[Your first crush]

Another ten minutes walking and the end of section 8 approached. The empty
hallway was spooky, so wide, like standing on, no, in, a pancake twisted in
an Escher-inspired curve into a ribbon, no, a ring.

It echoed, dully, at once feeling spacious and yet too enclosed.

The windows in the ceiling, the view up into the majesty of the heavens and
the ring above, didn't do anything to help. If anything, they made the
combination all the more obvious, the thick plastic was solid enough to feel
enclosed, but the view was, right now, into the void. A few more minutes and
the earth would rotate into view, but for now, it was a dizzying view of the
stars, moving just fast enough to confuse the eye if you looked at it
sideways.

_Might as well keep moving. At this point, it's closer to keep going._

The entrance to section 1 was still mostly bulkhead, left from sealing off
the unfinished parts of the ring. A tiny door was the only passage through
the massive off-white wall standing in his path. The proportions matched
nothing built on earth. The Eiffel Tower could stand against it and only
just graze the ceiling. The small cluster of people around the door looked
Lilliputian from any distance at all.

The people around the door were mostly military types. He supposed that made
sense, since Section 1 was mostly the military lab. Black uniforms that gave
the impression that they were body armor gave a uniformly meanacing
appearance.

At the door, a woman with clipped grey hair and a sergeant's stripes stood
with a clipboard. She insisted on seeing his ID, and when he didn't have it,
pursed her lips and made a few surly taps on the computer she carried until
his face popped up on her screen. 

"Dr. Karetov, you're not cleared for access here. You may pass through, but
the labs on either side of the path are off limits. Corporal, show him
through."

A nearly identical looking woman with the same clipped grey hair motioned
him through the door and curtly walked next to him. Fitting that her name
was Dorlock, he thought.

The corridor was dark, not well lit like most of the others, and not the
oppressively flat light of the empty section 8. At once it felt both ominous
and a relief from the stark, blank white. The other thing about the dim
light was was the view. The earth was rotating into view, darkside, with the
endless sprawl of Beijing spilling light out like a scattered web lit from
some internal source.

He paused for only a moment and Corporal Dorlock promptly nudged him with a
clipboard. "Keep moving please."

Being escorted was possibly one of the more humiliating things that an
ordinary day might bring to someone ruggedly independent, and Alex was
bristling by the time Section 2 came into view.