As an educated transfer to the island of Stony Brook, ‘Jack’ would like to put in his informal request ‘- through this tale ‘- to have the school put up a great many more signs (and accurate ones too). One could hope that this might have a positive affect on the numerous LOST individuals that tramp here daily (some of who, when interviewed anonymously, claimed that they still have trouble finding things amongst the infinite maze walls, despite being natives here for years).
Jack was in a predicament shared by many–about thirty-nine thousand of the approximate forty thousand of the ‘Others’–walking about campus on any given day. He turned one way that was not in any way the right one, and walked two miles uphill before an out-of-place polar bear, or was it a Sea-Wolf, turned him around.
Heading down the opposite path, Jack started to locate ruins of buildings on a portable map he had secured. The buildings have exits on every side, but only have the name of each building on one side. One side!
When Jack could see the name of the buildings, standing in one of the rare angles so that these signs were in his line of sight and not fully covered by foliage, he would try to locate himself and his destination on the wrinkled half-torn map he held in his hands. The map, which inaccurately displays buildings without showing most of the worn paths leading to them, was utterly useless. It was only with the help of a guide ‘- a broad and completely bald man bearing a machete as though it were a notebook ‘- that Jack found the edifice wherein was his English ‘Survival’ Analysis course.
‘ Once inside the building, Jack found that the dim lighting and maze of doors resembled an underground laboratory from the 1970’s. Though interesting and pleasing to the eye, the symmetry of the stone architecture created an artistic setting which replicated whole sections of the place, and subsequently hid the door that Jack sought desperately. Time ran low and a button needed to be pressed, or else all hell would threaten the very world that in which we live in if he did not make it on time.
Running and battling through incumbents, Jack spied a two-inch by four-inch sign that posted the rooms N101-N145 and N170-N315. Nowhere did the sign reveal where Jack’s room number, N155, might be. That sign does not exist. Through a prisoners’ rumor, he learned that the ‘N’ rooms were located on the opposite side of the dense building and that they could either be found on the first or third floors.
After running around a guinea pigs’ toy-wheel and circling the place several times, Jack reached the only possible hiding place for his room– it looked exactly like the place he had just been. Unfortunately for him, the room he found was number U155 and the instructor there informed him that he would have to exit the building, and circle around half-a-mile to the far side where he would find the only elevator that could take him off the island and to his class located in Tunisia.’
As Jack left the elevator he felt isolated, as though he were treading through a desert. He all but crawled through the tough terrain until he saw an open doorway with the number N155 looming over it. Was he on time? Kate’s freckled face held a frown that was no indication that he was.
