A Factory

‘It’s just awful.’ Caitlin called right after it happened. She had heard from the neighbours, of course, rather than seeing for herself. Caitlin lived two cul-de-sacs across from Rae. Everyone lived in a cul-de-sac now, since it was well known that they experienced less crime.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ replied Rae resignedly. ‘Besides, we were set to be separated either way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was fixing to leave me anyhow.’

Caitlin gasped theatrically, revelled in it.

‘He told you this?’

‘No. But my husband is not an emotionally complex man. It was clear as a glass of water.’

‘You seem very … unfazed, dear.’

‘Oh, there’s no point in making a fuss. That’s why Mitch and I worked, I thought. He made the fuss, I didn’t.’

‘It’s just so sad.’ Caitlin said it long, eking out the drama.

‘I suppose. Anyway, must go, it’s nearly collecting time at my factory.’

‘Ok, bye Rae. Call if you need anything. I’ll see you soon.’

Rae put down the phone and set out to the factory, walking in the opposite direction to Caitlin’s place. They lived either side of a Hexagon edge, so they used different factories. They only knew one another from over-the-back-fence chats. It wasn’t done to step out of one’s Hexagon, even to an adjacent, tessellating one, so they’d never been in each other’s houses. Rae headed towards the centre of her Hexagon, going down one arm of the Y of her cul-de-sac then along the stem, which led, like the other six, to the factory. She fell into step with Rog, who was a neighbour and night shift manager at the factory.

‘So sorry, Rae, to see them come for Mitch like that.’

She sighed. ‘I warned him so many times. I can’t deny I enjoyed the results, but I told him they’d find the source in the end. Three years … it was a decent run.’

Rog looked over his shoulder and dropped his voice.

‘Those steaks, though … they were sensational. So juicy, tender, proper bite to them though, real blood oozing out … wow. And worth every cent. A thousand times better than this fungal stuff.’ Rog gestured ahead of them, in the direction of the factory.

‘He was talented,’ Rae admitted.

Rog looked behind him again. Other residents were on their way to the factory too. He lowered his voice even further.

‘How’d they get him?’

‘His guy at the Agricultural Institute blabbed in the end. Kept quiet for three years, then … I guess they leaned hard after Mitch’s big sale to the Senate restaurant.’

Rog was a good friend; he knew details like this already.

‘Ironic, isn’t it,’ she continued. ‘The same folk were probably eating them, enjoying them so much, just as they were plotting to find the source of their illicit dinner.’

‘I hope those steaks turn to ashes in their mouths,’ Rog muttered.

‘Careful,’ said Rae.

The pair came up to the factory now and joined the short line. They nodded afternoon to their Hexagon neighbours politely. People looked at Rae: some sympathetically, some disapprovingly, their faces squeezed.

At the counter, like a hole-in-the-wall takeout from the old days, hollowed out of the sheer, windowless southern wall of the factory, a young and cheerful lad was being trained. A narrow-faced, narrow-mouthed woman stood at his shoulder.

‘Good afternoon, citizen,’ he said to Rae as she stepped up to the counter. ‘Please may I have your ID card?’

Rae handed it over. The boy assiduously held it to the scanner and passed it back.

‘Thank you.’

The boy reached behind him and took a ration pack from the slow-moving conveyor. He held out the plastic box for Rae.

The narrow-faced lady coughed.

‘Oh yes,’ the boy said to himself. Then to Rae: ‘Don’t forget to return your receptacle!’

‘I never do,’ she said.

The boy looked at her blankly. Rog helped him out by stepping up to get his box.

This factory gave three-day ration packs, a standard combination of fungal mince, ‘cod’ fillets, algal pastes and bacteria shakes. Some factories produced two- or four-day packs; the Senate allowed the ration managers some, tokenistic, autonomy.

Six storeys up, two men were talking about Rae’s husband even as she collected her rations. They were snatching a cigarette break on the roof, which was against regulations of course, but they knew how to disable the alarm on the door out. They could see the endless Hexagons from there, stretching as far as the horizon in all directions, honeycombed across the flattened land from coast to coast.

‘I heard they knocked the door right off its hinges.’

‘Oh give over. They just knock, polite as you like, and when you see who it is, you just give in and go with them. That’s always the way it goes.’

‘Alright, well they did break his wrist putting him in cuffs.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, I feel sorry for the guy. Just showing a bit of entrepreneurial spirit!’

