The Factory

The Factory: The factory is near the edge of town, just before the fields on the far western side of town. The spring which the town is named after is on the other side of the town. The factory comprises of three main buildings and several smaller control buildings and five large silos. Between each building and each silo, there are several iron catwalks, barely large enough to place one foot on, with thin guard rails on either side. They interlock and weave into one another like a spiderweb of steel. There are a handful of junctions and several places where these act as stairways. The support-structures don’t seem possible when you start to examine them, often ending before they even touch something stable and the walkways rock dangerously in soft wind. There is a constant sound of machinery from inside the buildings and smoke billows out of all the many chimneys and smokestacks lining the roofs.
There are six cranes of varying sizes on the lot, their arms usually crossed over one another, long cables running down and tangling together. The operator booths have tinted black glass, the doors always closed, but somehow, at 6:45 every day, they begin to move back and forth, cables often slapping over the walkways and knocking anything standing on one off. They sometimes carry containers and crates from one end of the lot to the other and alternate it from crane to crane, but most of the time, they move agonizingly slowly, with screeching grinds of steel on steel. When they finally stop, a plume of white steam and chalk is expelled from the exhaust pipes atop them. The operator booths are covered in chalk as a result.
The fog from the fields spills into the factory too, often making it difficult to see past the halfway point of a catwalk, meaning that when you’re in the middle, you can often only see other catwalks. On the ground below, trucks drive in and out of the garages, the doors closing almost immediately behind them and opening just as they leave or enter. The windows are tinted dark black and the trucks honk aggressively at anything near them. The drivers are impossible to make out, but sometimes a muscular arm can be seen resting on an open window on the driver’s side, usually with fresh scars and cuts up and down the forearm.
Should you make your way to the top of the silo, you will find a way down. The contents of the silo will be too dark to make out in the poor light, but going inside will reveal the bodies of hundreds of Drones.
Drones are identical to Workmen in every way, but instead of being dangerously obese, are anorexically thin and wear blue jump-suits, similar to old-fashioned mechanics, no hard hats and return to the factory instead of the construction site. Like the Workmen, they’re bald or balding and hard to distinguish between. Unlike the Workmen, will ignore you entirely unless you get in their way on a catwalk, whereupon they will throw you over the side. Often Drones run into each other on the catwalk. From there, they feebly push one another until one or the other is pushed over the side.
Drones arrive at 6:45, much like the Workmen and leave at the sound of the last bell, making the long journey out of town and back by morning. When they arrive, they shuffle into the three buildings, their huge garage doors open just high enough for Drones to walk underneath. Those that are too tall fall over and are trampled to death by other Drones making their way inside. Inside the buildings are complex systems of pipes and more catwalks. Machinery with exposed gears can be seen at nearly every corner all of it just barely moving. Stairways leading to different panels with inscrutable dials and dim indicator lights are constantly in use by Drones, shuffling up and down. A single elevator in every building regularly takes twenty or so Drones to the top floor, thirty or so identical doors ahead of them when they reach the floor, each of which leads to a different exterior catwalk at different and impossible height differences. Below, you can see all the machinery at work, with huge gears and giant steam engines working slowly and dutifully. Sometimes, you can see dead Drones caught in between the belts and cogs, their arms and legs torn off and crunching like dry leaves in between the different components.
There is a basement to the factory. A long corridor that leads to a generator. It makes a high-pitched sound. As you step closer to the generator, the sound it makes becomes louder and louder and more scream-like, as though someone is in agony. Inside the generator room, which is a perfectly square room with one red valve to be turned is a window. Behind the window is a naked man pressed against the wall, his arms and legs spread like the Vitruvian man, his hands and feet caught in vices made from huge metal gears, all of them slowly turning. Turning the valve either way causes the gears to move away from him, making his screams louder still. You cannot tear his limbs from him, but as they become unnaturally elongated, Drones begin to file down the corridor towards you. One of the will shatter the glass and release the man. The rest will block the exit. The released man will stop screaming the moment he is freed, then hold your hands, stretching out his now unnaturally long arms to their maximum span, which, eventually, will dismember you.