Fast Fiction! - The Factory
ONE
Dragged upwards to cold rafters by hoists, twenty metal hooks under the skin of your back pull, but only after intersection is completed. Tubes for nutrients forced down tender red throats. Catheters invade urethras. Needles puncture skin and spit their poison into veins, savagely beating a chemical unconsciousness into the subject. It would be cold if they were awake, hanging all the way up there, in the dark vastness of the warehouse, naked and limp.
The only noise is hoarse breathing from ten thousand throats, and the clacking of metal against metal. The noise is almost inaudible, but constant high above the secguards head. He swipes his card, another vulnerable point on his rounds secured. Its the night shift, the easy shift, he doesn't look up, and stays away from the loading docks when the clock sluggishly drags its way around to five am.
Five am comes and the secguard is on the other side of the building swiping. All he feels is the change in air pressure and the gentle popping of his ears as the Hyiabusa Corp Incuship descends, its grav engines a knife of light in the cardiograph spiked darkness of the industrial estate. Another hour, and the cargo will be gone.
He saw the cargo once, little translucent boxes with digital imaging on one side. Graphs growing, and then slowly subsiding, real time digital 3d rendering of what he did not know, didn't want to get close enough to know, but it moved, rotated and shifted with a biological ease.
At nine he got to go home, after being searched, scanned, and probed six or seven times. That was only to be expected though, there was a war on, and we all have to make some personal sacrifices to ensure security. He was just damned glad he didn't have to work dayshift.
TWO
Hands above your head, pressed together, oxymask on your face, regulating your breathing. White light in your eyes and cold breeze on your breasts. You strain to lift your head to find out where you are. The first attempt fails. The second succeeds, and you find out more and less about your situation at the same time. A white wall, sterile and surgical traverses your midriff, and reaches, tiled, all the way up to the white ceiling. Something unseen clicks and whirrs between your legs, as a gloved hand, belonging to a masked face, holds your head back and gently slides a needle into your arm, you smile as you drift away.
Months go by, nine months to be precise, before the pain starts. Before you are lowered to the cold tiles, restrained and put into a coma. Before the knives cut your belly. Before the amniotic fluid spills on a sterile ammonia stinking floor.
Then weeks of rest. You try to remember something about who you are, you try so hard but have no memory of anything outside of the warehouse, the surgery, or the recuperation room.
The cycle begins anew. The factory never stops, from rafters, to womb, to rafters, to biocrate, to training camp, to active service. After all there's a war on.
© Fathercrow 2004
Peace and Hope
Fathercrow
Dragged upwards to cold rafters by hoists, twenty metal hooks under the skin of your back pull, but only after intersection is completed. Tubes for nutrients forced down tender red throats. Catheters invade urethras. Needles puncture skin and spit their poison into veins, savagely beating a chemical unconsciousness into the subject. It would be cold if they were awake, hanging all the way up there, in the dark vastness of the warehouse, naked and limp.
The only noise is hoarse breathing from ten thousand throats, and the clacking of metal against metal. The noise is almost inaudible, but constant high above the secguards head. He swipes his card, another vulnerable point on his rounds secured. Its the night shift, the easy shift, he doesn't look up, and stays away from the loading docks when the clock sluggishly drags its way around to five am.
Five am comes and the secguard is on the other side of the building swiping. All he feels is the change in air pressure and the gentle popping of his ears as the Hyiabusa Corp Incuship descends, its grav engines a knife of light in the cardiograph spiked darkness of the industrial estate. Another hour, and the cargo will be gone.
He saw the cargo once, little translucent boxes with digital imaging on one side. Graphs growing, and then slowly subsiding, real time digital 3d rendering of what he did not know, didn't want to get close enough to know, but it moved, rotated and shifted with a biological ease.
At nine he got to go home, after being searched, scanned, and probed six or seven times. That was only to be expected though, there was a war on, and we all have to make some personal sacrifices to ensure security. He was just damned glad he didn't have to work dayshift.
TWO
Hands above your head, pressed together, oxymask on your face, regulating your breathing. White light in your eyes and cold breeze on your breasts. You strain to lift your head to find out where you are. The first attempt fails. The second succeeds, and you find out more and less about your situation at the same time. A white wall, sterile and surgical traverses your midriff, and reaches, tiled, all the way up to the white ceiling. Something unseen clicks and whirrs between your legs, as a gloved hand, belonging to a masked face, holds your head back and gently slides a needle into your arm, you smile as you drift away.
Months go by, nine months to be precise, before the pain starts. Before you are lowered to the cold tiles, restrained and put into a coma. Before the knives cut your belly. Before the amniotic fluid spills on a sterile ammonia stinking floor.
Then weeks of rest. You try to remember something about who you are, you try so hard but have no memory of anything outside of the warehouse, the surgery, or the recuperation room.
The cycle begins anew. The factory never stops, from rafters, to womb, to rafters, to biocrate, to training camp, to active service. After all there's a war on.
© Fathercrow 2004
Peace and Hope
Fathercrow
posted by fathercrow at 9:34 AM
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