The Glitch_A Novel

by Elisabeth Cohen

  I have a start date.

  I put my phone away and leaned back against a pole. My eyes prickled. My sinuses were streaming with an especially wet form of congestion. No, I thought: tears.

  “Are you OK?” someone asked, tapping my shoulder. I pulled away, shook off the tears, and blinked. “Shelley Stone!” the woman said. “I was excited to meet you.”

  She pushed her umbrella back so I could see her better. She was smiling. She was very young, and her hair was highlighted with copper-colored pieces and pulled into a high ponytail. She wore a flashy raincoat with lots of zippers. At her neck was a thin gold necklace. Without her smock, it took a moment for me to recognize that I’d seen her at a workstation inside the factory.

  “Hi.” I wiped off my hand and extended it.

  “I’m Sara,” she said. “I knew you right away. I recognized you when I saw you. I rode once in your car.” She positioned her umbrella to cover us both. Her English was good.

  “You rode in my car?”

  “Yeah, because I was the number one worker. Here when you’re the number one worker, they give you a little medal, it’s nothing to cherish, but at the other one they let you ride in your car.”

  “My car? What?”

  A bus had pulled up at the stop. The crowd sorted itself into a line and began to board.

  “I admire you!” she said. “I too hope to become the head of a large company one day. That’s why I left the other factory, to get more experience and rise up.” She glanced worriedly at the bus. Just a few stragglers were still waiting to get on.

  “What other factory?”

  Someone yelled to her, and she took a step backward toward the bus. She was saying something, but the rain made it hard to hear her.

  “Here,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Ride with me!”

  We stumbled up the steps onto the bus. She showed an ID card and yelled something at the driver; I rummaged in my pocket for money, but because of the chaos or for some other reason, I didn’t have to pay. Everyone seemed to be looking at me. Wedged between several people, I scrounged for a handhold, and gripped a pole just in time as the bus jounced off.

  The ride was not butter-smooth. The bus wheezed up a hill. Far ahead, at the top of the hill, loomed a tall white building streaked with rust and smoke stains and rusty fire escapes. It would have been nice to assume it was abandoned, but clotheslines hung across the fire escapes, strung with flapping clothes. This was, I think, where some of the factory workers lived.

  I felt a pinch near my hip, somebody’s hand insinuating itself through the crowd. “Knock it off!” I yelled, twisting away. Sara whacked downward with her furled umbrella, clearing the space around me.

  “That’s better!” she said. “I won the prize for being the number one worker twice. I have lots of ideas for you.”

  “I can’t wait to get your input,” I said. As the bus jerked us around, I fished out a business card and gave it to her. “Please—be in touch.”

  “You should go see them at the other factory. They’ll be so excited. They talk about you all the time.”

  The other factory. I tried to think what she meant. Perhaps she was confused.

  Before I could ask her, I glanced down at my phone, and there was a new message from Willow, a long one. I sighed. That’s never good news.

  Willow: Hi, sorry to bother you. It’s almost midnight so I’m heading out. Wanted to let you know I’m taking tomorrow off to go see my family. There was a terrible fire back home. You know how my cousin Jerilyn installed self-charging Powerplex lights in her chicken coop? Last night there was a storm, and the whole coop burned to the ground—the firefighters said the Powerplex parts started the fire. Must’ve been a faulty batch.

  “Oh, no!” I said out loud, without meaning to.

  In my mind’s eye I saw workers making new Conches, to be cradled in paperboard inserts, packed in boxes, lidded, wafer-sealed, stacked, and shipped all over the world. I saw a goat in the factory being sacrificed in a puddle of blood, much like all the other things I didn’t see that kept this operation moving. Rare earth minerals being mined by child workers. The women—girls, some of them—who left their homes and families and came on buses to this factory town, not knowing what it would be like, not knowing anyone at all, and without enough money to go home. I thought of all the people at Conch who came to work when they were sick or tired or grief-stricken, and of myself. Manufacturing is a bitch.

