nickname, he thought.
At
the top of the stairs there was a small clearing that functioned as a staff
room. There was a small fridge and a kettle, and a selection of chairs where
people could sit to enjoy a caffeine enriched break when it simply couldn’t
wait any longer. As he neared this clearing he paused, suspended in the void
somewhere between expectation and reality. He stopped to take a longer look,
thinking that his hungover mind was trying to play a trick on him, like the satisfying
delusion of a mirage in a desert of nothing but emptiness and dehydration.
Only this mirage was the exact opposite. In place of the chairs he saw nothing
but floor space. In the corner where normally stood a fridge was a bare wall
with a lighter imprint of clean ice blue paint where the fridge had once stood
and protected it from the grime of everyday life. Gone was the life that had
been here for the past four years and instead in its place was a vacuum of empty
space. He walked up the last few steps, his eyes wide and fixed in disbelief.
He stood transfixed for a moment unable to comprehend the change in environment.
He stood there in the absence of a single lucid or explanatory thought, until
eventually the only ideas to come to him arose from a darker and inconceivable
place. At first it was very small, an almost indistinguishable thought, a
silent what if , that was dismissible with the same ease at which it
sprang into his mind. But with each passing second that he stood taking in the
sight of the vacuous space before him the thought grew, changing and developing
into something more terrifying than he could dare let himself imagine. He
hesitated as he cleared the last couple of steps for fear of what he might see,
but yet unable to avoid the lure, he turned right to face the sliding door to
the lab. Eyeing up the red button to his left that would permit him entry, he
gingerly pressed his finger against it. The door slid back as the pneumatics
released a shot of air, and before him the extent of what he saw was almost
impossible to register, so great was the horror of what lay before him. Where
there should be workbenches, there was dust. Where he expected to see laminar
flow cabinets and hear the hum of the fluorescent lights there was empty
space. There were no reagent filled cupboards, no laboratory stools, and where
he expected to see Ami, Alan, or Phil, there was simply nobody. He walked
towards the back of the office, where the walls separated his office from the
rest of the room and pushed open the door willing his eyes to see a desk, and
cabinets, and wall to wall research files stacked haphazardly on top of each
other in an order that only he could understand. He wanted to see not only the
last four years of work that he had accumulated since he got the job with
Bionics, but everything that he had dragged here on day one, too precious to leave
behind. Instead he saw nothing but another empty room. No files. No desk.
No picture of his father. Nothing. He rubbed his hands across his face, his
fingers probing at his heavy eyes like an udder, hoping to milk out the truth,
to make himself see that this was all just a horrible dream. He backed out of
the room, his body turning in circles looking desperately for something solid
to cling to. After a moment of bewilderment, numbly backing out of his office,
his body made contact with the nearest wall, and as his legs buckled beneath
him he slid down onto the floor dropping the keys beside him.
When
Ben was ten years old he got his first bike. It was June the second, nineteen
eighty five. His birthday. He had woken up to the sound of his parents
singing the happy birthday song as they danced along the crazy psychedelic
swirls of the carpet of his bedroom, a remnant from the previous decade, and
they whisked him downstairs for a special pancake breakfast with extra sugar.
It was a Wednesday, and he had been allowed an
At
the top of the stairs there was a small clearing that functioned as a staff
room. There was a small fridge and a kettle, and a selection of chairs where
people could sit to enjoy a caffeine enriched break when it simply couldn’t
wait any longer. As he neared this clearing he paused, suspended in the void
somewhere between expectation and reality. He stopped to take a longer look,
thinking that his hungover mind was trying to play a trick on him, like the satisfying
delusion of a mirage in a desert of nothing but emptiness and dehydration.
Only this mirage was the exact opposite. In place of the chairs he saw nothing
but floor space. In the corner where normally stood a fridge was a bare wall
with a lighter imprint of clean ice blue paint where the fridge had once stood
and protected it from the grime of everyday life. Gone was the life that had
been here for the past four years and instead in its place was a vacuum of empty
space. He walked up the last few steps, his eyes wide and fixed in disbelief.
He stood transfixed for a moment unable to comprehend the change in environment.
He stood there in the absence of a single lucid or explanatory thought, until
eventually the only ideas to come to him arose from a darker and inconceivable
place. At first it was very small, an almost indistinguishable thought, a
silent what if , that was dismissible with the same ease at which it
sprang into his mind. But with each passing second that he stood taking in the
sight of the vacuous space before him the thought grew, changing and developing
into something more terrifying than he could dare let himself imagine. He
hesitated as he cleared the last couple of steps for fear of what he might see,
but yet unable to avoid the lure, he turned right to face the sliding door to
the lab. Eyeing up the red button to his left that would permit him entry, he
gingerly pressed his finger against it. The door slid back as the pneumatics
released a shot of air, and before him the extent of what he saw was almost
impossible to register, so great was the horror of what lay before him. Where
there should be workbenches, there was dust. Where he expected to see laminar
flow cabinets and hear the hum of the fluorescent lights there was empty
space. There were no reagent filled cupboards, no laboratory stools, and where
he expected to see Ami, Alan, or Phil, there was simply nobody. He walked
towards the back of the office, where the walls separated his office from the
rest of the room and pushed open the door willing his eyes to see a desk, and
cabinets, and wall to wall research files stacked haphazardly on top of each
other in an order that only he could understand. He wanted to see not only the
last four years of work that he had accumulated since he got the job with
Bionics, but everything that he had dragged here on day one, too precious to leave
behind. Instead he saw nothing but another empty room. No files. No desk.
No picture of his father. Nothing. He rubbed his hands across his face, his
fingers probing at his heavy eyes like an udder, hoping to milk out the truth,
to make himself see that this was all just a horrible dream. He backed out of
the room, his body turning in circles looking desperately for something solid
to cling to. After a moment of bewilderment, numbly backing out of his office,
his body made contact with the nearest wall, and as his legs buckled beneath
him he slid down onto the floor dropping the keys beside him.
When
Ben was ten years old he got his first bike. It was June the second, nineteen
eighty five. His birthday. He had woken up to the sound of his parents
singing the happy birthday song as they danced along the crazy psychedelic
swirls of the carpet of his bedroom, a remnant from the previous decade, and
they whisked him downstairs for a special pancake breakfast with extra sugar.
It was a Wednesday, and he had been allowed an
Similar Books
