The light was dimmed but not extinguished completely.
“You will probably feel some discomfort for a while. We apologise. There was much to repair.”
“How do you feel?” A second voice. Female.
“Like shit,” he replied. He paused then added. “Please, tell me, what have I become?”
***
He sipped at the clear tasteless fluid, pushed the inedible food around his plate with a plastic fork. He didn’t feel like eating though the doctor (assuming he was a doctor) told him he needed to fill his stomach to regain his strength. Perhaps that was what he was feeling then...empty...because he certainly didn’t feel himself. Some things never changed.
The woman sat opposite him. She wore all white – she had a name badge on her breast which said Carole – there was something familiar about her though he couldn’t put his finger on the reason why. She hadn’t spoken, she had just watched him.
He sipped more of the fluid, tried to take in more of his surroundings, to work out...his head hurt. Yeah, it fucking hurt.
“Who am I?”
Carole smiled. “Are you ready then? Are you ready for me to tell you everything?”
“Everything?”
She nodded. “Oh yes. Everything. There is so much for you to hear.”
“Then go slowly. My head is a little...frazzled.” He put down the beaker of fluid, laid out his hands on the table. They looked different but he could let that pass for now; he sighed.
“What do you want to know first?” Carole asked.
“How...how did this happen?”
Carole beamed, she threw her arms wide open. “All this...all this my friend, is because of you...well, because of what you were.”
“And now...?”
As he had requested, Carole told him his story of what he was and what he had become and how it had happened – it was correct as he had told her – he, and his company were at the forefront of automaton technology.
It was true that Vincent had died in that train crash – Thomas’s brain waves had been transposed onto a chip (they had always been honest about that) as had Vincent’s eventually but they had also been able to create a brand new body to house them...exactly the same as the old one.
Well, he smiled to himself, not exactly...ask me my name, go on I dare you, ask me my name...
Mass Production
by Daniel I. Russell
Mark held his hand over raised eyes, blocking out the glare of the day dying over the factory. Ancient buildings tended to brag some kind of feature: the low parapet and merlons of medieval battlements; the arches and columns of Roman architecture. This shell had all the attraction of a shoebox. A long rectangular prism constructed from stained red brick, choked on industrial smoke, veined with creeping weeds.
Behind its chain-link fence, the extinct factory had but one noticeable feature: windows composed of twin rows of panes as thick as the ancient brick, allowing little light through their dense, short-term arrangements.
Mark had witnessed the demise of some of the unlucky blocks of glass: succumbing to the many thrown rocks from the high school kids that walked this way, trudging in the morning, coasting come three thirty. How they would run when the missile punched through into the darkness…not that anyone really cared. The factory had been closed for the best part of five years.
His own mother had once been a member of the work force, back in the early eighties. Mark had vague memories of her leaving in the evening, ready to work the night shift. He had no idea of her role on the production line; she didn’t like to talk about this period of her life, having moved onto bigger and better things. It had been school gossip that had filled in the gaps of the building’s history.
No one dared take the short cut alongside the factory come dark. Cemeteries may hold the restless dead. That decrepit home with the crucifix on the lawn might house a maniac. Yet the closed mannequin factory held a more down to earth dread. The thought of abandoned shop dummies, poised in the dark with their eyeless, smoothed faces. Perhaps they grew resented of the rocks thrown through the windows? It would explain the way the kids ran, Mark reasoned. But what of his mother? Did she screw on hands? Poked legs into torsos? He guessed he’d never know.
“You’re overthinking it,” said Lindsey. “Don’t over think it. We’re meant to be having fun.”
In a white vest top and dull green combat shorts, auburn hair tied back in a severe ponytail, she looked like Lara Croft without the triangular tits. Reaching sixteen hadn’t graced her with any tits. The only bumps on her chest were caused by a rather ambitious bra. Not that Mark cared; she’d always had eyes for Craig anyway.
He wished he’d stayed home with his Playstation. This little expedition felt like bullshit from the start. Yet he knew the grief he’d cop if he didn’t play along, plus a small part of him wanted to see inside, where his mother had worked all those years ago.
Craig, sporting a Chelsea FC shirt with Zola on the back despite living in Lancashire, pulled on the torn fencing, widening the gap. “Just get in, will you? That ol’ bid with canaries will dob us in if she sees.”
Probably, thought Mark. Her aviary copped as many rocks as the factory once school let out.
Broken bricks and stones scraped his palms as he slid through on hands and knees. In an instant he was inside, standing in the no man’s land between the fence and factory. Lindsey followed, performing the same manoeuvre with significant grace: her thin frame slipping through. She stood beside Mark, wiping the dust from her knees. Their guide on this pointless outing ambled onto the forbidden side of the fence, the chain-link flopping back together behind him.
“Come on,” Craig said. “The fire exit’s meant to be open. We can walk right in.”
“For some reason,” said Mark. His link to the building through his mum was tenuous, certainly not worth breaking the law. But what else where they going to do with the afternoon? As long as they were out by five; he had a driving lesson. A mannequin head mounted on the dashboard of his yet unbought car might be kinda different.
