11.399 --> 00:05:15.319 trades lightly in rumors for detests speculation. Once, after a 107 00:05:15.360 --> 00:05:17.759 heated debate about the infamous fifteen to four marble Viasca, 108 00:05:17.800 --> 00:05:20.120 when marble slabs of three slightly different shades were somehow 109 00:05:20.120 --> 00:05:22.319 outstalled on the same landing, he only said, with a 110 00:05:22.319 --> 00:05:24.360 ghost of a grin, he'd ha thought any one would 111 00:05:24.399 --> 00:05:27.240 Noticepage isn't white. Roar is the memory bank that doesn't 112 00:05:27.240 --> 00:05:30.720 give out with drolls freely. Then there's Anji, the building manager, 113 00:05:31.319 --> 00:05:34.399 pragmatic numbers first, famous for two things, tight budgets and 114 00:05:34.439 --> 00:05:37.680 the ability to recite insurance policy causes by memory. She 115 00:05:37.759 --> 00:05:40.720 admires efficiency and thinks building character is found only in 116 00:05:40.759 --> 00:05:44.480 stabilate track readings. She'll indulge Hallwick chatter, specially from me, 117 00:05:44.639 --> 00:05:46.480 but keep it to a minimum. If the subject veers 118 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:49.600 off into speculation or nostalgia. People like Anji keep the 119 00:05:49.639 --> 00:05:52.879 place from drifting toward chaos. Our building is old enough 120 00:05:52.920 --> 00:05:55.399 for quarks and young enough not to qualify as a landmark. 121 00:05:56.079 --> 00:05:59.120 The hand made aluminum directory, signed stamped decades ac sometimes 122 00:05:59.160 --> 00:06:00.800 get up dates from the sty off with Marco ridd 123 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:05.160 and arrows or sticker ovalays on certain floors surviving nineteen seventies. 124 00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:08.040 Here artwork still stares up from behind glass, faded but 125 00:06:08.040 --> 00:06:12.120 stubbornly present. Each holiday season, someone on the tenant events 126 00:06:12.120 --> 00:06:14.879 committee picks a the in Victorian mid century kitch space 127 00:06:14.920 --> 00:06:18.199 age and decorations sprout overnight, hanging, often crooked for weeks. 128 00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:21.240 The fifteen fourse marble misapp is still good for a laugh. 129 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:23.720 The sub basements pipe seem to echo like no others 130 00:06:23.759 --> 00:06:26.920 creating harmonics that spook the younger security guards on late shifts. 131 00:06:27.519 --> 00:06:30.519 Their rooftop garden, much boasted about in lease agreements, is 132 00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:33.360 frequented only by pigeon families and whoever smoke cigars in 133 00:06:33.399 --> 00:06:36.560 the shadow of the attract stacks. I've watched new tenants 134 00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:39.360 in sharp suit or with half open laptops drift into 135 00:06:39.360 --> 00:06:42.360 the rhythms of these corridors long time as linger in 136 00:06:42.399 --> 00:06:44.879 the lobby for hours of chess or weekly lunch and learns, 137 00:06:45.079 --> 00:06:47.600 swapping stories about that winter the heating never worked, or 138 00:06:47.639 --> 00:06:51.120 Missess Cordles goes cat on seventeen. When old staff retire, 139 00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:54.879 many return for these lunches, swapping stories, challenging each other's recollections. 140 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:57.800 These are my people, shop, irreverent and often stuck in 141 00:06:57.839 --> 00:07:00.920 the details. I am proud of what I know. Which 142 00:07:00.920 --> 00:07:03.920 ceiling tiles have been quietly glued back, Which fused boxes 143 00:07:03.959 --> 00:07:06.480 really a disguised phones, which with the shock cut cross 144 00:07:06.480 --> 00:07:08.759 base beside the freight elevator lets you by past two 145 00:07:08.759 --> 00:07:11.240 sets of stairs on a date when your need ache. 146 00:07:11.279 --> 00:07:14.040 Once I guided a lost city inspected down a corridor 147 00:07:14.079 --> 00:07:16.839 so rarely used its emergency lights still ran on original 148 00:07:16.839 --> 00:07:20.560 batteries after a routine maintenance or just before lunch, always 149 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:22.639 at the same small table beside the lobby windows. I 150 00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:24.959 reviewed the previous days checklist to my expectations. Set to 151 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:27.519 the usual slowly calls for a new valve, flickering lights, 152 00:07:27.519 --> 00:07:30.360 meanful to ballast, an ovote, warm offices, just a stock damper. 