Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

  Someone had told P. he must find a job.

  He could not now remember whence the admonitory voice had issued. He had heard it so often that the repetitious and separate sources had merged into one amorphous imperative. His wife, his parents, his teachers, the state, the television, his own children—someone had definitely informed him of his responsibilities. Frequently. And in no uncertain terms.

  P. had to find a job. It was his duty, his right, his privilege and his only hope of fulfillment. He would never be at ease until he was performing a useful role in society. That would only come when he had a job.

  For some time P. continued to put off this vital task. He would read the classified advertisements every morning over his breakfast cereal. Sipping the last of the sweet candy-tinted milk from his lifted bowl, he would afterwards announce that nothing suitable had presented itself. He was saving his skills for something grand, something commensurate with his talents and ambitions. P. also refused to deal with state employment agencies or independent placement services, claiming they did not offer sensitive service, but were only intent on jamming any square peg into any round hole.

  So the days passed. P. was unable to truly enjoy his freedom from work, as the pressure to perform some vital function continued to mount.

  One morning there was a different kind of ad in the newspaper. P. studied it curiously.

  the boredom factory

  has opened a subsidiary

  in your town!

  we are now hiring

  by the thousands!

  no skills necessary,

  experience a minus.

  light work, heavy work,

  delicate work, crude work,

  white collar, blue collar,

  women, men and children!

  all makeshifts

  minimal wage guaranteed

  photo-opportunity for advancement

  “This sounds like the thing for me,” P. announced to his family and the alert television. “I think I will go apply this morning.”

  His family greeted this news with delight and acclamation. P. set off for the address given.

  Out on the edge of town he found an enormous new sprawling multistory windowless structure. P. walked across the huge deserted parking lot up to the door marked personnel. He knocked politely and walked in.

  P. had expected to find crowds of people waiting to apply. Instead, the office was empty, save for himself. As P. puzzled over this, a man in a nice suit walked through the inner door.

  “Hello,” said P. “Are you hiring today?”

  “Yes,” said the man. “Just one person, though.”

  “I thought your ad said there was employment for thousands?”

  “There will be. Tomorrow we are hiring two people.”

  “I see.”

  “The day after, we will be hiring four.”

  “I see.”

  “And after that, eight.”

  P. contemplated this pattern. “Will the day after that be sixteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “At that rate, you will soon employ the whole world.”

  “This is true. However, today we need only one person. That is why the ad appeared only in your copy of the newspaper.”

  “What if I choose not to take the job?”

  “The Boredom Factory will not be able to begin operations.”

  “This is a large responsibility.”

  “Take your time in making a decision.”

  P. thought about it. Everyone kept telling him he must take a job. Here was a job offering itself to him alone. Could any decision be clearer?

  “I will take the job.”

  “Very good. Follow me.”

  The man led P. out of the personnel office and onto the factory floor. Vast echoing spaces ranked with obscure machinery stretched on for miles. P. and the man ascended many levels and finally ended up in a moderate-sized room. The room featured a conveyor belt. One end of the conveyor entered through a hole in the wall shielded with a leather flap. The other end terminated in midair above a set of mechanical jaws. There was a chair midway along the conveyor’s length. Next to the chair was a box filled with enigmatic parts.

  “You will sit here,” the main in the suit explained. “At intervals an object will come down the conveyor. You will stick a part in the appropriate socket. That is your job.”

  “How will I recognize the appropriate socket?”

  “There is only a single socket.”

  “There seems to be a number of different parts in here. Will any one do?”

  “Yes.”

  “I believe I understand the job.”

  “Good. If you need assistance, press the button on the chair arm.”

  P. sat down. The man left. The conveyor belt started up with a petulant jerk and began to slowly travel its endless loop. P. waited tensely for the unknown object to emerge. A half-hour passed without a sign of anything. P.’s tension abated, becoming transformed into sleepiness.

  Suddenly a cubical gunmetal case pushed aside the hanging flap and approached P. on the slow conveyor. P. grabbed a random part from the box. When the case drew abreast of him, he quickly spotted the socket on top and had plenty of time to insert the part.

  The assemblage traveled on down the belt. It reached the end and fell off into the mechanical jaws, which promptly closed and crushed it with a grinding noise.

  P. grew angry. He had been regarding the assemblage with pride in his workmanship. It had hurt to see it destroyed. Perhaps this was a malfunction. Perhaps his initiative was being tested. P. pressed the button on his chair arm.

  The man in the suit entered. “Yes?”