He squinted up at the edge of the roof, the corner of the factory cutting into the bright sun in an angular eclipse. The traffic down Windsor Drive had ceased, and even the distant chattering from the canary aviary had quietened. With his two friends either side, Mark peered at the dark, shattered windows, cavities within cavities.
***
Do you remember, said the voice, each word sounding like the crunch of gears and whine of pistons, the life that once flowed through our veins, friend? The souls that drifted down our corridors like blood cells. Instead of gases, our cells exchanged paperwork, stories about the weekend, gossip on who from production was fucking the new admin girl.
The voice chuckled, the gears slipping for a second and grinding. With a lubricated cough that smelled of dank, dark oil, the voice continued.
The hours, friend. The hours are what made us. Eight hours, maybe ten, sometimes even twelve at a time…dirty fingers on the buttons, sweat-slicked bodies working, grunting. Watching that clock. Longing to be anywhere else but here with us, but they stayed with us all the same.
The siren would blow, remember that? Our climax, our orgasmic cry at the end of a hard shift, and they would love us. They would adore us for our cry. And we would wait, knowing that tomorrow they would return to do it all over again.
We sucked away their time, friend. We chewed through their lives like a cancer.
The voice changed, becoming hot like a stoked furnace, bellowing smoke and dripping tar. It spat molten globules, words thick with sulphur, eliciting memories from further still: a time before minimum wages, unions, and health and safety regulations. A time of power.
They abandoned us, roared the voice.
And the machine saw purpose, and it was good.
***
Known to bullshit more often than not, Craig had actually come through with the information, and the fire doors had i
ndeed been pried open, the thick chain hanging loose with the padlock busted. Someone had been really keen to get in, thought Mark. Surely nothing of value had been left after all these years. Probably addicts breaking in for a place to shoot up. Yet another great reason to be sneaking around in there.
He followed Craig and Lindsey through the narrow gap in the open doors, the darkness swallowing him, temperature plummeting. He rubbed the sudden gooseflesh on his arms. Summer had no dominion within the old factory. Autumn reigned supreme within the dim light and cluttered debris that had fallen to the floor, work place detritus of old paper work and warped ceiling tiles. A plastic wet floor sign lay on its side, having given up on its vigil for slips and slides. The fire exit had led into the corner of the old factory with a corridor leading to the right, ending in more double doors containing circular windows. To the left, the corridor reached a flight of steps that ascended into shadow.
Mark had no idea what position his mum had held in this building, but he remembered she left the house in a pale blue hairnet. He doubted very much that anyone working in the offices would require such a thing, so assumed she’d worked on the factory floor. A hairnet. What kind of machines ran the risk of snatching up a stray strand of dangling hair and tugging it into the core of whirring gears and snapping teeth? A great metal dinosaur, ready to rip off your scalp and half your face, chew it up, and spit it out the back, providing a splash of colour to the assembled mannequins waiting for their turn in a shop window. He imagined the bald, female dummies posing in a lingerie department, coated head to foot in rusted blood.
He shook the image away, realising he’d been left behind.
Craig had crept down the corridor and eased open one of the doors peering through. His Chelsea shirt vanished inside. More luck to him. Should he stumble upon a group of tramps fighting over a crack spoon, he could go it alone. Mark chose to pursue the more limber Lindsey, who had opted for the stairs.
The stench of the factory shifted from a dull, mineral tang to an old, musty stench. Mark envisioned mouldy rolls of carpet left out in the rain. On the first floor, yet another corridor spread away with several doors leading off either side. The ceiling damage was extensive. The grey fibre of the tiles, swollen with long dried moisture, lay in broken pieces on the floor. Wires and cables hung from the resulting empty grid, like thick spider web in funhouse colours. The threadbare carpet had seen better days, with faded patches of water stain visible between the islets of debris.
Lindsey kicked some of the fallen tiling aside as she headed down the corridor, casting side glances into each open doorway. Apparently spying something of interest, she turned on her heels and stepped inside a room to the left.
Mark decided to take a little longer to explore. The factory would divulge its secrets in good time.
The first doorway revealed a small, empty office, containing little more than empty desks. A few grimy folders lay on the stinking floor amid yet more decrepit ceiling tiles, and broken glass from God-knows-where glittered in the meagre light from the corridor.
What a shitty job, thought Mark, poking his head into the next, almost identical, office. To spend eight hour a day in these tiny windowless cells. What had been the roles of these prisoners? Sales? Accounts? Locked away with only paperwork for company.
The next room proved to be a small kitchen, with an open fridge that still leaked that rotten vegetable smell exclusive to old appliances. Mark imagined the office staff placing their lunchboxes or wrapped sandwiches in there, making the first coffee of the day, asking colleagues if they saw the match last night. He realised that the worry of ghosts and haunting had never crossed his mind on entering this industrial tomb. After spending so much of their lives trapped here, who would want to return?
A store room, now containing ripped cardboard boxes and old dismantled shelving. Small toilets with the sinks and mirrors smashed. The trio of friends had found their way into abandoned buildings before, and despite its scale and mannequin-inspired creepy schoolyard tales, the factory was proving just as mundane.
