by Glen Johnson
He had studied the technical layout of the inside of the cabinets. The image was burned into his mind’s eye. His hand followed a panel until it reached the right area. Inside should be a hollow space, where the button to stop the fluorinert liquid from flowing should be located, in case it needed to be individually emptied for maintenance.
Tim placed the hexagon 1.5 key into the hole and turned. He repeated this six more times until the panel came away. Inside was a simple switch. As he pressed it, he could hear the noise change. The waterfall of fluorinert liquid stopped; it was now simply draining away.
He stood for a few minutes until he was sure the cabinet was empty. With the same Allen key, he removed the large two-foot-by-two-foot side panel.
What the fuck?
The section of the cabinet was empty. He removed some more paneling, to reveal the front section that could be seen through the glass window. Apart from a few components that could be seen through the window, the rest of the large seven and a half foot cabinet was empty.
Huh?
No wonder it’s warm, why cool something that doesn’t exist!
He removed the front of two more random cabinets to be sure. Both were also empty.
Tim went to walk over to the lift to check the next level down, to see if the cabinets below were empty as well. A door caught his attention – the stairwell.
Hmm? I wonder.
Tim pushed the door and headed down.
The lift has limited access, but I wonder if they have locked the fifth floors stairwell door? Why check all the cabinets, all I have to do is see what is actually downstairs. There’s no need for nine tonnes of cooling water, because there’s nothing to cool. So what’s on the bottom level?
He knew he was being foolish, but when he got an idea into his head, he was like a dog with a bone.
He reached the door. It looked thicker than normal.
Soundproofing?
Then he noticed the card reader.
Bloody hell!
There were no cameras in the stairwells.
Why not? If they have registered me trying to get down by the lift, then what does it matter if I try this door as well? Besides, something dodgy is going on here.
There was a small window the size of an A4 sheet. It was completely dark. No lights were on. He could not see a thing.
Tim swiped the card. The light flashed green, and the door clicked.
Ah, crap!
He grabbed the handle and pulled. Silently, the thick, heavy door swung open.
There was no whooshing or pumping sound? His olfactory senses picked up nothing. He expected to be able to hear the cooling system pumping the nine tonnes of water through the pipes if they existed.
As the door opened lights flickered on.
Automatic, I hope.
Tim poked his head around the corner. He was the only person about. The area around the lifts and stairwell door was unadorned brushed concrete. Three hallways led away into the distance. One to the left. One to the right. One straight on.
This just gets weirder.
Tim snuck into the area in front of the three hallways. He could discern no sound. Everything was just too quiet.
Suddenly, the lift pinged.
Shit!
Tim pulled the door – that needed no card swipe from the inside – and quickly scooted back out. He stood to one side, so he couldn’t be seen through the window.
Shit, the lights are still on!
He couldn’t hear what was happening on the other side of the thick soundproof door. Cautiously, he peeked around through the window. He was just in time to catch the back of what looked like a metal, wheeled gurney stretcher, and a man dressed in surgical scrubs, as he disappeared down the left hand hallway. He couldn’t tell if there had been anything on the stretcher, it had flashed past too fast.
What is going on around here? What have I got myself involved in?
But he knew he couldn’t walk away. It’s not as if he could go upstairs and phone the police, because he hadn’t really seen anything illegal.
Was the company defrauding the customers, by saying they owned and run a supercomputer? Was that illegal? He had no idea. He only had one option open to him – to go look around, and find out exactly what was happening on the lowest level of the building.
Slowly, he opened the door. The powerful strip lighting was still on. He couldn’t hear any sounds, apart from his heart racing in his chest. His hands were sweaty on the door handle. He stood still, straining his hearing. Nothing.
Tim slowly made his way towards the three hallways. The gurney was pushed down the left hallway, so he would go down one of the others.
I will go down the right one.
Tim slapped his hand against his face.
Jesus, this kinda shit doesn’t happen in real life. This is crazy movie shit! I’m no hero!
Tim could imagine the look his father would give him if he could hear him.
Tim slowly walked towards the right hallway. When he got to it, it looked more like a tunnel, with a flat floor and arched ceiling. One single continuous line of strip lighting ran down the center of the ceiling. The light was slightly flickering, making his eyes want to squint.
There were no doorways or other tunnels, just one long stretch of unending, bland, brushed concrete. He also noticed the tunnel had been slowly heading downwards.
Tim was becoming worried; he had been walking for five minutes along the downward sloping tunnel, and if any one came from the other direction, he had nowhere to hide.
As he was thinking this, he turned a corner and a vast chamber opened up.
Fucking hell!
Tim didn’t like to swear; it wasn’t his style. His father always stated that people who swore were the lower classes, people with below average education. He said they used swear words because they had a limited vocabulary.
However, it was the only collection of words Tim could think of that truly described what he was looking at.
The tunnel ended in a small area where there was a mechanical lift for lowering larger objects into the cavernous area below. The ceiling looked possibly forty feet high.
I didn’t realize the floor was sloping that much.
