Short Story: POWER

POWER

By Rainey Wetnight, ©2014

December 18, 6:00 AM

‘Twas two weeks before Christmas, and all through this plant,
The lines keep speeding up, but as for us, we can’t…

“Y’all right?”

I nod. Charlene means me, even though her concern (muffled by her face mask) sounds like it’s for more than one person. Except for her skin being black and mine as pale as death, we’re identical twins. We’re wearing hairnets, safety goggles, the aforementioned masks, navy-blue jumpsuits, and thin latex gloves that sink into every fold and wrinkle on our hands. You’d think they’d puncture, but they don’t. At first glance we all look like doctors or nurses, but none of us will ever have that kind of skill - or pay grade.

We’re assembly-line drones, “rightsourced” as the official jargon goes, in the thick of the holiday rush.

Tech0p0l1s, 1nc. (yes, it’s spelled that way, with ones and zeroes) is both state-of-the-art and dirt cheap. It makes the world’s most advanced robotic toys for children ages six and up, so how come its workplace P&P’s - policies and procedures - are straight out of the late nineteenth century? I’ve been working double shifts lately, which means sixteen hours instead of eight, but I’ll really GO FOR THE GOLD this time.

I hate that stupid plaque, staring right across from me when I’m not powering up robot after robot. It’s not actual gold, but it gleams. Someone actually gets paid to polish it to a high mirror shine every day.

“You sure? You’re looking like a space cadet.” Charlene again.

“Sorry. It’s the new energy pill I took. SILA: One’s all you need.”

She looks at me warily. Hasn’t she seen their ubiquitous ads? I guess not, because with schedules like ours, who has time to watch TV? Fortunately there’s one in the break room, plus Internet access. The pills are made by a Russian pharmaceutical firm, hence their own spelling of the product: СИЛА. I felt vaguely uneasy when I first looked at the label on the bottle, feeling a dim memory of the Russian I’d learned from my grandmother resurface. I couldn’t remember what this word meant, however, in her native language.

Anyway, I’d taken one of the iridescent blue capsules - only one - and now I was raring to go.

“Good morning, everyone,” a calming male voice says, fit more for GPS’s than a factory intercom. “We’re glad you’re here for another day at Tech0p0l1s. Please remember that time is of the essence. Thank you.”

The signature notes of our company’s jingle play, and then after a whirr, the conveyor belt jerks to life.

6:15 AM

It’s my job to plug in each toy and see if it activates with initial power, leaving all the fun of testing to the testers. They’re the ones who get to play with the robots and work out all the bugs, so to speak. Me? I’m the “on” technician, and if the products don’t turn on, I’m supposed to toss them in REJECT bins at my feet. Out of the hundred I’ve plugged in, only one hasn’t made the cut, which speaks well for our assemblers. The conveyor belt is deceptive, as sterile and white as the fluorescent lights in a hospital, but I know better. Sometimes we cut ourselves on the small parts as we build the toys, but we’re supposed to deal with that.

To me, the belt runs as crimson as the sunset with the unseen, and unheeded, blood of tiny lacerations.

I blink. What was that?

Nothing. Come on. You’re just nervous because you’ve never put in a twenty-four-hour shift before. 

I want to rub my eyes, but can’t because of the goggles, and pray the sudden itching goes away.

6:30 AM

I’ve fallen into a rhythm. In a job like mine, this is critical. New fish on the line start out so worried, fretting about absolutely everything and if they’re doing it right, that someone has to tell them not to think. It’s best to let the simple parts of your brain take over: the lower ones responsible for reacting instead of reasoning. This stuff should become as automatic as breathing, as it has with me, and SILA helps me do it faster.

Next, next, next. I’m already up to two hundred units, and only two more REJECTS. So far, so good.

I’ll make the rent if I pull this off, and buy one more month of begrudged silence from my landlord.

7:00 AM

I…I can’t believe this. My count should only be 300 by now, but it’s 375. Am I actually getting faster?

If this keeps up, I’ll take SILA every day and do this all through Christmas. Even on Christmas.

Not since I was little - I mean, like five or six - have I had this much energy. Robots fly to me and past me faster than I ever thought they could, yet I still find time to plug each one in. I feel no pain, no discomfort from standing on my feet for a full hour, not even the tingling I felt in my eyes before. There’s nothing. More than that, though, I feel something slowly building in me, something wonderful. It’s as if that little blue pill I took this morning - no, not THAT one! - has awakened something in the chemistry of my blood, the meat-machine of my body, to turn it from being thin and spent into something fluid, something malleable yet infinitely charged. I’m literally being refreshed, renewed, with each second that I surrender to work.

10:00 AM

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice people coming on and off the line for their morning breaks. Wimps! 

12:00 PM 

“Lunch?”

Shut up, Charlene. Don’t you know that a “gold shift” is twenty-four hours STRAIGHT? 

The robots are no match for me. I was once their slave, but now I have become their lawful master. The conveyor belt, helpless to do anything but bring more, is nothing but a crazy blur. My count? The big 1000.

So simple and beautiful a cipher, a one and three zeroes, an “on” and three “offs”. Bountiful. Celestial. Millennial. It is this number, more than any other, that entrances me. It is my salvation, in dollars and in the electronic tally that represents how many units I’ve activated. Never before have I reached it so quickly.

Tears form along my parched corneas, but I don’t even notice them until they’re rolling down my cheeks.

3:00 PM

FASTER FASTER FASTER FASTER FASTER FASTER 1800 FASTER FASTER FASTER…

6:00 PM 

This factory is alive, and I don’t mean with people. We’re the most mechanical (or should I say, digital?) things in it. Everything else, from the walls to the fluorescent lights to the plaque I abhor, teems with life.

Some people believe that every form of matter, now matter how inanimate, possesses consciousness. They’re right. Even the dust motes in the air, which land against my face mask like sleepy children’s heads coming to rest on pillows, know exactly where they’re going, what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. They exist to float, and to remind us that we are like them in every single respect. None of what we call our great accomplishments, not even the ingenuity to come up with the idea of these toys, is worth a whit.

Dust we are, and to dust we shall return, unless we merge with the infinite and the mathematical: 2900. 

12:00 AM

I have learned the truth:

“One’s all you need?” That’s a big lie, because it’s only eighteen hours into my shift and I’m wearing down.

I have to take another SILA, or else the two O’s in GO FOR THE GOLD, shining maws, will swallow me.

5:00 AM

There are a 4, a 5, a 6 and a 7 on a screen in the near distance. What do those things mean?

I feel completely liquid, full of acid. Battery acid. If the pills can’t help me, then I bet something else will:

Two sharp prongs.

As quick as a wink, I roll up my sleeve and stab them into my arm. I feel hot and sizzly-tingly all at once.

Yes. Yes. Yes. YES. 

At long last, I have enough

POWER

~ 3/31/14 ~