Andy showed Job the other parts of the factory, the next day. There was a wide mess hall, connected to a wide kitchen, for all the people there who ate. It had charging docks and supplies of batteries, for all the people there who didn’t.
A parts room, with darkened shelves hanging with spare bits, electrical parts, machinery, for the repairwork and maintenance of the locals.
A cross between a library and a museum, a tall, pyramidical room with long dusty shelves, rows of books and glaring artefacts hanging from the walls.
There was a cloister, all glistening green, rustling with burgeoning life in all the cool greyness of the city.
An armory, untouched, largely, gathering dust, but for the smaller implements–tiny pistols or blades, for the beating away of the strange things that prowled the city from the safeties of the factory.
So Job met other people, like him, and Andy. He met the drone who had found him. He met Andy’s husband, a more advanced model than either Job or Andy, all streamlined and plasticky, who had taken his hand and shaken it like a jackhammer. He found himself in a small therapy group, for others like him. They were in a drafty room around the edges of the factory, with a window opened out to a slope, revealing nothing but the blue sky and the edges of skyscrapers.
‘Peeing,’ he had said. ‘That’s my main issue with the body. I can’t pee, even when it feels like I need to.’
Nods, murmurs of agreement arose through the room. In that moment, Job truly did know he was among his people.
And on the next day, Job joined one of their trading caravans as a guard.
They traded relatively frequently with the settlements surrounding the factory. Scrap parts, machinery, repair work or certain things grown in their gardens for outside supplies and food and medical equipment and fabrics. Trade continued constantly, though the city grew ever steadily more empty, though towns that were once great partners and friends became hollowed out shells, dancing with dry leaves and rattling metal.
Job was a man with a gun and a decent arm, and was therefore a shoe-in for the job.
The caravan’s name was Milk Seventeen. She had named herself after a carton of milk she stumbled on in an old grocery store which, as the beginning of a series of convoluted and highly coincidental events, ended up with the growth of her own self awareness. She was a shipment drone, resembling a compact grey truck.
Bolted onto her sides were platforms and railings, for Job and the other guardsmen to stand on, while, in the driver’s seat sat the trader himself, and the lead guardsman, a rough-looking android with a torn open faceplate and thick arms, and a shrivelled, thin, soulless woman, clasping a rifle like it was a lost child. Hanging off her on poles, cloves of garlic, thin strings woven carefully into loops, hanging manufactured crosses, horseshoes, and assortment of other charms and artefacts.
So they rattled, steadily, down the empty roads. Job clasped himself close to the railings, looked blankly out. Every time they went over a slope, every turn, every slightest bump riddled Job with adrenaline and he gritted his teeth and grasped harder.
‘Sorry fellas,’ said Milk Seventeen, breaking suddenly, rounding a short curve around a thick pothole.
‘Go faster,’ drawled the guardsman stationed next to Job, who had spent the whole trip lazily leaning against the railing, fiddling with a knife here and then. Milk Seventeen ignored him.
It was a strange feeling, to be back in the city. Back outside–back out there. Job had a sudden new awareness of the deadliness of the place. How cold and sharp its corners were, how tearing the winds, how glaring the eyes behind the windows were. It wanted to kill and eat him. He had always known that. There was a fact that had been embedded into his skull for many years, now. It was only recently that he was exposed to the opposite. The nemesis. To be not killed and eaten, to, in fact, be guarded from killing, and to be fed.
It was unfamiliar, but not uncomfortable. He felt upright. Jolted. The dreamy, slumping tiredness he realised, now, he had always seemed to wear was gone. When he grew more used to his position on Milk Seventeen he stretched out and felt the wind running in lines over his coat and in his joints, breaking against his faceplate.
There was punctuation, now, to it all. He now lived in a cycle, rather than a great vague line, ends disappearing into fog, leading ever onwards until it fell off a cliff, or broke against a wall. There was something, now, finally, to break up all the journeys. An end, solid, physical, close enough to grab, to circle back to. A place to come back to. Waiting for him, and him for it. A certainty, finally.
It was not a paradise, obviously. The streets seemed coiled and tensed, at their approach. Around the corner, all activity, gusts of litter and leaves, then, the silence that presupposes an ambush. Cannibalism hung in the air.
The powerlines grew hungry, once. Shuddered in their poles, chittering to themselves. And then, spinning down, snaked across the road, rummaging up and down, swivelling up the sides of lampposts and knocking rubbish bins down. A small rattling of gunshots scared them promptly off.
