The Coloured Columns

The computer hall of a research laboratory in California, fluorescent light over a raised floor of pale grey tiles, a tower two metres tall and two and a half metres across, built as an open ring of columns with a gap at one side, faced with panels in black, wine red, dark green and deep blue in narrow aluminium frames, every panel plain and unmarked, through the gap a dense thicket of fine pale blue wires, around its foot a low ring-shaped bench in black padded leatherette, a technician's hand setting a white coffee mug on the bench beside a closed grey folder, grey cabinets along the far wall.