Breathe Read Online Free PDF

mate.’ Ray rolls up his sleeves and reaches in to the rerouters. ‘Was a time when they’d employ a bloke with a broom to keep a place clean. Now even a sweeper needs a fucking degree in electronics to figure out. Give me some light here. Tony? Coxie?’ He looks around. Tony seems to have vanished. Suddenly, the lights come back on all the way along the corridor.
    Relays trip. Electricity arcs. Machinery moves. The hum of new air starts up. Ray still has his hand inside the sub-station as the lid is reactivated and starts to close. There’s no way he can get his hand out in time. He struggles, but the heavy steel lid is still coming down on his fingers.
    ‘Coxie! Coxie! Shut it back off!’ The metal sheet closes on his hand, crushing then snipping off his last two fingers at the first joint. Ray’s agonised cries echo along the corridor, but his hand is free and the shield is back in place. The system’s designed to do that, after all.
    The built-up boot. You hear it coming from the other end of the corridor. You get to recognise the loping walk. Clarke clumps to the front of the seated workers and barks at them.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he looks from one expectant face to the next, ‘this Friday, SymaxCorp presents its office systems via the top floor satellite link to the New York Board Of Commerce. This will be the most important presentation in the company’s history. The later you stay, the harder you work, the more likely you’ll be to win promotion over your colleagues. Don’t trust them, because they won’t be trusting you. This isn’t a business. It’s a war that we intend to win. Get a good night’s sleep. You have a very tough week ahead of you.’
    Ben and Miranda are seated near the back, like kids who talk in class. They eye each other with some suspicion. ‘He should have been in the military,’ says Ben.
    ‘He was ,’ Miranda tells him. ‘Desk job. The boot. But you never lose the discipline.’
    Clarke is watching them.
    3. TUESDAY
    The building glints blackly beneath gathering storm clouds. Sometimes movement can be glimpsed within; it looks as though a great creature is shifting. The darkest part of the sky is touching the SymaxCorp roof. On the twentieth floor, Ben dons a headset and runs the SymaxCorp DVD he has been given. He finds himself watching more streams and woodland scenes. ‘SymaxCorp creates integrated electronic office environments to suit any size of business …’ says a wholly insincere voice.
    Ben wanders away through the open-plan floor. What should be ordinary is now becoming mysterious to him, because he sees it with fresh eyes.
    A girl is on her hands and knees taping a cable along the floor.
    A senior staffer is thumping his computer with his fist as the screen fills up with images from old porn films. John Holmes has a moustache, and is alternately fucking two overweight girls. The staffer is mortified with embarrassment.
    ‘SymaxCorp sets new standards in office efficiency, allowing you to work – ’ Here the DVD voiceover sticks and phases oddly, distorting. ‘– faster faster faster faster faster faaaasterrrr … and better than the best from your staff … no matter how urgent your deadline …’
    A secretary touches a scanner and her hair stands on end with static.
    A worker is lying with his head on his desk. He is surrounded by aspirin packets and bottles.
    Another secretary finds her cardigan sticking to the wall behind her. She pulls it free, but it floats away from her body again.
    Ben examines a window covered with a spiral of small insects. He presses his hand against the glass and the insects drop away. He returns to his computer screen, where the DVD is still playing. The images are increasingly absurd and divorced from reality. He looks up and imagines the discreet ducts that supply air to the entire building, forming an X-ray of the building’s walls, a maze of tubes he can hear hissing above his head as he works.
    ‘… creating