“Cancers and diseases will claim you if you stay out here in the wasteland. If you go toward the coast, perhaps you’ll find someplace safer.”
“The Company all but ran this planet,” called Eustace Radiationtech. “There must be tens of thousands of adrift Company Town citizens these days, and who knows what it’s like in the cities.”
“If sickness will claim us whether we stay or go, I’d rather stay,” cried Eileen Breadbaker. “Lotte’s right. This is home.”
Dreya stooped to touch the ground. She could feel corruption multiplying in the soil below her feet. In the air. In her people. Dreya could wander from here now, too, if she wished. Perhaps visit Headquarters, speak with Mother. If Dreya’s powers as godling were useless, why stay here?
She looked at Lotte, her family, and the other hundred people drawn here. She knew their every name, their every ailment. She knew their terror right now—and their love. Even now, in their agony, they looked to her, as their parents and predecessors had as well.
Town H wasn’t simply Dreya’s assignment. It was her home. Her bond with her people was stronger than any paper contract in the Factory office.
Young Clark Forge pointed at the night sky. “There’s a paper bird up there!”
The bird swirled downward, slow against the gale, and alighted on Dreya’s outstretched arm. She turned her body to shelter the folded paper as she bade it to speak.
“Sister, my icons hold, but my Sister-Neighbor to the east found her icons in tatters. Within days, a passing wagon informed us that Town B was no more. Not even buildings remained. None of its citizens have entered our borders.”
Dreya’s jaw fell slack. Town B’s very existence had been blotted from the prairie?
“Blessed godling, there’s another bird,” said Lotte.
This one perched on the edge of Dreya’s frayed collar, its beak almost kissing her lips. “Sister, three Company Towns along our road have been Unmade, one after another. I have seen no refugees, not even livestock. My own people are scared, and assist me in making new icons to reinforce our homes and borders.”
Only one being could Unmake godlings and entire Towns.
“Mother is going to Unmake us next,” Dreya whispered. “But why?”
The wind howled empty answers.
“Unmake?” echoed Lotte. “But—but you’re a godling! You can’t die.”
Dreya shrugged. “Mother Made me what I am. She can Unmake me in a matter of minutes.”
“How can we fight her?” asked Lotte.
Dreya almost laughed, but she saw the determination in Lotte’s face. In all of the faces around her. Dreya wavered. She couldn’t fight Mother. She was weak.
But if she did nothing, Town H would be razed. Her people obliterated.
Dreya’s Company mandate demanded that she always act for the benefit of her people, but that centuries-old directive didn’t bind her now.
She’d fight for these people and this place because she loved them.
“We fight with what we have,” she said, reaching for the papers clutched in Lotte’s hands.
Mother would need time to rest after exerting herself to Unmake the local icons, but Dreya didn’t think she would require more than a day to recover. Perhaps only hours. This was no time to dither with the minor paperwork strewn about the office.
No, Dreya went to their greatest fount of power: local copies of contracts. These didn’t simply state the terms by which each person was bound to the Company but chronicled centuries of genealogy. Forges, Munitions, Loaders, Enrichmenttechs, Breadbakers, Diggers. Some of their lines stretched back four hundred years to the Company’s Founding. The potency of the vital words acted as an inebriating perfume to Dreya, but she refused to fall into a hazy bliss. Production goals must be met.
Her people dispersed throughout the office. The energy of the place encouraged their eyes to stay open and awake. The adults creased sheet after sheet as younger children shuttled about papers or food and drink.
Before the Company’s fall, Dreya would have serenaded them with rousing industrial mantras—”My Labor is My Redemption,” “The Greatest Machine.” Instead, she sang about them. Of their births, accomplishments, trials, griefs, marriages. These were her people, after all. She knew them with deeper intimacy than could ever be portrayed in staid Company paperwork.
Her words and emotions melded with those contracts-in-hand and the emotional reactions of those who folded.
With the efficiency of an assembly line, Dreya and her people created a paper army.
