Day 2 and 3 - Reality Bites!

Finding time to write is going to be a real challenge while I am working 14 hour days! But, hey! There is always the weekends! And who needs sleep anyway? One note - I am trying to get up at 6 am and write for a couple of hours - anyone who knows me knows that 6am is not my best time of the day. A nice mug of English Breakfast Tea, sweet and white, (thanks for that particular obsession Derek!) seems to help! Anyway here is the update for Monday and Tuesday:

Rising up from the warm tile floor, Donnor went in search of a service hatchway. Not more than 40 steps from his observation post he found the first one, and lucky for him, it was for the exact supplies carts that were going into the mystery door. He waited for a cart to come out of the hatch and dove through the opening before it could close behind. He landed roughly on the metal mesh cart track, scraping a gash into his elbow and taking a mild shock from the electrified grid before he could get to his crepe-soled feet to protect himself.

Gripping his bleeding elbow, Donnor looked around at the world of automated service machines he had entered. Everything was precise, sterile and hermetically sealed. Metal gleamed, rubber shone softly, and robot arms reached and placed, filled and filed all with a quiet whooshing sound like a heartbeat. Hospital infection rates were controlled partly by this quiet and clean efficiency behind the scenes. He felt momentarily guilty for the drops of blood that were falling to the mesh floor, but quickly banished the thought – he had never been sick a day in his life. If anyone’s blood was clean, his was.

Moving cautiously along the grid, Donnor worked his way past the first rank of robot arms and deeper into the system. He needed to get far enough back to reach the un-activated carts. That way his tinkering wouldn’t set off any alarm bells.
The further back he moved the dimmer the light became, as fewer machines had active sensor lights. Gradually, his vision was reduced to the faint glimmer of the track below his feet, and the infrared glow of his embedded watch. He turned his wrist so that the pale light added what strength it could to his path.

Feeling his way carefully with his toes, Donnor inched along the path until he came to the cart storage facility at the end of the line. Here was rank after rank of supply carts, returned from the sterilization wash, sitting in standby mode, waiting to be summoned from electronic slumber.