Industrial Complex
Predator Press
[LOBO]
Trapped in the confines of the Zane Warehouse, it’s easy to forget there is a sky.
You look up to see a steel roof about eight stories up, with miles of random, dusty pipes winding their way across it.
It's a quarter of a mile square. The complex is so huge, it takes fifteen minutes to walk to some work stations from the parking area. It is sectioned by steel shelving to the ceiling, like giant stacked milk carton caddies --into which merchandise pallets are raised by “reach” trucks so the storage capacity of merchandise is maximized. The floors above are crisscrossed with catwalks made of the same steel flooring. It’s a rigid fence-like pattern, so you can see through them; if you look through the metal cobwebbing, you can see people working above and below you.
Dizziness and disorientation are normal for the first few days.
People with height phobias take a little longer.
But before long, you just forget about the mammoth and elaborate size of your complex cell, and you walk and climb and try to second-guess where the cheese is this time.
I’m thinking of this now, because I’m looking out a window.
There were no windows to look outside this warehouse.
Or so I thought.
***
I’ve admittedly never been in Dashel C. Cunning’s office before. It’s on a central point along the East wall, above three flights of these steel fence-like stairs. For your reading enjoyment as you climb, the walls are peppered with multiple variations of "Work Safely" posters, all space at equidistantly intervals at perfect ninety-degree angles.
I was summoned for my Annual Evaluation.
Ethan is supposed to be here. He’s not.
Favoring my right foot, I drop my helmet on Dash’s desk, and limp over to stare out Dash’s window. First I’m wondering if Dash had it put in specifically. Because the window looks out over the parking lot: Dash has a clear view of everyone entering the complex through the security checkpoints. There’s a large, accurate clock immediately to the left, and I’m imagining him making lists of the stragglers late for their shift.
Because Dash is just that kind of guy.
Dash, meanwhile, is just to my right, doubled over on the floor, writhing and moaning. I push my finger under my ponytailed hair to my ear. “Ethan.” I ask.
***
Even in the parking lot, you can see the diversity of the workforce. From Dashel's "secret window", you see the sexy classic cars from the sixties and seventies, mighty and curvaceous art forms. And then you see some sort of repentant self-flagellation in the eighties and nineties cars: cubicle, outwardly unattractive, non-aerodynamic boxes. And then, for the last fifteen years or so, the cars started looking like pastel lozenges. More attractive, true, but impossible to distinguish from one another.
And then my eyes fall to the "Reserved" parking, the closest row. The executives. The guys who work so hard they can’t walk as far as the guy stuffing 40,000 lbs of Zane products on a truck by hand.
Their cars, the “cutting edge” latest models, intrigue me.
SUVs, Hummers, whatever … a supervisor that drives those is generally not as smart as they think they are, but they have huge frail egos to massage. And they bitch about gas prices like they had no idea that an urban assault vehicle might not be the most practical consideration they might have made.
I simultaneously love the retro-trend in new sports cars and revile it. These baby-boomers, with all their “peace and love” bullshit, sure did get a fingernail into a piece of that pie when the subject came up. People that fought governments and corporations. People that had “love-ins”. People that blew weed and took psychedelics. People that defiantly rebelled against hideous effigies of what they were invariably to become themselves.
Those cars --those ’69 Mustang Boss 429s, those ‘57 Chevys-- they meant something wholy unlike these bastardized incarnations. And buying one of those wasn’t the equivalent of buying a small house.
I have been enslaved, and some of my heritage has been co-opted under a thin guise of "conspicuous consumerism".
I touch my ear again. “Ethan?” I repeat. “Wake up!”
My job at Zane is pretty simple. Trucks pull into docks on the south side, and the cargo is unloaded and disseminated throughout the building. Eventually, the stuff makes it to the north side of the building --where the loading docks are-- and it’s re-assembled into trailers there. Then truck drivers hitch up to the north side trailers, and bring them to the docks on the south side so they can be unloaded by the next shift.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
***
“Ethan!”
“What?” Ethan says groggily.
“I just kicked Dash in the nuts.”
“What!?” more alert.
“We got a building-wide uniform annual raise, based on production.”
“The evaluations were today?”
“Yeah,” I says.
“So did we get our raise?” Ethan inquired.
“Yeah,” I repeat.
“So what, a buck an hour?”
“Who are you talking to?” chokes Dash between anguished cries.
I ignore Dash. “Uh, noooo—“
Ethan pauses. “Fifty cents?” I can sense his rising ire.
