The Warehouse Ch. 4 & 5
Chapters 4 & 5
A Couple Quick Announcements: Chapter four is quite short, so I’m once again releasing two chapters this week.
& my story, “Tangela”, is out in 96th of October’s Summer Edition. Read it quick before Pokemon hits me with a copyright infringement lawsuit!
Chapter 0104
Word Count: 910
Time Allotted: 03 Minutes 13 Seconds
Setting: Belt Tower
Rosie follows the lights. She paces back and forth. The path she treads is parallel to a pair of conveyor belts on one side and a wall of shelves containing small consumer products on the other. The far belt streams endlessly by, carrying with it a huge number of plastic boxes, and eventually feeding into a larger belt. The nearer conveyor belt is a short segment, running the length of Rosie’s section. It feeds a plastic crate down the line. She walks along beside it as lights blink on above the necessary products on the other side. Wherever in the line a light blinks, the belt stops. She picks a product from the lighted cubby, places it in the tote, and pushes the button and the light goes off. If the light doesn’t go off, she picks another of the same and pushes the button again, and on and on until the light dims and the belt moves the tote down another few feet.
Her section is about twenty meters long. There are other pickers further down and more back the other way, dozens of them just on her level of the belt tower. When the tote reaches the end of her segment, she closes its lids, prints off a label, slaps it on, and then shifts it to the long belt, and off it goes.
Above her, the scene is replicated on the next level, and again below. Her tower goes up to level seven, but there are many of these towers scattered throughout The Warehouse. The tallest she has heard of is supposed to be thirteen levels, but the world beyond her tower is one she knows little about. Young men rush past on large machines, trailing teetering towers of boxes. They might as well live in a parallel universe, visible but inaccessible, overlaid atop her own. She has never spoken to any of these boys. The different departments’ breaks are staggered, so she never runs into them off the floor. They once interested her, but now she has been here long enough that they are just more background noise, something to watch out for when she crosses the floor towards the double doors for lunch.
The work she does is so close to automated that Rosie has to wonder what is stopping The Company from bridging that final gap. Employment quota deals with the city in exchange for tax breaks, she guesses. She knows cities use such things to entice corporations to build within their limits. As soon as the deal expires, they will flip the switch and she’ll be out of a job. Shame. It’s the easiest money she has ever made. It’s the least abstract kind of work she can imagine, and she has plenty of time to imagine, or she should, but she finds it difficult to think about much of anything while working. Time slows to a gray sludge.
She talks with neighboring workers in brief exchanges if they both happen to be at the borders of their respective zones at the same time, but then the lights drag them in opposite directions.
Rosie once had an idea, one that seemed far simpler than the eccentricities of The Warehouse, one that could cut down the size and time required immensely. It was probably a stupid idea, but what if there was just the conveyor belt, and these plastic totes, and a small quantity of products. There could be an app, and a certain amount of points each family gets per week. The points would be adjusted according to family size, and the choices could accommodate religious, allergy-induced, and ethical dietary restrictions. They could also allow for some range of preference, but basically the family could order a certain amount of food staples per week. Things like flour, oil, dry beans, milk and milk alternatives, sugar, corn meal, fruits, vegetables, meat, spices, just the essentials. The range of choices could be somewhat limited by geography. No more making everywhere like anywhere.
Each family selects what they’d like and the tote is filled and sent directly to them, no need for supermarkets. It would be a streamlined process. An entire town’s worth of totes could be filled in a couple hours. If every industry streamlined similarly, well some sacrifices would have to be made, of course, but the workload could be slashed dramatically.
“I don’t want that shit. I hate cooking. I just want a can or something I can zap in the microwave,” a co-worker told her when she vented her idea at break one day.
“But we’d actually have time to cook!” Rosie countered. “All this instant shit only sells so well because no one has the time to devote to making anything themselves because we are all too busy at work making this instant shit for everyone else! You don’t think even with the time to do so you would like to learn how to cook?”
“No way. Cooking means cleaning, and if there’s anything I hate more than cooking, it’s cleaning.”
Rosie prepares to mount a defense, but loses steam. It occurs to her that if it could all be so simple but wasn’t probably meant it can’t actually be that simple, so she puts it out of mind and does her best to just follow the lights. What does she know, anyway? If she knew anything, she wouldn’t be stuck moving boxes
Chapter 0105
Word Count: 2901
Time Allotted: 17 Minutes 02 Seconds
Setting: Outside the Box
Outside the Box is constructed in an out of the way part of The Warehouse where floor managers never venture. Its full history has yet to be collected and written, and few among the warehousers who frequent it are up to the task. Its stock is skimmed from The Warehouse supplies, and its operators were once selectors themselves who had grown sick of the grind and, seeing an opportunity, walked off the floor (but never left the building) to set up a little speakeasy for themselves.
