Down here my senses are altered; the sounds are lazy and the light gentle. It's truly a three dimensional world; I am as free as a bird in the sky. I swoop downward to the sandy bed below. Somewhere here is treasure, I know this because I dropped it myself. It's not the kind you can find with a metal detector, these are all little packets of a very special chemical. A chemical that will change my fortunes. I just hope the packaging has stood up to the water currents these past sixteen months. Now that the heat is gone it'll be simplicity itself to return home with several kilos. Above in the boat is all the usual kit I take diving, I can slip in at least five packs and still have my usual swagger down the pier. Even if the cops are still on stake-out this trip will not look different in the slightest to every other time I dive.
The lights above start to flicker like an old movie reel, but this is no theatre. In this corrugated shipping container the light is the only thing keeping these hundred or so people cramped in here with me from loosing their God-given minds. We weren't promised comfort, food or even water until we reach the other side of the city wall; but we need light. Perhaps we were naive to think that the smugglers would care; we are cargo now. But after years in the gutters where darkness means a knife comes next, or worse, the robbing of your vision is enough to put most folks over the edge. Their faces are now strobed, but they don't move in funny stilted images. They are cast as hard as concrete and just as grey, even the children. In each momentary snippet of blackness we all die a little, only to come alive again in the next sallow burst of yellow.