Jane Espenson

Five years ago, I woke up to news of the attack. Numb, I called everyone I knew, and then, still numb, when it was my normal time, I drove to work at Buffy. I thought we’d probably be sent home, but I wanted to see my friends anyway.

There was a television in David Fury’s office, and some of us collected in there to watch as the coverage continued. Soon, Joss was in the doorway. We all talked quietly, and then he sent us home.

To get from the Buffy offices in Santa Monica to the apartment where I then lived, my route required that I drive for a long time toward the building immortalized in film as "Nakatomi Plaza" from Die Hard. It towered at the end of the wide street, constantly in my frame of vision, with no other tall buildings nearby. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

I watched it not because I thought it could be another target, but because I was trying to comprehend the scale of events, to understand what it meant that what had just happened was real. It’s like it was still too large to understand, and I was trying to bring it closer to hand, so I could see it all, believe it was real.

It didn’t help.