“Twenty-five cents,” I exhale sympathetically.
Ethan runs the numbers through his head. “That’s ten bucks a week. Before taxes!”
“Yeah,” I says.
“Kick him in the nuts again!”
***
“Shit, I think he passed out!” I says. I could feel that shot right through my metatarsal boots. “Now what?”
“Anybody see you?”
“Well, Dash and I are alone here, but I was paged to his office—" Looking out the window, I spot the Safety Coordinator, Craig Deeks, routinely climbing the stairs to Dash’s office. “Ah Christ. We’re busted. It’s Deeks.”
Craig Deeks is quite obviously the guy that went to college on a heroic football scholarship. He walks in a half-running, right shoulder forward gait, and carries his surgically-attached clipboard carefully guarded under his arm.
“Oh my God!” he says, spotting Dash on the floor.
I then toss my helmet tantalizingly out of reach over his head. Dropping his hallowed clipboard he leaps for it, and comes down groin-first into my heavy boot.
“Did it work?” Ethan asks.
“Like a charm!” I says enthusiastically.
***
I grab a bunch of the paperwork from Dash’s inbox --and his handy "late" lists-- and attach it to Deeks’ clipboard which had spiraled off into the corner of the office. Putting on my helmet, I exit the office.
“See anybody else?” asks Ethan.
I glance quickly as I descend the stairs. “I see Beth.”
“Kick her in the nuts too!”
“But I like Beth!” I protest. Beth just got a boob job six months ago. And God Bless that woman, you just couldn’t keep her shirt on anymore during after-hours parties. “I’m not doing it.” I chuck Craig’s thick clipboard, Dash’s paperwork, and my helmet into a handy grinder on the way out.
“Well, that’s fine,” Ethan continues. “Now just drive to the hospital about those involuntary leg muscle spasms. You’ll be out for at least four weeks on a Section-8.”
“Cool!”
“In fact, you’ll probably be able to sue them.”
“Can I make it six weeks?” I ask, sliding my timecard at the exit. “I just got an X-Box 360.”
“Oh yeah. Six weeks will not be a problem.” Says Ethan.
I step outside into the warm sunlight, and take a deep breath. “God bless those Liberals, Ethan.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “God Bless ‘em.”
[LOBO]
Trapped in the confines of the Zane Warehouse, it’s easy to forget there is a sky.
You look up to see a steel roof about eight stories up, with miles of random, dusty pipes winding their way across it.
It's a quarter of a mile square. The complex is so huge, it takes fifteen minutes to walk to some work stations from the parking area. It is sectioned by steel shelving to the ceiling, like giant stacked milk carton caddies --into which merchandise pallets are raised by “reach” trucks so the storage capacity of merchandise is maximized. The floors above are crisscrossed with catwalks made of the same steel flooring. It’s a rigid fence-like pattern, so you can see through them; if you look through the metal cobwebbing, you can see people working above and below you.
Dizziness and disorientation are normal for the first few days.
People with height phobias take a little longer.
But before long, you just forget about the mammoth and elaborate size of your complex cell, and you walk and climb and try to second-guess where the cheese is this time.
I’m thinking of this now, because I’m looking out a window.
There were no windows to look outside this warehouse.
Or so I thought.
I’ve admittedly never been in Dashel C. Cunning’s office before. It’s on a central point along the East wall, above three flights of these steel fence-like stairs. For your reading enjoyment as you climb, the walls are peppered with multiple variations of "Work Safely" posters, all space at equidistantly intervals at perfect ninety-degree angles.
I was summoned for my Annual Evaluation.
Ethan is supposed to be here. He’s not.
Favoring my right foot, I drop my helmet on Dash’s desk, and limp over to stare out Dash’s window. First I’m wondering if Dash had it put in specifically. Because the window looks out over the parking lot: Dash has a clear view of everyone entering the complex through the security checkpoints. There’s a large, accurate clock immediately to the left, and I’m imagining him making lists of the stragglers late for their shift.
Because Dash is just that kind of guy.
Dash, meanwhile, is just to my right, doubled over on the floor, writhing and moaning. I push my finger under my ponytailed hair to my ear. “Ethan.” I ask.
Even in the parking lot, you can see the diversity of the workforce. From Dashel's "secret window", you see the sexy classic cars from the sixties and seventies, mighty and curvaceous art forms. And then you see some sort of repentant self-flagellation in the eighties and nineties cars: cubicle, outwardly unattractive, non-aerodynamic boxes. And then, for the last fifteen years or so, the cars started looking like pastel lozenges. More attractive, true, but impossible to distinguish from one another.