The whole chamber had a collection of breezeblock walls, separating off dozens of smaller rooms, which had no roofs. From above it looked like a large, strange, concrete labyrinth.
Sounds were now drifting over to Tim. There was moaning and crying, and a few screams, mixed along with the mechanical sounds of machines working and steam hissing and monitor’s beeping.
Tim slipped down the stairs next to the flatbed lift. A lift just large enough for the stretcher he saw. As he looked back, he could see the three tunnels came out into the same area.
It’s possible a few rooms were dotted along the way. Or possibly they needed three tunnels to give enough support to the building above; Tim found himself wondering, trying to divert his mind from the obvious scenario that was building.
Scooting down the metal stairs, as quietly as he could, Tim then headed towards a small area that looked like it contained supplies; boxes were stacked on forklift pallets.
Then he heard voices getting closer. He couldn’t work out which direction the voices were coming from, so he ducked behind the closest container.
“...Not a problem.” The footsteps drew nearer. “We have just had five new subjects delivered. Um, four men and one woman. All are as healthy as can be expected. Um obviously.” A page could be heard flipping. “A twenty-one-year-old male, a twenty-six-year-old female, a thirty-three-year-old male, a forty-six-year-old male and finally, a fifty-one-year-old male.”
“Good! Move two men to the skin-care section. The one woman can go to the eye-care section, and the two men who are left can go to the medicine section.”
“Perfect! I will deal with that now.”
“Dr. Caco,” the second voice said, as footsteps started to move off.
“Yes Dr. Malum.”
<
br /> “How’s the new jasmine body cream from Bio Body Essentials doing? You know they are our biggest customer.”
“It’s not going too well. Too slow to be honest. I was just heading over there now to take a sample. Would you like to join me?”
“I think I will. Mr. Collins has been putting a lot of pressure on, to make sure we speed up a little. He said he can only stall them for so long. It’s supposed to be a supercomputer after all.” They both laughed at the inside joke.
Both doctor’s footsteps headed off towards the breezeblock partitioned rooms.
What is going on?
Tim knew he should have headed out, and let someone in authority know what was going on, but he needed to be sure; his curiosity was ringing like a bell.
He poked his head up as the two men, dressed in white lab coats, headed down some steps onto the main chambers concrete floor. They then disappeared into the closest partitioned room.
Tim looked around to check no one else was in the area, and there were no cameras looking down from above. He didn’t think to look when he had first entered the chamber. Luckily, there wasn’t any.
Tim scuttled along, almost in a half crouch. He also stumbled down the steps as he headed towards the smaller room with no roof. As he came closer, he ran around the side, down behind a desk and cabinet. He noticed a glass window, possibly for observational purposes.
He crouched down below the window, breathing hard. He could feel sweat running down his back, and across his top lip and on the palms of his hands.
Fuck, what am I doing?
“While I’m thinking about it, Dr. Caco, have you heard from Mr. Diaz?”
“Yes, I was about to mention hearing from his son, Eduardo. The delivery has been dispatched, and should be with us by tonight, through the normal channels. All the organs we have asked for have been provided, so we can do our submergence tests.”
“That’s great news that will cheer Mr. Collins up, get him off our backs.”
Dr. Caco returned to the problem at hand. “As you can see, he is slightly redder than yesterday, but not as bad as the day before.
“Yes I can see. Has he been biopsied today?”
“I was on my way to do it before you joined me.”
“Then let’s commence.”
Tim slowly turned and looked over the lip of the window. Acid rose into his throat.
What the fuck!
There was a man lying on a metal gurney, wheeled table. The man was naked, with a skinny, undernourished body, with long greasy hair and a half a beard. One-half of the beard had been shaved and that part of the face, as well as the eyelids and forehead, along with the rest of the naked body, including his shrivelled genitals, had been covered in a thick layer of white, what looked like cream.
“I love the smell of jasmine,” Dr. Caco stated.
“Gets a bit cloying after a while,” Dr. Malum added.
“True. True,” The shorter Dr. Caco said. His tubby little body hardly fitted inside the lab coat; rolls of fat protruded like a Michelin Man. His bolding head, with a brush over leant over the man on the metal table, as he used a metal scraping device to remove the cream from a section on the skinny mans thigh, then the chest, then on his hairless cheek.
The taller doctor watched, as he held the clipboard to his chest. The motionless doctor looked older, with thin birdlike features, a long face, and a beaklike nose, with piercing blue eyes. His gaze never left the cream covered man, who seemed to be unconscious, with a tube down his throat helping him breathe, with the respirator machine to one side, with the pump slowly hissing up and down. He also had two drips going into his arm, one possibly feeding him liquids, while the other filled him with drugs.
The fat doctor then put the scraper down and picked up a scalpel.
Tim’s breath fogged out the window.
Shit, this cannot be happening! This is America!
Dr. Caco cut a one inch square flap of skin from the thigh, the chest and then, lastly, the face. He laid the skin onto a wet chemical solution on a tray.
“I will get this right over to the lab. Hopefully we can give Mr. Collins the answers he needs for Bio Body Essentials within a few hours.” The tubby little man gripped the tray and went to scuttle out of the small breezeblock room.