  I called Mr. Tengku from the bus, as we rode through the streets of Penang’s industrial district. I left a message, shouting to be heard over the noise. “I’m so grateful for your time and your advice, but on further consideration I don’t want to move forward with the goat sacrifice.” Several people on the bus who had lost interest in me went back to staring. “I’m reviewing alternatives. In the meantime, I want you to give the employees a paid day off, and I’ll pay for it. I have a couple other ideas for worker-morale improvements…I’ll be in touch.”

  Willow, I texted, I’m going to need you to find me a goat sanctuary pronto near my current location.

  Willow called back right away. “OK, I just had to share. Your autocorrect did something really funny.”

  “Huh?” I said. “Have you found me a goat sanctuary yet? OK, so what was the autocorrect?”

  “Never mind,” Willow said. “I just went to bed, but I’ll work on it.”

  I overheard Willow talking to someone (a roommate?) away from the phone. “There’s really no typical day for me in this industry.”

  “Try the zoo,” I told her. “So sorry about your cousin’s farm. I’ve got to go. My phone’s dying.”

  Sara gave me a gentle shove between the shoulder blades. “It’s over there. Here, take this.” She thrust her umbrella into my hand. I got off the bus and watched from the curb as it pulled away.

  I opened the umbrella. The thin, slippery material flapped in the wind. From the underside, looking up and through, I could see beads of water plotted on its surface. The sky was gray, and the umbrella was gray too, and printed with a navy blue, wave-shaped insignia. I looked around. How was I supposed to know where to go? There were dozens of factories. I was in the middle of an island full of factories. I pointed the umbrella forward to block the wind, and I started to walk.

  * * *

  —

  The bus had dropped me off high on a hill, on a wide, double-yellow-line road. Through the rain I glimpsed skyscrapers in the distance, cranes in the port, and the factory rooftops below. Along the roadside were walls and gates shielding tall white apartment buildings.

  A couple of birds staggered across the sky. A palm tree bent over, cowed by the wind. The sky had darkened to the color of a conservative interview suit. From the trees came squawks and trills. The sound was just like the white noise recordings I used to fall asleep on strenuous business trips: the silvery high notes of rain, and underneath, the filler of wind. Rain pounded my umbrella. The light kept adjusting: dark, bright, dark.

  Then thunder rumbled.

  Part of me is always listening for thunder, just in case. Sometimes I hear it even when it isn’t there (i.e., Jacqui is vacuuming). But this was unmistakable.

  The chances are high you’ll be fine, I said to myself as I walked down a chipped sidewalk. Thunderstorms are naturally occurring phenomena involving warm air, moisture, and lift. Another part of me, the practical planner part, thought: OK, maybe I’ll die here. Water streamed around my shoes. My mind turned to the endgame—thinking of myself dead, and the lack of an appropriate successor for me at Conch. Laundry flapped on a line. A flagpole wrapped itself in a wet flag. Thunder clapped again.

  I tried to imagine my own death as a fact: the obit in the Times (a writer had made some proactive calls right after I came to Conch), the employees at their desks reading the message HR would send out, company-wide, the day after my death. What would the subject line be? At Conch it would be “Announcement.” Or “Please Read: Message from Director of HR.” There’s n
o reason to put anything sensational in a subject line. Probably we would schedule a Conch-wide call and tell them. I could hear Cindy from HR’s cigarette-graveled voice: “This is a gentle reminder to mute your phones, folks.”

  It was late, the streets were empty, and all the stores were closed. I passed a bank and an IVF place, with a huge baby face in the window.

  Who would miss me? My kids. Well, Nova. Blazer wouldn’t remember me at all. Rafe. Christine. All the employees of Conch, maybe. But not right away. They would exult for a few months and mourn me only after realizing how much worse the new person was.

  I saw a lit neon sign in the distance and followed it to the top of the hill, but when I got there, the sign was bright, but the place was closed. I didn’t know what to do. I stood under the awning in the doorway, and looked out. The rain streamed down. I held tight to my umbrella.

