THE APPLICATION Part 1.
An April day, approximately during the 2030”s.
Madelon drove her car through the visitor’s entrance. She opened her side window and put the magnetic card into the card reader. The barrier boom opened, and she drove into the car park. There was plenty of parking space. She drove her old Opel Corsa on a parking place in front of some bushes. She switched off the engine.
Madelon looked at the car clock. Nine minus twenty. She was well in time. She had taken no risk, considering the possibility of traffic perturbations, particularly the sometimes long waiting lines at the traffic lights. But underway all went quite well, probably because of the school vacation during the week after Easter.
She looked around. What did she need? She needed the magnetic card R&H had sent her, which she had already used for opening the boom barrier. She also needed her identity card. She opened a small purse and took it out of it. The purse would stay in the car, hidden under the pale pinkish pillow, she would probably need at the end of the day, to provide her the necessary sitting comfort.
Then she looked into the rear-view mirror. She saw the face of Madelon, 43 years old, divorced, two children. She noticed the wrinkles around and above her eyes. The sure sign that she was no longer a youngster. ‘Life starts at forty’, her mother had always stated. But the start of life at forty did not come alone. It brought with the wrinkles, and the first gray streaks that had appeared in her dark brown hair, last summer. Moreover, the start of life seemed to have brought along more work, more worry and more trouble than before. And now, on this April day, she was facing the culmination of her biggest trouble as yet. She was up to something she never, by no means, had ever considered to have to experience in her whole life.
She took the car keys out of the lock.
“Come on Madelon, let’s go”, she said to herself. She took a deep breath and stepped out of the car. She locked the door, put the keys into a pocket of her jacket and looked for the entrance door. It was a chilly morning. During the night, there had been some rain showers. The soil was still wet. The humid vegetation filled the air with a delicious, energizing smell.
Madelon looked around. Behind the fence, densely covered with ivy, she heard the busy traffic on the main road. One of her fears was, that curious people with a twisted, even perverted mind for sensation, would dwell around near the entrance, just to look who would go in, to watch those who were going to meet a few hours of hard time. The sort of malicious pleasure that once took people to go watching public executions. At least some people must have knowledge what is going on inside here, it appeared to her. But she was alone on the parking area. Nobody was around. There were just two camera’s on a pole, high above the ground. She considered that a rather normal security precaution. Although, with surveillance cameras, you never know.
While she took deep breaths of the morning air, she walked to the entrance. A pity, such a lovely morning to start a dark day like this. She thought how strange it was, just coming all the way to here, just walking onto the building, well aware of what was going to happen. Strange, how obedience proved stronger than fear, aversion and instinct for self-preservation. It was a feeling quite similar to going to an appointment with the dentist. Reluctantly, fearing the drilling session, but it has to be done!
The ‘regional application center’ of R&H looked like an average small industrial building. It had only a ground floor. Its outer walls, lined with light gray bricks, had remarkably no windows. On the roof stood a lot of machinery, likely for ventilation and air-conditioning. The building looked like a lab, or a facility for the production of high tech materials. The kind of buildings that are supposed to be dust-free and require to be extremely climate controlled, or something like that. But behind these walls, completely different things happened. Madelon stopped before the entrance. Time for some last breaths of open air, as if they would give her extra strength. She inspected her clothes. R&H had advised to wear rather loose clothes, especially around the hips. Avoid skinny clothes and especially pants. She had put on an old grey skirt down to the knees, and an old brown kashemir blouse. Above it, she wore a simple hip jacket. She wore flat shoes, and no stockings. She had removed her rings from her fingers, as she had been advised to do for any kind of jewelry. One last deep breath! Then her attention was drawn by movement on the parking area. Two cars had entered one after another. And one of them, damn yes, was clearly a Jaguar. Another last deep breath and she went in.
The visitor’s entrance was located below a shelter on support poles, where yet another camera had been fitted. As she approached, a glass sliding door opened. Behind it was a second sliding door. She went through. Next, there was a corridor, leading to a reception desk.
The reception room looked very familiar. It was comparable to the reception room of any small hospital or of any other institutions of that kind. Or to her dentist’s cabinet. She had to take a number, sit and wait. The reception room was guarded by a surveillance camera and by two guards in the dark buff shirt and the grey pants of the uniform of R&H. Even in many hospital receptions, cameras and uniformed guards had become familiar too, the last years.
Of the two reception desks, only one was open. The receptionist in charge was a black woman in a nurse-like uniform, registering a visitor. At the backside of the desk was an office, with the door open, where a similarly dressed curvy woman was doing paperwork.
The registration of the visitor was finished. The woman was instructed to go through a door, which she unlocked by a magnetic card. The woman, Madelon estimated, was of about the same age as herself, but taller. She had blond hair, tied in a ponytail, and she wore large glasses. She was dressed in a simple jeans skirt and a jacket. Without looking back, she disappeared behind the door.
A buzzer sounded. Number 47 appeared on the board. Madelon had number 49. The other visitors were the woman who stood up, and a man and a women, most likely man and wife. The woman whose turn it was, was about twenty-five. She had a somewhat darker skin and black hair, bound in a tight bun. She had a slightly chubby figure, particularly because of here wide hips and her heavy bosom. She wore a green skirt just down under the knees and a blue parka. She took place in front of the desk, put her number into a small beaker, and said, with a loud voice and with an accent that confirmed Madelon’s assumption that she had foreign roots : “Good morning, I come for my caning!”
(to be continued)