He stopped when Dr. Malum spoke. “I will be in my office, notify me the instant you have a result.” Then as an afterthought added, “Will we need patient one thousand one hundred and eighty-six again?”
Dr. Caco’s head swung around. His brush over slipped down over his eyes. With an action done a thousand times without conscious thought, the tubby hand flicked the hair back into place.
“Um, I don’t think so.” He didn’t even look at the human suffering on the metal table.
“You get the samples to the lab; I will prepare the room for the next patient.”
“Of course, Dr. Malum.” Then the shorter doctor was gone.
The tall doctor pulled what looked like a walkie-talkie from his big front pocket.
“Clean up in room nine.” He replaced the walkie-talkie and then moved over to the respirator and simply flicked off the switch. The container with the pump in pushed down for the last time and stopped.
He is killing him! Fuck! Fuck! What can I do? I cannot just watch as he snubs out a human life!
Tim went to grab his phone, then realized he had left it next to his laptop in the office, because it didn’t work underground.
If it doesn’t work in my office, there is no chance of it working down here if I had it anyway!
Tim crouched back down with his back against the wall under the window.
It cannot be happening! The computer is fake; they are testing on real humans! Testing on the homeless and runaways. Next door is a fraud; they get them in there then ship them over to here. Who notices, or cares if the homeless disappeared? Tim rubbed his hands down over his face.
I must get back upstairs and outta here. I must let someone know. This has to stop!
“Thank you gentlemen. And make sure you wash him off properly before sending him back over to the kitchens. We don’t want their pork casserole tomorrow to taste of jasmine now do we?”
Tim could hear different men laughing at the doctor’s joke.
Fuck! They then ship the dead bodies back over to feed the homeless! The sick bastards!
Tim was feeling queasy and disorientated.
The two men exited the breezeblock room carrying the dead body in a thick plastic, what looked like, long snow sledge. Body cream was dripping over the side where they had scooped him onto it.
Tim was pressed up against the wall. He was shaking, and not from the cold. Realization had finally sunk in – these were killers. Evil people ready to use other humans in order to make money. If they found him, he would be treated no different.
When they have gone, I will run back down the tunnel.
Sweat was dripping from his face. He rubbed the sweat from his eyes.
Tim hadn’t heard if Dr. Death had left the room yet. He slowly rose to look through the dirty glass. Empty.
It is now or never!
Tim stood. He felt wobbly on his feet. He checked around the wall. All that could be heard was a distant conversation and the beeping of medical machinery.
Then he noticed it for the first time on the desk, a landline phone.
Tim fumbled with the receiver as he picked it up and was about to dial nine-one-one. Instead of a dial tone a voice said, “What extension please?”
“Who is this?” Tim whispered.
“This is Melanie on reception.”
In his stressful state, Tim had forgotten it was late. He didn’t realize Melanie shouldn’t have been at work, but she had been notified by the security staff when Tim had tried to access the lift with his pass card.
“Melanie, thank god, it’s Timothy Parker. Phone the police. Get the police here. I am on the lowest level they are testing on humans. People are dying. I–”
&nb
sp; “Please stay calm Mr. Parker. It will all be over soon.”
“What the fuck?” He dropped the phone. It swung over the side of the desk. Melanie was still speaking; sounding tinny, he could not understand what she was saying.
Tim turned around and went to run over to the steps, and head up to the tunnel and run full pelt out of the chamber, and out of the building, to get the authorities involved.
As he turned one more time to check all was clear, he noticed movement in his peripheral vision. Dr. Malum was stood with two men on either side of him.
Fuck!
Tim had no choice he had to run. As he did so, his foot encountered a blob of jasmine cream on the concrete floor. In what felt like slow motion, as the two men ran towards him, Tim felt himself fly backwards, with his arms flaying uselessly to the sides, as his head cracked hard against the concrete floor.
*
“Ah, Mr. Parker, so glad you could join us.”
Tim felt groggy and confused.
“Prepare the general anesthesia drip and the respirator,” Dr. Malum’s voice said.
Tim opened his eyes. He lay on his back. He could see the top of some breezeblock walls, and the ceiling about forty-foot above. He went to sit up but realized he was strapped to something. It was cold. He then realized he was naked.
What the fuck? I am on one of those metal gurney tables!
Tim could only move his head. He turned towards the doctor’s voice.
“All you had to do is sit in a room and play on your computer. Is that so hard?”
Tim went to speak, but just as he was about to a green scrub covered body moved into view, a metal device was forced into his mouth to open his jaw, and then a tube was forced down.
Tim started to choke as the respirator tube was pushed down his throat.
Next, a drip was connected to a device already pushed into his chest.
“It’s just a PICC line, which you are fed through directly into the blood stream, and where the anesthesia is administered.” The doctor was filling out a form on a clipboard. He then finished and dropped it into a metal sleeve on the end of Tim’s metal gurney bed.
“Don’t worry, you will not die alone,” the doctor stated. “Say hello to your roommate, Mr. Peter Lazarus.”