153 00:07:30.920 --> 00:07:33.560 I didn't suspect anything out of the ordinary, nota turuly. 154 00:07:34.279 --> 00:07:37.120 I cataloged systems and schedules and smiled at the orderly 155 00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:40.560 sense of the building's hundreds of small, manageable problems. I 156 00:07:40.600 --> 00:07:42.800 had not yet realized that single missing number would be 157 00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:44.839 what did my sense of certainty that the secret fault 158 00:07:44.839 --> 00:07:46.759 wouldn't be a broken pipe or a loose tile, but 159 00:07:46.839 --> 00:07:49.279 something far more quietly persistent, the idea that the building 160 00:07:49.360 --> 00:07:52.000 itself could hold secret larger than any one person's memory. 161 00:07:52.480 --> 00:07:54.959 Thursday put me in the supply office, an organized massif 162 00:07:54.959 --> 00:07:57.600 hardware bins, paper towel palettes, and the faint tang of 163 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:00.560 old insulation. My original aim was just to locate some 164 00:08:00.639 --> 00:08:04.519 replacement filters and check the annual fire inspection record. Instead, 165 00:08:04.560 --> 00:08:07.399 I found myself entangling a stack of time or maintenance lopbooks. 166 00:08:07.439 --> 00:08:09.839 Those oversized ledges in which I in my predecessors had 167 00:08:09.879 --> 00:08:12.519 recorded every job, no matter how triville, for as long 168 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:15.199 as they'd worked here. The ledges were lined up along 169 00:08:15.240 --> 00:08:17.720 the north wall, dusty, with the air labels curling at 170 00:08:17.759 --> 00:08:21.279 the edges, pulling down the volume marked twenty ten, twenty seventeen. 171 00:08:21.319 --> 00:08:24.240 I thumb through routine complaints flickering light seventeen O nine, 172 00:08:24.360 --> 00:08:27.639 a toilet leak fifty O three. I'd expect it monotony, 173 00:08:27.680 --> 00:08:30.319 until almost absently I landed on a string of entries 174 00:08:30.319 --> 00:08:33.320 with an old familiar rhythm. Four nineteen omain replaced broken 175 00:08:33.360 --> 00:08:36.480 valve nineteen o four, sweet water main leak five slash fourteen, 176 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:39.720 slash thirteen. The four or nineteen electrical replaced ballasts offered 177 00:08:39.799 --> 00:08:42.799 nineteen o seven twenty forty notage. The four nineteen tenant 178 00:08:42.799 --> 00:08:46.200 requests replaced ex at sign nineteen eleven. The handwriting was 179 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:49.200 mostly Minor Roy's, meticulous, with the kind of abbreviations only 180 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:52.320 a long habited crew could decipher. There was nothing ghostly, 181 00:08:52.440 --> 00:08:56.080 nothing overtly strange about the notes themselves. They belonged, and 182 00:08:56.159 --> 00:08:58.879 yet they couldn't because four nineteen per every one else 183 00:08:58.919 --> 00:09:02.039 did not exist. There it was again, like a misplaced 184 00:09:02.039 --> 00:09:04.759 brick in a wall. My curiosity kicked into high gear. 185 00:09:05.480 --> 00:09:08.120 I switched to the current digital directory on the service tablet. 