  My Conch buzzed. A text from Rafe. Thought you’d call. Going to bed now.

  A man hurried by in the distance, his suit soaked. He held a briefcase over his head to block the rain.

  “Hello,” I cried hopelessly, but I couldn’t tell if he heard, and he didn’t stop.

  Lightning cracked. My Conch buzzed with an upbeat chime and a reminder. “Hey, today’s a memorable day. Twenty years ago on this date, you—”

  “Please stop,” I said. “I’m well aware.”

  I braced myself against the wall as lightning cracked across the sky. Twenty years. Seemed like a lot, and also not very long.

  Sheet lightning brightened the area around me. I flinched.

  “Your stress level is very high,” my Conch warned. “You might want to sit down.”

  There was nowhere to sit, and nobody else besides my Conch to talk to. “I need to find a factory,” I said.

  “OK,” my Conch prompted. “Tell me the name of the factory you’re trying to find.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Conches don’t get exasperated, but they aren’t good at open-ended questions. Mine fell back on a recitation of general information about the area. “Welcome to this vibrant port town, full of hip nightlife and modern industry. The quay is located to your east. You may want to explore the restaurants and bars to the north. Factories are clustered in the area to the south, straight ahead of you—” The thunder hit hard and the ground vibrated. I edged closer to the building.

  I gazed out at a checkerboard of roofs. And then I gasped as a lightning bolt cut against the darkness, so bright I could see it through the rain and even the umbrella in front of me. It was so bright I felt like I’d seen its jagged shape right in front of me, as if it had made the awning transparent. It seemed to slip between the buildings and surge toward me full size.

  I screamed.

  Then there was a series of three lightning bolts.

  The first bolt, and I noticed a building with a square, flat roof.

  The second bolt, and I saw something in front of the building, glinting.

  And then with the third bolt, a pole of light descended from the sky. It lit everything around it in a circle of light, like a flashlight against the darkness. In that instant I saw the flat square roof, with an aerial. A pale expanse. A flagpole, which my eye descended, and in front of the building, but raised off the ground on a pedestal, a car. A car with a haze of violet surrounding it. A car I happened to recognize.

  I saw first its profile, sharply cut, like my toddler silhouette, cut from black paper, framed and hung in my parents’ stairwell (with exaggerated eyelashes, lips). And then the light filled in, and for the shortest length of time that seemed possible, I saw that the car was silver, and behind it, on the plain façade of the factory, was some sort of insignia, shaped like waves. Then it all went dark.

  The booms came one after another, like a fusillade.

  I concentrated on remembering the position of the building. It was a bit like playing a memory game with Nova, trying to hold in mind the location of a certain tile. I kept my eyes on the spot and waited for the sky to lighten and the storm to break. I didn’t trust myself to move my eyes away, not wanting to lose sight of the car.

  “I have to get down there,” I said to myself. I picked up the umbrella and set off.

  * * *

  —

  The rain had quelled, and the mass of dark clouds had moved to one side of the sky, leaving a bright, stunned field of palest gray-blue, a color often seen in the J.Crew catalog when I was young, and a shade that the catalog may even have called, misleadingly, “sky.”

  Asphalt and roofs were stained dark from the rain, the air felt heavy, and plants looked extra green. Droplets hung under a metal handrail in a scallop pattern. The flanks of the parked cars looked like they’d been dredged in a coating of pollen, seeds, and tiny leaves. Puddles on the road vibrated from the motion of cars driving over them. My shoes were wet.

  Just when I feared I would never find the silver car, I saw a glimmer of it, at the end of the block. I sprinted toward it. Hello, old friend! Could it be? Was it? Surely not the same car I’d driven in Spain. An unusual car, it had seemed, though couldn’t it just be a type I wasn’t used to, which might exist plentifully in other countries, if not at home? Perhaps it was just a model I’d never seen before. Though it was hard to believe there could be many of them, with the same deep silver exterior, with its hint of depth, of shadows beneath the surface. Surely it was a coincidence that it was here.

