Some people spend years studying the mysteries of the universe. They build laboratories, write papers, collect grants, and argue with one another using words nobody else understands.
I, on the other hand, climbed in an aluminum tube because I wanted to scare Barney.
At the time, I was assigned to Bioenvironmental Engineering at the air base, though I would later move over to the Environmental Health side of the office. On this particular day, I was supposed to meet Barney at a facility where Civil Engineering was reworking an HVAC system. The building needed more air draw because workers were using Toluene, a chemical that can make a person’s life considerably more heartbreaking than needed.
I arrived early and found a large section of aluminum ductwork lying about. It was one of those tubes big enough to crawl inside, which is precisely the sort of thing that attracts grown men with government jobs.
My plan was simple. I would hide inside the aluminum tubing until Barney came along. Then I would leap out and frighten him so badly that he would spill his coffee and provide me with a story to tell for years afterward.
Like many government projects, it did not proceed according to plan. I crawled inside the tube and settled in.
It was surprisingly comfortable. The aluminum curved around me like a giant metallic burrito.
There was little to no sound, and the light was dim. The outside world gradually faded away.
After a while, I began wondering where Barney was. Then I began wondering where I was.
An hour can be a long time when you’re sitting alone inside a giant aluminum cylinder. The human brain apparently dislikes boredom about as much as a cat dislikes bathwater.
When deprived of sufficient stimulation, it starts manufacturing entertainment. Mine took me flying.
Suddenly, I wasn’t sitting in a duct anymore. I was soaring around the air base like a low-budget ghost.
I drifted over hangars, floated above roads, and cruised around familiar buildings as if I were wearing a set of invisible wings. Everything felt astonishingly real, not dreamlike or fuzzy.
Meanwhile, in actual reality, I was still sitting inside a piece of HVAC duct waiting to ambush a coworker who had apparently forgotten I existed.
Years later, I learned that experiences like mine are not uncommon. Put a person in a quiet, enclosed environment with little sensory input, and the brain starts improvising.
Float tanks produce similar effects. So do sensory deprivation chambers.
Of course, some folk would rather explain it using more colorful theories, like Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kozyrev, who proposed that time itself might be a kind of physical force.
Followers later built strange aluminum structures known as Kozyrev mirrors, claiming they could influence consciousness, produce visions, or create experiences involving time and space. Now, I am not saying I traveled through time.
I am merely reporting that I entered an aluminum tube and emerged an hour later, having conducted an aerial inspection of the entire base without filing the required paperwork.
Science would likely blame sensory deprivation. A lack of outside stimulation, a little isolation, perhaps a touch of fatigue, and the brain creating its own reality show.
That explanation is sensible. Unfortunately, sensible explanations are rarely as entertaining.
Eventually, I crawled out of the tube. Barney never received the scare I had planned for him.
In fact, the only person who ended up startled that day was me. I had gone in expecting to play a practical joke and came out wondering whether I had accidentally invented a discount version of a time machine.
It remains one of the stranger episodes of my military career, which is saying something. After all, not every government employee can honestly claim that an attempt to scare a coworker resulted in an unauthorized flight around an air base while sitting perfectly still inside a piece of ductwork.
The federal government paid me for that hour, and I still consider it one of my more productive days.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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