Making Gods, Page 2
Tony Cooper
Chapter 1 - Thursday 13th September 2012
The first bird calls of the day filter through the ventilation system. The pale blue-grey light of an overcast dawn lazily floats through the vaulted glass ceiling and drapes itself over the shop frontages that stare emptily out onto the wide, dim interior. The glass and chrome fountain sculpture is dry and sleeping. A McDonald's milkshake cup pokes from the mouth of a dozing swing-bin, having been gently gummed all night. Silent seats. The tik-tik of an unseen security system, usually imperceptible above the daily swirl of chatter and music and noise, now echoes across the cool ceramic tiles. A muted primary colour window display, "20% off". Silent seats.
He stands in the centre of a giant blue and gold floor mosaic of an old sailing ship, directly underneath the highest point of the roof, eyes closed, breathing slowly and deliberately, arms down straight by his side. He is listening. He breaths so slowly the folds in his pale blue shirt barely change shape, only the sewn-on shield symbol on his left breast rising and falling betrays the fact he is alive. Fingers outstretched he feels the air slipping between them thickly, like a soft current underwater. Every sense is heightened. The silence is at once imposing, pressing in on his skin, forcing him onto the floor and yet at the same time lifting him up, pulling him outside his body. Through his boots he feels every crevice, every crack and texture of every tiny tile under his feet. Through his eyelids he sees the leaves stuck to the top of the glass roof, the seagulls patrolling the ledges, the city beyond.
He likes it like this. Silent seats. No voices. Just listening to the world. Listening to the buzzing.
Buzzing.
There was a faint yet persistent buzzing, like an alarm clock being forcefully smothered by a pillow. He felt himself slip wetly across the rooftops, accelerating, before slamming back into his body. He exhaled a huge breath from his barrel chest. It was already time.
Despite carefully and slowly opening his eyes, the sudden rush of visual information stunned him momentarily. Abstract shapes and colours violently forced themselves onto his consciousness and hurriedly coalesced into recognisable structures. As his pupils adjusted, the reverie faded and he was now firmly in a reality that was less than before. With his senses swamped he could no longer hear the buzzing, but he knew it was still there. He cracked his fat knuckles, rolled his heavy shoulders back, briefly checked he remembered how motor control to his legs worked and turned round.
The security office was two floors up in the management section of the New Merlin Shopping Centre. It occupied an innocuously small room in the 'gallery' area, a line of offices with one-way windows that overlooked the main lower aisle of big name shops and the first floor mezzanine of smaller, boutique stores. One wall had a long, shallow desk, above it the ubiquitous mosaic of flat-screen monitors showing a persistent, uncomfortably bleached version of the key thoroughfares and entrances. On it sat an oddly-shaped joystick, a computer keyboard and mouse, a spare two-way radio and another, smaller flat-screen monitor displaying a swirling colour screensaver. The opposite wall had another desk and a filing cabinet forced up against it. There was very little space between them and the chairs for each desk jostled for dominance in the middle of the room. This second desk was covered in papers, folders and sticky notes – some deliberately placed, some having peeled off a large whiteboard above it covered in marker pen grids entitled 'Shifts', 'A.A.Strong delivery timetable' and 'Emergency contacts (management)'. The third wall, just inside the door on the right had two tall dark blue lockers leaning against it. Reclaimed from a fire sale, they didn't fit in the room in either sense. Neither were locked and the nearest one didn't even close properly, the door slightly forced in at the missing latch.
As he came into the room, the buzzing started again. A large black intercom phone at the far end of the security camera desk blinked a frustrated orange light at him. Fighting with the chairs for supremacy he held the speak button.
"Hello, can I help you?"
"Martin you dick, Mary's freezing her tits off out here!"
"Can I confirm your security ID please?"
"Your mother's so fat the Japanese want to harpoon her for science!"
"Be right down."
He wiggled the mouse and the solo screen hurried into life. With a few clicks, the staff door alarm was disabled and he headed back down.
People. Damn. People. Crap. Damn. People. Martin braced himself with several quick breaths in and out, rolling his shoulders. People. He could do it. He knew these ones. They were OK.
He had been working here for five years now, always night-shift. He liked the solitude. He needed it. It was the handovers he hated the most. Not the people themselves but forcing himself to speak, forcing himself to engage with their chatter and humour after a night lost in himself. Not that none of it was interesting or funny, just that he would prefer to engage with them on his terms. Which were pretty much 'not at all'. Actually these ones were OK. He liked them.
Turned out that most other security guards tended to be individuals that preferred their own company so they all gave each other the requisite amount of personal space, just the right amount of conversation, just the right level of black humour.
He was good now, the breathing exercises had helped.
