The Great Structure
The room was large and oppressive. It’s bones stood tall and lurked high above those few men who found themselves inside. The great glass walls formed a broad and rigid square around them, and inside the square there was very little but space, all space, save a little set of concrete benches in the middle of the room, on which a couple of the men were currently sleeping. Those who were not sleeping ambled around the room aimlessly, with their hands in the pockets of their trousers, making sure they didn’t cause a stir or disrupt the foul peace which held the room together.
The young man woke up and rubbed his eyes. He looked around the room and, despite what he was seeing, felt unphased. There was something wrong, he knew, but he did not care to find out what. He sat up and looked around. The room was odourless and bright. He looked upward into the great vastness of the structure, and his eyes were pained by the light, which seemed so concentrated and artificial that it was as if he and his fellows were being observed by some great creature for one reason or another; research, profit, fun. Perhaps they were being punished for some great crime they had committed beforehand. Perhaps he had died. No, he thought. That could not possibly be the case.
He thought more for a little while and then decided he did not care enough to think any more about the matter. He counted the rest of the men in the room. There were ten of them in total, which was not a lot in comparison to the size of the place. He imagined that to anyone on the outside they would look like foul little specks, floating about in the vast space they inhabited. It was a void of sorts, colossal, vacuous, dense, and at the same time painfully bright and deathly dark.
He observed the men around him and then himself. They all wore the same thing, in slight variations. Loose slacks, and then stiff, starched shirts and blazers, all of which fit them rather well. On their feet were brogues, either brown or black, which looked as if they could do with a polish. He wondered why they all looked like this, very professional, very proper. He did not mind himself looking as he did. He was sure that he looked quite good, though the collar of his shirt quickly began to rub against the side of his neck, which at a point became rather irritating. He did not care to adjust his collar, despite the fact that the irritation grew more painful throughout the day. It was not something he felt was worth going out of his way to change.
He stood up and walked slowly to the edge of the space. Before he could get all the way to the glass edge one of the men came up to him. His slacks were black and his shoes were brown. His shirt was off white and his jacket was a brown which matched his shoes. He looked tired, awfully tired. His face bore no emotion despite this. Not pain nor sadness. The young man felt that all of those around him looked the same. It was hard to decipher what they were feeling. He wondered if he looked the same.
“Hello,” The stranger said monotonously.
“Hello,” The young man said, attempting to sound ever so slightly more spritely than the stranger, and succeeding, though not by much. They shook hands, both attempting to match the others grip.
“What do I look like?” The young man asked.
“How do you mean?” The stranger replied. He was confused. It was not often in here that he was asked for his opinion.
“How would you describe my face?”
“Hm,” The stranger stopped and analysed the young man's face. The young man’s face was not as expressionless as the others, and there was a slight suggestion of a smile on his face, which was not so deliberate but natural, a look you sometimes see on people from time to time. The young man had a handsome face, well structured and finely highlighted by his dark hair and five o’clock shadow.
“You look young,” The stranger said finally. “And,” He stopped himself. “There is something else but I don’t know what.”
“Hm,” The young man replied. He tried to think of something else to say. “So what are we all doing here?”
“I am not sure.” The stranger said. He shook the young man’s hand again to say goodbye and wandered off toward the other side of the room.
The young man finally made his way to one of the four sides of the square, and analysed the great pane of glass which formed almost all of the wall, except for the bones in each corner which held the structure together. He reached out with his right hand and held his palm up to the pane. It was very thin. He looked to the outside and wondered what was out there, past the white which surrounded the structure. There must be something, he thought. As the minutes went by his mind raced with possibilities. Perhaps it is grassland, or sea. Perhaps there are more people with exciting minds. He lifted his hand to the pane again, and felt its texture, its thinness, its fragility. It could be very easily broken, he thought. All he needed to do was take off one of his brogues and bash the heel into it. It would cause a great crash, and he might get cut from the shards, but it would all be worth it to see what was outside of the great structure.
He stood still for ten minutes, deliberating, deciding carefully what to do. Finally, he bent down slowly to untie the lace of his left shoe. As his fingers grasped the knot on the centre of the shoe’s tongue he stopped, and lifted himself up. “No,” He thought. “I had better not make a fuss.”
He walked back to the centre of the room and lay down on one of the concrete benches. He listened to the silence and stared into the brightness. He closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep.
