Good Neighbour
The interior walls of the factory were high and windowless, and seemed to stretch on forever. The rigs and cables that ran above the factory floor like a canopy were a hive of activity, with machines running here and there like great silver insects. The machines danced along the wires, collecting shipments from the floor below, then spinning away to the delivery bays. Below, on the factory floor, was a maze of shelves laden with crates, containing goods for every conceivable need. Orders came and went via the internal dispatch system, with no human presence ever required on the factory floor. Everything ran smoothly in the factory. Always.
Perched above this frenetic movement was a single, lonely figure in the main observation booth. Her name was Eid Sigma, and she was “A model of efficiency and professionalism” as her latest work evaluation had stated. Not that her job was at all taxing, by her standards in any case. Provided that one could work a computer, and memorise the few safety protocols for the factory, it was easy. Day after day, the screen in the booth would flash and give her the same shift progress report, and she would log it and file it away. Always, it read:
Systems optimal. All safety protocols are engaged. 99.8% efficiency.
The 99.8% always bothered her. What was the final 0.2%? Was it accounting for human error? For her? If she left her post, would it be running at maximum efficiency? Would the machines still run without her? Occasionally she would entertain the idea of leaving her post, letting the machines run as they may. Then she remembered the panic that crept in whenever she spent more than a few hours at home, in her apartment. The claustrophobic terror she felt, lying awake in bed. The silence. The doubt. Knowing that the next day would pass exactly the same as the first, on and on. No, she thought. This was better. It kept at least some of her mind busy, being at the factory.
Not that she had any contact with other colleagues at the factory. As far as she knew, the nearest person was in the next sector, over a days walk across the steel gantry from her booth. As there was no other way for a person to traverse the entire factory besides on foot, she did not feel compelled to explore. Besides, abandoning her station would have repercussions. There were occasional signs of life, messages from her employer’s via the intranet communication, or daily updates over the internal tannoy system, safety reminders and daily announcements recited in a flat, monotone voice that became as routine as the sound of the machines.
In all her years working at the factory, she had never seen one of the machines fail or break, not once. And even if they did, they had other machines to fix them. It was like a small ecosystem, totally independent from the need for human intervention. If spare parts were needed, the machines would make them. If there was an error in a shipment, the problem would be solved in front of her eyes on the computer screen before she could even register it. She could swear the machines spoke to each other, in high chittering clicks and hisses from their pneumatic joints as they weaved across the wires, their brushed steel bodies pulsing with movement as they went.
On her way home from the factory, she rode her bike through the underground service tunnels that honeycombed the city. The narrow beam of light from her headlamp flashed glimpses of human activity, but never any real people. She sometimes heard what sounded like voices, wordless moans and echoes that only encouraged her to pedal faster through those dark tunnels. She would place her bicycle onto its rack, and enter the basement foyer of her apartment block, not once ever seeing the surface level of the city.
From the foyer, she entered the elevator and selected floor ‘H’. She had no idea if this was above ground, as there were no windows in the elevator, or in fact her apartment. She sometimes fancied that the floors ran horizontally, running in great long tunnels and walls, just like the factory. She held her breath as the doors opened on her floor, and quickly closed the distance from the elevator to her door at a brisk pace. Eyes down and shoulders squared, she moved to best avoid noticing anything in the gloom of the corridor. The grey concrete walls made the building feel like a tomb, her room just one of many dark sepulchres.
Her apartment, as far as she knew, was like all the others in her building. A Combined living room/bedroom took up most of the apartment, with a bathroom tucked in to its furthermost side. Food was provided daily via a service hatch in the wall, which she ordered using the black tele-screen that had been installed above her bed. There was not a single reflective surface in the apartment, no mirrors or shine to anything. Even the tele-screen offered no dark glass for Eid to see herself, and she preferred that. She had no insight into how she looked, and sometimes even feared it. An accidental glance at a broken mirror in one of the bathrooms at the factory had given her enough of a fright to make her vigilant. As far as she was concerned, her body was functional, not something to be admired or flattered.
After a day’s work, she would bathe, take a supplement pill, and then attempt a few hours of restless sleep until the tele-screen lit up to inform her of the next day (She had tried taking sleeping tablets, but the dreams that came with them had been worse torment than the insomnia). All the apartments were soundproofed, creating a cocoon of quiet that she found unnerving in the sleepless night. At least the machines talk, she thought. Not that she spoke their language, but she heard it all the same and took some comfort from it. Watching them run across the wires of the factory like trapeze artists, graceful as prima ballerinas, she could watch them for hours.
On and on she had lived like this, in all her thirty years. No friends, no family (the memory of her parents was vague and fuzzy, and hurt to think about) and a routine that she was happy to fulfill until it came to its natural end. In fact, trying to recall any of her memories before the factory presented an indistinct picture: it was like they were stuck at the bottom of a deep, dark pool of water, shadowy and vague. All she knew was that she worked at the factory, however long that was or would be.
