by Tanith Lee
Soon I observed that the men standing to the left and right of me at the assembly block were attempting to emulate the new man’s style of deftly fitting together those small metal pieces and even compete with the incredibly productive pace at which he worked. I myself followed suit. At first our efforts were an embarrassment, our own hands fumbling to imitate the movements of his, which were so swift that our eyes could not follow them, nor could our minds puzzle out a technique of working quite different from the one we had always practiced. Nevertheless, in some way unknown to us, we began to approach, if somewhat remotely, the speed and style of the new man’s method of fitting together his pieces of metal. Our efforts and altered manner of working did not go unnoticed by the employees at the assembly blocks nearby. The new technique was gradually taken up and passed on to others around the factory. By the time we stopped for our first break of the day, everyone was employing the new man’s methodology.
But we didn’t stop working for very long. After it became obvious that the new man did not pause for a second to join us in our scheduled break period, we all returned to our assembly blocks and continued working as furiously as we could. We surprised ourselves in the performance of what once seemed a dull and simple task, eventually rising to the level of virtuosity displayed by a man whose name we did not even know. I now looked forward to speaking to him about the change he had brought about in the factory, expecting to do so when the time came for our meal break. Yet when that time finally arrived the rest of us at the factory never anticipated the spectacle that awaited us.
For, rather than leaving his position at the assembly block during the meal break that the company had always sanctioned, the new man continued to work, consuming his food with one hand while still assembling those metal pieces, although at a somewhat slower rate, with the other. This performance introduced the rest of us at the factory to a hitherto unknown level of pace and attitude in the service of productivity. At first there was some resistance to assuming these new heights where the new man, without any ostentation, was leading us. But his purpose soon enough became evident. And it was simple enough: those employees who ceased working entirely during the meal break found themselves once again preoccupied, even tormented, by the troubling atmosphere that pervaded the factory, the source of which was attributed to the temporary supervisor who inhabited the office with heavily frosted windows. On the other hand, those employees who continued working at their assembly blocks seemed relatively unbothered by the images and influences which, although there was no consensus as to their exact nature, had plagued everyone the day before. Thus, it wasn’t long before all of us learned to consume our meals with one hand while continuing to work with the other. It goes without saying that when the time came for our last break of the day, no one budged an inch from his assembly block.
It was only when the bell rang to signal the end of the work day, sounding several hours later than we were accustomed to hearing it, that I had a chance to speak with the new employee. Once we were outside the factory, and everyone was proceeding in a state of silent exhaustion back to town, I made a point of catching up to him as he strode at a quick pace through the dense, grayish fog. I didn’t mince words. “What’s going on?” I demanded to know.
Unexpectedly he stopped dead in his tracks and faced me, although we could barely see each other through the fog. Then I saw his head turn slightly in the direction of the factory we had left some distance behind us. “Listen, my friend,” he said, his voice filled with a grave sincerity. “I’m not looking for trouble. I hope you’re not either.”
“Wasn’t I working right along with you?” I said. “Wasn’t everyone?”
“Yes. You all made a good start.”
“So I take it you’re working with the new supervisor.”
“No,” he said emphatically. “I don’t know anything about that. I couldn’t tell you anything about that.”
“But you’ve worked under similar conditions before, isn’t that true?”
“I work for the company, just like you. The company sent me here.”
“But something must have changed at the company,” I said. “Something new is happening.”
“Not really,” he replied. “The Quine Organization is always making adjustments and refinements in the way it does business. It just took some time for it to reach you out here. You’re a long way from company headquarters, or even the closest regional center.”
“There’s more of this coming, isn’t there?”
“Possibly. But there really isn’t any point in discussing such things. Not if you want to continue working for the company. Not if you want to stay out of trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“I have to go. Please don’t try to discuss this matter with me again.”
“Are you saying that you’re going to report me?”
“No,” he said, his eyes looking back at the factory. “That’s not necessary these days.”
Then he turned and walked off at quick pace into the fog.
The next morning I returned to the factory along with everyone else. We worked at an even faster rate and were even more productive. Part of this was due to the fact that the bell that signaled the end of the work day rang later than it had the day before. This lengthening of the time we spent at the factory, along with the increasingly faster rate at which worked, became an established pattern. It wasn’t long before we were allowed only a few hours away from the factory, only a few hours that belonged to us, although the only possible way we could use this time was to gain the rest we needed in order to return to the exhausting labors which the company now demanded of us.
But I had always possessed higher hopes for my life, hopes that were becoming more and more vague with each passing day. I have to resign my position at the factory — these were the words that raced through my mind as I tried to gain a few hours of rest before returning to my job. I had no idea what such a step might mean, since I had no other prospects for earning a living, and I had no money saved that would enable me to keep my room in the apartment building where I lived. In addition, the medications I required, that almost everyone on this side of the border requires to make their existence at all tolerable, were prescribed by doctors who were all employed by the Quine Organization and filled by pharmacists who also operated only at the sufferance of this company. All of that notwithstanding, I still felt that I had no choice but to resign my position at the factory.
