My wife, son, and I were going on vacation, driving to an island just off the coast. The freeway went over a bridge, through one island, and over another bridge to our destination. (Similar to taking the Bay Bridge through Yerba Buena Island in the San Francisco Bay.)
However, once we drove into the first island, which was covered entirely with an enormous building, we got lost under that building. The freeway seemed to go straight through, but hit a dead-end at the other side of the island, so we couldn’t find the second bridge. There were various exits from the freeway, so we drove around for a while. Finally we found a “blue area” parking lot, and stopped to ask directions. It was getting late, so we also thought we might be able to find a hotel room.
We found out that this entire island was a government installation of some kind, not open to the public. However, I was surprised to learn that my wife had a security clearance that allowed us in. They did offer us rooms to stay overnight. They gave us ID cards which acted as keys for our rooms, and also allowed access to other services, including restaurants and use of the computer network.
The purpose of the installation was a mystery to me. The computer wouldn’t tell me very much. I could request certain documents, and they were delivered in capsules by a pneumatic tube system. After doing this several times, another capsule arrived unexpectedly. Someone had set up a program that saw my pattern of queries and delivered to me a set of index cards with a lot of information that he or she had managed to compile about the nature of the facility.
Based on the information on the cards, I took certain corridors and elevators, until I found myself outside the office of the director of the facility. I told his administrative assistant, a robot, that I wanted to see the director. The assistant smiled, and said “welcome back, sir.”
Apparently I was the director, and my memory of this had been erased when I embarked on a mission several years before, in order to avoid inadvertently divulging any classified information. Bits of that memory started returning, but not the big picture. Apparently I still had to keep a low profile, and hide the fact that I was the director.
The purpose of the facility was to house a group of extraterrestrials and keep them safe. They had arrived several years before, and their spacecraft was damaged, so they were not able to leave. The bigger problem was that the aliens had pathogens very harmful to humans, and no way had yet been found for the aliens to safely coexist with humans. We tried to make their stay as pleasant as possible while keeping them quarantined.
Unfortunately other parts of the government felt that the only safe solution was to exterminate the aliens. We constantly had to fight these efforts both politically and by countering “black ops”. A rogue agency was trying to kidnap top executives of the facility, myself included.
I needed to give a presentation to the alien leaders. This was done by use of an alien technology that swapped the minds of two individuals. The aliens had adapted it to work with humans. I found myself in an alien body, which was basically humanoid but definitely not human.
As I gave the talk, a group of humans in hazmat suits broke into the facility and tried to capture me. I made it into an elevator which closed just in the nick of time. There were only two buttons, for up and down. I pressed the up button. After about 45 seconds, a voice announced that the elevator was nearing the top of the shaft, and I had five seconds to press the stop button. What stop button? I couldn’t find one! I pressed the down button, but the elevator did not slow.
The elevator crashed through the top of the building, and started flying under its own power, like the “Up and Out” button of the Wonkavator. I urgently needed to get to my office, but was still in an alien body, and still being pursued. The elevator asked for directions, and I found that it would accept voice commands. I directed it to enter the facility through a cargo entrance, and head for a biology lab, where I could don a hazmat suit so that I could get to my office without endangering humans.