She had read once on her tele-screen that most people (or so she was aware) worked from home these days, and with the air pollution above so pervasive, this made perfect sense. Anything and everything a person could possibly want could be delivered to your door, then and there, at the push of a button on the tele-screen. One could live and die in the same four walls of their room without ever stepping foot into the outside world. The thought of this terrified her, to be so utterly alone. Doubt would creep in at night, questions that wrapped her in confusion: where were all the children in her building? Families? Everyone had those, surely?
On the 7th day of July, the water in her apartment stopped running. This was puzzling, as she had no recollection of anything ever breaking down in her apartment. She brought up the maintenance assistant on her tele-screen, and pressed ‘report’. The screen replied: “please stay calm. Help will be along soon.” She felt this was a little melodramatic. Why would she need to stay calm? She had plenty of bottled water in the apartment, so she wouldn’t be dying of thirst anytime soon. She had only needed to bathe, the dust and grime from her daily commute streaked on her skin and her hair.
She waited. An hour passed, then two. The screen showed the same message without change.
“Stay calm”.
The dirt on her skin itched, and she felt the prickle of red welts start to form on her arms. If she was to wait, she did not want to waste the water she had by bathing with it. She thought that maybe one of her neighbours still had running water? Her neighbours. People. She would have to meet a person. How would she explain herself? She couldn’t even remember that last time she spoke. Her voice felt dry and reedy in her throat, rarely ever raised above a whisper.
She decided to pluck up her courage, and left the apartment. In the dim light of the overhead lamps, she could barely see the numbers and names on each door. She picked the nearest, room 34 “Robert, Dorster”. Weakly, she tapped on the door, afraid to press the comm-bell, worried she would startle the occupant. No answer. She rapped again, more forcefully. Her skin itched, and her breathing was becoming shallow and panicked. She tapped harder on the door now. Against her better judgement, she gave it an experimental push. It opened.
As the door slowly swung open, she noted that the room, much like her own, was bare of decoration. A thin film of plastic covered the bed, the telescreen, and the light fittings, as if they were all brand new. The air was stale, with the tang of disinfectant and cleaning fluids cutting through and making her eyes water. She stepped inside. This felt violating, invading the space of another. She tried the faucet in the bathroom. No water. She decided to try the other doors on her floor.
Every single one. All of them. Empty and open. She had tried every room, from one end of the corridor to the other. Even the drawers and cabinets lay empty. The tele-screens, impassive and uncaring, all flashed the same message. “Stay. Calm”. She must be dreaming. This could not be. There must be someone. Anyone. Her parents? She tried to remember their names. Their faces. Nothing. It hurt trying to remember. The factory, then. There must be someone there. Even just to hear a voice.
She cycled through the tunnels, through the detritus of human lives, the graffitti, the old newspapers and discarded rubbish that lined them. Abandoning the bike at the factory doors, she ascended the internal staircase up towards her observation booth. On the wall of the booth was an intercom system, ‘only to be used in emergencies’, it exclaimed on the sign above it. She pressed the intercom, and listened acutely to the electric hiss of radio frequency that came out. “Hello?” she said, her voice barely audible above the static. She tried again, pushing against the knot of her vocal chords. “Is anyone else here?” She waited again.
This went on for several hours, like a prayer being spoken into the ether. She had even tried calling on her employers via the computer in her booth, but was met with silence. The realisation that nobody was coming began to take form. Perhaps, if she started walking along the gantry, eventually she would end up in the next sector, where there had to be someone at an observation point? It could take more than a day to get there, without food or water, and no guarantee that someone would be there waiting. But she had to try. Stepping out of the booth and onto the metal walkway along the gantry, she began her journey.
Walking this far into the factory was like walking through the same photograph, over and over. The same grey walls, the wires that held the machines, and the grid of crates below. No discernible difference could found from one end of the walkway to the next, and when she dared to glance behind her, there was no way of telling how far she had come. This was the fear and anxiety of her sleepless nights made manifest. When she was too tired to walk, there was nowhere to rest but the metal walkway, lying under the bright neon lights that hung from the ceiling.
Eventually, there was change, of a sort. At first, she thought it was a hallucination, the image of a nightmare that had pushed its way through into her consciousness. But as she progressed, the factory seemed to be getting…..darker. Like a long shadow being cast from a great distance. She walked further into this darkness, welcoming whatever this new sensation could be. And in the dark, small pinpricks of light. Although as she walked the factory became darker, the lights would become brighter and more distinct. Eventually, she could not see in front of her or behind her. She paused. And then she looked down.
There was no more walkway. And there was no more factory. The outline of a great ugly gash could be seen from either side of where she stood, like a hole had been ripped out of the world. From the broken walkway she looked out into the world below. It was dark, and quiet. The lights she had seen glistened in the night sky, and a cool breeze blew against her skin. In the starlight, she could make out what seemed to be a vast expanse of grey sand that stretched on forever. At this, she sat down and wept. Alone. And far, far behind her, the machines continued their work.