When he got to the side door Barney was peering through the glass, forehead pressed against it, hands held either side of his head like a cheeky boy peering into a lavishly decorated Christmas shop display. Behind him stood three women talking to each other. All of them had visible breath. Barney shook his head as Martin unlocked the door with a fist-sized bundle of keys.
"Fucking slacker." He pushed his way in, slipping off his woollen hat, his bald head beaming red. The sudden presence of people around Martin was jarring. His head started to swim. He tried to remember that this wasn't his space, it was work, that this was OK. His head cleared but he had a crushing urge to force himself into the grooves of the wall and hide there.
"Morning Barney, how's you? Morning ladies."
Mary, Emma and a new oriental girl whose name he couldn't remember slipped in past him through the narrow corridor as he held the door for them.
"Ooh, cold enough to freeze your bits it is!" said Mary. "And it's only bloody September!".
"It's tits love." called Barney from round the corner.
Mary made an 'oh isn't he awful' face and took the set of cleaners' keys Martin had brought down with him. As he closed the door, the breeze blew a fire safety leaflet from a cork pin board down the corridor. The oriental girl picked it up and handed it to him.
"Good night?" she asked with a slow drawl.
"Quiet... thanks." he smiled back, and pinned the leaflet on top of a handwritten 'Renault Clio for sale' note.
Their chatter and bodies and smell and mannerisms were intruding into his calm space now. He liked them as colleagues but he didn't want to have to think about their thoughts, he just wanted his own.
"Hope you've got the fucking kettle on you twat." bellowed Barney.
With everyone settled into their tasks and the security shift handed over uneventfully Martin grabbed his jacket and backpack from the broken locker and made his way through the random etch-a-sketch corridors below the gallery. Four more cleaners had arrived and one of the admin staff on an early shift. His space was now full of chatter, clattering keyboards, dragging buckets and he couldn’t wait to escape.
He walked faster and faster, the passageways seeming to narrow around him so much he felt he needed to turn sideways so as to not scrape the walls. Finally, the exit. He swiped his card on a small silver box. It happily beeped green and he pulled the heavy door open and relaxed as he felt the cool swish of air around his face.
Making sure he was satisfied to hear the magnetic lock click shut behind him he adjusted the strap of his backpack and took a few clear breaths. Across from him he spotted the lights in a small French-styled café flickering to life. Looking down the main aisle, several other stores were waking up, one metal shutter complaining abo
ut being forced open. A loud radio station starting up in the girls clothes store next to him made him jump.
"Jesus!" he said to himself and for a moment tried unsuccessfully to recognise the electronic music thumping through the floor.
He zipped himself up to the neck and went across to the café. He was their first customer of the day whenever he was on night shift. The owner, a small fussy man with dark curly hair, gave him a free cup to check whether the machine was heating up properly. Most of the time it had. When it hadn't he got a free biscotti.
He found himself smiling as he left the centre, coffee in one hand, crunching on a biscotti. Emma locked the doors behind him, gave him a little wave and went back to shining the glass.
He took a deep breath of the crisp air and immediately felt lighter, his chest relaxing, the tremor in his hands fading. He was no longer locked in a box with people. He only had to survive the supermarket, which was thankfully quiet at this time of the day, and then he would soon be safely home again. His own space.
The early morning sky was puffy and overcast like a giant grey duvet smothering the world. The familiar sleepy shrugs of people were wandering to work, the odd car crawling round the deserted roads. He liked this time of day. He liked knowing that so few people saw the world like this through his eyes. He crossed the plaza in front of the centre, a group of dozy pigeons half-heartedly getting out of the way.
As he debated in his head whether to go home through Element Park or go out the back entrance of Tesco instead there was a sudden commotion in the distance. Screeching tyres. A hard rev of engines. He immediately became nervous, a tingle of uncertainty zipping down his arms. He stepped back from the zebra crossing he was near as an unmarked police car with a small lopsided and painfully flashing blue light on it's roof whizzed past. Following it intently was the Team Element City One van. Electric red with blacked out windows and emblazoned with their logo, website address, and a small line of plain white text reassuringly stating: "Working with the authorities for a power-safe city!"
Martin had to wait until they had both disappeared into the far distance before he could exhale. After a few seconds he could feel his hands again and shook his arms out, spurting coffee from the small mouth hole in the lid over his sleeve.
As he wiped his arm dry with a small tissue from his pocket he couldn't help but think about the van. He could imagine the team in the back, prepping for whatever they had been called to do, most likely a drugs bust this time of the morning.
Their hearts would be pounding but they would busy themselves checking equipment, going over the intel. They would be practising their powers, like an athlete stretching and warming up their muscles before an event. They would be confirming the plan and what their roles were to be: scout, entry, offensive, crowd control, etc. They would be nervous yet calm and professional, keeping an eye on everyone else, supporting each other, because they know that a single mistake by one person could endanger them all. And the team sticks together, always.
