The Shifting Void
His shift started at 0000hrs.
The temperature of the lab was stifling and had produced condensation across the observation window, obscuring his view out. Lowering the thermostat and brewing some coffee, he prepared his mind for the 12-hour shift ahead. From the window he could see the previous scientist to occupy the room return to his quarters.
Sipping the black coffee, he let his gaze and mind drift for a moment through the observation window. Looking back at him: a view he never tires of, yet its composition minimal.
Clusters of dark, slender columns rise, descend and disappear into the infinite distance. A forest of steel without roots, branches or canopy despite efforts to climb to the stars and plummet to the earth below. At moments light breaks through the vast blackness, its source unknown, its legitimacy unknown. The columns fill the void with a blankness that he could gaze into indefinitely and let his imagination fill the space. His mind's potential his only limitation.
The columns shift with time, to create space for new inhabitants and new minds. Each column the same, each life predetermined. A deep cacophony filled the air as steel pushes, grinds and stretches to its tolerance: the sound of space compressing. Volumes shift ominously into their new positions. They move slowly and precariously.
People travel great distances to sign their minds away and inhabit these columns. All these bodies, all these minds and lives, wasting away for a dream, a fake dream that he has provided for them.
As he gazed out the viewing window he saw lab 269 moving to its next subjects. The lab, which binds the columns together like a clenched fist climbs endlessly higher and higher never to descend. Changing shifts, an employee approaches the lab and enters as another leaves with no exchange of gestures. Stepping out onto the suspended steel walkways, which weave in and out of the forest of columns, the employee returns to the accommodation quarter. Giving up their reality for a dream.
The lab jolts awake, his previous subjects sink through the bottom of the lab as new ones descend into position. The glazed windows that frame the faces of the patients become translucent with condensation. Approaching one of the pods, he puts the palm of his hand on the glass. The coldness hurts as small drips of water trickle down his fingers and fall to the floor. Wiping the widow he stares at his own reflection, asleep in his fictitious life.
