Maxwell had arrived one year ago. He opened the doorway to the underwater paradise; however there was no water, and not a grain of sand in sight. Where he had seen glass hallways and the endless blue of the ocean in his mind stood impenetrable steel walls with concrete supports and the only windows looking outside were one foot by two feet, scratchy, and hard to see out of. There were three main buildings; one building was the dormitories used for housing and food, another was the Advancement in Underwater Living Research building, and the third was the Aquatic Life Research building.
"I expected more excitement," said Maxwell, feeling uneasy at lunch,
"why should we be living under water if everything's the same?"
"It's the principle of constructing livable structures in unlivable
places they are going for Maxy, not the adventurous, dangerous appeal
you see in it," Claudia said, "maybe some adventure will still come your
way."
Disappointment
had already struck a few weeks earlier, after Maxwell made his time
thieving descent in a windowless, brown carpet floored submarine. "I
suppose I should just be glad for the experience…"he said.
To hold some interest in his new home Maxwell had quickly learnt what
all the different colors of lights symbolized; he even remembered which
lights were in each room and favored the low frequency reds in the RADAR
Tracking Stations. In most sections of the AULR building the light
given off was more nutritious to plants and animals. Florescent lights
were mostly used. The ALR building was strung up with LED lights; some
rooms in here had three or four different colored lights in them. The
typical yellow-gold lights were in the bathrooms and halls. Often
accompanying these lights were plain white walls of steel that were
brushed in a way that made them look wooden, along with a mixed-shade
brown carpet. Maxwell's mind was eased to normalcy on his daily
passes through the hallways that connected the private quarters to the
Advancement in Research wing. The hallways reminded him of his first
house, he favored the building. He disliked the hard, loud tile floors
of the other two buildings, however he enjoyed the colors and daily
happenings in each very much.
"I feel closer to the plants and animals down here than I do the men."
said Maxwell one night when he was eying some of the fish swimming
around in a tank close by.
"What are you talking about, kid?" asked one of the research supervisors.
"People here don't seem to like to talk much," answered Maxwell, "that's what I'm talking about."
"They all have their ways of getting by." said the supervisor, "They weren't as excited as you were coming down here."
"That's probably because they knew what they were getting into…"
"I like to think it's because they understand what makes good
research," the supervisor continues, "they throw away their social
skills for the good of science. We love it down here together, yet
alone, in the dark."