The first bird calls of the day filter through the ventilation system. The pale blue-grey light of an overcast dawn lazily floats through the vaulted glass ceiling and drapes itself over the shop frontages that stare emptily out onto the wide, dim interior. The glass and chrome fountain sculpture is dry and sleeping. A McDonald's milkshake cup pokes from the mouth of a dozing swing-bin, having been gently gummed all night. Silent seats. The tik-tik of an unseen security system, usually imperceptible above the daily swirl of chatter and music and noise, now echoes across the cool ceramic tiles. A muted primary colour window display, "20% off". Silent seats.
He stands in the centre of a giant blue and gold floor mosaic of an old sailing ship, directly underneath the highest point of the roof, eyes closed, breathing slowly and deliberately, arms down straight by his side. He is listening. He breaths so slowly the folds in his pale blue shirt barely change shape, only the sewn-on shield symbol on his left breast rising and falling betrays the fact he is alive. Fingers outstretched he feels the air slipping between them thickly, like a soft current underwater. Every sense is heightened. The silence is at once imposing, pressing in on his skin, forcing him onto the floor and yet at the same time lifting him up, pulling him outside his body. Through his boots he feels every crevice, every crack and texture of every tiny tile under his feet. Through his eyelids he sees the leaves stuck to the top of the glass roof, the seagulls patrolling the ledges, the city beyond.
He likes it like this. Silent seats. No voices. Just listening to the world. Listening to the buzzing.
Buzzing.
There was a faint yet persistent buzzing, like an alarm clock being forcefully smothered by a pillow. He felt himself slip wetly across the rooftops, accelerating, before slamming back into his body. He exhaled a huge breath from his barrel chest. It was already time.
Despite carefully and slowly opening his eyes, the sudden rush of visual information stunned him momentarily. Abstract shapes and colours violently forced themselves onto his consciousness and hurriedly coalesced into recognisable structures. As his pupils adjusted, the reverie faded and he was now firmly in a reality that was less than before. With his senses swamped he could no longer hear the buzzing, but he knew it was still there. He cracked his fat knuckles, rolled his heavy shoulders back, briefly checked he remembered how motor control to his legs worked and turned round.
The security office was two floors up in the management section of the New Merlin Shopping Centre. It occupied an innocuously small room in the 'gallery' area, a line of offices with one-way windows that overlooked the main lower aisle of big name shops and the first floor mezzanine of smaller, boutique stores. One wall had a long, shallow desk, above it the ubiquitous mosaic of flat-screen monitors showing a persistent, uncomfortably bleached version of the key thoroughfares and entrances. On it sat an oddly-shaped joystick, a computer keyboard and mouse, a spare two-way radio and another, smaller flat-screen monitor displaying a swirling colour screensaver. The opposite wall had another desk and a filing cabinet forced up against it. There was very little space between them and the chairs for each desk jostled for dominance in the middle of the room. This second desk was covered in papers, folders and sticky notes – some deliberately placed, some having peeled off a large whiteboard above it covered in marker pen grids entitled 'Shifts', 'A.A.Strong delivery timetable' and 'Emergency contacts (management)'. The third wall, just inside the door on the right had two tall dark blue lockers leaning against it. Reclaimed from a fire sale, they didn't fit in the room in either sense. Neither were locked and the nearest one didn't even close properly, the door slightly forced in at the missing latch.
As he came into the room, the buzzing started again. A large black intercom phone at the far end of the security camera desk blinked a frustrated orange light at him. Fighting with the chairs for supremacy he held the speak button.
"Hello, can I help you?"
"Martin you dick, Mary's freezing her tits off out here!"
"Can I confirm your security ID please?"
"Your mother's so fat the Japanese want to harpoon her for science!"
"Be right down."
He wiggled the mouse and the solo screen hurried into life. With a few clicks, the staff door alarm was disabled and he headed back down.
People. Damn. People. Crap. Damn. People. Martin braced himself with several quick breaths in and out, rolling his shoulders. People. He could do it. He knew these ones. They were OK.
He had been working here for five years now, always night-shift. He liked the solitude. He needed it. It was the handovers he hated the most. Not the people themselves but forcing himself to speak, forcing himself to engage with their chatter and humour after a night lost in himself. Not that none of it was interesting or funny, just that he would prefer to engage with them on his terms. Which were pretty much 'not at all'. Actually these ones were OK. He liked them.
Turned out that most other security guards tended to be individuals that preferred their own company so they all gave each other the requisite amount of personal space, just the right amount of conversation, just the right level of black humour.
He was good now, the breathing exercises had helped.
