I took yesterday afternoon off. Why? I was hungry. Secondarily, I didn't want to die.

My cubicle is very near one of the side doors of one of our companies buildings. The building is a quarter mile long or so, almost all open space with cubicle walls dividing it all up and aisles of walled offices here and there just to keep the ceiling up. Because I'm near the door, I overhear a lot of conversation.

The first weird thing I started overhearing was that the cafeteria was closed and sealed off. Weird. Did the food get contaminated, maybe? There was an increasing exodus of people leaving to go out for lunch, and finally I got too curious not to walk down to see for myself what the big deal was. So I did. Indeed, the cafeteria had the security cage thingies drawn down over the entrances, and the staff was all clustered at one of the tables outside. One of the cooks was talking to one of my co-workers about what was going on, so I meandered over to listen.

I didn't learn much. I learned the reason didn't have anything to do with the food itself. There was some speculation that something had gone wrong with the building's plumbing or heating ducts, but nobody really knew.

I went back to my cube. I figured I'd wait a little longer and then drive somewhere for lunch. But then I started overhearing over things by the side door. There was a security guard there now, telling people to badge out when they leave. (We're supposed to do that anyway, but the door will open and let you out even if you don't, so most people don't bother.) Presumably this is so an accurate record is kept of who is in the building and who isn't.

But then the security guard starts telling people that if they leave, they can't re-enter the building. But the rule is confusing, because she's letting people back in the building that left before she started telling people that if they left, they couldn't come back in. Confused? I was, especially since I was still only half paying attention, engrossed as I was in my work.

Meanwhile, people are starting to notice the yellow police tape cordoning the main entrance off outside. Police cars and firefighters are gathering in the parking lot outside. There's a news helicopter circling the building.

I started paying particular attention when an employee returned from lunch, got the spiel from the security guard (if you leave again, you can't re-enter the building), and the employee started asking questions like, "Is it safe in the building?" to which the answer was, "I'm not at liberty to discuss that."

At that point, I'm not working anymore. I'm standing up and skimming the tops of the cube walls for people I recognize. There's a whole cluster of people I work with by the windows out front, so I wander over and repeat the weird exchange I overheard. Slowly it's sinking in that, even though I'm still assuming the building is safe, if nobody can *tell* me it's safe, I'm not hanging around.

Besides, I hadn't left to eat lunch in time, and the cafeteria is closed. I'm getting really hungry at this point, and if I wanted to eat lunch that day, I'd have had to have left the building.

But for the moment, I'm hanging around my friends and wondering if they know anything more than I do. One of them shows me a company-wide email that had just gotten sent out. It says that a bag of unidentified white powder was found in one of the conference rooms, and the company called in the authorities. There's no further information, and we can leave for the day if we feel we need to.

Well I sure felt I needed to. I was hungry. Besides, like I say, even though I figured the building was safe, *I* didn't know that, and if nobody can tell me for sure that I'm in a safe place, I'm not staying there. So I went home.

The next day, I learned that the feds instructed the company not to communicate anything to the employees. (I'm not sure if that meant "anything other than that email" or if it meant "anything at all" with that email later being "cleared.")

I also learned what the white powder was. It was flour.