Funny how muscle memory works.
This afternoon I was running a little containment drill in the laundry room — we have three orange kittens who treat every cracked door like an escape hatch — and somewhere in the middle of it, 1977 walked back in.
Not as a thought. As a feeling in my hands. Close the inner door first. Wait. Then open the outer one.
I learned that sequence in this same house, in this same room, when I was thirteen. Left in 1986. Came back in 2023. Apparently the procedure stayed behind and waited.
Forty years of dormancy, same laundry room, same sequence. The procedure remembered itself. I just showed up.
The room sits between the garage and the living room. Two doors. One outward, one inward. In 1977 that was enough to make it something else entirely.
I had recently seen 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was thirteen. I probably understood forty percent of that film. Maybe less. But I understood the concept of an airlock — the weight of sequence, the idea that survival depended on getting the order right. You didn’t open the second door until the first one had fully sealed behind you.
So I built a procedure. (Cue “Also sprach Zarathustra.”)
Outer door closes. Pressurization hiss. Pause for atmosphere stabilization. Inner door opens.
I whispered “Open the pod bay doors, HAL” to an empty garage and thought it sounded completely authentic. I was absolutely that kid. Have been since I was eight. Most normal people watch a movie and then go home. I watched 2001 and came home and built an airlock out of a laundry room. This is a documented character trait.
Someone in the house watched all of this with the kind of patience that doesn’t announce itself. Didn’t say much. Let the procedure run. That particular mercy is its own thing, and I didn’t fully understand it at thirteen the way I do now.
Years later, someone else encountered the protocol for the first time and offered a very patient version of: “Ah. So this is the level of geekery we’re dealing with.”
Which is fair. I won’t argue it.
What I didn’t expect was that the procedure would ever be genuinely useful. It felt like the kind of thing you leave behind with the house — part of the permanent inventory of a place, sealed up with everything else when you go.
Turns out that’s almost exactly what happened. The house kept it. I just came back to find it waiting.
The kittens — only 4 months old — have no idea about any of this. They have no interest in the history of the room or the cinematic inspiration behind the containment protocol. They have one interest: the garage. And if the garage door happens to be open to the street, we’re not talking inconvenience. We’re talking a search party.
So the procedure is back in full service.
Inner door secured first. Outer door opened briefly. Visitor admitted. Outer door sealed. Only then does the inner door cycle open.
No overlap. No exceptions. The kittens have made that very clear.
This afternoon the water heater kicked on while I was running the sequence — that soft gas-burner whoomph that whispers through the laundry room — and all three of them were already at the inner door, sitting in a row, staring up at the knob.
Charley, because he had already decided it was going to open and was simply waiting for the humans to catch up.
Jonesy, because Charley was there, and where Charley goes, Jonesy eventually commits — fully, aggressively, on his own terms.
Lucy, because she had observed the situation from a distance, assessed it thoroughly, and determined that her brothers had adequately cleared it for simply because she deserves it.
Three different protocols. One door. Zero interest in my containment procedures.