  P. explained what had happened.

  “Very good. But it is not necessary to inform me of each satisfactorily completed unit.”

  “So then—all is proceeding as you wish?”

  “Yes. You are doing a good job. Keep it up.”

  The man left. P. waited for the next unit to come down the conveyor. When it did, about an hour later, P. inserted a part and watched as the implacable jaws crushed the resulting construction.

  After the third such event, P. felt no anger, but only a growing apathy and boredom.

  The lunch hour was signalled by the stoppage of the conveyor and the arrival of the man in the suit. By this time P. had completed four assemblages, only to watch them all be destroyed.

  “Allow me to show you the lunchroom, P.”

  P. wondered how the man knew his name. He supposed if they had managed to deliver the unique newspaper to his house, then learning his name would present no problem.

  The lunchroom was enormous. One wall was completely filled with little automat doors.

  “Please enjoy your lunch, P. Compliments of the Factory.”

  P. went to one window. It was labeled cheese sandwich and milk. P. did not care for cheese sandwiches. He investigated another window. It too held a cheese sandwich and milk. So did a third. Eventually P. became convinced that the thousands of doors all held cheese sandwiches and milk. He reluctantly took one. Tomorrow he would make sure to bring his lunch from home.

  P. sat down at one of the thousands of empty seats and ate his lunch. When he was done the man returned for him.

  During the afternoon P. completed six assemblages. Then it was time to go home.

  “See you tomorrow, P.,” said the man in the suit.

  That night P. explained about his job to his wife and children.

  “I am sure the units are not destroyed,” said his wife. “Those jaws do not crush, but merely reform the device into its next stage.”

  The hopeful speculation gave P. the strength to return to The Boredom Factory the next day.

  This day, carrying his lunch, he entered by the door marked employees. The man in the suit was waiting for him.

  “Congratulations, P., you have been promoted to supervisor.” The man shook P.’s hand warmly.

  “Whom will I be supervising?”

  “Tod
ay’s two new hires. I have already set them up at their stations. Come with me.”

  The man brought P. to what was perhaps the same room P. had labored in yesterday. If so, an alteration had been made.

  Today, instead of ending in midair, the conveyor belt made a U-turn and exited parallel to its entrance. Two chairs were positioned opposite each other on different sides of the conveyor. The one P. had occupied—if indeed it was the same—still commanded a full box of parts. Beside the new chair was an empty box of equal size. There was also a third chair behind a small desk whose surface bore a single sheet of paper and a pencil.

  There were two men waiting nervously in the room. The man in the suit introduced them to P., and explained that P. would be their boss. He bade the men take up their stations, and then guided P. to his new desk.

  “You will draw a line down the middle of this paper, P. The right column will be headed ‘Assembly,’ the left ‘Disassembly.’ Make a hash mark in the appropriate column for each operation you witness. At the end of the day, total the columns and make sure that the two sums are equal. If there is no discrepancy, sign your name. If there is a non-equivalence, notify me, and we will adjust it the next day. As before, you may summon me with this button.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  P. sat at his desk. The men sat at their workstations. The conveyor jerked to life. Forty minutes later the first cube emerged. The man with the box of parts inserted a part. P. made a stroke in the “Assembly” column. The cube traveled around the bend in the conveyor. The second man removed the part and dropped it into his empty box. P. recorded the action. The cube disappeared through the wall, naked as it had arrived. The two men looked to P. for approval. P. was slightly embarrassed. He waved his pencil to indicate his approval, and found himself repeating the words of the man in the suit.

  “Very good. But it is not necessary to inform me of each satisfactorily completed unit.”

  Chastened, the men returned their gazes to the conveyor.

  The day proceeded in a completely uneventful fashion, all going to plan. The workers inserted and removed parts, P. recorded all. A miasmic fog of boredom gradually began to permeate the very air the three men breathed.

  At lunch time, the workers ate cheese sandwiches together, while P. sat apart, trying to enjoy his lunch from home. The food seemed tasteless, however.

  At the end of the day P. totalled his columns, verified their identicalness, and signed his name. The man in the suit took the sheet from him.

  “Excellent work, P. I foresee a great future for you here.”

  When P.’s wife heard of his promotion, she was overjoyed. P. did not have the heart to tell her how boring the work actually was.

  The next day P. found he had six workers to supervise. The cubes emerged now with three sockets, which were filled by half the crew and emptied by the others. P. anticipated that the additional strokes he would be required to make would add some interest to the job. However, in what seemed to be a compensatory change, fewer cubes emerged.

