Escape from the L with Brains, Not Brawn
“Please, everyone, there’s no need to panic. We’re going to get you out of here,” blurts a disembodied voice in a Chicago accent as thick as Ditka’s mustache. I’ve just paid $30 to be locked inside a convincing facsimile of an L car crammed into a small studio in the Flatiron Arts Building in Wicker Park. In the distance, the sound of the actual train heightens the authenticity. My companions are five 20-something bros geeked to get their neurons firing during a nerdtastic bachelor party.
We’re only 10 seconds into our joy ride when things abruptly go off track. The lights flicker, and a shadowy computer-hacker character appears on a fuzzy TV screen to deliver the bad news: Due to some sort of postapocalyptic catastrophe, we’re speeding toward certain death. Our only chance for survival is to solve the riddles scattered around the train car. We have 60 minutes, which begins … now...