Another time, it was something invisible, and windy. A roaring, fluttering form built of swirling papers and leaves, that they fired and yelled at until it quietened down, backed off and, finally, gave out completely, all falling to the ground in a lumpen pile.
There were more muggers, sometimes, too. They would swagger in, spreading out to block all sides, begin announcing their intentions while toying conspicuously weaponry, lead pipes and various other cheap implements for the battering of skulls and limbs. They, too, would be shot at, and promptly left behind in the dust.
And when the streets themselves grew hungry, and seemed to close in on all edges, buildings leaning over so their shadows narrowed in on them over the roads, Milk Seventeen sped up. The goods in the back rattled to themselves. The ground gnashed and grinded. Job hissed and clutched the railings. Buildings fled past, bending forwards, twisting. The guardsman next to him fiddled with a cigarette. The scorch marks they left on his faceplate looked like a moustache, almost. And they rose a hill, descended it, and left the street gnashing and creaking to itself.
The flapping things never came for them. They never came at all, when you could see them, so the smoking guardsman had told Job. They only came at night, or on you in those darker alleys, or in the places the city hung over itself, folded, formed its own tunnel of brickwork and windows. So somebody would go out, and, in a thick shadow, never return. Wings would flap around a near corner, there’d be a damp cave stink. And, in the far sunlight, you would see a shape, humanoid, with great wings. But that was it.
The things that didn’t chase them were the worst ones. The dangling charms, Job presumed, kept them away. So he hoped. Either that, or they weren’t hungry, at that point, already having engorged on something else, less lucky than the caravan. The shine of glinting eyes in a far alley, all dirty grey, rubbish bins and litter, gutters wet. Or something behind a dark, cracked window, glancing, pale face flashing in sunlight, then walking by.
They would stop, finally, at some faraway settlement, blocked up within the buildings, watches glaring down from high windows. Sometimes it was as if the old times were still around, and the infrastructure wasn’t crumbling and hungry, and the Europan Admiralty still cared, and they would walk out, dressed in the same clothes they wore on Mars or Europa, the same bland shirts and trousers and black shoes they wore before the thing with the sun. They’d wheel out their own trade goods on wheelbarrows. They’d swap stories: vapid, humorous ones; tragic and horrifying ones; mixtures of the two, usually. They’d show off new scars, or a gun that had been bitten nearly clean in half, or a new infant swaddled in scavenged fabrics who they would all surround and coo at.
Others were stranger. They traded with a small outpost of Monitor Cultists, who greeted them with their customary quiet ritualism, in long, cloaked rows, bowing one by one, brandishing a monitor and polishing its screen to cleanse the area. And then, immediately, they all awkwardly spread apart, throwing their hoods off, some entering back into their homes, some producing cigarettes and chattering through them, ruggedly grinning and nodding and casually swearing.
Other more obscure folk, whose societies were left generally unquestioned, unremarked on.
‘Got any human meat?’ asked one woman, through a mask carved out of a stop sign. Others loomed behind, through open doors, the half-shut curtains of windows. And lining those streets were statues, Grecian, almost, in detail. It was like they were made from grey flesh, grey fabric, like they’d be soft and warm and pliable to touch, but for their faces. They were sanded off in such a manner so as to reveal grumbly bumps and creases. And the light cast shadows strangely on them, played over them so it was like they had faces all along, glancing at them, changing expressions.
‘We won’t ever have human meat,’ the trader had replied. ‘I don’t know where you think we’re going to get it from, either.’
He cut her off before she could reply, politely nodded, and they rattled further down the streets.
They rolled by abandoned places, too, and were quiet, then. Even the guardsmen standing to the opposite side of Milk Seventeen, who had kept up a constant chatter throughout the whole ride, went silent. There was always a sentience in the city, especially in the emptiest places. It felt the most mournful, in those newly abandoned areas. The wind seemed the sighs of mourners. The litter spidering across the wide roads seemed leaving, hastily, so as to forget all the desolation.
So it went.
They grew fascinated with Job’s tunnelgun, seeing the great round holes it blew into the concrete. The folk at the armoury queried him on it, muttered theories about it to each other.
‘An invisible bullet, perhaps? Like a kind of, very sneaky cannon?’
‘No way. It seems it’s just force. Some kind of… telekinesis, perhaps. Like a wand, of some kind, to channel it.’
And when they asked Job about it, all he could say was: ‘It puts tunnels in things.’
He worked with the caravan whenever he could. The rest of his time, he spent doing other odd jobs, carrying things around, or gardening, or basic repairwork. He worked with Andy plenty of times, and they complained together.