In its first iteration, the tavern was constructed completely out of cardboard. In the years since, its design has grown more intricate and its structure more stable. The forks of many scrapped Barretts have been removed and welded together in order to create the long, iron bar, smooth and cool to the touch.
There is even a billiards table these days, left off an order and delivered to the tavern at the cost of one selector’s job.
The entrance is hidden within a pallet junkyard. One must approach it carefully or risk breaking an ankle. There is a pathway through the wreckage, but it is not easy to identify. Those who walk it do so by memory, or by closely copying he who brings them there. The doorway is a triangle, a short tunnel of pallets propped against each other, meeting at a point, and forming a low ceiling. One must enter stooped, but once inside it opens up.
It is dug into a slight pit, cool beneath the concrete and intersecting water lines without any higher up’s knowledge. There is no true toilet, but an aqueduct has been built to funnel the beer piss away. It leads into the foundation and may very well be eating away at the entire enterprise.
The drink selection varies daily, but the warehousers aren’t known for being picky.
Big Bucks and Arizona take Milhouse to celebrate the completion of his first week. They cross the pallets carefully, Big Bucks pointing out where to step, Arizona blazing ahead. He is a known entity in Outside the Box.
“Evening, Phoenix. What’ll it be?” Axe-Grinder, the bartender, asks Arizona.
“Give me the selector’s special,” he says.
“Phoenix?” Milhouse asks.
“Like Phoenix, Arizona,” Arizona says.
“This man burns himself out every night, but each morning is born again,” Axe-Grinder says, pointing towards a whiteboard behind the bar where the day’s top selectors are listed. “Phoenix closes this place down nightly and still manages to top the list everyday.”
“Don’t give him a bigger head than he already has,” Big Bucks says.
“Hey, number fifteen is respectable,” Arizona tells his friend with a grin.
“What’s the selector’s special?”
“Changes every night. It’s whatever we have the most of at any given time.”
“He means it is the cheapest swill they sell. Don’t get it,” Big Bucks advises. “Got any good whiskeys right now?”
“Not a great week for whiskeys,” the barkeep frowns, turning to reveal a bottle of Jim Beam atop the highest shelf. “Got some good tequilas though.”
“Ooh boy, is it going to be one of those kinds of nights?” Arizona asks, pumping his friend up with a ruffling of the shoulders.
“Three tequila shots,” a newly brazened Big Bucks says. “And two Boxing Days. That’s their house brewed beer,” he explains to Milhouse just as he is winding up to ask. The three boys take their shots at the bar, toasting Milhouse, and then find a place to sit.
“You do this every night?” Milhouse asks Arizona.
“Well, yeah. I sure as hell don’t work all day just so I can go home and sleep!”
“Oh, you’re a commuter?”
“Home, hammock. Same thing. I’m a turtle, man. Everything I need, I carry with me. My blood is my money and it won’t run out until I do!” he shouts and Milhouse has to believe there has been some sound-proofing material installed because it is loud down here, but just outside there’d been nothing but ambient Warehouse drone.
Nearby, there is a booth stuffed full of rowdy warehouse boys playing cards in the dim light. Elsewhere, others are drinking heavily and swapping stories from past lives. There is little in the way of wall decor, but at least a dozen mirrors recast the blue light into a dense haze that one must move through. It is its own presence.
“This place is really cool,” Milhouse comments, accompanied by a wholesome smile.
“It’s alright. Could use some women,” Big Bucks says.
“They never come down here?”
“Fuck no they don’t. Worst thing about this job. You know how long it’s been since I’ve gotten any?” Arizona asks.
“No.”
“Too long. That’s why everyone sleeps alone, you know, so we can have some goddamn solitude to jack off in. Listen close at night and you’ll hear it: a chorus of masturbatory noises rising into the air like an evening prayer, and the sudden bloom of bleach as the jizzum floats down from the rafters like seafoam to impregnate The Warehouse. And you should see the night selectors when they’re leaving in the morning. They’re glazed in it.”
“But then wouldn’t they be doing the same while we’re on the floor?”
“Fuck no, man. That’s nasty! Is that what you think about while you’re out there? You bukkake-loving sicko.”
“No, I just, you, just, I—”
“He’s messing with you,” Big Bucks says. “Just ignore him.” Arizona laughs loudly.
“You’re alright, Milhouse. You’re alright.”
“Alright, alright, alright,” Meme drawls as he passes by on his way to the bar.
“Aye buddy, got a seat for you once you get your drink,” Arizona calls out.
“Martini, shaken, not stirred,” Meme tells Axe-Grinder.
“Sorry friend, no gin tonight. Not even any vodka, except this. Bubble gum flavored,” he says, lifting a bottle to display the label: a buxomous cartoon woman blowing a large, pink bubble.