‘Did you ever … get to taste them?’

‘Ha. Oh no. Too rich for my blood. I’m only assistant duty officer. But my mate, who knows the chief warden’s secretary, said she had to bring them in for him. Put them in a ration pack, she did, under the plankton gel sachets. But she could smell them … good god, I’d love to … Never mind, not going to happen now.’

The other man spat.

‘This effluent-fed tobacco substitute, it’s so bitter! I still remember my last real cigarette, before they phased out the imports from Colozuela. Ah, that was the real deal, so, so tasty.’

‘Yeah, well, hold that memory, because it isn’t coming back. Colozuela’s transitioning to the Hexagon model now too. Last South American country standing up to progress.’ He said it without irony.

He flicked the last of his cigarette over the ledge.

‘Back to work,’ he sighed. He took a look over the rooftops of the mile-long cul-de-sacs, fanning out from the concrete cube-shaped factory to the edge of the Hexagon, to the fence that demarcated the borders of his world, and went back through the door into the factory.

The assistant duty officer, whose name was Reg, worked on the top floor. He said farewell to his smoking partner, who was a ration pack packer, the bottom of the food chain, so to speak. Unless you consider the technicians in sewage processing and biogas production in the basement, that is. The top floor was by far the most private area of the factory. It housed the control centre for the food production areas, which took up by far the majority of the building’s space, along with the offices controlling the education centre annex and the small clinic. The correctional facility, where Reg worked, was also on the top floor. The fact that it was there at all was only hazily recognised by the citizens of the Hexagon, since it was happily not too busy, and its movements were opaque.

Reg picked up some papers from his desk then let himself into his superior’s office, where the duty officer was still questioning Mitch, whose wrist was not broken.

Reg: ‘Agricultural Institute documentation for you.’

The duty officer licked his top lip and took the papers. He flicked through them irritatingly slowly, but Mitch looked at him levelly from his chair, unperturbed.

The duty officer spoke at last.

‘Seems your stem cell-growing friend really sold you up the rivah!’ His volume shot up at the end of his sentences, for effect.

‘This Hexagon, Mr Humility, works!

‘Funny, that you would get that surname, of all the virtues we are named for, since your actions show little humility! This Hexagon, I say again, works! Our birth to death ratio has been one-to-one for a decade! Our biogas production meets demand on three-hundred and fifty one days of the ye-ah! But you, Mr Humility, you would try to upset our … finely balanced community, wouldn’t yah!’

Reg looked at Mitch. He was as calm as the regional lake, which took up the footprint of one Hexagon, six to the south. The duty officer was red in the face, his top lip sweating. He continued:

‘Isn’t this factory food good enough for yah? Humility indeed! Or your stipend as …’ He turned to Reg. ‘What does he do?’

‘Algal quality assurance officer.’

‘Your stipend as an algal quality assurance officer not enough?’ He glared at Mitch.

Mitch said: ‘Put me in a room with my equipment, I can set some meat growing for you right now. You never know, you might enjoy it.’

Reg couldn’t help smiling at the man’s audacity, and while the duty officer shouted and sizzled with rage, Reg decided to help Mitch out a bit. So after work, he went to visit Rae.

Rae opened the door quite guardedly. She swallowed when she saw Reg, his bronze sleeve stripe indicating his position.

He started straight in: ‘Rae, I met your husband today. I’d like to help you.’ He blinked; he’d surprised himself with his directness, but he had been wrong-footed by her vague, diffident attractiveness, her long, light brown hair.

She paused, decided she may as well take his word for it, since he’d just come in anyway if she told him to go away.

Reg tried to relax.

‘I don’t think we’ve met before have we? I live in the cul-de-sac on the opposite side of the factory. My name’s Reg.’ He was more informal than Rae expected from someone in his position.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Anyway, yes, I met Mitch today, and he seemed like a decent bloke. I admired his gall, although that’s my unofficial stance, of course.’

Rae eyed him like one eyed a drone overhead. No need to panic unless it dived down. She expected he was working her. Mitch, perhaps, hadn’t really said much and they needed to know … what? They knew his source; were they unsure who he sold the meat to?

As though he read her thoughts: ‘I’m not trying to get anything out of you. Honestly, I’m not. I can’t … you know, free him or anything. I’m only an assistant duty officer. But I could get you a visit.’

‘Why would you do that?’

Reg blew out his cheeks.