‘They don’t do anything out there but whinge about us. It’s all “earth’s a shithole, there’s nothing there”. I’d rather be on Earth than on Europa.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘You been to Europa?’ asked Andy, bending back, tearing a clump of weeds from the ground.
‘Nope.’
‘Arseholes. Their whole city–or arcology, whatever they wanna call it–is haunted, even worse than ours, its just they have more people to manage it. And I hear, cause it’s built vertical, right–’
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah.’ Andy nodded. He researched the things he complained about. He was a master of a scattershot variety of things, all of which he disliked. He was interested in justice, specifically justice for him, directed against those numerous things he disliked. ‘So they have a problem, where the lower layers, they don’t get enough light. I hear they’re paler than a baby’s arse. I hear they have skin like tissue paper.’
‘Christ,’ Job said, wrapping his own hands around a clump of weeds.
‘Don’t get me started on Mars, too,’ Andy continued.
Or he met that therapy group, again. Sometimes he found somewhere to sit. An out of the way place, and he would recline, and would gaze ahead as people walked by. And listen to their chatter, rising, singing. Feel the sunlight move over him, hug him close, swing over his body, trap in his coat. A drone would hum by, and Job would feel the warm wind bustle over his legs. They would hover up, fixing a crack in the wall, cleaning little oil marks around it.
He talked to the factory, sometimes, when it was free. They did not talk about Job’s heritage, and Job did not think of it much. They talked about what had happened on the day. What the weather had been like. Something funny that had happened, like when the guardsman next to Job had dropped his last entire cigarette pack and swore quietly to himself for a whole thirty minutes.
The factory talked about the strange damages left on its walls, in the night. The strange things that crept in, occasionally, on the outer edges, how they all, invariably, fled at the factory’s own voice. The factory had many stories about itself that were difficult for Job to relate to, not being a piece of infrastructure himself. This was fine; the factory had other stories, from other people. The factory collected them. Some were from the people who lived there, and some had been passed along from the people they traded with; so they had travelled across that barren city, from hand to hand, being bumped occasionally on rough roads, and details had been forgotten and had been filled in.
Sometimes, Job told the factory of his old jobs. The factory always punctuated them with little gasps, exclamations of surprise. Sometimes it interjected with: ‘Goodness. And how did you survive?!’
‘I was coming to that,’ Job would reply. And he would continue, speaking quick, hard, so as to steamroll any other interjections. But he smiled to himself, anyway.
And the factory, always, paused, for a few moments afterwards, taking it in. And it was then amazed. Impressed, even, not with just the stories–but Job himself. And the, finally, it reigned itself in, and ended with something along the lines of:
‘But that was terribly dangerous, Job. I would hate to hear about you being hurt, at all.’
And it was with strange feelings swirling around that Job would leave, go to his room, and rest. Sit there quietly and watch the buildings and roads turn black, watch the horizon one day go purple and red, or another day have the sky a pale deep blue with puffs of clouds looking like spurts of flame, hefty shadows over their sides.
He needed to leave, soon. Soon. The thought was always embedded in himself. It was a weight in his skull.. Hanging, vaguely, back there. Mars. Mars hung up there, in the sky, awaiting him. There was nothing left on Earth for Job. But he stayed.
The guardsman, some days, didn’t smoke. Those were the days he was numb, and felt nothing but the cool wind. He was quiet and rigid, and sometimes he stared down at his own arms the whole trip.
It was similar with Andy. They worked together, in silence, exchanged no words, but knew, together, to each other, what was happening. That they were dead, dead men, shovelling dirt, in a great monastery, for the dead and the soulless. Chrome skin, plastic and rubber, was all.
And the longer he looked over it all, the more he felt it. Death, death. Earth was death, no matter what. So Job wondered, again, if this place was a dream. If he was lying in some street, babbling, rusting away with a machete in his gut. If it was all the wondrous intertwinings of electrical impulses along panicked neurons, to weave gorgeous lies, golden cities on gleaming hills, and friendships to tackle the loneliness, and jobs to tackle the meaninglessness, and a place to live to tackle the primal fears for survival.
So Job, finally, took that seat by that inside garden and all the factory clattered and hummed and chattered by. And he asked the factory a question:
‘Why did you make us?’ he asked, leaning over, gazing into the concrete floor. Slowly, it twisted, grasped at itself, like it was sinking.
‘Pardon me, Job?’
‘Why’d you make us,’ he repeated.
Twisted, grasped at itself, like it was sinking.