Meme blushes and repeats himself, a little frazzled.
“You want it with this shit?” Axe-Grinder frowns.
“Martini, shaken, not stirred,” he says again.
“Alright, pal.” The bartender throws his hands up and makes the drink. He pushes it across the bar to Meme who is spinning atop the barstool. When the drink is before him, he aims a pair of finger guns at Axe-Grinder and shakes them up and down in gratitude, then he joins the table where he takes his first sip, screwing up his face at the taste.
“Something wrong with your martini?” Arizona asks.
“It’s the most amazing, fabulous, sensational gum in the whole world!”
“Gum?” Big Bucks asks.
“He said cum. He must have been out there under a hammock.”
Meme growls at Arizona and shoves his drink towards him. “Woah, hey man, I don’t want your man juice,” he says, but Meme inches it towards him again, and Arizona obliges with a sip that he ends up spitting on the floor. “What the fuck is that shit? Jesus Christ, that is terrible.”
“This has been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever,” Meme says as he takes another drink.
“Goddamn right it has. Go get yourself something else and poor that shit out.”
“It is my burden, and no one else can bear it,” Meme shakes his head and resigns himself to the task at hand.
“Suit yourself. I’m getting another round. Milhouse, want something?”
“Sure, yeah. I’ll take another beer.”
“Yeah, me too,” Arizona says. “Thanks.”
“You’re on your own, man.”
“Aw, drats,” he says comically before hopping down from his stool. The two boys go to the bar, leaving Meme and Milhouse alone at the table. Meme can’t seem to stop moving. His fingers tap across the table or else tear up a napkin in his lap, his head turns this way and that. He is rake thin. The monotonous labor of The Warehouse has stripped everything extra from him, but somehow left the wellspring of anxious energy untapped. Milhouse, or Javier, on the other hand, still has his baby fat. He’s not even legally allowed to be drinking. His face is doughy and kind. His own brand of anxiety manifests in a gentle meekness, whereas Meme is a live wire.
“So,” Milhouse says to Meme, thinking up something to avoid sinking into an awkward silence, “my assignments never seem to go beyond building five. Do those get unlocked later or something?”
“That’s beyond our borders. You must never go there.”
“So, like, even you guys never go beyond building five?”
“Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden...forbidden for him,” Meme answers without stopping to focus his gaze. His head twitches like a front yard sprinkler in the summertime, and Milhouse’s ears must run like children through its spray to catch the message in the din of the underground bar.
“What do you mean?” Milhouse asks in confusion.
“Javier, you’re never going to get a straight answer out of him,” Big Bucks says, returning with a beer in each hand and setting one down in front of his apprentice “What are you asking him about?”
“Oh, thank, Terry. I was just asking him about what is beyond building five. My assignments never go there.”
“Oh, just more of the same.”
“So you work out there?”
“Me? No. There are other teams out there, I’ve heard. Every five or so buildings is supposed to have their own.”
“Every five? So how many are there?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Big Bucks says. “A lot. I mean, you’ve seen the outside of this place. It’s huge. I’d say fifteen, maybe. Twenty at most. You hear stories of course, selectors who claim they have met travelers from far away sectors who say The Warehouse goes on forever, but of course that isn’t true. We know that just on the other side of these buildings is a railroad track, a strip mall, and then the interstate.”
“I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars.”
“Oh boy, you really wound him up, didn’t you? Or maybe it was just that god awful martini.”
“So no one knows for sure?” Milhouse asks as Meme starts in about a hockey rink so large that players never see their competition, and only rarely their own teammates.
“Of course people know. Just ask a floor manager if you’re that interested, but what’s it matter? Just more rooms full of boxes and more assholes like us. They probably even have their own bar out there, their own Milhouse, and Big Bucks, and Meme.”
“And Arizona,” Milhouse finishes.
“No, no. There’s only one of me.”
“Don’t waste your time worrying about it. Hey, looks like the pool table’s free. Y’all care for a game? Me and Javier v. Arizona and Meme?”
“Loser buys the next round?”
“Alright, but only that one more round then I’m out of here or I’m going to be miserable tomorrow.”
Several rounds later: a group of veterans have joined the boys, and they are gathered around a long table crammed into a corner of the bar, drinking feverishly, sweating, pounding the table in enthusiasm. Boxing Day foam escapes from glasses and turns the refurbished pallet table slick and dark with a thin layer of standing beer.
The veterans, with sobriquets like Goldie, Koopa, Whale Bone, Vroom, The Sandwich Man, and Doctor Doctor, are endlessly filling Milhouse with advice whilst topping off his glass from the communal pitcher.
“Get good shoes, man. Don’t go cheap. Bad pair of steel toes will kill you.”
