VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT AND MAIN ROADS

1. Long-Term Parking

The first thing to be seen is a red Subaru Forester, centred so precisely between the yellow lines you could swear that the bay has parked itself around the car, and that this multistorey complex has, in turn, erected itself around the bay. But if you look at the Daihatsu Terios to the left of the Forester, and the Honda CR-V to the right, you can see that they too have been reverse-parked to perfection – equal room on either side, rear tyres just touching the wheel stops, front ends neatly aligned with the outermost edges of the rectangular columns – as have the vehicles to the left and right of those, and the vehicles on either side of them, and so on all around Level 44. Note also the generous bay width, which, along with the extra height clearance, enables the Ford Transit to lie down with the Hyundai Getz.

Those yellow lines embracing each vehicle draw your eye to the equally yellow directional arrows, which in turn seem to gesture towards the vast expanse of the steel-grey floor slab, its epoxy-resin sheen calling to mind the surface of a frozen lake. At this point, you note that there are no oil stains, just shimmering brushstrokes of light from the fluorescent strips glowing soundlessly overhead.

When you shift your gaze from the floor to the gently curving walls and the rows of columns – pausing to appreciate the reflective-chevron corner guards, whose alternating black and yellow stripes somehow heighten the illusion of licorice- allsort sponginess – what strikes you most is the absence of shadows, of dark corners, of shady entrances to stairwells. The entire space is bathed in a factory-showroom brilliance, to which your eyes have already adjusted. Everything that can be seen, you are seeing.

Returning your attention to the Subaru Forester, you contemplate the splashes of milky light on the unblemished paintwork: a red that almost matches that of the gleaming fire extinguisher mounted on the nearby wall, and the lid of that curiously pristine dumpster over in the corner. You could be forgiven for thinking that what you are seeing is not a car park interior but a perfect three-dimensional rendering of a car park interior: a promise of what’s to come. You could be forgiven for thinking that these vehicles, cleaned, polished and backed in so carefully, are ideal versions of themselves.

At this point you notice that Level 44 is completely silent. But when you listen carefully, you sense that this silence is in fact made of an assortment of faint sounds you can’t quite identify or even describe. Do you hear the swish of a faraway boom gate periodically opening and closing? The paint-roller sigh of tyres ascending the internal ramps? The whirring of nearby ticket machines, even though there isn’t a pay station in sight?

No matter how far your attention wanders along the neatly arranged rows of empty vehicles, it always come back to rest on the Forester. The longer you regard its metallic red exterior and pristine halogen headlights, the more familiar they seem, as if you are being reunited after a long separation, as if you’ve been wandering Level 44 in search of this mid-sized SUV and you have at last found it, or it has found you.

Inspecting the concrete floor again you wonder, for the first time, why those yellow arrows point in one direction only.

At the same moment it occurs to you that the Subaru Forester is indeed yours, and that it’s in far better condition than when you last drove it. Searching in vain for the keys, you realise that you won’t drive it again. But you are kind of glad because, although you may have arrived here earlier than you’d intended, the rates are really quite good, and you’ll never have to remember where you left the car. Also: you find some comfort in the knowledge that no matter how many people show up after you, everyone is guaranteed to find a parking space.

2. Cones

One, two, three, four, five. And back to the beginning. One, two, three, four, five. I’m already slightly tired of watching the cones, but I have to admit the picture quality is topnotch.

The laminated sign on the back of the door at the far end of the room says Traffic Offenders Program (Advanced Module). The name alone is confusing because I don’t recall doing the Beginner Module, or the Intermediate Module, or whatever other modules there may be. I’d always assumed there was only one program for everyone, a program that involved sitting in a room all day on an uncomfortable plastic chair, along with a bunch of other people on equally uncomfortable plastic chairs, watching an educational video. While there’s no denying that I’m in a room, sitting on a chair, watching a video (sort of ), beyond those basic components the program is really quite different from what I’d imagined.

For one thing, there’s literally just me in this room; I’m completely alone here. For another, the chair, far from being uncomfortable, is very comfortable: ergonomically contoured, with what feels like a memory-foam seat cushion, so perfectly moulded to me that I’ve already lost track of where my arse finishes and the chair begins. True, I can’t move it around because the base is permanently fixed to the floor, but that’s the only downside of what is otherwise an ideal chair.

The chair’s parked more or less in the centre of this (windowless) room, facing a screen mounted on the wall just a metre or so in front of me. What perplexes me most of all is the footage. It’s just a kind of close-up panning shot of a row of five orange traffic cones. The camera (is it a traffic camera? If so, the technology is really advanced) drifts from one end of the row to the other, and then the film abruptly ends, jump-cutting back to the beginning: left-to-right pan, return to the start, and so on. It runs for about ten seconds and there’s no soundtrack: no background music, no narrator talking about the cones to give them some sort of context. The camera moves in silence. But, as mentioned, the picture quality is second to none. In fact, I’d describe it as supernaturally good.

