I watched the service entrance in the hallway, through the spy-hole of my front door, tracking the comings and goings of the engineer. He wore a boilersuit like a sheath of dark matter, with the service company name emblazoned on the back. He never looked at my door, but I tingled with excitement that he might one day pause and knock.

 

The engineer disappeared through the green ‘Service staff only’ door at seven in the morning. With his shoulders hunched he’d leave around five, all that time spent in the dark service corridors, I wondered if he took a vitamin D supplement. When he went home his legs had a salt-white tidemark of water, there must have been a lot of leaks.

 

I wrote it all down, my notebook stained with coffee rings and sticky with do-nut icing. The pages had random grains of sand between them which made some words wobble when I recorded timings and wrote notes. I flicked back through the notebook, there were pages torn out, the margin ripped and the zig-zag paper entrails forced the book to open at these violent events. I had no recollection of this damage, maybe I was in an urgent need to write a shopping list.

Around the service entrance there was a tang of iodine, fish and seaweed. Maybe it was the sulphur of clogged drains and mildew-musty dampness. I had nightmares that I’d bought a defective apartment in this brand-new city-centre building. Daily I checked the white tiles of the wall outside in the hallway, their verdant tinge made me shiver, microscopic fungal spores for me to breathe. Green slime woke me up at night, coiling tight around my neck, I’d scratch it off leaving welts in my skin, but there was never any sign on my pillow when I woke. I’d complained to the company many times by email and once I wrote an actual letter, but I’d never had an answer

 

Today as the engineer left, the door to the service corridor did not click shut, an oblong sliver of blue light flickered on and off. It was calling me, tempting me with its rapid blinking. After an hour, the door remained ajar. I changed into my pilfered boiler suit, it had been hung up in the wardrobe like a spectre, waiting for me to slip into its persona. I preened in the hall mirror, twisting to survey the company name upon my back. I slipped out of my front door and stepped through into the service corridor.

 

Inside, a computer terminal displayed a blue logo which bounced from edge-to-edge, corner to corner, mesmerised I paused and watched. It read, ‘MindCorp.com’. The logo seemed familiar; I couldn’t think where I’d seen it before. As the pattern zipped across the screen my thoughts dissolved with each turn it made.

 

My stomach quivered as I crept beyond the computer terminal through the shadows cast by the flickering screen and I realised the space was cavernous. Waves pounded on a pebble shore dark with contours of secrets, salt in the air embedded itself into my hair. There was an emerald sea in the distance, the final rays of a deep crimson sunset disappearing below the waves. I walked towards the water, the ground beneath my feet changed from solid to unbalancing shingle, which crumpled and squeaked in protest at my weight. A breeze tugged at my boiler-suit, the cloth belt flapped and slapped as I walked into the water. The waves were warm and fizzed against my legs, the touch was soothing and delicate.

 

How would I tell anyone about this? There was no one to tell, I didn’t know my neighbours, we were anonymous in this building, secure in our own apartments, wary of others. We shared the city-view, the pipes and service ducts, we drank the same water, but we did not share our lives, we were outlines in the gloom, strangers in the passageways.

 

There were no seagulls, the sky echoed only the sound of the pebbles being scrubbed by waves. I wanted to scream and shout at the sea, hoping someone would answer, but my throat was dry, words didn’t want to come. It’d been a long time since I had spoken to anyone, perhaps my vocal cords had atrophied. I gaped at the stars as they fought to sparkle against the light of the waning sun.

 

Behind me the computer came to life. The bright light screeched across the water the sunset and stars faded and warped to grey, the shushing of the waves was silenced by vowels and consonants of the voice.

 

“Issue in apartment 32, inmate 459. Looks like the end terminal socket is failing. Record memory chip, adjust and replace after a memory clean-sweep.”

 

“Acknowledged.”

 

I scooped up a handful of green and blue pebbles, I flung them into the water, the muscles in my arm relished the movement. Some sand had stuck in my palm, I knew their graininess, it spoke the truth, I’d been here before. A rapid shot of adrenalin coursed through my body and made me shiver, my feet itched to run. The light was now poor beyond the glare of the computer. I didn’t know if I would be trapped on the shore by an incoming tide. It was time to leave and explore later, I planned to write it up in my diary over a strong coffee.

 

In the hallway the light flickered. I stepped across to my door, my feet were wet, glistening seaweed fronds dangled and a ring of salt spread around my legs. As I slotted the key in the lock, a hand tightened on my arm.

 

“This way, Inmate 459,” he said. ”Soon have you back into the system. You can start it all again tomorrow.”