  When eight workers were added the next day, making a total of fourteen, the cubes emerged with seven holes. That day they did only three units.

  P. knew this could not go on forever. At least he hoped so. Sure enough, the next day brought a big change.

  There were now thirty workers. Twenty-eight of them occupied seats along the conveyor. The two who had started immediately after P. had received promotions. One would record the Assemblies, one the Disassemblies. P. would merely check their work, making no strokes himself.

  With so many people now performing these useless tasks, the sensation of boredom within the room was akin to being muffled in yards of fiberglass insulation.

  Soon it was time for paychecks to be issued. Even this stimulus failed to raise the pall of boredom by more than a fraction.

  Further days brought more sophisticated divisions of labor to the line. Eventually, though, all possible refinements in the process had been made. When this happened, the man in the suit approached P.

  “This room is functioning fine without you. We need your help now to open up a new division.”

  “Whatever you wish,” said P. He knew enough now not to grow excited at the prospect.

  The man brought P. to a gigantic room filled with smelting and casting equipment. “Tomorrow we hire hundreds of people. The machinery is almost entirely automated, so there should be no problem in operating it. You will supervise as before, making sure that the net output of the room remains at zero.”

  “As you say,” replied P.

  The next day the big room was alive with greased machinery and sweaty people. Blast furnaces roared, iron flowed in orange molten streams into troughs and molds. The finished ingots were recirculated as raw material for the furnaces.

  P. supervised as he had been instructed, although truthfully even his services were unnecessary. At day’s end, the man in the suit spoke to him again.

  “Our rate of hiring is now growing exponentially. We will be opening a new division each day, and expanding into other shifts. Your former underlings are being promoted daily, but you still outpace them. Your performance has been very satisfactory. We will continue to use you to open new divisions.”

  “Thank you,” said P. without emotion.

  Thus commenced many days of new activity. Each division whose start-up P. oversaw was different, insofar as the actual activities that took place inside varied. Stacking and unstacking; painting and stripping; polishing and abrading; sorting and scattering; cleaning and dirtying; packing and unpacking; threading and reaming; cutting and welding; raising and lowering; digging and filling; filtering and mixing; weaving and unraveling; drilling and plugging; inscribing and obliterating; layering and shredding.…However, the foregone nature of the net results was so identical that he could not summon up any interest in the various industrial procedures themselves.

  Meanwhile, as more and more workers exerted themselves to perform the useless tasks, the blanket of apathy, boredom and monotony increased in weight and duration, and began to spread.

  By the end of a month, when The Boredom Factory was running at a fever pitch— hundreds of divisions employing thousands of people in millions of perpetually nullified actions, whose workers ate thousands of cheese sandwiches for lunch—the morass of boredom could be psychically and viscerally apprehended miles away from the Factory itself.

  This then, P. realized, was its true output.

  Soon, P. knew, the boredom would invade his home, as it already had crept into the domiciles closest to The Boredom Factory. At such a time, there would no longer be any difference between home and the Factory.

  And, ultimately, this was why he continued to go to work.

  Strange Trades Drabble

  Once a group of fiction magazine enthusiasts gathered online.

  Their conversation flourished until the advent of virtual reality.

  Then they all began to quarrel over avatars.

  “I’ll be Tarzan!”

  “No, me!”

  “Take off that deerstalker, you second-rate Sherlock!”

  “Make me!”

  All civilized discourse ended when five people simultaneously appeared as John Carter.

  Once the fighting had temporarily ceased, the wise list- moderator stepped in. “Ladies and gentlemen, we must resolve this sensibly. I suggest we each adopt the persona of a famous editor, assigned by lot. There’ll be no fighting then.”

  He was right. Now faced with being editors, everyone left!

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, li
ving or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “Agents,” first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1987.

  “The Boredom Factory,” first published as a portion of “Fantasy Trilogy” in The Edge, 2, no. 1, 1995.

  “Conspiracy of Noise,” first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1987.

  “Fleshflowers,” first published in Back Brain Recluse, no. 16, 1990.

  “Harlem Nova,” first published in Amazing Stories, September 1990.

  “Karuna, Inc.,” first published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, no. 21, Spring 2001.

  “Kid Charlemagne,” first published in Amazing Stories, September 1987.

  “The Mill,” first published in Amazing Stories, October 1991.

  “Skintwister,” first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1986.

  “Spondulix,” first published in Science Fiction Age, September 1995.

  “SUITs,” first published in Amazing Stories, August 1993.”

  Copyright © 2001 by Paul Di Filippo

  Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

  ISBN 978-1-4976-1318-8

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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