When he got to the side door Barney was peering through the glass, forehead pressed against it, hands held either side of his head like a cheeky boy peering into a lavishly decorated Christmas shop display. Behind him stood three women talking to each other. All of them had visible breath. Barney shook his head as Martin unlocked the door with a fist-sized bundle of keys.
"Fucking slacker." He pushed his way in, slipping off his woollen hat, his bald head beaming red. The sudden presence of people around Martin was jarring. His head started to swim. He tried to remember that this wasn't his space, it was work, that this was OK. His head cleared but he had a crushing urge to force himself into the grooves of the wall and hide there.
"Morning Barney, how's you? Morning ladies."
Mary, Emma and a new oriental girl whose name he couldn't remember slipped in past him through the narrow corridor as he held the door for them.
"Ooh, cold enough to freeze your bits it is!" said Mary. "And it's only bloody September!".
"It's tits love." called Barney from round the corner.
Mary made an 'oh isn't he awful' face and took the set of cleaners' keys Martin had brought down with him. As he closed the door, the breeze blew a fire safety leaflet from a cork pin board down the corridor. The oriental girl picked it up and handed it to him.
"Good night?" she asked with a slow drawl.
"Quiet... thanks." he smiled back, and pinned the leaflet on top of a handwritten 'Renault Clio for sale' note.
Their chatter and bodies and smell and mannerisms were intruding into his calm space now. He liked them as colleagues but he didn't want to have to think about their thoughts, he just wanted his own.
"Hope you've got the fucking kettle on you twat." bellowed Barney.
With everyone settled into their tasks and the security shift handed over uneventfully Martin grabbed his jacket and backpack from the broken locker and made his way through the random etch-a-sketch corridors below the gallery. Four more cleaners had arrived and one of the admin staff on an early shift. His space was now full of chatter, clattering keyboards, dragging buckets and he couldn’t wait to escape.
He walked faster and faster, the passageways seeming to narrow around him so much he felt he needed to turn sideways so as to not scrape the walls. Finally, the exit. He swiped his card on a small silver box. It happily beeped green and he pulled the heavy door open and relaxed as he felt the cool swish of air around his face.
Making sure he was satisfied to hear the magnetic lock click shut behind him he adjusted the strap of his backpack and took a few clear breaths. Across from him he spotted the lights in a small French-styled café flickering to life. Looking down the main aisle, several other stores were waking up, one metal shutter complaining abo
ut being forced open. A loud radio station starting up in the girls clothes store next to him made him jump.
"Jesus!" he said to himself and for a moment tried unsuccessfully to recognise the electronic music thumping through the floor.
He zipped himself up to the neck and went across to the café. He was their first customer of the day whenever he was on night shift. The owner, a small fussy man with dark curly hair, gave him a free cup to check whether the machine was heating up properly. Most of the time it had. When it hadn't he got a free biscotti.
He found himself smiling as he left the centre, coffee in one hand, crunching on a biscotti. Emma locked the doors behind him, gave him a little wave and went back to shining the glass.
He took a deep breath of the crisp air and immediately felt lighter, his chest relaxing, the tremor in his hands fading. He was no longer locked in a box with people. He only had to survive the supermarket, which was thankfully quiet at this time of the day, and then he would soon be safely home again. His own space.
The early morning sky was puffy and overcast like a giant grey duvet smothering the world. The familiar sleepy shrugs of people were wandering to work, the odd car crawling round the deserted roads. He liked this time of day. He liked knowing that so few people saw the world like this through his eyes. He crossed the plaza in front of the centre, a group of dozy pigeons half-heartedly getting out of the way.
As he debated in his head whether to go home through Element Park or go out the back entrance of Tesco instead there was a sudden commotion in the distance. Screeching tyres. A hard rev of engines. He immediately became nervous, a tingle of uncertainty zipping down his arms. He stepped back from the zebra crossing he was near as an unmarked police car with a small lopsided and painfully flashing blue light on it's roof whizzed past. Following it intently was the Team Element City One van. Electric red with blacked out windows and emblazoned with their logo, website address, and a small line of plain white text reassuringly stating: "Working with the authorities for a power-safe city!"
Martin had to wait until they had both disappeared into the far distance before he could exhale. After a few seconds he could feel his hands again and shook his arms out, spurting coffee from the small mouth hole in the lid over his sleeve.
As he wiped his arm dry with a small tissue from his pocket he couldn't help but think about the van. He could imagine the team in the back, prepping for whatever they had been called to do, most likely a drugs bust this time of the morning.
Their hearts would be pounding but they would busy themselves checking equipment, going over the intel. They would be practising their powers, like an athlete stretching and warming up their muscles before an event. They would be confirming the plan and what their roles were to be: scout, entry, offensive, crowd control, etc. They would be nervous yet calm and professional, keeping an eye on everyone else, supporting each other, because they know that a single mistake by one person could endanger them all. And the team sticks together, always.
