Lookers

"Here we are, the twenty-fourth floor -- the very top," said Gloria. It looked rather unimpressive at first, simply a nice long white corridor. "Mmm ... we need to make you look even less conspicuous." She noticed a gurney lying idle. "Get on that, and ... uh ... lie ... sideways, and then I'll put this sheet over you ... Fine! You look ... normal. Now, just trust me and close your eyes, play possum."

I felt her wheel me down a while, and then I heard her speak with two women.

Gloria: "Hey, Dr. Marvell, Christa, how's it going?"

Christa (young, exuberant): "Oh hey, Dr. Steinmetz, this is so cool!"

Dr. Marvell (mature, sultry): "Don't let her saying 'cool' fool you -- she's good at this."

Gloria: "Great. Listen, girls, I'm killing two birds with one stone here -- I'm putting a poor charity case in Kicks, but I've also fallen to me to run a security check here. Why don't you make yourselves scarce for a few minutes?"

Dr. Marvell: "Sure thing, Gloria."

I heard the rustling of their close approach.

Christa (it felt like she was talking right at me): "Charity case, huh! Poor guy!"

Their footsteps faded away and Gloria wheeled me some more. "Wake up!"

I opened my eyes to a very large, neat, shiny room of which Orwell's Big Brother would have been proud. Three walls, plus a large panel directly before me, were packed with plasma TV screens ranging from large to gi-normous, with some controls scattered among them.

"Cynical critics worried that an Institute such as ours would require constant transparency to keep it ... honest," said Gloria. "Welcome to ARDR, the All Rooms Digital Recording chamber that monitors all of WISPR. I hope you'll get to check this place out from time to time, since it's just down the hall from where you'll be staying, in Kicks."

It sounded potentially injurious. "Kicks?"

"Oh, sorry. Confidential Intensive Care Suite -- CICS, we call it Kicks." She turned to the screens, many of them dark, and switched more and more on. "This should give you some idea of the routine here. Classes, laboratories, offices, rooms where we keep the other men here ... personal quarters, communal areas, our art colony, our fitness center ... pretty much everything. Anything in particular that you would like to see?"