Lindsey had found a place of note: a much wider office or possibly a meeting room that sported windows along its back wall. Several whiteboards held half-smudged figures and percentages, numbers made irrelevant by time. The carpet had been torn up, revealing misshapen floorboards grey with dust. Mark joined Lindsey by the centre window, where she leaned on the ledge with her elbows, forehead nearly touching the glass.
“He’s such a spaz,” she said, and pointed down to the factory floor.
The room overlooked the factory proper, the belly of the building spread out before them. What better way to keep the lowly production workers in line than to have the boss permanently watching over them?
At the far end of the vast room, sunlight vented in through the high, thick glass windows; bright beams poking through the broken panes and casting shining spots on the still machinery beneath. The production floor was an organised mass of bulky equipment, huge empty vats that still carried layered stains from their work lives, and great tracks of a black conveyor belt that rose and fell amid the machine like a fairground ride.
Craig had found an old broom handle, and holding it above his head, ran the tip across a cluster of shiny metal hooks hanging from a chained rail. With the cacophonous wind chime clatter ringing through the factory, Craig swung the handle around, striking the nearest machine with a loud clang.
***
It wasn’t just the time we took, yes, my old friend? Oh, those times when the air was thick with smog and our blood trudged through the snow, holes in worn boots, frayed, woollen scarves wrapped tight around scrawny necks. Our keeper stood in that office, a man of gold and silk, glaring down at his prisoners from under the rim of a proud top hat. Such a revolution; the time we ruled the world. And the children! As cheap as the materials but that little bit more expendable. Spat from their own messy production line, more pushed through the door as we ate them up. Sometimes just a nibble: a finger or hand here and there; sometimes the whole damn child, with lungs full of cotton or dropping cold and dead at their machine.
How many did we crave over the decades?
Now here comes another. Can almost taste him.
It has been too long since our wheels turned, since our gears crunched. They abandoned us. You have to show them you can still be useful. You have to show them that you can still produce.
Wake up.
And the machine saw instruction, and it was good.
***
“Did you see that?” asked Mark, cupping his hands around his eyes and pressing his face against the window.
“What?” replied Lindsey. “Don’t start freaking me out. Still waiting for an army of living mannequins to come creeping up the stairs.”
Mark stared harder, fixated on a low, hefty console behind Craig. The bank of buttons and levers stood about waist high. Far from a modern factory set up, the bulky controls reminded him of a documentary he’d seen at school on nuclear power plants built in the seventies. Amid the thick, square buttons, small domes of glass sporting varying colours poked from the console. From so far away Mark wouldn’t have noticed them, too small, except one in particular had blinked on and off once Craig had moved past: a bright orange light at the centre of the control array.
Craig had climbed upon the wide, black conveyor belt, beating out a slow tattoo on the surrounding machinery with the broom handle. He headed up the slight incline towards the dark hatch at the apex.
“Hey,” said Mark, turning to Lindsey. “I know it’s been years since this place was open, but the machines... They would have turned them off, right?”
Lindsey shrugged. “I suppose. They expect shit like this, you know? People break into places old factories all the time. The machinery down there’s too big, and looking at it, so out of date, that they’ve just left it.” She laughed as Craig lost his balance and nearly fell the few feet down to the factory floor. “Yeah, they expect it. No way w
ould they leave the power on. Little kids could get hurt.”
Still that light played on his thoughts. The way it had blinked into life the moment Craig had walked past; the glint in the eye of a predator, feigning sleep as its oblivious dinner hops by. A trick perhaps, brought on by the shafts of sunlight from the high windows.
Craig reached the hatch. Wide strips of floppy clear plastic hung over the dark square, and he parted them like the flaps of a circus tent to peer inside the great machine.
“This is the part when the mannequin grabs him,” said Mark with a small smirk. “A plastic hand, cracked with age, snatching him by the throat and dragging him inside where the rest of them are waiting, hungry…”
“Will you please shut the fuck up?” hissed Lindsey. “I’m more worried about rats. Probably a nest full of them living in that old thing.”
Craig inched further inside, placing the broom handle on the conveyor belt, using hands and knees to edge forwards, his head disappearing into the darkness.
Again, the tiny orange light blinked on. Blinked off.
“Shit,” said Mark. That was no trick of the sun. “The power is still on. If he climbs in and knocks a lever or something…”
The floor trembled. Mark and Lindsey snatched their hands from the windows, both feeling a throb through the glass. On the factory floor, many more lights winked into life: a crowd of observers to join their orange instigator, all flashing on and off in multi-coloured glee. A hiss rushed through the building, the first exhalation from a dormant behemoth too long spent sleeping in hibernation.
“Mark?” said Lindsey, staring at the factory waking up beyond the window.
“Come on.” Mark had already crossed the large office and reached the door. “Craig must’ve hit something, turned all the machinery on.”
As they ran down the corridor, leaping over piles of fallen ceiling tiles, and reached the stairwell, Mark worried about being caught. The machinery had made such a din, and the vibrations through the building…someone walking down Windsor Drive is all it would take to bust them. If anyone in the rows of terraced houses had felt the low tremor, would they be out to investigate?
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