Mother arrived soon after the sun’s gray light pierced the multi-pane windows on high. She was little more than a skeleton adorned in a blue Factory pantsuit three sizes too large. She struck a haughty pose in the doorway. A sunbeam highlighted the copper sheen of her skin but couldn’t hide a sickly undertone like verdigris.
The workers’ hands froze in mid-fold. Even the children stilled. Dreya stood. With a sweep of her arm, she called a flock of paper vultures to crest her shoulders and arms. Dreya and her people had formed a force of carrion-feeders. Scavengers. Vultures, hawks, eagles, coyotes. Creatures that would do whatever they could to survive through dire days.
Mother stood still for a moment as she took in the sight of the workers gathered behind their godling. Her steel-toed shoes clopped like hooves as she advanced a step. Around the room, hundreds of paper animals stood at attention. The coyotes bared their sharp-edged teeth while the vultures gaped their thickly-folded beaks. Their aura of protection buffeted against Mother and drove her backward to the doorway.
Mother’s cold black eyes sought out Dreya as she moved into the central corridor.
“Daughter,” Mother said, her voice husky.
“Mother.” Dreya respectfully bowed her head, even as she quavered in terror. After all her months convincing herself she deserved to be Unmade, now that the moment had come, she only wanted to live. For her people to live.
“You expected me.” A note of surprise warmed her voice. “And you see me as a threat.”
“My highest mandate is the safety and security of my people. You Unmade my icons. So yes, Mother, you are a threat.”
“You should submit to your Unmaking. You haven’t met your stated production goals.”
Dreya absorbed the exhaustion, the elation, of her people. She looked at Lotte beside her. The girl’s hands were painted black by ink, her eyes bloodshot and fierce.
“Our town goals have changed,” Dreya said.
Mother inclined her head. “Only Headquarters can formalize adjustments.”
Dreya hesitated, confused. If anyone knew anything about the power still held by Headquarters, it would be Mother, and yet no authority had been evident for over a year now.
“Town bylaws state that if Headquarters has been unresponsive for a period of ninety days, I can act on my own discretion,” she said, speaking slowly. “That period is long past.”
Mother’s eyes narrowed. “You are establishing precedence.”
“My Sister in Town B formed no such argument? Nor did my siblings in the other Towns you have Unmade?”
Shock filtered over Mother’s face. Before she could speak, Dreya continued.
“Your actions demonstrate precedence, too, Mother. Any official visit from Headquarters requires three days’ notice. Even more, you Unmade my icons without submitting proper paperwork to justify your actions.” She met her Maker’s piercing gaze. “You cannot pretend to act on behalf of the Company. You act on your own volition.”
In that instant, Mother’s expression shifted, as if she, too, were paper folded into a new form.
“I am the Company!” she screeched. “I am the last remnant of its Founding. I Made you. I Made your Brothers and Sisters. You were supposed to keep our Management strong, our land usable, our production at maximum. And now, what remains? Our Company Towns.” Her lips curled in blatant revulsion. “They are abandoned, polluted, defective. We need to be remembered by our glory years! Not by these... corpses.
”
“My Town lives, and there’s no denying it has fallen on hard times,” Dreya said softly, “but that has happened throughout the Company’s history, too. There have always been Factory fires, waste spills, fallout. Our glory years may yet return.” The paper vultures perched atop her shoulders flapped their wings, causing her braids to jostle and chime in the manufactured breeze.
“I’ll Unmake all of you,” Mother hissed, “and the buildings, and the streets. I will pull enough putrescence from the earth and water to grow grass on this prairie again. Within days, it will be as if this Town never existed.” A dreamy light filled Mother’s eyes.
“Wait. Mother, you can cleanse the earth and water? Why does the wasteland exist at all?”
“Your Factory’s work was vital and dangerous, as you well know. The wasteland acted as a necessary buffer between Town H and other settlements.”