186 00:09:08.679 --> 00:09:11.240 The suites were four eighteen were listed crisply eighteen o 187 00:09:11.320 --> 00:09:15.000 one to eighteen fifteen. Then immediate jump to floor twenty 188 00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:18.440 two thousand one to twenty twenty two, no floor nineteen, 189 00:09:18.759 --> 00:09:22.159 no nineteen o four, no nineteen o seven, not redacted 190 00:09:22.200 --> 00:09:24.519 to just skipping past, as if it had never been planned, 191 00:09:24.759 --> 00:09:27.679 let alone occupied. For a second, I wondered if some 192 00:09:27.679 --> 00:09:29.639 one had made an umbering mistake, but every had a 193 00:09:29.679 --> 00:09:33.080 floor fit perfectly. By then, buzzing with impatience, I found 194 00:09:33.159 --> 00:09:35.960 Roy after his shift. I showed him the logbook and 195 00:09:35.960 --> 00:09:39.440 pointed out the entries. He shroked, half amused, half bored, 196 00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:43.039 old paperwork. Car lots gets mixed up here never was 197 00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:45.039 a nineteen. It's the sort of thing that happens with 198 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:48.200 these old joint superstitious owners. Contracted her skipping numbers. If 199 00:09:48.200 --> 00:09:50.360 you remember ron, that's all next you'll be asking for 200 00:09:50.360 --> 00:09:54.200 a four thirteen two. But the old logbook's I hesitated. 201 00:09:54.759 --> 00:09:57.720 He shook his head with restrained irritation. You want a 202 00:09:57.759 --> 00:10:00.480 real answer, probably some one copied old entries for or 203 00:10:00.519 --> 00:10:03.080 numbered work carreas without regard to flaws. Paperwork as a 204 00:10:03.080 --> 00:10:06.159 will of its own, always did let it go. Not satisfied, 205 00:10:06.200 --> 00:10:08.519 I saw it, Angie. She was deep in a digital 206 00:10:08.559 --> 00:10:11.960 city permit file, scanning for compliance issues. But she indulged 207 00:10:11.960 --> 00:10:14.960 my questions. It's not just a missing button, I said. 208 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:18.200 There are log entries decades worth, some with my own 209 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:21.240 handwriting her. She waved the permit bindery in my direction, 210 00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:24.639 smiled with patient cheer. Carl, the city records are clear, 211 00:10:24.720 --> 00:10:26.879 eighteen twenty. That's how it was built. That's what's on 212 00:10:26.919 --> 00:10:29.720 the drawings, the permits, the official directory. I've filed for 213 00:10:29.799 --> 00:10:32.360 this place for fourteen years, and those numbers haven't changed. 214 00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:35.320 If weird in nineteen, the insurance policy would know. Trust me. 215 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:37.960 She scrolled through a digital permit scan and turned the 216 00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:40.600 screen toward me. See all plans jumped straight from eighteen 217 00:10:40.639 --> 00:10:43.320 to twenty. It was all there in in disputable black 218 00:10:43.360 --> 00:10:45.440 and white. She looked at me with a mix of 219 00:10:45.440 --> 00:10:48.000 amusement and sympathy, the kind of look managers give loyal 220 00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:50.480 aging staff who sometimes see ghost in a copy room. 221 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:53.440 You're probably thinking of that old Ekert tarjaal were this 222 00:10:53.480 --> 00:10:56.159 Swee's all mixed up? I realized then that I was 223 00:10:56.159 --> 00:10:59.320 becoming astros, that usters guy, the one with fixations. I 224 00:10:59.399 --> 00:11:01.759 left the office with polite thanks, shutting the door more 225 00:11:01.799 --> 00:11:05.039 gently than usual. That evening. In my pocket note bec 226 00:11:05.120 --> 00:11:08.759 usually reserved for inventory corrections. I began scribbling everything I remembered. 227 00:11:08.799 --> 00:11:11.000 A floor in nineteen the blue carpet, the bronze bus 228 00:11:11.039 --> 00:11:13.559 in na Foy they always called window Bay by the northwestair. 229 00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:17.720 I paired each memory with the question mark. I wasn't frightened. 