I'm hardly an urban explorer of opacity caliber, but from time to time I do love a good romp in a derelict building. A while ago I got to explore an old egg carton factory as it was in the process of being stripped for copper wire. There is something primal about crunching over glass and pigeon feathers with silent industrial-age assembly lines rusting in the broken beams of sun filtering through a boarded window. Your senses sharpen—the scuffle of mice and the creak of rotting wood and warped sheet metal are strangely amplified, and you can practically taste the mold and asbestos dust in the air. You begin to feel like a character in a post-apocalyptic novel, ready to start harpooning rats and barricading the doors of a defunct office against the inevitable midnight zombie attack. The mind slips all too easily into the fantasy, and when you leave you're almost disappointed that the highways and gas stations and supermarkets are still well lit and stocked with every amenity, still awaiting Armageddon. Well, I suppose it's only a matter of time, but it's easy to dream darkly among the paradoxical beauty and ugliness of civilization's inevitable decay.