If you listen, you can hear it.
You can hear the pipes creaking the story of the ancient; you can hear the echoing shshshshshsh of the machinery whispering its sweet lullaby. Faded. You can hear the melancholy choir of birds singing their sorrows away.
You can hear the door as it dances open to a melody none but itself has lived to hear. The sounds all merge and dim. The sounds all twist and turn and mix into a harmonic cacophony, a bitter-sweet happy-sad, organised chaos. Chaotic order. All blues and classical and pop and jazz and rock and country, all together weaving a pattern more complex than its individual self. Beauty.
The second you enter you’re attacked by the vast echoes of space - the empty stalls, the subdued water, the slow squeaking squealing as the cleaners squeak squeal across the floor. The second you enter you’re overwhelmed by how underwhelming it is. It's not silence, it's quieter than silence but it is so, so loud.
The crowd: it trickles in like water in a fresh spring, slowly to begin with but flowing, flowing, flowing faster and faster and faster until it's nothing less than a torrent of people screaming and shouting and cheering. With the crowd the pressure builds, the torrent of fear makes stars dance before your eyes and grim determination echo around the hollows of your mind.
Your team: the nervous chatter and excited possibilities unified in harmony, your hope and power - once individual - now a weaving polyphonic melody. Each of your flaws and talents equalled and improved by the souls you are sharing the burden of your country with.
Eight separate lives formed one.
Your heart rate, thump thump thumping its own drum beat as your name and heat is announced - you wait. You scream and celebrate and scream and celebrate for the rest of your soul - you sit. You breathe in and out and in and out, find calm, control the fear.
Your heat is announced, the time keepers singing your fear away - just for a heartbeat. Your muscles are proud as you take one last stretch. A quick smile from the time keepers and then the crown goes silent. Anticipating. Standing beside your block you snap your cap against your ears. Everything is muffled, blurred. All that is clear is that you now represent something much bigger than yourself.
Three clear beeps and you rise and stand on your block - for your country. A single beep commands you to get in your position - for your country. ‘Take your marks’ - for your country.
An age passes - for your country.
‘GO.’
You dive and all is silent, you hear nothing but one recurring thought.
Win.