[For the record, this is all fiction. No lie. Don't even bother to vote on this completion, these photographs are pure fiction.]

The unmarked police car made a laboriously long U-turn, and came up along side us.

"Hey, you three--did you just come out of that building there?"

After some quick thinking, that somehow excluded that resounding advice about never lying to a cop when you're not actually doing anything that illegal, Dax responded, "No." (On the other hand, still a great answer--totally negative. No one would possibly mistake it for a yes.)

"You were not in that building?"

"Nope."

"What are you doing walking down this street?"

"Well, we just came from the Columbia Dance Center and were looking for some food - do you know of any food around here?" (good, stick to the truth...)

"Well, we got two calls - two different calls - about three people walking around inside the building there, one of them a guy wearing a skirt. We were just going to move along, and then we see you three here. We don't get many calls about guys wearing skirts."



Dax, looking down at his black skirt: "Huh."

So at this point, Dax looked at the cops, and they looked at him, and they knew that he was lying about being in the building, and he knew that they knew that he was lying. The only question was one of information: how to tell them we weren't doing anything they needed to worry about...while still not telling them we were in the building.

"Well... we were looking over the fence at the building, maybe [the callers] were mistaken. I'm just confused as to why they thought we were inside the building..."

"Well, you see, there's a lot of graffiti down in those alleys back there, and you can understand that people around here would be suspicious of people poking around abandoned buildings." We were all too happy to hear this. We weren't tagging anything and didn't have any materials for tagging anything: that's totally U of A territory - and this is a BART PA task. "What's your interest in the building?"

All together: "It's pretty."



We apparently were all thinking the exact same thing at that point in time: tell the cops we were just taking photographs... oh wait no, don't tell them we were taking photographs! Thank goodness for the triple don't-tell-the-cops-we-have-incriminating-photographs Saving Throw.

They seemed extremely fixated on the graffiti possibility, which was strange. Not the unsafe nature of climbing about in a half-demolished building or the chance we may have tried to sabotage expensive heavy machinery, but graffiti. In a building that was in the process of being demolished.

After confirming that we were not vandals, they let us go.

* * * * *

PROLOGUE: Earlier that evening

The evening started with us talking about tasking. In particular, saying that sometimes, you have a beautiful plan and vision for how to do a task. But sometimes, the tasking just comes along and you take advantage of it. zer0gee had a name for this second kind of tasking: she called it:

'Surpraxis'

And as the evening progressed, we found ourselves walking through the city. Guided initially by a desire for some food, and later by the hand of fate, we came across a building in the process of being demolished.

We all paused for a moment.

'For example', said Spidere, 'I've been keeping an eye out for good places to do Urban Exploration.' It wasn't entirely clear which of us were being bad influences on the others--what was clear was this: this was an opportunity we could not deny.



We each took a slightly different way into the building grounds, and met up on the ground floor. Spidere decided to go up the rubble-filled stairwell (terrible idea or just bad idea?) to clamber around on the top and swing around the front facade (eventually shimmying down the scaffolding), while Dax took the basement and zer0gee took the main floor. There was lots of wonder to be found, and plenty of dust (but sadly for zer0gee, no rusted metal she could pocket). There was an enormous crane with a claw, and a wrecking ball laid among the rubble with a chain the size of Dax's leg. We found a computer monitor that was still plugged into the wall, and a fire alarm we decided not to pull, just in case (although we DID discuss doing so). And lots and lots of brick that threatened to collapse down on us at any opportune moment.



Once we'd all reconvened on the ground, we saw a police car turning the corner under the El tracks at the end of the lot, and we all ducked down. Spidere watched it go by and began to walk back toward the rubble fairly brazenly, thinking everything was okay, when he was quickly pulled back into hiding. Men with flashlights were moving along the street next to the building. The men eventually put their flashlights away and got back into their SUV. After a five or ten tense minutes crouching silently in the dark of the abandoned building, Spidere found an easy way out on the other side (literally through what had used to be the front door, then out along the scaffolding front--totally hidden, and no climbing required; definitely the way we should have come in) and decided it would be a good time to make our exit.



While walking back to Dax's bike, we saw a cruiser pulling away under the El tracks, while another unmarked car made its way Southward... but not before spotting us and flipping a bitch.



* * * * *

EPILOGUE: 1AM, Elston Ave.

Elston and Ashland, 1AM.

(biker passes Dax on the left, turns and looks over his shoulder)

Biker: Guy in a skirt!
Dax: Huh?
Biker: You're the guy in a skirt, white blouse!
Dax: Uh... what's up?
Biker: I'm the cop who stopped you on State Street.
Dax: Oh! Funny to see you here.
Biker: That's the way the life works!

(bikes off)