At the end of the hallway outside my apartment there was a tiny niche in which was located a telephone for public use by the building’s tenants. I would have to make my resignation using this telephone, since I couldn’t imagine doing so in person. I couldn’t possibly enter the office of the temporary supervisor, as Blecher had done. I couldn’t go into that room enclosed by heavily frosted glass behind which I and my fellow workers had observed something that appeared in various forms and manifestations, from an indistinct shape that seemed to shift and churn like a dark cloud to something more defined that appeared to have a “head part” and “arm-protrusions.” Given this situation, I would use the telephone to call the closest regional center and make my resignation to the appropriate person in charge of such matters.
The telephone niche at the end of the hallway outside my apartment was so narrow that I had to enter it sideways. In the confines of that space there was barely enough room to make the necessary movements of placing coins in the telephone that hung on the wall and barely enough light to see what number one was dialing. I remember how concerned I was not to dial a wrong number and thereby lose a portion of what little money I had. After taking every possible precaution to insure that I would successfully complete my phone call, a process that seemed to take hours, I reached someone at the closest regional center operated by the company.
The phone rang so many times that I feared no one would ever answer. Finally the ringing stopped and, after a pause, I heard a barely audible voice. It sounded thin and distant.
“Yes,” I began, “I would like to resign my position at the company,” I said.
“I’m sorry, did you say that you wanted to resign from the company? You sound so far away,” said the voice.
“Yes, I want to resign,” I shouted into the mouthpiece of the telephone. “I want to resign. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can hear you. But the company is not accepting resignations at this time. I’m going to transfer you to our temporary supervisor.”
“Wait,” I said, but the transfer had been made and once again the phone began ringing so many times that I feared no one would answer. Then the ringing stopped, although no voice came on the line. “Hello,” I said. But all I could hear was an indistinct, though highly reverberant, noise — a low roaring sound that alternately faded and swelled as if it were echoing through vast spaces deep within the caverns of the earth or across a clouded sky. This noise, this low and bestial roaring, affected me with a dread I could not name. I held the telephone receiver away from my ear, but the roaring noise continued to sound within my head. Then I felt the telephone quivering in my hand, pulsing like something that was alive. And when I slammed the telephone receiver back into its cradle, this quivering and pulsing sensation continued to move up my arm, passing through my body and finally reaching my brain where it became synchronized with the low roaring noise which was now growing louder and louder, confusing my thoughts into an echoing insanity and paralyzing my movements so that I could not even scream for help.
I was never sure that I actually had made that telephone call to resign my position at the company. And if in fact I did make such a call, I could never be certain that what I experienced — what I heard and felt in that telephone niche at the end of the hallway outside my apartment — in any way resembled the dreams which recurred every night since I stopped showing up for work at the factory. No amount of medication I took could prevent the nightly onset of these dreams, and no amount of medication could efface their memory from my mind. Soon enough I had taken so much medication that I didn’t have a sufficient amount left to overdose my system, as Blecher had done. And since I was no longer employed, I could not afford to get my prescription refilled and thereby acquire the medication I needed to tolerate my existence. Of course I might have done away with myself in some other manner, should I have been so inclined. But somehow I still retained higher hopes for my life. Accordingly, I returned to see if I could get my job back at the factory. After all, hadn’t the person I spoke with at the regional center told me that the Quine Organization was not accepting resignations at this time?
Of course I couldn’t be sure what I had been told over the telephone, or even if I had made such a call to resign my position with the company. It wasn’t until I actually walked onto the floor of the factory that realized I still had a job there if I wanted one, for the place where I had stood for such long hours at my assembly block was unoccupied. Already attired in my gray work clothes, I walked over to the assembly block and began fitting together, at a furious pace, those small metal pieces. Without pausing in my task I looked across the assembly block at the person I once thought of as the “new man.”
“Welcome back,” he said in a casual voice.
“Thank you,” I replied.
“I told Mr. Frowley that you would return any day now.”
For a moment I was overjoyed at the implicit news that the temporary supervisor was gone, and Mr. Frowley was back managing the factory. But when I looked over at his office in the corner I noticed that behind the heavily frosted glass there were no lights on, although the large-bodied outline of Mr. Frowley could be distinguished sitting behind his desk. Nevertheless, he was a changed man, as I discovered soon after returning to work. No one and nothing at the factory would ever again be as it once was. We were working practically around the clock now. Some of us began to stay the night at the factory, sleeping for an hour or so in a corner before going back to work at our assembly blocks.