‘To be honest, I’m intrigued how he did it for three whole years. And I’m curious about … where did he keep the lab?’ It was a good question: the standard home layout had two up, two down, and little else. Not a lot of room for a secret lab.

He smiled, very sudden and disarming, at Rae.

‘Well, that was a stroke of luck for Mitch, really.’ Reg was so forward and honest-seeming; Rae just let the words come rolling out. ‘Our homeplot, it turns out, is right where some big fancy house must have been, you know, before the Hexagons were even built. Mitch was trying to fix some floor-ply in the corner of the kitchen one time, and managed to put his hand right through it, it was so rotten. He could see something gleaming down there, just catching the light. So he yanked up a bit more floor-ply, enough to drop himself down below. It was, whaddya call it, a car store place down there! Still with three cars! Of course, neither of us had seen one of those old-fashioned cars before, but they were in our lessons about pre-transition when we were kids.’

Rae paused and looked carefully at Reg. There was nothing calculating about him. She continued; it was a good story to tell, even to the authorities. Still, she hedged on the next point, for good measure.

‘I said we ought to report it to the factory. I’m sure they can use any old metal. My husband said no, though. I don’t know if he came up with the plan there and then or what. But soon he was getting his lab together. We covered the hole in the floor with our wash tub. Well, you’ll know he is … was … an engineer on the fermenters and propagation tanks and whatnot at the factory, at least at one time, before the new manager did his restructuring. Before long he started sneaking parts home.

‘They weren’t fit for his purpose, but Mitch is a clever man. He retooled, refitted, used bits of the old cars and all sorts. In the end, it was very impressive down there. All he needed was some stem cells to get it going – but your lot knew all about that.’

Rae stopped abruptly. Reg was looking at her strangely, rather like a rapt child.

He shook his head quickly.

‘Will you let me see it?’

‘No harm, I guess. They took lots of it away, not that I’d know what to do with it anyhow.’

And so Rae let Reg climb down to the large, dark space. Mitch had assembled a kind of makeshift stair from a couple of car seats. Rae lit a little biogas burner, showing a room extending wider than their homeplot footprint. It was twice the height of Reg. There were three cars, as promised, in the space, which had been hollowed out, leaving steel skeletons, as though metal insects had crept through and digested the innards. The in/out ramp started at one end, but led only to a plug of rubble and concrete. It was unthinkable to people like Rae and Reg that individuals used to own this much space and could fill it with such reckless property.

‘What a spot!’ exclaimed Reg.

Inside each car were various tanks of glass, a microscope or two, broken, and lots of small, flat-sided bottles. There were a few scraps of the growth support mesh Mitch had used lying on the floor.

‘So …’ Rae could feel his question coming.

‘What were they like?’

She sighed.

‘Just … wonderful. Like nothing you’ve ever eaten.’ She had that faraway, nostalgic look about her.

‘Boy, I wish…’ Reg stopped himself.

‘You’re not how I expected someone from the corrections unit, not like those two who arrested Mitch at all.’

‘Ha! You’re dead right I’m not like them! The arresters don’t even work in the factory. They come from outside. I don’t even know where it is. Probably near the Senate. The coast. I’m not the stickler those guys are. Besides, I’m getting on. No more promotions in store for me. I can do what I like, so long as it’s reasonable.’

‘No … neglecting to pump your effluent late at night then, after you’ve been, or other such crimes?’ Rae had a mischievous quality in her voice.

‘You’ve got it. Ok, so let’s get you in to see Mitch. I can take you tomorrow morning. I’ll just say it’s for questioning, if anyone asks. The boss won’t be bothered. He’ll probably think I’m showing great initiative or something.’

Rae was well aware that husband was impetuous, impulsive and somewhat narcissistic. She also knew he was going to quit her. Call it a wife’s sixth sense, call it common sense – somehow, to her, it was as clear as if he’d left a goodbye note. Nonetheless, she admired him, probably still loved him, after a fashion. It was not too much to see him again. After all, it would likely be the last time. So she said:

‘That’d be wonderful.’

Reg called by to collect her at eight-thirty the next morning, on foot of course. Only dignitaries were allowed the electric cars for transportation, similar to golf buggies – although the memory of those comical machines died with people’s grandfathers. There wasn’t room for golf courses now.