“You know what the steel toes are for?” The Sandwich Man cuts in, eyes gleaming with mischief.
“To protect your toes?” Milhouse says rather unconfidently.
“No sir. The edge is sharp. Under pressure, it comes straight down. WHAK! Like a fucking guillotine and your toes are Marie Antoinette.”
“Marie Antoinette didn’t get guillotined, dumbass!” Koopa cuts in.
“Bitch, you don’t even know who Marie Antoinette is.”
“Do too. She was like an actress. She got killed in a car accident. That’s how her head came off.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Koopa?” Goldie asks and the table erupts in laughter, one or two desperate to get the conversation going again lest they be asked about this merry Aunt what-was-it-again?
“See, Milhouse, you’re going to be fine,” Goldie says, named so for the huge gold chain he wears at all times. It’s dangling over his exposed chest now, shining just a bit amongst his puff of chest hair. “Anyone can do this job. Doesn’t matter if you’re fat as shit, or dumb as hell,” his pointer finger slowly drifting from its original target of Big Bucks and landing on Koopa to general mirth.
“Bullshit!” Arizona is quick to say. Goldie looks towards him, bushy in the eyebrows, with large rimless eyeglasses, and teeth never surveyed by modern orthodontics. “Someone couldn’t just walk in off the street and do this.”
“I’m not talking about someone walking in off the street, but once they go through the proper training...sure, just about anyone with working arms and legs.”
“Well then that’s a slippery slope,” Arizona counters. “With the proper training...that could go for just about any job in the world.”
“Sure,” allows Goldie with a grin.
“What, you think just anyone could do anything? You think Doctor Doctor could be a doctor?”
“Maybe not a doctor, but for most jobs. I mean, what is anyone actually doing anyway?”
“Professional athlete,” Koopa puts in.
“Okay, now y’all are just looking for the exemptions.”
“Teacher,” Big Bucks asks, having once dreamt the path for himself.
“Depending on the subject,” Goldie nods his head and the chain shifts just a smidge, like an overstuffed snake after a big meal trying to get comfy in her hole as Big Bucks stifles a sad smile.
“No, that’s bullshit,” Arizona continues, unconvinced. “This job takes a certain level of mental fortitude,” he explains to Milhouse. “Some people have it, some people don’t.”
“This job creates a certain level of mental fortitude,” Goldie amends.
“No way,” Arizona stands firm. “The boxes will get you if you let them,” he says, dropping his voice and speaking directly, intensely, to Milhouse. “They’ll get you, and get you and get you. Thin needle beaks pecking ever away. Pecking and pecking like skeletal buzzards hungry for your very soul. They get, get, get,” he says, imitating a vulture feasting on carrion with pointed fingers atop the table as the tavern falls into silence. “Once they get you, you’re got. You ever been got?” he asks standing up. “You ever been got, boy?” he asks more loudly, leaning in so that he is standing over Milhouse, his massive form casting a shadow that darkens the run of the table. “There is no Warehouse. There is only some collective magic that keeps us all believing we are in one, that there is some grocery store where all this endless stuff is going, that there is a population to feed. In reality, we are each in a vast desert of alienation. To cross it, to go beyond it, is to reach one’s true self, but are you up to the task? Do you know what it is to work shift, after shift, out there, with no hope of distraction, nothing to do but to think, to stand locked in the gaze of a mirror for twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a day? Nothing to look at but your own miserable self. Every sin comes back to you. Every regret. Every mistake. Every stupid little thing. Can you handle that? Most can’t. People don’t last long here, but you already knew that. It’s not the labor that gets them. It’s that horrible mirror. Listen closely out there on the floor. The small talk isn’t friendly. It’s desperate. Desperate for company, for distraction, but we are each of us alone in a desert beneath the unblinking sun of our own eye. Under our feet, living in some dark cavern in the earth, there is a serpent-headed beast, and if we ever hope to leave the desert, we must descend into that cavern and face it, but even if you gather the courage to go down there, the beast feeds on the very weapons used against it, so battle is pointless. You become lost even further, in the cavern beneath the desert, and then you start to forget yourself. Lines become blurry. Things get confusing...are you the hero sent to kill the beast, or are you the beast? But only when the hero drops their weapon and opens their arms to embrace the beast, only then, together, can they burst through the volcano mouth in a flaming loogie from the earth’s interior, only then will they emerge as neither hero nor beast, but as something entirely new, fused of the two in the molten spittle. Only then will you be able to cross the desert.”
Arizona sucks in the excess moisture that had built in his mouth during his speech and the sound of him swallowing it back down is heard throughout the tavern. Milhouse looks to the others, but they are only staring down at their drinks in silence, as if remembering something. It is Arizona who breaks his own silence, with pure, unrestrained laughter, and that is the most frightening thing of all.
[Exit Music]