"James Calhoon, BMID 128776F, inbound for sector 31B."
"Morning Jimmy."
"Morning Stan."
"Stairs again - once you get to your platform. We're still waiting for an engineer on that elevator."
"I'm not holding my breath."
Stan chucked, "You have a good one."
"And you."
'Shit' Jimmy thought to himself. Despite how little movement he was required to do in an average day, the three floors he'd now have to climb every morning were not going to be something he'd look forward to. And every day here *was* an average day, extremely average in fact. So while the exercise would probably do him good, Jimmy's bigger concern was the broken lighting on one of the intermediate floors. While all F level security personnel were issued with a shoulder light that they were required to keep charged, he hated the dark.
With Jimmy's closing words Stan pulled the heavy leaver from his checkpoint booth and the service tram shuddered forwards. Jimmy gripped scratched iron railing to steady himself and felt cool, stale air hit his face as the huge blast door opened in front of him, allowing the car to pass.
The doors appeared reliable, probably one of the few things that were well maintained this far out from the experiment centers, but Jimmy couldn't help wonder what would happen if these things got stuck. He'd been told that each block of 10 sectors should have supplies for 2 weeks when he'd received his training. He'd always wondered what the need for this was. Surely not just a broken door.
The tram was now reaching it's shambling terminal velocity and Jimmy was treated to the full wirr of it's electric motor, accompanied by the ker-clunk of an under-maintained rail connection passing under the tram's checker-plate platform.
The concrete tunnelling opened up into wider areas with maintenance platforms, some with flickering lights above the platform doorway. Some with no lighting. The tram glided past the wide scratched windows of the sector 30 laundry room. Rows of washing machines lay empty, lit with unrelenting halogen strip lamps and the glow of an old vending machine. Waiting on one of the wooden benches sat the room's lone user, Greg from 30F, stripped down to his boxers, vest and socks. Jimmy wolf whistled loud enough to interrupt the rather raggedy looking 40 year old from his sports column. Greg returned two fingers and flashed Jimmy a grin just before the tram passed the end of the window.
Around a few more turns, the tram reached the only reasonably populated platform in the next 5 sectors, 30D. From here Jimmy could see the platform's lower deck and front areas of the upper. Jimmy observed a handful of grey-clothed security personnel and a couple of remaining research associates and admin staff chatting and moving between the coffee makers, notice boards and situational-awareness screens. Seeing the grey-uniformed staff or "CareTakers", as the blues liked to call them, was usually a sign of a department on life support. CTs went through less training, had less responsibility and above all were a lot cheaper than blues. The CT force was largely made up of sidelined blues that had refused to move with the times or were otherwise deemed a problem. They were now relegated to the environment in which many had spent their careers - the legacy sectors. They were dusty old kit stashed away with other dusty old kit, so as not to cause too much headache for anyone with more important things to worry about. Or at least that's how Greg put it.
Jimmy on the other hand had joined a CT at the age of 24. Having no confidence in himself, nor any real interest in anything in particular, he wanted a job with the opportunity to do the thing he loved most - goofing off. After a string of dead end jobs on leaving school Jimmy's brother Barney, a blue-clad level E security officer at the Black Mesa Research Facility, managed to talk the right people into finding him a position. While Barney had some initial concerns that Jimmy would "screw this one up just like the others", Jimmy's role required so little responsibility that it made this almost impossible. Additionally Jimmy didn't ever try to cause trouble. He was never caught skimming the tills or being rude to customers at any of his previous places of employment. He just worked at his own pace - a pace that made the legacy sector service trams look dangerous.
As Jimmy had no business at 30D on this entirely average Monday morning, and wasn't fond of early morning small talk, the tram continued its journey towards Jimmy's platform. Jimmy travelled alone this morning but this wasn't unusual, after entering the legacy sector rail system at 25, the people traffic thins considerably. With the journey through the system being as time consuming as it was, it also wasn't unusual for employees to stay in the sleeping quarters available in almost every sector. The idea that someone would want to stay at work overnight initially struck Jimmy as strange. But as he came to realise, the field of military scientific research attracted many equally strange people - people with minimal ties to the outside world.
As Jimmy's mind began to slowly pick up speed, pondering these people and the bizarre world he found himself in, the tram rounded it's last dark corner and began slowing in front of the platform for sector 31B. The platform stood 8m off the base of the tunnel and about 5m wide, grey matte concrete furnished only with worn iron railings and 4 basic wooden benches. Despite intricate designs painted in shoe rubber on the concrete, and areas where the matte finish had been worn to a fine polish, Jimmy knew he would likely be the only person traversing the platform that day or in fact that month. The thought always gave him a slight thrill and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. As he passed the benches and approached the double glass doors to the sector, seemingly only lit for him, it always felt like the return a celebrated executive on sabbatical, only with an empty welcoming party.