I was at a trade association meeting, which was being held in an old manor house (not a banquet hall). I spotted a woman from my high school graduating class who had visited my classmates.com page recently, although we had not known each other then. I tried to be friendly with her, probably because I didn’t know anyone else, but either she didn’t recognize me or she pretended not to know me.

Distraught, I wandered off and through twists, turns, doors, and stairways that I later couldn’t remember, I found myself in the decaying bowels of the old house. At one point I was looking at where part of the house seemed to be rotting into an earthen bank, and something — dirt? a piece of the house? a rat or other animal? — fell away and downward. I was startled and frightened and very alone. No matter what I did, I seemed to go deeper and deeper and to get more and more lost.

It occurred to me that something dangerous was hidden here. Several times I found steps or stairs, but it would not be clear whether they were going up or down, and down seemed to be fatal.

Somehow, I came to a brighter, less decayed part of this subterranean world and heard voices and machines. I envisioned, and even may have seen evidence of, an underground war plant.

By now I knew I would be in danger if I were found. Finally, I came to a place that looked like a dusty cellar or basement, with food and clothes in storage, where I was discovered, although I couldn’t see by whom. “Oh, I was looking for the coat room,” I said sheepishly and genuinely enough, and they seemed to believe me and took me back to the meeting. They did not seem to realize I had been underground and seen much, much more.

There was a sexual element involved at this point, but I’m not going to go into that.