A foot in front of the other. The neon buzzes and illuminates. “Es ci pi number…” The hallway.
Secure, Contain, Protect. This is the motto for which I lived and worked so hard in the past twentyseven years. Few words that from decades express the feeling, the fears and the sacrifice of thousands of men and women, a continuous battle against the unknown, the immensely powerful and the incomprehensible.
The hallway continues, sterile and white, a never changing line of reinforced doors and electronic latches, with their red light to indicate that they are locked, that keep the abominations and the demons away from use frail beings, so strong, so weak. At each door I pass I feel observated, I’m led to make a small step towards the opposite wall, a good compromise between my instinctive impulse and my reason; I know very well that if something actually came out, those twenty centimeters wouldn’t be the ones to save my life, but I feel a little more secure anyway. Not that this wing is particularly dangerous, actually: here are mostly kept inanimate Euclid class objects that, while representing a certain danger, surely aren’t cause of real worry, thanks to the boys of the containment team. I don’t consider myself a very fearful man, on the contrary; it’s this particular hallway which puts a strange feeling in my body every time I go through it.
I usually cross this part of Site Minerva once each week, and every time I think about the same stuff. That door, for example. I’m pretty sure I’ve been there several times but the containment procedures specify that after each visit the assumption of amnestics is mandatory; it’s said, though, that it contains a potted plant with a consciousness and other anomalous properties. What I think about when my steps resonate between these four walls, however, is that maybe it shouldn’t be here. After all, who are we? What right do we have to trap these sentient entities? Maybe those from the Hand are right when calling us “Jailors”. Or maybe not, maybe we shouldn’t even be thinking about studying or understanding these things, maybe we should just destroy them, like the Coalition. Or maybe embrace the anomalies and make art with them?
Or maybe — and this is the thing which scares me and comforts me the most at the same time — let them all go and do nothing. Just like that. Let nature follow its course, let these divine beings and unexplainable objects flip over our reality like a sock, putting an end to our fears e suffering. Maybe it would be the most correct thing to do to avoid the continuation of this disparity: we die in the dark, while common people thrive, swimming inside their triviality. Yes, that’s how it must go; my hand slides into the pocket of the trousers, with two fingers grabs the passepartout and gets me closer to the control console of all reinforced doors…
Ah, what am I thinking. It’s all fault of this hallway which gives me this bad mood. I certainly cannot allow certain thoughts inside my head, not me, the director of this place.