Love On A Wire (working title)
Prologue
Standing anonymously dark against a clear night sky, the flawless sheen of the towering steel and glass office building reflected the blinking navigation beacons of a jet heading for the nearby airport.
A brilliant white flash illuminated an upper storey window briefly, as though the building signalled back to the plane. In the unlit office behind that window a short plump man closed the door behind him, wheezing and sweating, extinguishing the bright lights from the corridor. He stood still while his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom.
"Caffeine," he thought. He knew if he was caught here after hours he would have some serious explaining to do, but his heart was pounding from the exertion of climbing the stairs and from the adrenalin. Right now his need for a coffee superseded the need for haste. He crossed the floor to a drinks machine, moving carefully through the constricted maze of desks. With shaking hands he punched the code for a creamy coffee, double-sweet. The clatter of his cup falling into the cradle was as loud as a gunshot in a silent forest. Startled, he glanced feverishly over to the office door, holding his breath and pressing himself into the shadow of the machine. The door remained shut. The machine hummed loudly as it brewed his drink.
He carried the steaming cup towards a desk where a PC monitor drew complicated nests of coloured pipes. A waste bin left in the gap between the desks by the office cleaners caught his foot and fell over, its fresh liner rustling.
"Ow!" he cried, more in surprise than pain, and then "Fuck!" as he bent to pick up the bin and the hot coffee spilled onto his fingers. Transferring the cup to his other hand he stood perfectly still, sucking on his burned fingers, listening intently. He had assumed the adjoining offices were empty, but he didn't want any more nasty surprises.
The man set his coffee down on the corner of the desk and leaned over to reach the mouse. The pipes on the screen reflected in his thick round glasses, distorted into cavorting multicoloured worms. He moved the mouse. The pipes disappeared. He leaned closer to the monitor, his body tense. A light sheen of sweat on his forehead reflected the hard blue light of the screen, deep concentration creases casting crater-like shadows. Finally, he sat down on the edge of the chair, tapped away at the keyboard for a few seconds and leaned back, reading.
Reaching unconsciously for his coffee, his fingers brushed the lip of the cup dangerously before picking it up. He took a sip, his eyes never leaving the screen, replacing the cup on the desk absent-mindedly. The cup rested over the rim of a coaster and tilted, splashing coffee on the desk. Muttering to himself, he leaned even closer to the screen and scrolled rapidly through pages and pages of a scientific report. At intervals he stopped scrolling and read feverishly. A bead of sweat picked up two friends and headed off for his eyebrow. He wiped it from his forehead impatiently with the back of his hand and mechanically dried it on the leg of his cords. Minutes later his muttering turned to swearing. His fingers clattered heavily on the keyboard as he brought up more information. With a cry of "Jeeeeeeeeeesus Christ!" he rocked back on his chair and stared up at the ceiling, his mind racing to catch the full implications of what he had found.
He removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes and reached for his coffee again. The base of the cup, still wet from the coaster, dripped onto his shirt.
"Ugh!" he spat. The coffee was stone cold. He shut down the PC but remained sitting at the desk, the darkness now barely relieved by a thin finger of light from the corridor and the dull orange glow of the drinks machine. Only the whispering of the machine's chiller disturbed the silence.