Inside the factory, Reg led Rae up in a lift and through his office. It was not the paragon of clinical efficiency she was expecting. There were piles of paper files all over the place, ticker tape machines slowing beating out production rates, a big scoreboard on the wall of births and deaths, whose numbers would need changing by swapping cards over by hand. The corrections facility took on other monitoring jobs, since there were so few crimes to deal with in the Hexagon.

Reg took Rae into the back squat room, where Mitch was sitting. He smiled that broad, rueful smile at her. He almost didn’t seem surprised to see her; perhaps he thought that visits were routine, rather than profoundly irregular.

‘Hello Mitch. Are you ok?’

‘Hi Rae. I’m alright, considering …’ He eyeballed Reg.

‘Reg here brought me into see you,’ Rae reassured her husband. ‘He’s secretly a fan of yours.’

Mitch considered him further.

‘Is that so?’ Any chance of busting me out then, Reg?’

Reg laughed. ‘Not likely, my friend. This visit is the best I can do.’

‘I don’t mean just out of the factory. I mean out of the Hexagon; exile, if you like,’ Mitch said.

Rae looked unnerved. ‘You want to leave the Hexagon?’

Mitch had the glassy look of the dreamer he was.

‘Yes, far away. That’s always been my goal. Not to another damn Hexagon. Freedom. A ship, hunting the ocean for marine life. They have those, you know. Effluent run-off is down ninety-two percent – the chances of finding something are getting better all the time. I could ride the waves. And that’d be the way to go. The ship brought down by a giant squid, strangled by an octopus, guzzled by a great white shark … not just in my bed, in the same old Hexagon.’

A chill whipped through Rae, with the realisation that her husband was stir crazy. The meat growing, she could write off as a childish phase, an almost cute foible, dangerous though it was. But here he was, making up animals and wishing for death by them.

Rae closed her eyes as her husband continued to pontificate on life at sea.

After a time, Reg stepped in, controlling the situation, impressive. ‘You’ve had too long, I’m afraid,’ he whispered. ‘Sorry, but you need to say goodbye.’

Mitch looked at his wife as though he’d just met her, and she’d done something odd like thumbed her nose at him.

‘Goodbye Mitch,’ said Rae, sadly. She hugged him briefly and kissed his cheek.

Mitch was still partly in his reverie.

‘Bye Rae. See you soon.’

Reg led her out and closed the door.

Rae puffed her cheeks and let the air out. ‘What will happen to him now?’

He studied her for a little then concluded, ‘I’ll show you.’ Reg was letting the chance to swagger seep through his sensitive man act.

In the lift, Reg unlocked a tiny door in the wall and pushed the button inside. They descended below the basement level and stepped out into a large space, dark other than the puddles of brightness from down-lights over work stations and the large glass tanks that were situated every five metres or so, in neat rows. Reg took her around. At each work station, diligent workers were doing unfathomable things with Petri dishes, cell culture bottles, pipettes, microtomes and centrifuges. The workers totally ignored Rae and Reg. In the tanks were steaks, chicken breasts, chicken feet, lamb chops, salmon and hake fillets growing; cells dividing to fill in the mesh-like constructs that outlined each piece of flesh. Rae gaped.

‘Only for the elite, of course,’ Reg said, himself with awe in his voice. ‘Not many factories have these. But it’s always where the illegal growers end up – we may as well use their expertise. There are lot more of them than you might think. Then again, the Senate has a lot of mouths to feed.’

‘Where … do they live?’ asked Rae. She didn’t know any of the faces of the workers; they must have come from other Hexagons.

‘Oh, they live and work down here. There are dorms that way.’ He pointed. ‘They don’t mind.’

‘Mitch would definitely mind!’ Rae gestured, a mite wildly.

‘Look.’ Reg indicated a small cannula inserted in the fleshy part under one worker’s left ear.

‘What is that?’

‘Well, it’s a weak cocktail of various opiates and a dose of chlorpromazine, just to keep them docile and focused.’

Rae arched her eyebrows but said nothing. She looked suddenly frazzled, resignation in her eyes.

‘Let’s go,’ said Reg, gingerly placing his hand in the small of Rae’s back to guide her to towards the lift.

As Reg walked Rae back home, she let him keep his hand there. At the door, she let him kiss her cheek. She went in and had a lie down. When she got up again, she’d accepted that it was time to move on. She pushed the memory of Mitch from her mind. It was easier to do than she would have guessed. She checked the directory and dialled slowly for Reg. What else was there to do?