The Island Read Online Free PDF

this one housing a full-sized snooker table, the cloth blue and emblazoned with the Lomar corporation logo. He found what he was looking for. His jeans, which he had hastily stepped out of the previous evening when things with the model got a little heavy. He fished in the pocket and took out his phone, then perched on the edge of the snooker table and punched in the number for Maurice Gilbert, the chairman of the telecommunications arm of the Lomar Corporation. He waited for the line to connect, absently rolling one of the snooker balls around the table and catching it as it came back towards him. On the fifth ring, a tired and grumpy sounding Maurice answered.
    “Maurice, it's Damien. Listen, I know it’s early, but I have an idea that just can’t wait.”
    “Of course, Mr. Lomar. What can I do for you?”
    Lomar loved the way people feared him. He knew that if anyone else had called Maurice at home on his private line when it was five thirty in the morning would have received a hell of an ear bashing instead of the snivelling passiveness which he could hear on the other end of the line. “I was thinking about The Island.”
    Silence . The most obvious way to show caution. Lomar went on. “I was thinking more specifically about the game and how it wasn’t the success it should have been.”
    The word he had wanted to use was failure, but Lomar would never saddle himself with such an admission of underachievement. Even so, Maurice still responded with silence. Lomar could imagine the fat fuck’s shifty eyes dancing all over as he tried to think of something to say. “Are you there, Maurice? You haven’t gone back to sleep have you?”
    “No sir, I mean, yes sir, I’m here. I haven’t fallen asleep.”
    “Good. Then you heard what I said? About The Island?”
    “Yes sir, I did.”
    “What if we brought it back?”
    This time, Maurice knew silence wouldn’t cut it, and so settled for half formulating a word as he tried to figure out a way to respond to his employer.
    “You can speak freely, Maurice, I’d like your honest opinion.”
    “Well sir, I don’t think it’s a good idea. With everything that happened last time, I think it would be better to leave it alone.”
    “We can do it better this time,” Lomar said, rolling the ball across the table and sinking it in the corner pocket. “Things have changed.”
    “It’s your company, sir, you can, of course do whatever you like. It has nothing to do with me.”
    “Ahh but it does, Maurice because this time I want to televise it.”
    This time, Lomar let the silence hang, determined to give his spineless employee a chance to answer. To his credit, the radio silence lasted seven or eight seconds before Maurice spoke again, his voice high and shrill. Lomar thought to himself that if he had been half asleep before, Maurice was definitely wide awake now.
    “Mr. Lomar, if we set aside the logistics for a second, which alone would make shooting on The Island difficult if not impossible, there is also the moral angle to consider. I’m not sure the company needs that kind of publicity again.”
    “Times have changed. The public have become far more desensitised to such things. The intrigue of what lurks behind The Island walls still holds strong. Imagine it. A group of contestants rigged with cameras, their every move tracked as they try to win the ultimate prize, knowing that failure will mean death. The public will be right there with them as they discover what lives out there.”
    Lomar stood and started to pace, making slow laps around the snooker table. “Reality television isn’t what it used to be. People don’t want to see people playing for money, or living in a house with strangers for three months at a time. They want danger. They want excitement. What if we could give it to them? What if we, the Lomar Corporation could guarantee a show that everyone would watch? The sponsorship alone would be worth billions.”
    “And what about the backlash