Not all buildings have
windows. The one I'm sitting in right now is a perfect example of this - I'm three stories above the ground, but the only way I can tell what the
weather is like is to use a web-cam.
All day without sun - the
fluorescent lights my only source of illumination. All day without fresh air - the
overhead ducting is shut off due to heating problems.
This isn't a building for people - it's a building for machines. Long banks of wires and
blinking lights and power cables and countless boxes of electronics.
The red
laser light of the tape autoloader give a
stange glow to the far end of the room - it hurts my eye to focus on it.
I spend much of my time here
programming; telling the machines how to do the many
trivial task required to keep them going day and night. They take a long time to learn, because I am not the best
teacher, but once they understand they can do things far quicker then we can. They twist the
numbers around, slot them togather and make new
patterns in ways we cannot.
One day there wont be any people here. One day the
machines will be left on their own. Already most people have already left - gone to better places, where the sun is more than an memory.
The machines will like it here. They don't need the sun. They don't need the air.
And when I finish my job here, they won't even need us.