And then my eyes fall to the "Reserved" parking, the closest row. The executives. The guys who work so hard they can’t walk as far as the guy stuffing 40,000 lbs of Zane products on a truck by hand.
Their cars, the “cutting edge” latest models, intrigue me.
SUVs, Hummers, whatever … a supervisor that drives those is generally not as smart as they think they are, but they have huge frail egos to massage. And they bitch about gas prices like they had no idea that an urban assault vehicle might not be the most practical consideration they might have made.
I simultaneously love the retro-trend in new sports cars and revile it. These baby-boomers, with all their “peace and love” bullshit, sure did get a fingernail into a piece of that pie when the subject came up. People that fought governments and corporations. People that had “love-ins”. People that blew weed and took psychedelics. People that defiantly rebelled against hideous effigies of what they were invariably to become themselves.
Those cars --those ’69 Mustang Boss 429s, those ‘57 Chevys-- they meant something wholy unlike these bastardized incarnations. And buying one of those wasn’t the equivalent of buying a small house.
I have been enslaved, and some of my heritage has been co-opted under a thin guise of "conspicuous consumerism".
I touch my ear again. “Ethan?” I repeat. “Wake up!”
My job at Zane is pretty simple. Trucks pull into docks on the south side, and the cargo is unloaded and disseminated throughout the building. Eventually, the stuff makes it to the north side of the building --where the loading docks are-- and it’s re-assembled into trailers there. Then truck drivers hitch up to the north side trailers, and bring them to the docks on the south side so they can be unloaded by the next shift.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
“Ethan!”
“What?” Ethan says groggily.
“I just kicked Dash in the nuts.”
“What!?” more alert.
“We got a building-wide uniform annual raise, based on production.”
“The evaluations were today?”
“Yeah,” I says.
“So did we get our raise?” Ethan inquired.
“Yeah,” I repeat.
“So what, a buck an hour?”
“Who are you talking to?” chokes Dash between anguished cries.
I ignore Dash. “Uh, noooo—“
Ethan pauses. “Fifty cents?” I can sense his rising ire.
“Twenty-five cents,” I exhale sympathetically.
Ethan runs the numbers through his head. “That’s ten bucks a week. Before taxes!”
“Yeah,” I says.
“Kick him in the nuts again!”
“Shit, I think he passed out!” I says. I could feel that shot right through my metatarsal boots. “Now what?”
“Anybody see you?”
“Well, Dash and I are alone here, but I was paged to his office—" Looking out the window, I spot the Safety Coordinator, Craig Deeks, routinely climbing the stairs to Dash’s office. “Ah Christ. We’re busted. It’s Deeks.”
Craig Deeks is quite obviously the guy that went to college on a heroic football scholarship. He walks in a half-running, right shoulder forward gait, and carries his surgically-attached clipboard carefully guarded under his arm.
“Oh my God!” he says, spotting Dash on the floor.
I then toss my helmet tantalizingly out of reach over his head. Dropping his hallowed clipboard he leaps for it, and comes down groin-first into my heavy boot.
“Did it work?” Ethan asks.
“Like a charm!” I says enthusiastically.
I grab a bunch of the paperwork from Dash’s inbox --and his handy "late" lists-- and attach it to Deeks’ clipboard which had spiraled off into the corner of the office. Putting on my helmet, I exit the office.
“See anybody else?” asks Ethan.
I glance quickly as I descend the stairs. “I see Beth.”
“Kick her in the nuts too!”
“But I like Beth!” I protest. Beth just got a boob job six months ago. And God Bless that woman, you just couldn’t keep her shirt on anymore during after-hours parties. “I’m not doing it.” I chuck Craig’s thick clipboard, Dash’s paperwork, and my helmet into a handy grinder on the way out.
“Well, that’s fine,” Ethan continues. “Now just drive to the hospital about those involuntary leg muscle spasms. You’ll be out for at least four weeks on a Section-8.”
“Cool!”
“In fact, you’ll probably be able to sue them.”
“Can I make it six weeks?” I ask, sliding my timecard at the exit. “I just got an X-Box 360.”
“Oh yeah. Six weeks will not be a problem.” Says Ethan.
I step outside into the warm sunlight, and take a deep breath. “God bless those Liberals, Ethan.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “God Bless ‘em.”
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