Room Description

The tool room is not a place you want to work in. It is a dead end and a place constantly under scrutiny, so it is easy to be caught with even the slightest thing wrong, and you will. It truly is a place where dreams do not come to fruition. The first thing you might notice about it is the location. The large hardened bunker like hangar is where the Fuel Shop is, at the end of the flight line and runway. The entrance is a gaping opening that leads back the same width and height the whole way till it turns right where the maintainers for the C-21s work. Before the right turn is a long row with multiple kinds of aircraft engines, and tucked back in the corner to the left is the room.

As you approach it there are several things that are impossible to miss. Two ugly shades of brown painted plywood greet you and the letters “CTK”, also in those wonderful colors, make you crane your neck uncomfortably if you choose to read them. On the left side of the wall hangs an air conditioning unit noisily humming away and dripping sandy water in a waiting trash can, which seems to always be a quarter full no matter when you look within. A large imposing metal door shoddily painted a mix between blue and gray standing seven feet tall and four feet wide takes up the entire right side. The handle isn’t a normal knob, but a large “D” shaped curve of metal that you turn from horizontal to vertical, and as you turn it you hear metal scrape against metal until it is free when the weight of the door causes it to push you back a little.

The smell of confined people assaults your nostrils with that first step through the door way. The room explodes outward and you realize it is rather massive, the beguiling plywood outside hinted at a ten foot tall by ten foot wide room. In truth it stretches twenty high, twenty wide, and thirty deep. The walls are concrete and a dingy off white color was painted all around but only eleven feet up, the section above that is an even more disgusting gray that is splotched with some darker and some lighter spots. Everything within appears faded or washed out despite being lit by seven out of ten operating fluorescent bulbs that are secured to the ceiling.

Directly in the front is an “Air Force Blue” metal desk with an ugly scarred and marred particle board top that spans the twenty foot width of the room, a hinged panel before the door you can lift allows people past, if they so choose. The desk is too tall for anyone who would sit behind it, forcing them to reach and look up uncomfortably at the computer screen which contains mundane information about what is in the room.

To the right, stretching back two feet shy of thirty, are two cabinets that are the same blue as the desk and two metal shelving units. The cabinets are secured by large Master locks, allowing no entrance except to whomever it is that possesses the key at any given time. Dark blue gortex coveralls that faintly reek of JP-8 jet fuel, despite being freshly cleaned, are piled high upon the first set of shelves and the second set contain random sized boxes with barcodes that mean nothing as stickers with numbers were placed haphazardly over them. Inches from the second set of shelves raises a foot by foot square industrial looking duct, going twelve feet straight up and against the wall until it makes a sharp right angle to taper down after six feet to a round tube, supported by three “L” brackets, running straight through the concrete part of the wall at the front.

At the back of the room are two book shelves, each filled with technical data, and another cabinet with a large Master lock, barring everyone from the contents within. Boxes sit atop the two book shelves, one of which is overflowing with small bags designed to hold miscellaneous hardware.

On the left side of the room is a massive eleven foot tall black metal construction of shelves and cabinets that runs the length of the wall by itself. The entire thing is a cacophony to the eyes, as there is hardly a bit of space on the shelves that isn’t used. Face shields that still drip splattered JP-8 sit furthest from the door. Boxes used to contain devices which sample the air and warn if it isn’t safe to be in the area sit upright and on a shelf above the actual devices, secluded to their own section. Varying sizes of boxes containing almost any kind of wrench imaginable are all across the enormous shelves. A large green container with a machine that only a fuel systems mechanic could fathom wests in the middle beside buckets labeled “JP-8 Only”.

In the middle of it all rests an island of even more “Air Force Blue” cabinets with a scratched and dented pine top. The island appears to serve no real purpose other than ensuring there is no empty space beside a small walk way that travels in front of all the cabinets and shelves as most of the cabinets are empty or filled with trivial items that will never be used.

The entire room makes anyone feel small and uncomfortable. If you don’t belong in there you can almost feel an urge to be out and away from the room as soon as possible. When you finally leave you realize you had been slowly slumping more and more as if all of the monstrous things inside loomed over head and pushed you down.