Eternity - Chapter Two

The biggest problem with telling yourself that you aren’t going to do something that you really want to is that inevitably, you’re going to do it and then regret it so much more. I tried… really. I waited a whole four and a half minutes for the police before deciding against remaining cramped up in my car. I got out, trying to stretch at the same time, and only succeeded in cracking my head against the roof of my vehicle. I only just managed not to scream out the worst word I could randomly pluck from my mental dictionary, and slammed the door to my car. So. It was going to be like that was it? Okay then. Trying to hurry as quietly as possible, I approached the factory… I still hadn’t wrapped my head around the fact that a cosmetics factory was stuck smack bang in the middle of the slums… what possible good could that have? From the outside, the building looked like any other in the street, crappy and run down to the extent that I was expecting it to topple on me at any moment… in fact the only discernable difference that the exterior offered was the large, solid looking glass security doors in the centre of the building front. Those double doors stuck out like a pig at a police function… hmmm… bad analogy. Anyway, the only indication that something was wrong was the fact that one of the doors was slightly ajar, leading to the impression that whoever had robbed the place was a little careless. As I am generally known to do, I went against all common sense and decided that the best course of action was not the logical path of leaving about now, no, instead I decided that it would be a good idea to go in and have a right royal snoop around… real smart.
Glancing about quickly to try to glimpse anyone spying on me, and then giving up when I realized that, being four in the morning, I could barely see me, let alone any one else, I slipped on my infamous black leather gloves and slipped through the door, only to get the surprise of my life.

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Now when I say surprise of my life, I may be exaggerating just a little bit. It was a surprise, no doubt about that, but I actually recall the time that I walked in on my girlfriend, my best friend and her best friend in the living room to be the surprise of my life… believe me, that sort of thing takes a long time to go away. It still hasn’t… So I guess in relation to that, I received a rather pleasant surprise. The building lobby was immaculate. I had to turn and look out the glass doors to make sure I was still in the same building. There was stainless steel polished to a mirror shine every where… man, is my hair really that boofy..? Sorry… everything was clean and I assume it was sterilized… this had to be the cleanest factory that I had every seen… actually it was the only one, but that still means it was the cleanest. No blemishes on the floor, no dents in the walls, I mean there weren’t even spitballs on the ceiling above the guard station. Waitaminit… Guard Station? I practically tiptoed over to the security station, trying not to have my boot thud on the floor and failing miserably. The only thing out of place in the entire room was a cup of cold coffee sitting on the bench in front of the security camera. I couldn’t help myself… I had to wave at the camera simply to watch myself on the monitor. Once I had overcome my childish impulses enough to continue (namely face pulling and certain middle finger extensions), I went in the only direction available to me. Down a long corridor.

This is starting to sound like one of those old role playing games on the commodore 64. Not that I would know about that… ahem. “Turn down the gloomy corridor or exit through the door you came through” sort of stuff. Choosing the gloomy corridor, I wandered down it for a bit, flinching at every footfall that sounded louder than a mouse fart, until I reached two doors directly opposite one another. I assumed that one was the toilet as it was either that or a roomful of maggots (it had gents stenciled on the door) and seeing as I currently had no need to use the little boys room or fly larvae, I entered door number two.

And if this room didn’t look like a whirlwind had gone through it then it looked about as bad as my flat. There was paper strewn everywhere, hanging out of filing cabinets and even shredded paper was flung about willy nilly. It looked as if a small child had run about in their seventh heaven for hours. I took my boots off before entering, to make sure that I left no prints on a piece of paper, and proceeded to do some real class ‘a’ snooping. It seemed like someone was certainly looking for something, and that they either found it or was interrupted in their search, because the maelstrom stopped about halfway in. One thing was certainly interesting, and I riffled through a couple of the untouched filing cabinets to make sure… yep, every piece of paper that was scattered about had the same letterhead… UIR PROJECT. Nothing else had been gone through… someone certainly knew what they were looking for. There seemed to be nothing else in the office to be really important, so I exited the room. I must confess that before I did I pocketed a couple of company pens… hey, they were good quality ok?

Putting my shoes back on and hoping that the smell wouldn’t linger for long, I crossed the corridor as silently as possible, so quietly in fact that I don’t think you could have heard an anvil drop… wandering up to the toilet door, this time deciding against removing my shoes (hey, you never know what is on those floors… and I just mean the cleaning products.) I pushed on the door only to get a heavy resistance on the other side. As I strained harder to force open the door, by chance I looked up slightly and made a startling discovery.

The door said pull… grinning sheepishly and looking around, I took a step back and proceeded to follow the blatantly obvious advice, therefore opening the door. As I stepped inside the john, it felt awkwardly as if something was wrong, but due to my pure genius in swinging open a clearly labeled door, I put it down to embarrassment… rounding the wall blocking off the pee trough, I soon discovered that assumption to be one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made in my entire life…