  The car was on a pedestal of poured concrete outside the factory, elevated off the ground. The concrete had been formed into a ramp at one end, presumably so that it could be driven on or off. I climbed up, tried the door (locked), and peered in the window. The upholstery, the dials: I was glad to see it again.

  There was a plaque on the pedestal: “This car is reserved for our #1 employee.”

  What was this place? What kind of factory was this?

  I Conched the query, and my Conch buzzed. “Enjoy your visit to…Name Suppressed Engineering.” Then my Conch gave a light tremble, like the shake of an insect’s tail, as its power ran out.

  The building was plain white, with no sign except the wave-shaped logo. It was getting late. People had probably gone home from work. Only a few lights were on. But I tried the door and it was open. I went in.

  * * *

  —

  A receptionist behind a counter was checking his phone. “Hi,” I said. The room was tiny, hardly a room at all, more of a vestibule. There was a TV on the wall, broadcasting news or weather. Trees whipped on the screen.

  “Hello,” he said, sounding bored. Then he looked back at me and suddenly put his phone down with a start. “Excuse me!” he said, with a change of tone. “Many apologies! One moment, please.”

  Gratified, I introduced myself as he disappeared into the back. A moment later a man in a short-sleeved shirt came out from the inner door, beaming.

  “Shelley Stone! What a tremendous honor! We weren’t expecting you, but we are thrilled you are here. Do come in.”

  Surprised but pleased by this warmth, I left my dripping umbrella by the door and followed him back into a small, high-ceilinged factory. The factory floor was compact and well lit, with white walls. There was something familiar about it. But I haven’t toured too many factories; my background was in digital-only plays, prior to coming to Conch. Most of the machines were off. There were no workers around; they’d probably gone home for the day.

  “Some tea?” he said. “Or should we tour first?”

  “Tour,” I nodded, my throat dry, but I was already curiously examining the equipment. “A surface-mount technology component placement system,” I said. My eyes widened as we strolled around.

  He pressed a button and a conveyer belt thrummed past. The devices whirring by on the belt beamed at me with their inane frozen smiles. I did a double take, because I recognized those smiles. I leaned closer. They were partially assembled Conches.

  Disbelief gripped me, but I strived to be no more than casually, appropriately curious as we walked around.
An orange bucket of housings, like the one I’d seen at Mr. Tengku’s office, sat beside a familiar machine. Much of our machinery was there, in a more compact space. It was smaller, and arranged differently, but there could be no doubt: this factory was making Conch. The manager spoke proudly of the systems, and showed me Conches in various stages of completion. “I have always wanted to visit California,” he confided, and gave me his business card. I stared at it as it lay in my palm; it had our Conch logo on it, subtly askew. “I am very proud,” he said, exactly as Mr. Tengku had, “to make the Conch.”

  His pride was touching. I was touched, although the statement was also alarming, since this was not our factory. We only had one factory, and I had just visited it. I dipped my hand through a bin of housings, stroking these incipient Conches. They felt very like the real ones. I picked one out and peered at it. It looked the same, as far as I could tell. I asked him about himself, his career here, scrabbling for clues.

  “These are…?” We’d come to a bin of unfamiliar housings.

  “The new generation, of course,” he said. “We are very excited about it.”

  “Of course,” I said, though I had never seen the style before.

  The surprise of seeing this factory was making me dizzy. I had pins and needles in my feet, and I winced as we walked. When we rounded the corner, I gasped. It was an executive-style gasp, in which my heart seemed to stop for a moment but only the subtlest shimmer of dismay crossed my face. On a wall hung a large poster featuring a photo of my head and Cullen’s, pressed together against an orange-and-pink sunset. “Conch Top Team,” it said below, in a script that I am certain is not one of our approved corporate fonts.

  “Wow, that’s amazing. Do you have an extra copy of that?”

  “You should see our more advanced Conch2. These sell very well in certain markets: Asia, the Middle East…”