The Terrible Discovery

The resounding ticks from the clock on the wall echoed round the uninviting room. It was the only noise in this silent place, this formal world of science and extreme technology encapsulated in a single room. The regulated series of clicks flowed life away, tiring limbs and wearing out organs, bringing organisms one second closer to death. It’s face showed ten past three.

The shiny steel cases that lined two walls seemed white, as they reflected nothing but the bare whitewashed walls and white ceiling. Along these cases there was a string of about twenty small doors, approximately two feet square, set about three feet from the ground. Each little door had a lock and several numbers on a display below it. They made the room look like a futuristic mortuary.

The door to the room opened slowly, as if the opener took great care in everything they did. A man in a white laboratory coat softly padded in, closing the door behind him. As he paced across the tiled floor, his sterilised shoes made a creaking squeaking sound contrasting to the clock’s metallic ticks, but in the same cold organised manner. He absent-mindedly fished through a sea of pens and notes in his top pocket, finally producing a small but intricate key, which he pushed into the lock of the first door he came to and then twisted it clockwise. He did all this without thinking, he was used to this procedure.

He then proceeded to open the door, and take hold of a horizontal metal handle that was inside. He pulled.

A seemingly dead body in some sort of glass case was what he pulled out. It was held up with a titanium stretcher on rollers much like one used in a mortuary. The body was of a man, totally naked and covered in pipes entering almost every orifice in his body including some "man-made" ones. Most of these unnatural holes went through his chest, and through his head. A scarlet liquid that the scientist knew to be blood was being pumped along most of these pipes.

The man in the case looked about eighteen, with blonde hair, small ears and a crooked nose. The skin on his body was unusually pale. His eyes were shut, his arms by his side, his legs together. He looked like a well-disciplined soldier frozen in time and laid out flat on his back. He was not breathing.

To most other people, this sight would stun you into a state of shock; paralyse you with the sheer surprise of finding his mutilated body. But the scientist seemed totally unconcerned. He saw this sort of thing all the time.

The scientist took a glance at the cuboid glass case and then pushed it back into its private hole. He took out the notes from his pocket, jotted down the numbers on the display and then returned them to the top of his coat. Whilst closing the door and locking it, he hummed a tune which sounded alien in the quiet room used to only the constant ticking of the clock.

Moving like a machine, he walked up to the next door, and reciprocated the opening procedure. The case was pulled out, and a strange sight was beheld. The man in this particular case looked exactly the same as the man in the previous case. Same hair, same ears, same crooked nose. Every aspect of his body was identical to that of the previous person. Even the pipes were in the same places.

The scientist again inserted the case and noted down the numbers, not forgetting to lock the door.