Maybe all this is specific to the Advanced Module. Maybe the earlier-module people get lower-definition screens and less comfortable chairs and some other kind of footage. I don’t know why I’ve been fast-tracked, but the real issue is: I don’t know why I’m here at all. I recall nothing between the point where I was driving down Ipswich Road texting ‘LOL’ to my girlfriend and the point where I was sitting here – am sitting here – doing the Advanced Module. Yes, I clearly remember texting ‘LOL’ because she’d just sent me a photo of our dog doing something funny – admittedly not laugh-out-loud funny, so maybe ‘LOL’ was a bit of an overstatement, but that’s all beside the point. I can only conclude that somehow, in those few seconds when I was texting, the police spotted me, and now I have to do the program.

So, to reiterate: I’m in the room, on the chair, watching the screen, the picture quality is superb – I really can’t help thinking it’s wasted on the cones, and yet I can’t stop watching. What with the comfortable chair and the crystal- clear image, I’m occupying a strange zone somewhere between utterly mesmerised and utterly bored. I count the cones, and I count the cones again. The camera dwells for a moment on each one, inviting me to do the same. It seems to be saying: examine each cone carefully; try to discern and appreciate its individual qualities. It seems to be saying: imagine these cones are people.

But I keep waiting for the next bit, the bit that comes after the cones (whatever that may be), to begin. You might even say I’m desperate for it to begin, and I’m beginning to wonder if something’s gone wrong: a glitch that whoever is remotely operating this footage is unaware of. I’d contact the IT department or the AV department or whoever’s responsible for the footage, but there’s no phone in here; there’s nothing but the chair, the screen, the door and the laminated sign. Still, I’m pretty certain that sooner or later someone will walk through the door and the next thing that’s supposed to happen will happen. I could stand up and walk over to the door, maybe even open the door and see what’s going on out there on the other side, but this chair is so incredibly fucking comfortable I literally can’t move. I’m halfway to being convinced that it was designed especially with me in mind. Meanwhile, there’s nothing else to do but watch the cones: one, two, three, four, five. And back to the beginning. One, two, three … I’m sure this will drive me mad sooner or later but the picture quality really is excellent.

3. The Green Man

The Green Man remained, locked mid-stride, his legs perfectly straight, his shoes like two bricks, his hands inexplicably sheared off at the wrist. Ted wondered if the signals had gone haywire. On a good day he was lucky to get himself and his rollator halfway across before the Green Man disappeared and the Red Man took over. Not now, though: the Green Man remained and the traffic waited while Ted, a solitary pedestrian, shuffled forward.

The Green Man remained, heading screen left to some unknown place beyond the frame, but with an enviable sense of purpose. Something definitely must have gone wrong, as Ted was quite sure that the people in charge had no intention of extending the Green Man’s time; on the contrary, they wanted to reduce it by tiny increments, thinking no-one would notice – but Ted had noticed, and he knew that one day the Green Man would be little more than a fond memory. Then that prick the Red Man would reign supreme, forever standing to attention, squarely facing the pedestrians, his shoulders oddly hunched as if he were holding an invisible suitcase in each hand (or at the end of each arm), while Ted remained stranded at the kerbside, leaning on his rollator.

The Green Man remained, his uniform a grid of brightly lit cells. The rollator glided forward, Ted close behind. But the median strip remained out of reach, as if unseen road-widening machines were pushing it a little further away with each step he took. And all the while the traffic waited, six lanes of it extending far into the distance, oddly patient, almost reverent. Ted couldn’t see the drivers through the tinted glass, but he knew they could see him.

The Green Man remained, glowing behind his window, high up inside his yellow box. Ted eased the rollator forward. The road put up no resistance: all Ted had to do, it seemed, was hold on and allow himself to be gently reeled in to his destination somewhere on the other side. He looked at the waiting cars and felt as if he were crossing the surface of a life-sized map.

The Green Man remained, back straight, chest puffed out, torso angled slightly forward. Ah, to be the Green Man, forever young, held up by eternal legs: no rollator for him. Admittedly, his hands were missing, but you can’t have everything.

The Green Man remained, overseeing the cars from on high. They sat perfectly still: a photograph of traffic.

The Green Man remained, and Ted kept his eye on the median strip. No matter how much road he and his rollator covered, they could never seem to get there. But the thing was, his legs weren’t tired. In fact, he no longer needed the rollator, and he noticed that he was walking erect. Even though he still had a lot of ground to cover before he got to the other side, he wasn’t concerned, because he somehow knew that the Green Man would give him as long as he needed. And the traffic would wait. Everything seemed to be saying: Take your time, Ted. It was an odd sensation, one he hadn’t felt before, but all things considered, he had to admit it was quite nice.