The Quest For Perfection (Is A Damn Fine Thing)

Part II: The World Beyond The Water - Chapter 12

12

The bank of monitors flickered to life, lighting up the desk in a monochromatic wave of colour, washing his little security area with the look and feel of days long gone by. Colin Hardy stirred at his paper cup of hospital quality coffee and glanced over the screens in front of him, momentarily washing his face in black and white, making him look like an extra in a movie from the 1930s. A quick check of the CCTV images told him that everything was in order and the building was secure. Installing the Complex 60-feet underground clearly wasn't secure enough for his employers. The company had decided to install state of the art security systems (it took 3 finger print locked doors just to go and take a shit) as if they still feared the place would fall victim to petty vandals and the opportune thief. Colin knew there was more to it than that, obviously, but he didn't like to think about it. Thinking leads to questions which leads to answers which leads to decisions that don't need to be made. No, Colin didn't like to think much; it only made life more of a conversation than it ought to be. If he'd thought about taking the job before he had accepted it, he probably wouldn't have taken it and therefore wouldn't be involved in something as potentially groundbreaking as this project promised it would be. Despite his work on Project Sims, (not the official name just his affectionate pet name) reduced effectively to that of a hospital porter, a glorified night watchman and a button pusher, he still felt a weird thrill at being involved in something so secret and so, well, cool.  Any job he had before paled in comparison to this one. Jotting down the time 22:09 and ALL CLEAR in the log book, Colin moved away from the monitors, walked down the steps leading away from the Control Centre and moved through the finger-print panel doors into the main room. This was where all the magic happened. If the Control Centre was backstage then this was Front of House, the Director's box and the Main Stage all wrapped into one.  This was the Tank Room.

This was where the cast were held and the show took place.

Swiping his keycard and pressing his thumb to the scanner, Colin let the doors slide shut behind him before turning to survey his room for the night. There was yet another set of CCTV monitors behind a desk in the centre of the room. The room itself curved round in a semi-circle, with a roof that rose so high above that Colin felt like he was at the bottom of a well. Some nights he would stare up at the roof from The Royal Box (this is what he called the CCTV Monitors and his desktop computer) and he wished he knew how to open the little door that was located on the roof so that he could find the stars. But he never did. Later, he would think how nice it would have been see the stars one last time. If only he'd known which button to push or had a ladder high enough.

Lining the curved wall, underneath the sealed and starless ceiling, were the 5 remaining participants of the programme. Their eyes closed, each of them were contained within their own individual metal tank. The tanks themselves were a dark green and were starting to rust. They were filled with what looked like water (but what Colin knew to be a cocktail of chemicals and drugs that he had never heard of) and there was a small monitor, which displayed the vitals and any essential information of the person inside the tank. There was a small, rectangular, glass window, through which the "sleeping" participants could be seen bobbing up and down peacefully, all manners of wires, drips and various pieces of equipment protruding out of them and into the metal casing of the tank which surrounded them. As he started to bring up each individual's condition reports he couldn't help but glance toward the only thing in the room that he didn't like. He didn't mind the 5 sleeping beauties bobbing up and down in the tanks. No, that wasn't what made his skin crawl or his spine shiver. Nor was it spending all night alone in a secret underground facility with nobody but the silent, floating bodies for company. It wasn't the cold wind that seemed to sneak in from above through what was supposed to be an airtight seal nor was it the fact the he would be the only soul left in the building for 10 hours. It wasn't any of those things and it certainly wasn't the full tanks that gave the place that creepy and eerie atmosphere.