Dreya leaned forward in eagerness. “Mother, if you could fully purify our Town’s sector, we could—”
“Purify the Town? Where does the poison end, Dreya?” Her gaze flicked around the room to all of the people. “I see cancers that ache to spread. I won’t let that be.” Mother stepped forward, the soft rippling sound of her baggy uniform strangely loud. “You, girl. Your head is hurting terribly.”
She reached out as if to brush the layers of draped braids away from Lotte’s forehead. Dreya summoned up a barrier, and Mother’s fingertips encountered air as hard as glass.
Mother withdrew her hand and cast a look of scorn at Dreya. “This girl is part of my legacy. A Company Town girl, born and raised. I can see proof in her cells. So many of them writhe with need to grow, and grow, and grow. If you think this migraine is bad, child, wait until the tumors multiply.”
Lotte’s terror rattled against Dreya. The other townsfolk shifted in anxiety as well, with the heightened alarm of the Forge family as piercing as train whistles.
Dreya sucked in a breath. This manipulation—this doubt—was all part of Mother’s Unmaking of Company Town H.
And it was going to stop here and now.
“The tumors won’t grow. I Make the icons that keep my people safe and well. This is my town. Mother, you don’t even know this girl’s name. I do.”
Her people’s escalating fright shattered like glass, consumed by a surge of faith. Dreya’s heartbeat pounded with the might of the great engines that once filled their Factory.
Mother’s jaw gaped as she sensed the abrupt shift as well. “How can their faith still be this strong? I broke your icons! Their fear and pain should have compounded to break their belief in you, how—”
“You don’t know my people,” Dreya said.
She pointed at Mother with her ink-stained fingers. The paper army advanced, cresting around and past Dreya in a white, gray, and black wave; her ears filled with a cacophony of fluttering sheets and screaming beasts. Somewhere in the din, she heard Mother’s faint cry.
Through the blur of animated paper, Mother was shoved into the hallway. She had crossed her arms as if she fought a gale, but she couldn’t stand against the determination of the town. She skidded all the way to the Factory floor, her heavy shoes squealing on the concrete.
“You will leave my town,” Dreya said. Her voice carried down the hallway and boomed in the Factory.
“This is not your town! It’s a Company Town!”
“The Company is dead. You know that,” she said. “You have no contractual basis to eliminate me or my Brothers and Sisters. This is a new town, and you have no place here. Go.”
She laid all her power as godling into that word, and with it, she cast Mother away. The paper army pressed itself low to the floor as a spontaneous wind snared Mother in its fist. She spiraled to the ceiling. Dreya directed her through one of the skylights on high. The sound of shattering glass echoed and filled the mighty space.
The other creatures turned to face her with a quiet ripple of paper. They overflowed the front of the office and the hallway. Most of her previous icons had been created to be stationary, but these beings were designed to move. And so they would.
She motioned to half of the new creations. “Deploy. Guard our borders. Alert me if you find humans in need or any who threaten violence.” Paper flapped and thrummed as the creatures advanced. Their power would erode in weeks due to direct exposure and the wear caused by their own animation, but Company paperwork was the one resource they had in plenty.
She looked to the other folded creatures. “Rummage through the township and explore the wasteland. Look to the derelict railroad line and our abandoned tenements. Seek out iron and other metals suitable for my icon workings. Find where the water is most potable. Find food and fuel for our people.”
Dreya turned to her people. They hadn’t waited idly for her instructions. Already, they were talking among themselves, Breadbaker to Digger to Forge, to ensure that everyone was taken care of in the absence of the iron icons.
She listened to them with fierce pride, then began to catalog the many tasks that she must immediately address. Create new, powerful icons. Warn her siblings about Mother, and establish bonds to foster their mutual survival. Tend to her people who suffered most under new maladies. Retrieve blank paper from the store room, and ask the Machinist family to make sure the typewriters were in working condition. Everyone needed new contracts drafted as the town began anew.
For now, their goal was simple: scavenge and survive. As they had once worked together to assemble great machines in the Factory, they would now produce a future of their own making.
© Copyright 2019 Beth Cato
Beth Cato - [BCS 268 S01] - The Blighted Godling of Company Town H (html) Page 2