Flashers

ALBANY, N.Y. - One night, about a year ago, a friend and I were walking across Albany's Empire State Plaza on the way to a concert in the Egg.

It was a warm night, so we walked slowly. The Plaza is a long promenade that connects the State Capital to the State Museum. Created in the 1960s by bulldozing the city's old Italian section, the Plaza is the symbol of Albany, the thing that appears on the few postcards sent each year from the city.

The sides of the plaza are flanked by office buildings, four smaller ones on the west side, and the Corning Tower, Upstate New York's tallest building, on the east side. On this particular night, ambling toward our destination, I looked up at the night sky.

Somewhere between the ground and the few stars that penetrate the urban light pollution, something was wrong. The Corning Tower looked alive. Lights were flashing, randomly, at all of the tower's windows. All 42 floors were illuminated and then dark, dozens of times each minute.

"What's that?" I said. My friend stared at it for a while and shrugged.

I stood in front of the Tower and frantically narrated a digital camera video on what might be causing the light show. Aliens? Terrorists? A government conspiracy?

After shooting, we hurried quickly into the concert. Two hours of Aimee Mann's country rock later, the lights were off.

Two weeks ago, that same friend and I were talking about that night. He said off-handedly that he later found what had caused the display.

"That's what happens when the fire alarm goes off," he said. "Those lights were the emergency flashers."

The lesson of the evening: In Albany, things are often duller than they seem.