The Chain

“Do you think there was more, before?”

The chug of the factory floor is a steady thrum in the background.

“Before what?”

“Before all of… this…” Kate gestures wildly with her arms, vaguely in the direction of the huge factory floor in front of and below us. “This… this place. All the places like this.”

“Maybe.” I don't know. I know what she means, of course, and what she wants me to say, which is that of course there used to be more, of course we are built for more, or course these walls aren’t the edge of the known universe. Well, that last part at least was true.

“I like to think there is. Or there used to be. More, you know, green.”

“Yeah.” I kind of wish she’d let me enjoy my break in peace.

Kate sighs softly and slouches further back in her plastic chair, eyes tilted back. “When I’m really tired, sometimes, I like to turn all the lights off and lie in bed and imagine myself somewhere green. Not just a tree or two like in that big entrance hall, but surrounded by green. Stems coming out of the walls, and moss on the floor and tendrils around my legs. Like I’m sinking in it, a bit.” She opened her eyes and frowned. “Well, not sinking exactly, more like…” - she gestured again – “being enveloped. Like a hug.” Her cheeks went a little pink and she looked at me, expectantly.

“In the dark?” God, conversation was hard.

“Yeah, in the dark.”

I stood up and busied myself with the coffee machine. “I suppose I know what you mean,” I relent. “Your head needs a break, sometimes.”

“Yeah, a little like that.”

She went quiet after that. Thank god.

“Do you think… do you think they ever get like that?” Jesus. Her voice was soft and low, questioning.

I didn't, actually. I didn't think they thought about much except the next thing on the conveyor belt – my mind flicks to the morning roll call and the awful task of checking each body with each name on the list. Actually, most of the time it wasn’t so awful because most of the time they looked at the floor but sometimes their gaze would flash up, just at the wrong moment, and it’d catch yours with this depth of greyness, this unreadable monotony. Every pair looked the same to me. It always made me shiver.

“No.” I said shortly. “Too much to do on the floor.”

She nods, it is true. Too many parts to be made.

“Course. It’s funny, though,” she laughs, “I don’t recognise the stuff that goes out of this place any more I do the stuff comes in.”

I click my tongue in exasperation. “No. That’s the point. The parts go somewhere else after this, to get put together.”

“I wonder what they are,” her voice rises a little with anticipation. “Have you ever seen other floors, other places? I haven’t, I came straight in here.”

I have, actually. Once. I couldn’t say it looked much different from this one. The woman running it even had the same colour hair as me, the same length too. “No, I haven’t.”

“Oh. That’s a shame. I wonder if they’re similar to ours?”

Enough. I walked out of our little area to stand guard on the ring of railings which wrapped the walls, a few metres up from the factory floor. Rude, maybe, but I wasn’t sure I cared much at all.

//

I get a message on my break a few days later:

Illegal Material – Dormitory 2.

I blink at the screen a few times. Illegal material? We haven't had any new workers for months - I can't even remember the last time a worker had managed to get non-conveyor material into this place, let alone successfully smuggle it into a dormitory. And keep it for weeks.

It boggles me how the higher-ups knew about this stuff, too. How do they find out? Cameras, I guess. Heat detectors?

“Kate.”

“Yeah?” She turned to face me.

“I’m going to dorm two. Watch my side, will you?”

“Course. Why the hell are you going to dorm two, though?”

“Not sure. I’ll be back in ten.”

“Right, yeah.” She was still confused, obviously, but her black cap bobbed in a quick nod and she went back to scanning the floor.

//

Group two doesn’t start until four today, so the dormitory is full of silent sleeping bodies under thin blankets.

UP. GET UP, ALL OF YOU, NOW. UP.

I press the light switch on and off, creating a sort of greyscale flicker book of bodies scrambling to stand to attention. Flick. Sleepy eyes, confused faces. Flick. Half the room are half standing. Flick. Curved backs hold up heavy heads. Flick. Forty bodies with straight backs are stood by twenty bunks. Flick. This job should come with an epilepsy warning.

One of you is currently holding illegal material. Give it to me now and the punishment will not be severe. If you make me look for it, you risk deportation.

Every body stands stock still, staring straight ahead. I’m beyond grateful that my gaze isn’t intercepted, it’s cold enough already.

One more chance. My voice is tinged with metal. It all works better this way, I’ve found. Three… Two… One…

It takes me thirty-five minutes to find the locket. I won’t bore you with the details, they aren’t pretty anyway.

//

“What was it?” God, she does ask a lot of questions.

I lift the necklace up between my thumb and forefinger to show Kate.

“Oh, pretty! Was that in the dorm? How the hell did they get it in there? We haven’t had any new workers for weeks, have we?”

I grit my teeth. “Yes, in the dorm.” Obviously. “No, I don’t know how it came in, but they kept it in their cap, apparently.” The drum of the factory floor is loud enough now that that I have to raise my voice slightly, and lean in.

