"The Factory" by Abigail Swire
Like a big maze that you can’t find your way out of, that’s how I thought of the Factory when I first saw it. I even had nightmares. The time clock was ticking on and on and I took one dark turn after another but could never find the way to my department. After a while I forgot where I was going and why.
“You’ll get used to it,” Leslie said. It was the night before my first day and she was sitting against a pillow, flipping through a Factory-issued booklet, wearing her nightgown and reading glasses. I took the tour just that morning, to my department only. They wouldn’t even let me in the front door until my paperwork came through.
So I walked the eight blocks feeling worse every minute and my palms sweating. The dress I had chosen was blue and seemed too loud. I stood outside the colossal metal gates wondering what to do. A tiny door opened off to the side, where before there had been no defect in the plane of gleaming walls.
“This way,” said a man in a gray uniform.
I followed him across a small paved courtyard to the face of the entrance, where a wall of curved windows stared back at you with images of yourself. He stopped in front of a steel door and turned around.
“This will be your entry and exit,” he said with no emotion. It seemed like minutes ticked by while he waited for a response. The door buzzed and we went through.
It was a small reception room. To the left was a curving counter with two women behind it. The counter was bare. To the right were four or five narrow jagged brick walls, all at odd angles, with a door in each face. I followed the man to the counter.
“Number 3675120002,” he said as she punched in the numbers on a small machine that clicked with each digit. The machine spat out a card.
The woman was middle-aged with skin tinged gray from long hours indoors. She had brown, curled hair that was very smooth, and red lipstick and nails that glared against the bare counter. Her uniform was gray, a little lighter than the man’s. Her eyes went over my face and dress and I began to sweat again. I knew the dress wasn’t serious enough. She handed me the card and a lanyard.
“Ok. You can go, 3-2,” she said, like she was speaking to a dawdling child.
The man turned on his heel.
“Follow me,” he said.
The first door to the right buzzed and he opened it.
It was a tiny room, the size of a janitor’s closet, with a myriad of dingy walls, again all at odd angles, like a Fun House at a carnival. A single square metal box was attached to one of the walls. Below was a bare brown table with sharp corners.
“Give me your card,” he said.
I held it out to him.
“First rule. Never...ever...give anyone your card!”
His voice bounced off all the corners and edges in that room. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“That card, from now on, is like your soul. It is what you will use to enter and exit your workplace, and what identifies you as a worker. It will tell other people that you belong here. It will be your identification to authorities outside of the Factory, as well. It is what you will use to log your time, and therefore be rewarded for your time. This card will be your currency.”
“You will not let anyone hold your card. You will not show your card to anyone unless they identify themselves as a Tier Two or above. Here.”
He pointed to a card on his left breast pocket. It said, beside his identification, “Tier II.”
“You will not leave, lose, or misplace your card. If you do lose or misplace it, or believe it to be stolen, you must report it to a Tier Two or above authority immediately, and there will be penalties. If I were you, I would sleep with it.”
I wondered if he slept with his card.
“Now, attach it to the lanyard and put it on.”
Being not very mechanically inclined, it took me several tries of fumbling, dropping it once, all with his eyes on me. I put it over my head.
“Now you will use the timeclock, as you will do every day from now on when entering and when exiting. Punch in.”
The lanyard was just long enough to reach the square box on the wall, and I put the card in the slot. It made a loud ka-chungt noise.
“Now I will show you to your department,” he said.
“What is the table for?”
He stared at me, then turned on his heel and began walking through the crooked room. I followed.
It was the kind of room that kind of pushed you through it, like a water pump, and chunked you out on the other side. In fact, the whole place was like a machine, thrumming and humming with mechanized activity behind the walls. After we turned the last corner in the time room, there was another door.
Now we stood in what seemed to be a cave, or a dungeon. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust. The floor was made of loose stone bricks, very uneven, so you had to be careful not to trip. A few bluish lightbulbs behind wire mounts were fixed to the stone walls. The ceiling was arched and dark and you couldn’t see the top. It was cold...goose bumps popped up on my naked arms. We walked through an arched doorway. Water trickled behind the walls. The brick path sloped down to a small footbridge that went over a concrete gutter with no water in it. The gutter disappeared into black arches on either side.
We climbed up the other side and walked through another arch into an expansive system of tunnels that were well-lit with lamps. To the left, the broad tunnel ended in an arch with iron bars blocking the way. We went right, then right again into a smaller passage, then left. It seemed like it would never end. Our footsteps echoed against the walls of the old drainage system, and behind the walls was a throbbing hum.
An aluminum staircase took us up a level or two. Now the floors were planks and the walls brick. We went down another set of stairs, then up again.
“Is there a map?”
“There are no maps of the factory.”
“But how will I ever find the way?”
“You will arrive and depart with your group. You won’t be lost.”
Was that a hint of softness in his voice? I could have imagined anything, at that point.
He stopped abruptly outside a door with a glass window in it.
“Here is your area. You will not enter your area until you arrive for work tomorrow.”
There was so much noise behind that door… . And so many colors! The boys wore common brown pants with suspenders and caps, and the girls had on their street dresses and bright kerchiefs. Workers were moving in all directions at once, carrying boxes and pushing carts that rolled on thunderous wheels, calling out to each other, swinging wooden crates on ropes, whistling, singing even.
“The work you will do here, that everyone does, is very important.”
Again, there seemed to be nothing for me to say, but this time he did not wait for it. We continued down the hallway, opposite the way we had come. We took other stairwells, and passed more doors with people behind them. I tried to map the way as we walked. Maybe it was a shortcut.
As we descended a long flight of stairs and passed a room of assembly lines where everyone wore gray uniforms and dour faces, I asked what they did in that department.
“That division is none of your concern. You will never go in that division, or any of the other departments, other than the one you are assigned to. You will never use this route to exit again.”
We were funneled through the hallway to the door at the end, which put us back in the lobby. The woman behind the counter buzzed us into the time room, I clocked out, and I was ushered through the door.
And that was the tour.
I stood blinking in the sunlight as it splintered off all those blinding metal gates as if I had just woken from a dream, or fallen into one.
Abigail Swire, in silly third person, writes fiction and non-fiction. She served time as a journalist, mad scientist, and assembly line worker, among other things. Abigail has published articles and short stories for various media. She is currently working on her first novel, The Factory, and a tarot deck with real people imprisoned in it.
©Abigail Swire