230 00:11:18.399 --> 00:11:21.759 I was, if anything, driven by a sharper focus. The 231 00:11:21.799 --> 00:11:24.759 building and I had lived through deferred maintenance, budget cuts, 232 00:11:24.879 --> 00:11:27.600 owners with grand plans, and others who disappeared after only 233 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:30.799 a season or two, surely a reason. If a memory 234 00:11:30.799 --> 00:11:33.559 persists despite all this, then maybe the fault isn't a memory, 235 00:11:33.559 --> 00:11:36.360 but in how its evidence is buried. That resolve would 236 00:11:36.399 --> 00:11:39.480 become the wedge that prided the mystery wider. Most puzzles 237 00:11:39.480 --> 00:11:41.919 and maintenance are solved with a flashlight, a wrench, or 238 00:11:41.919 --> 00:11:44.840 a phone call. The one growing inside my thoughts spilled 239 00:11:44.879 --> 00:11:48.200 over quietly, almost in a code of small resistances. Next 240 00:11:48.279 --> 00:11:50.879 day I started searching for fresh evidence in the paper trail. 241 00:11:51.480 --> 00:11:54.279 The first hint was almost comically mundane. An old maintenance 242 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:57.399 receipt from the late nineties founded a fining cabinets missileigne 243 00:11:57.440 --> 00:12:00.440 drawer a delivery in nineteen ninety eight, signed for a 244 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:03.840 four nineteen in Mayram. The receipt had the ancient building logo, 245 00:12:03.960 --> 00:12:07.679 all blocky geometry and faded maroon. Next, an invoice replaced 246 00:12:07.720 --> 00:12:11.840 thermostat floor nineteen janitorial closet. Intruders of numbers and tasks 247 00:12:11.840 --> 00:12:14.799 placed the space in a geography nobody else apparently remembered. 248 00:12:15.399 --> 00:12:18.080 Even stranger was an evacuation chart unearthed from behind a 249 00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:20.879 web stack of dusty mot buckets in the north janitorial cupboard. 250 00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:24.759 The map was yellowed midman as one thousand, nine hundred eighties, 251 00:12:24.840 --> 00:12:27.720 laminated and curling at the edges. It showed a clean 252 00:12:27.759 --> 00:12:31.799 stack of schematic boxes G one two all the way 253 00:12:31.840 --> 00:12:35.080 up to twenty one. There between eighteen and twenty was 254 00:12:35.080 --> 00:12:38.200 a marked nineteen floor. The suites were labeled in tiny 255 00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:41.440 print nineteen o one, nineteen o two up to nineteen 256 00:12:41.480 --> 00:12:44.759 twelve and neat shadowy parallel grum signifying the mailrom the 257 00:12:44.840 --> 00:12:47.120 Yachtless certainty of the chot sent an old shiver through me, 258 00:12:47.879 --> 00:12:50.399 setting out to collect living memories of visit attendant on 259 00:12:50.399 --> 00:12:53.240 either side of the missing floor pair. On the twentieth, 260 00:12:53.279 --> 00:12:56.039 an elderly attorney named mister Matthews was pausing outside his 261 00:12:56.080 --> 00:12:58.159 office door, setting a bowler hat on a shelf, as 262 00:12:58.159 --> 00:13:00.799 if arranging it for a later inspection. I struck up 263 00:13:00.799 --> 00:13:03.600 our usual morning talk, then added, as smoothly as I 264 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:06.080 could ever, get turned around in this building. Find yourself 265 00:13:06.120 --> 00:13:09.240 somewhere you didn't expect. He laughed, as foggy but shrewd. 266 00:13:10.279 --> 00:13:13.159 My god. Yes, in the old days, especially early mornings, 267 00:13:13.159 --> 00:13:15.519 sometimes I get off afore too soon, get lost in 268 00:13:15.559 --> 00:13:18.120 a maze. There was a corridor, odd art work, bronze heads, 269 00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:20.120 you know. I always thought they were fancy for an 270 00:13:20.159 --> 00:13:23.120 office building. I told him I remembered them, and he 271 00:13:23.159 --> 00:13:26.000 grew a little distant. I was drifting away. Wasn't that 272 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:28.799 on eighteen or twenty? No, nineteen may be hard to say. 273 00:13:28.879 --> 00:13:31.080 They We did so much now it all blurs together, 274 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:34.600 doesn't it. Down On the eighteenth, receptionist wholly told me, no, 275 00:13:34.840 --> 00:13:36.919 I've never had a client on a floor that doesn't exist. 