After returning to work I no longer suffered from the nightmares that had caused me to go running back to the factory in the first place. And yet I continued to feel, if somewhat faintly, the atmosphere of those nightmares, which was so like the atmosphere our temporary supervisor had brought to the factory. I believe that this feeling of the overseeing presence of the temporary supervisor was a calculated measure on the part of the Quine Organization, which is always making adjustments and refinements in the way it does business.
The company retained its policy of not accepting resignations. It even extended this policy at some point and would not allow retirements. We were all prescribed new medications, although I can’t say exactly how many years ago that happened. No one at the factory can remember how long we’ve worked here, or how old we are, yet our productivity continues to increase. It seems as if neither the company nor our temporary supervisor will ever be done with us. Yet we are only human beings, or at least physical beings, and one day we must die. This is the only retirement we can expect, even though none of us is looking forward to that time. For we can’t keep from wondering what might come afterward — what the company could have planned for us, and the part our temporary supervisor might play in that plan. Working at a furious pace, fitting together those small pieces of metal, helps keep our minds off such things.
SAILING ON THE BRINE, by Sally Parker
I've traveled near, and I've traveled far
When I set sail in a pickle jar.
I discoursed with many an ancient beet,
Danced with pickles dill and sweet.
*
I've seen sights both horrid, hellish --
Young pickles chopped to pickle relish.
By death that swirls upon the brine,
I've tracked the feet of hissing swine.
*
Love has granted her mementos
I've thrust on olives red pimentos.
When sorrow came, I did my part
To soothe the pain of an artichoke's heart.
*
For he who sails the salty brine,
Past peppercorns bathed in wine,
Past darkest seas of the deli shelf,
’Tis but a journey through one's self.
THE WARRIOR OF ASHES AND RAIN, by David Sandner
Crunching on her skateboard, Sarah zoomed downhill into a white fog rolling into the City off the Pacific and the San Francisco Bay. Last night’s rain had washed the streets clean, leaving rainbow oil slicks under parked cars, white streaks on windows, dew on leaves and park benches, and silver-shiny-wet glinting on the streetcar tracks running away over the hills. The sunlight made the fog luminous white, somehow morning-bright and twilight-soft at once. Her headphones played loud, holding her in her own world. While everything else stood still, she raced past waiting cars and through strings of red lights. She sped up, fog condensing cold on her face and hands as she leaned hard into turns, her arms opening like wings. She had been looking for the Wizard of Ashes and Rain all morning with no luck at all. She had been looking for him ever since she had talked to her sister about her sister’s dream, the dream she had been having over and over for three days.
* * * *
Today was Sarah’s sister’s birthday. Thirteen.
“Did you have the dream again?” Sarah had asked, standing on the top step of the stairs in her mother’s house. Amanda had stood in the upstairs hallway looking at herself in the full-length mirror.
Sarah could never just talk to her sister, not anymore. Her sister wouldn’t respond, or, when she did talk, Sarah could never figure out what she really meant.
“Come on, Amanda,” she said. “Talk to me.”
Amanda walked on tiptoe, twirling around in their mother’s favorite blue sequined evening dress, holding the loose sides out away from herself like a cape.
“Mom’s going to kill you if she see’s you in that.”
“It’s my birthday,” Ama
nda said.
Amanda swayed from side to side, eyeing herself from different angles in the mirror.
“Yesterday, sister, darling,” Amanda said, with a slight fake Southern drawl, “the handsomest boy in school asked me out, just like that.” She turned around so she could see herself from behind. “Kyle was going to break up with his girlfriend, the ever popular Margie Stevens, just to ask me out, can you believe it?”
“Amanda, cut it out.”
Amanda had just started Junior High School. Sarah knew it was bad, but she hated to tell her sister that in High School, things just got worse.
“I told him, Kyle, I do believe I want to stand on my own just now. I’m afraid you’ll just have to go out with Margie Stevens after all.”
“I hate it when you’re like this.”
“Margie never even knew, and she being the most popular girl and school and all, she would have been devastated, just completely. Sometimes I even surprise myself by my generosity.”
“Amanda, did you have the dream again? It’s serious.”
Amanda let the sides of the dress fall from her hands.
“I saw myself today,” she said. “Another me.”
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked.
“After having the dream again, I woke up and went to the window and there I was, waving at myself to come down and follow.”
“Amanda, are you just funning around? Well, don’t.”
Bad. Not just a dream, a hallucination. Or worse. Things were always getting worse.
Amanda stared at herself in the mirror, expressionless.
“I’m not,” she said.
“Mom sent me up here to tell you to get dressed, people will be arriving for your party soon. Look.” Sarah made a decision. “Look, I’m going to find the Wizard and ask him about your dream, O.K.? I’ve been hoping to run into him since your dreams started, but I haven’t — and I should talk to him. I’ll be back soon. I’ll ask him about you seeing yourself, O.K.? Just have your party. And don’t tell Mom anything. And take off that dress. And I’ll be back soon, I promise.”