“This worker must have been hiding it since they got here. Clearly thought they could trade it for something, turned out they couldn’t, hid it and hoped no one would find it.”

“That’s a shame, though. It’s pretty. What are you going to do with it?”

Pretty, I wasn’t sure about that. It was a tacky charm, heart-shaped, old and faded with a cracked gold finish and a chain that seemed to be turning to dust as we spoke.

“Higher-ups want it. I’ll send it over at the end of the day, better to not waste time on it now.”

I could feel her eyes on me as I took the necklace to our break area and locked it in the drawer under the coffee machine.

//

“You can tell whose it is, you know. There’s this one woman, she's standing at the top of the fourth row on the left, look, she’s slow today and she keeps looking up at us with this scared expression on her face. Or sad. I can't tell. Look, see her now!"

I keep my eyes on Kate. “I’m sure you’re just imagining things.”

“I’m not, actually. And the workers beside her are slow too, it’s like she’s infected them or something.”

“Our count for outgoing parts is the same as always.”

“I’m not saying it’s affecting the figures, I’m saying she, out of two hundred workers, is a little slow today. And she’s clearly worried.”

This, to be fair, is funny. “They don’t get worried, Kate. They don’t get anything. They live on, let’s say, a sort of surface of life. They don’t feel things like we do, they don’t have any depth to them. They make parts, they sleep, they make parts.”

“And eat. They eat in that canteen after their shift.”

“Yes. They eat too.” I would prefer to forget that the canteen existed, lifeless unholy place that it was. Food should be enjoyed, I thought, not shovelled down.

“The thing is, I looked in that drawer, at the locket – “

“What?” My eyes narrow as my voice hardens. “That’s not your domain, Kate.”

Her face flushes. “I have a key too, you know. We’re equals here.”

I forgot there was a second key. I fashion my face into something resembling a smile.

“Anyway,” she continues, “I looked at the necklace, and it’s a locket, not a charm. There’s a picture inside, of this little girl. So adorable, like not even big enough to work yet. And the whole thing kind of got me thinking, like obviously this worker cares about this kid, enough to carry her around in a locket, an illegal locket no less, and – "

“Kate. For god’s sake, the worker probably stole the bloody necklace before they got here,” I sigh. “I’d be willing to bet my next paycheck that she doesn’t even know there’s a picture inside. Like I said before, you get this kind of thing very occasionally, where workers think they can trade this stuff, later find out they can’t and it comes to us.”

“Yeah, but what if she didn’t steal it? What if this is, like, her kid or something, and she’s carrying her around in this locket like a little ghost in a vessel – "

“God, Kate, listen to yourself. A ghost? In a bloody vessel? Pull yourself together, this is a factory, not a goddamn… whatever. And so what, if in the extraordinarily unlikely chance that she’s managed to get access to the kids rooms somewhere, she owns a picture of someone who may or not be her daughter? What then?”

“I mean, I guess it doesn’t really matter. But doesn’t it interest you, even a little bit?”

“No. It does not interest me. If she collapsed dead right now, then yes, I’d be interested. Since she is still breathing and working – although apparently slowly – I do not, in any way, care about this bloody locket.”

“Fine,” she says. “Do you fancy another coffee?”

Kate wasn’t so bad, sometimes. “God, yes, I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks. Double shot, if you will.”

“Coming up.”

//

Sending things to the higher-ups is my favourite thing to do, although it is admittedly rare. The joy of walking past the door to my room on the upper walkway, of not going down the stairs which lead to the factory floor on my right, of carrying straight ahead until the speckled grey linoleum and marked walls fall into clean tiles and smooth paint – it is unparalleled, every time.

Eventually, after a fair few turns and locked doors, the corridor breaks out into the main entrance hall, which has the leafy trees that Kate mentioned, and two shiny silver elevators. I've got no idea how they got the trees in or how they get them to stay alive, though. Or, honestly, where they came from in the first place. I’m pretty sure nothing has grown outside these walls for decades, at a minimum.

I drop the locket off in a silver cabinet labelled FDJ (Federal Department of Justice) and swing around slowly to maximise my time here. No-one else is physically here, in this space, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a camera.

As if on cue (actually, probably exactly as planned on cue) a message flashes up on my wrist.

Slow worker, 579 – please remove and send to floor eleven.

Huh, Kate was right. That worker who hid the locket was slow, after all.

Despite what I might’ve implied to Kate, I do enjoy the trees, and I do wish our floor had one. Or a little mini tree, for my room. I heard an old wives tale once about people putting ribbon and glass onto trees for luck when the air got cold. I like the high ceilings, too, and the quiet and the clean space to breathe in.

I clasp my hands behind my back and head back down the corridor.