Free Bad Glass by Richard E. Gropp

collapsed in on itself.
    “Here we go.” Taylor’s voice echoed back down the length of the corridor, jolting me out of my reverie.
    I found her in one of the big, empty rooms, squatting in front of a busted window. She was holding up Charlie’s USB drive. “Easier than smuggling it in,” she said, a sly smile on her face.
    I followed her back to the stairwell, then up three more flights of stairs.
    The sixth floor was bustling with activity. It had the same layout as three floors down, but the cubicles here were arranged with ruler-straight precision. And they were occupied, full of life. Each desk supported a heavy-duty notebook computer, illuminated from above by a standing desk lamp. A mix of casually dressed civilians and uniformed officers sat hunched over these machines, studying LCD screens and transcribing text from handwritten forms. A din of voices filled the air. It was standard office chatter: rat-a-tat-tat conversation, hushed laughter, muffled curses.
    The difference between this floor and the one three floors down was disorienting. The architecture was the same, but the feel was radically different. Like it was the same place—the same floor—but separated by a vast period of time.
    But which comes first?
I wondered. Was the third floor the past or the future? Was it an abandoned, desolate space waiting for reclamation, waiting to be filled and rejuvenated? Or was it what comes next, what happens when all of these people pack up and leave, abandoning this place for good?
    “This is the military command center,” Taylor explained, noticing the perplexed look on my face. “You’ll find the bigwigs up on the top two floors, plotting and planning, arranging the infrastructure,sending out search parties and data-gathering expeditions.” She gestured into one of the rooms. “Down here, you’ve got the dregs, crunching numbers and cataloging information, trying to make sense of what’s going on.”
    We continued down the main corridor, past several more densely packed rooms. Finally, Taylor turned into a smaller office. There were only four cubicles here, all of them oversized and filled with multiple monitors. At the moment, the room held only a single occupant: a soldier dressed in a natty olive-drab uniform. He glanced up from his computer as soon as he heard us enter, and a wide smile spread across his face.
    “Taylor!” the soldier exclaimed. He rose to his feet and greeted her with a warm embrace. I caught the grin on Taylor’s lips and felt a moment of intense jealousy; it was an irrational reaction, I knew, but it was something I couldn’t control. She was practically beaming. I hadn’t known her for long, but still, from all I’d seen, I wanted to be able to elicit that type of reaction in her, the sheer magnitude of that joy.
    As soon as he let go, Taylor introduced us. “Danny, this is Dean. He’s a photographer. He’s trying to document the situation here.” The soldier’s arm remained draped around Taylor’s shoulder, and she reached up to pat his hand as she talked. “Danny’s my spy in the military-industrial complex. He helped me get in good with the soldiers.”
    “You make it sound like treason,” Danny said. He held out his hand and I shook it. He was taller than me—about six foot two—and he had a powerful frame. His dark brown hair was sheared close to his skull, letting a glimpse of skin shine through. It made the curve of his head look like a powerful, tightly flexed muscle. He had a strong handshake. “I just help her out now and then. I figure I should do my part … lend a hand to the little guy.”
    Danny smiled. He had a perfect smile—a warm, winning smile—and that bugged me to no end. “A photographer, huh,” he said, and he gave his head a tiny little shake. “You should be careful out there. The captain sees the press as public enemy numberone, and he’s already got a couple of newsmen locked away at Fort Lewis … Frankly, I think he just