276 00:13:36.960 --> 00:13:39.200 You'll have better lock ask in the retirees. They remember 277 00:13:39.240 --> 00:13:42.000 every desmote like it was a prize back and admin. 278 00:13:42.080 --> 00:13:45.240 I asked Anjie for the arqueaves of his blueprints. Anything predigital, 279 00:13:45.799 --> 00:13:49.120 she laughed, unlocking the tall file locker. Let me guess. 280 00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:51.960 Now you need to see the building's baby pictures. She 281 00:13:52.080 --> 00:13:55.919 gave me a thick folder. Knock yourself out, detective. The 282 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:58.799 early blueprints, heavy with notations and pencil and red pen 283 00:13:58.919 --> 00:14:01.039 gave a seductive clarity, the kind of trust more than 284 00:14:01.080 --> 00:14:05.440 any digital reproduction. The nineteen sixty seven version nineteen floors 285 00:14:05.480 --> 00:14:09.279 staggered off as plants, utility closets, janitor's room, may room 286 00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:12.799 or marked on the nineteen line. Then the nineteen seventy revision, 287 00:14:12.879 --> 00:14:16.080 same arrangement, Those spaces crowded without a detailer clearly outlined 288 00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:18.639 blue cop its own in what was marked reception nineteen. 289 00:14:19.159 --> 00:14:22.559 But then the nineteen eighty eight Schmatic No. Four nineteen 290 00:14:23.159 --> 00:14:26.480 flours jumped from eighteen to twenty. The physical outline square 291 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:29.720 footage structural walls remained steady, but the labels abruptly skipped. 292 00:14:30.360 --> 00:14:32.960 No reassignment of numbers, just an absence, as if an 293 00:14:32.960 --> 00:14:35.600 e race name on a rosta I got permission to 294 00:14:35.600 --> 00:14:39.279 walk the stairwells that afternoon between the eighteenth and twentieth flours. 295 00:14:39.320 --> 00:14:42.279 The landing should have served as the access point directly 296 00:14:42.440 --> 00:14:44.360 of eighteen. There was a longer stretch of steps than 297 00:14:44.360 --> 00:14:46.720 anywhere else, maybe three four steps worth more before you 298 00:14:46.799 --> 00:14:49.679 hit the fire door to twenty. Examining the wall by 299 00:14:49.679 --> 00:14:53.279 hand light, I found feinn discoloration, slightly cleaner rectangular sections 300 00:14:53.279 --> 00:14:56.679 at regular intervals. On every other floor, those blind patches 301 00:14:56.720 --> 00:14:59.960 featured a brush metal placout four, thirteen, four, sixteen, four 302 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:03.120 or eighteen, all mounted by the service corridor. But here 303 00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:05.799 above eighteen only the screw holes and the watterskin of 304 00:15:05.799 --> 00:15:10.159 paint placards removed, but their ghosts remained. On a hunch, 305 00:15:10.320 --> 00:15:13.000 I dug in the keypox, finding two old Masters sets, 306 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:15.399 mostly ignored since the ring repair in two thousand five. 307 00:15:16.039 --> 00:15:19.159 Those worn tags nineteen minutes one and nineteen minutes nine 308 00:15:19.279 --> 00:15:21.799 and nineteen minutes eleven. Their teeth, cove and patents I 309 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:23.960 could recall from the backs of my hands, but now 310 00:15:24.039 --> 00:15:26.320 checked against doors on both near by floors, the fit 311 00:15:26.399 --> 00:15:29.360 nowhere at all. I scribbled another new set of memories 312 00:15:29.399 --> 00:15:32.039 careful in my notebook doing my best to turn recollections 313 00:15:32.039 --> 00:15:34.919 and sketches. My version of floor nineteen had a blue 314 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:37.240 foy to the north, a mural of angular silver shapes 315 00:15:37.279 --> 00:15:39.799 and gold lines stretching