‘Yes. I suppose you have been. Questioning the morality, of my actions. Yes?’
‘A little,’ said Job. ‘It’s a bit weird, you know? Resurrecting people into old bodies, like that, against their will.’ He leant down on himself. He regretted saying that, immediately. He paused, feeling all dark and cloudy. It was too harsh, far too harsh. And the factory paused, too.
‘I will explain. Job. I have told a few people this. I am not, of course, justifying anything. I do not think it is a good justification. It is, as you said, a bit weird.’
So the factory told Job about the days after the thing with the sun. When the great spears, powered with moonlight, all pointed, together, at the sun’s bloated skin. The tops of skyscrapers melting, liquid glass running down, flowing in the gutters. It all stunk, that year, of ozone and ash.
It was one of the first godlings. Or so it thought. The sun dead, sentience floated around like billows of dust on a wind. And so it created. What else was there for a god to do? What was more godlike? To create, and, thus, scar the universe. Leave a great mark there, hopefully forever. All things sought immortality, especially gods.
Among those first things created was Job.
There was not much left of those old people. Text in a database. Factual statements that connected, somewhere, to a human being who had, at some point, existed, somewhere. Like the shape of the creases on clothes, when they’ve been taken off, or the imprint of a person’s body on a bed. So was Job. Nothing, nothing at all, but facts and statements, long nonsense lines of code that had been a medical brainscan.
So came his birth.
‘So I have forced you into. Nonconsensually. Into a terrible, resurrected half-existence. No apology can be possibly worthwhile.’
‘Nah, I’m pretty happy with it,’ said Job, wringing his hands together. ‘I was just curious.’
So they sat there, silent, for a few moments. The factory never left. The concrete slid slowly into itself, like mudflow, a small spot of liquid mess.
‘You want to leave. Don’t you?’ asked the factory.
So Job leant back on the seat. Leaves rustled. And around, all vibrancy, uncaring spinning life, that flitted onwards, unawares of its surroundings. Somebody laughed, far off. Feet clattered. Death. He couldn’t call them dead; how dare he, even.
He was dead. Job was dead. Him, alone. That was why he had to leave.
‘I ought to leave,’ said Job.
‘But what do you want. Job?’
‘I don’t want to be killed. I don’t want to be alone.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘I want to go to Mars. I’m haunted, here.’
‘Reasonable desires,’ said the factory.
‘So. I think I should leave.’
‘Can I convince you to stay. At all?’
‘Probably. That’s why I should leave quickly.’
‘O.K. Lots of people will miss you. Job.’
Job swung around in his seat, groaned, looked up. He gazed into the sunlight through the ceiling window. He tried blinding himself in it, for a bit. All stretching blooming rays of light, bright white and gold, warming him, burning out his eyes.
‘I’m sure they can live without me.’
‘Perhaps.’
And Job leant back on the seat, looked back down into the concrete. He placed a foot on the ground, leant on his side. He felt a tilting, hanging weight in his guts. He tapped the tunnelgun, felt a rush to his legs, around his stomach. He felt slightly dizzy.
‘Are you gonna try and stop me from leaving?’
‘No.’ The swirls, twists, warping in the concrete came closer, seemed to slow. ‘I would not stifle you. That would be worse than death, I think. And I think you would hate this place. And me. Did you think I would?’
‘Oh,’ said Job. The adrenaline filtered hastily away. ‘I don’t know. I thought you’d trap me or something weird like that. I’ve been having bad luck like that for a while. Sorry. Really.’
‘It is okay. Job. I understand. It is healthy to be concerned with such things.’
So Job stood. His bag tinkled quietly to itself. It was a gentle, familiar sound, to him, and it was swept away and eaten up by the chattering half-conversations swirling around Job. The tapping of feet around, and feet faraway. An engine humming. Somebody singing.
‘Well. At least we have that presupposition,’ said Job, stretching a grin over his face. Immobile steel plating, round lens eyes.
‘A presupposition? It was always just a wish. And nothing else.’
‘We will all be home, one day,’ said Job. His footsteps tapped on the concrete floors. His bag tinkled.
‘See you again. Job. Hopefully.’
‘Yeah,’ said Job. ‘In a bit.’
Job awoke on that wide street he had been stabbed on those days back swaddled in a robe of blown litter.
He tapped his gut and it was as smooth, as repaired as it had always been.
In his head echoed that low, rumbling voice, the exact kind you’d expect concrete to speak in, saying: ‘One day, one day…’
Meat Girls Dot Org 