Uncle Si finds an exit

Before jumping from the desk he's lived on for so many months, Uncle Si leaves a tiny message on the whiteboard for anyone who just might come looking for him or wonder about his whereabouts. He was pretty sure no one, not even the Uniform who stood him under his computer screen, would even notice he was gone.

He makes his way around old office furniture and through empty cubicles and over dusty office supplies. Uncle Si has heard many times from his perch under the computer screen that the number of Uniforms here on this compound has slowly gotten small and smaller. Many more are going home than are coming these days. He's heard talk about how things are changing for the military in Afghanistan. Walking through the nearly abandoned building, he sees just how true this is. Yet nothing has really changed for him until just a moment ago when he jumped off that computer and decided to see what he could see. 

He quickly realizes that to see anything other than cubicles and desks and chairs and fluorescent lights, he is going to have to get out of the building. Because for all he knows, it could be fantastic outside in the sunlight. A beach, perhaps. Mountains, maybe. Could be trees and flowers as far as he could see.  Uncle Si is excited to see the Outside.

He only stops twice on his way to find the door to Outside. The first time to browse a magazine for a moment, an article about a bicycle trickster, which caused Uncle Si to wish he could ride a bicycle through the sky. Or even just ride a bicycle. On the ground.

And the second stop Uncle Si made was to the restroom, or latrine as he'd heard all the Uniforms call it, because for the first time since arriving in Afghanistan, he thinks he, like all the Uniforms drinking all that water to stay "hydrated," might just have to pee before trudging into the Outside. Who knows when he will find another latrine?

Standing here beneath the urinal, Uncle Si wishes he was taller. And that he had a bio-hazard suit.

After washing his hands and his boots and pretty much his whole self...twice... Uncle Si leaves the bathroom and immediately is drawn down the hallway toward a red glow. He sees a doorway. Above the doorway shines a bright red sign. 

Uncle Silas, who had until this moment spent his entire time in Afghanistan beneath a computer screen, pauses before going out the door, a little scared, a lot excited, and very much happy for whatever might lie in the Outside, on the other side of this door.