along the east wall, and always 316 00:15:39.799 --> 00:15:42.440 a faint musty odors, and that a carpet left damp 317 00:15:42.480 --> 00:15:47.080 too long. During lunch, our retyped coworker Allan joined us. 318 00:15:47.759 --> 00:15:50.080 I probe gently, did you remember the art lady with 319 00:15:50.080 --> 00:15:52.960 a big modern painting in her waiting room, Missess Hsu 320 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:57.039 Alan bristled. I do remember, Miss s Hsu bit intense 321 00:15:57.159 --> 00:15:59.279 that one artwork everywhere. It made the hole one feel 322 00:15:59.320 --> 00:16:02.039 like a museum, and her office on well seventeen, No, 323 00:16:02.440 --> 00:16:04.600 must have been twenty. Wait didn't she call me once 324 00:16:04.639 --> 00:16:06.639 from nineteen? Maybe it was after the leak. Hell I 325 00:16:06.679 --> 00:16:09.440 can't separate it any more. He glanced at Mina, who 326 00:16:09.519 --> 00:16:12.519 just purshed her lips. We had a Missess Hshu. But 327 00:16:12.559 --> 00:16:15.799 it's all getting muddled. It was somewhere the older people's 328 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:18.480 uncertainty was contagious, a kind of memory fog that hovered 329 00:16:18.519 --> 00:16:22.159 over every conversation that evening. After most people cleared out, 330 00:16:22.279 --> 00:16:24.320 I stood in the exposed scene where a placard had 331 00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:26.519 been removed, and stared at the hazy, clean shape, dumb 332 00:16:26.519 --> 00:16:29.080 evidence for something no one seemed able to settle. The 333 00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:31.720 physical the recorded and the remembered versions of the building 334 00:16:31.799 --> 00:16:35.279 refused to collesce, but the evidence was mounted everywhere, like 335 00:16:35.320 --> 00:16:37.960 a quiet corps of science charts keys the way, the 336 00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:40.360 very wall scene bent by the force of conflicting histories. 337 00:16:40.960 --> 00:16:43.360 Rather than feeling closer to a solution, I was walking 338 00:16:43.399 --> 00:16:45.639 deeper into a labyrinth that had, I was now certain, 339 00:16:45.759 --> 00:16:49.480 been deliberately constructed. Saturday offered that bless rarity, the building 340 00:16:49.519 --> 00:16:53.200 almost entirely to myself. No email, no hallway complaints, no 341 00:16:53.279 --> 00:16:55.519 rush of coffee orders or tenants flagging me down for 342 00:16:55.600 --> 00:16:59.360 quick fixes. I decided to try an experiment. I took 343 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:02.080 the elevator to eighteen, then walked the stowel upwards, Clutching 344 00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:04.759 a pad of yellow graph paper and a flashlight. I 345 00:17:04.799 --> 00:17:07.240 counted each step comparing to the number between all the 346 00:17:07.279 --> 00:17:11.920 lower floors between seventeen and eighteen twelve steps between eighteen 347 00:17:11.960 --> 00:17:15.759 and twenty sixteen four too many. This was no mistake 348 00:17:15.799 --> 00:17:19.000 in construction. Either of the stairs themselves were built unevenly, 349 00:17:19.119 --> 00:17:21.319 or something filled the space up of eighteen below twenty. 350 00:17:21.920 --> 00:17:23.759 At that point I tried my master key in the 351 00:17:23.759 --> 00:17:25.839 fire door where nineteen would have landed, but the lock 352 00:17:25.880 --> 00:17:28.400 refused to tilting jamming not the right fit, even though 353 00:17:28.400 --> 00:17:32.079 the key itself was stamped nineteen. Stare dejected. I followed 354 00:17:32.079 --> 00:17:35.039 the wall to the right, feeling foreseam. My fingers found 355 00:17:35.039 --> 00:17:37.440 a subtle groove, then small and lick corridor pinted an 356 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:41.200 institutional beasia, recognized from older floors. Only it was narrower 357 00:17:41.240 --> 00:17:43.599 than any hallway I had seen elsewhere, windowless, rough, a 358 00:17:43.640 --> 00:17:47.039 little lower than normal. Five doors faced me, all blank, 359 00:17:47.279 --> 00:17:50.279 one slightly misaligned, another painted over A well lettering had 360 00:17:50.319 --> 00:17:53.400 once shown through at my feet A threadbirstcrap of blue 361 00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:57.640 green carpet patchworked against the baseboats that collar. It had 362 00:17:57.680 --> 00:17:59.759 haunted my memory since the first time I thought about 363 00:17:59.759 --> 00:18:03.559 this missing floor. I tested each door. None would open, 364 00:18:03.599 --> 00:18:06.359 at least not with the keys I had. Some doors 365 00:18:06.359 --> 00:18:08.279 gave no bance at all. Others felt as if they 366 00:18:08.319 --> 00:18:10.759 were bolted from within, or perhaps with simply decorative a 367 00:18:10.799 --> 00:18:14.920 face laid over solid wall. There wasn't total silence above 368 00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:17.279 the faint hummer power lines. I registered the buzz of 369 00:18:17.279 --> 00:18:20.079 ancient fluorescent fixtures overhead, the sluggish flicker of a two 370 00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:23.599 half past its prime. That place felt in her officially abandoned, 371 00:18:23.640 --> 00:18:26.319 but a little too stubborn to slip away completely. Then 372 00:18:26.359 --> 00:18:29.400 came the discovery, behind an old fuse box, as I 373 00:18:29.519 --> 00:18:31.799 was tapping the panel, a calendar, the cheak kind with 374 00:18:31.880 --> 00:18:35.279 town slogans and photocollage, A slip free from behind. It 375 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:38.559 was from April nineteen eighty five, faded yellowed, curling at 376 00:18:38.559 --> 00:18:42.079 the corners floor, nineteen maintenance week. It read in thick 377 00:18:42.079 --> 00:18:46.400 blue letters. The notes were cryptic hole RECARPETUUS, finalized storage 378 00:18:46.400 --> 00:18:50.200 white test wall, alarm mating slash nineteen corridor. That calendar 379 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:53.279 was a shock. Some one thirty years ago had seen 380 00:18:53.279 --> 00:18:56.119 this as an ordinary week, not an anomaly. I carefully 381 00:18:56.160 --> 00:18:59.400 stasted the calendars page in my pocket. Hours later, back 382 00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:02.240 at my desk, I realized what this meant. The question 383 00:19:02.400 --> 00:19:05.000 was and only why aren't the records consistent? Or whose 384 00:19:05.039 --> 00:19:07.960 memory is wrong? It was now more deeply about the 385 00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:09.720 stubborness of the built world, of the way a building 386 00:19:09.720 --> 00:19:12.559 could refuse to forget bits of a ghost, for would 387 00:19:12.599 --> 00:19:15.359 not surrender easily to paperwork or to management's need for 388 00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:18.880 a tidy numbering sequence. On my own, I started writing 389 00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:20.920 a list in my noteook of things that should not exist. 390 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:24.640 Too many steps, wall colors in congruent with any existing 391 00:19:24.960 --> 00:19:28.960 or index, floor door tags that led nowhere, a calendar 392 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:31.920 that described the hidden as merely routine. I was walking 393 00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:35.319 a line between skepticism and wonder. An hour earlier, I 394 00:19:35.319 --> 00:19:37.279 would have said floor nineteen was simply a slip in 395 00:19:37.319 --> 00:19:40.039 the records, an art fact of old paperwork. But with 396 00:19:40.119 --> 00:19:43.759 each physical anomally my understanding shifted. This building, I thought 397 00:19:43.880 --> 00:19:46.839 kept secrets, not because people forgot, but because physical space 398 00:19:46.839 --> 00:19:50.039 cannot last and quietly under my plan erasure, I scored 399 00:19:50.079 --> 00:19:53.279 one final note ghost neur a contradiction made real by 400 00:19:53.319 --> 00:19:55.799 memory and matter. The building itself can forget what people 401 00:19:55.799 --> 00:19:58.960