George, Act 1
When the grinding clangor of the end of shift alarm blared out through the production floor, George let out a relieved sigh, pulling off the thin blue latex gloves and using his pointer finger as a slingshot point to fire them into a nearby trash barrel jutting out from just under the central point of the conveyor belt. A few others of his coworkers tried doing the same, though one poor fellow’s shot strayed a little high, knocking a bottle of fuel additive right off the belt where it had come to a stop. Thankfully, the bottle had already gone through the capper, so nothing spilled on the cement factory floor.
The usual aches and grumbles were discussed in muttered, quiet voices among his peers, though George himself did not count himself herein. Despite the general reputation of the plant outside of its walls, he didn’t find the job all that bad. It didn’t pay very well, though it was enough that he was able to make his child support payments and keep up with all of his bills, but the 34-year-old George Collins never really felt that he was going to exactly ‘get ahead’ while working for Hawking Manufacturing.
Ambling along in the midst of the pack as he and his fellow first shift workers headed for the lockers near the main entrance to the factory, George peeled off to the time clock, punching in his employee number to the tablet mounted to the wall and selecting the ‘Clock Out’ option before heading to the locker he’d stashed his coat and lunch pail in.
The locker door creaked open on hinges that likely hadn’t seen an oiling since the locker was installed, and the smells of sweat and chemicals spilled on boots, shoes and clothes engulfed him among his coworkers. From the upper shelf of the locker he claimed his cellular phone and turned it on. He had a voice message, according to the symbol on the bottom of the welcome screen, and as he pulled on his coat, he plugged in his headphones and listened to the message.
“George, don’t forget to pick the kids up at noon on Friday,” his ex-wife’s voice chimed in on the message. “Their school is doing a half-day for staff development. Also, Dmitri came by yesterday and wants to know if you’re ever going to sell this truck, and I’m tempted to just tell him to give me five-hundred credits so I can get it the fuck out of my driveway. Call him.”
George groaned aloud, trying to keep himself from cursing Cynthia too much. He knew that he was going to have to call her back, but he didn’t want to have an argument right after getting off of work, so for the time being, he simply made his way out to the gravel parking lot and ambled toward his vehicle, pausing beside his driver’s side door to look off into the nearby woods.
The plant was situated in a kind of isolated portion of one of the more rural suburbs of Holek, accessible only by an unpaved hardpack roadway on the south side of the township of East Evans. With no wind on the day, the nearby woods that surrounded the plant seemed almost eerie in their silent stillness, as if the trees were observing their human neighbors, and did not approve of what they were doing.
George felt a little tremor run down his legs, then clambered down into the car. He let it run just long enough to warm up, the tail end of winter laying a thin layer of frost on his windows, and once his front and rear windshields were cleared enough to see through comfortably, he pulled out of his spot and rolled onto the hardpack roadway.
Home was only a six or seven minute drive away, and when he arrived at the parking lot to his building, George remained in the idling car as he looked at the fading, crumbling façade of the structure. From the outside, the apartment building looked like an absolute shithole, and from first-hand knowledge, George could confirm that it was indeed a complete shithole. But given his financial obligations, and his need for three bedrooms, it was all he could afford.
George killed the engine, hitched another heavy sigh, and headed up the narrow, cracked walkway to the front of the building. He passed into the front lobby, halting to take his keys back out in order to open his mailbox and pull out the handful of advertising flyers and envelopes therein. He didn’t bother to rifle through them just yet, taking to the stairwell through another heavy door and climbing up to the third floor.
His apartment door didn’t match any of the other three unit doors on the third floor, a point he had asked one of his neighbors about shortly after moving in. “Cops had to use a battering ram to knock it in on the last guy lived there,” the man who lived across from his unit explained, an older gentleman whose grown son had been forced to move back in with him after losing his job some months earlier.
“Cops,” George asked.
“Yeah, he was selling smack,” said the neighbor, a stout, grungy man with a heavy accent of some origin that George couldn’t quite identify readily. Now, the divorced father of three looked at the gold-plated ‘11’ on his apartment door and slid his unit key into the slot, making his way inside.
Flicking on the light over his small, round dining room table, George winced, having forgotten that he’d had to replace one of the four bulbs in the fixture overhead with a too-bright bulb he happened to have on hand. The unit opened immediately on the dining room area, with the kitchen off to his right through a narrow archway, and living room straight ahead past the dining room, separated mostly by the transition from laminate floor to carpeting.
George could still smell the bacon he’d cooked up that morning before heading off to work, breathing the trace fragrance deeply as he set his lunch pail on the table. “Well, no time like the present,” he said to himself, tossing the mail down beside the pail and dialing his ex-wife from his list of contacts. The line rang twice before she picked up.
“George?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” he replied. “How much is Dmitri offering for the truck,” he asked, making his way to the fridge and retrieving a beer. He popped the top with a twist, holding the phone to his ear by craning his neck to the side.
“He didn’t give me a figure, but whatever he offers, you should just say ‘fine’ as long as it’s over eight-hundred. I just got the bill from the hospital for Adam’s arm, they want to charge us seven-hundred dollars for the visit.”
“What the shit,” George barked, almost spraying his first swallow. “They didn’t even do any X-rays, they felt around on his arm and put it in a cast for Christ’s sakes!”
“Well, my insurance alone isn’t great about this, George,” Cynthia snapped back. “You need to sign the kids up for supplemental coverage.”
“I told you before, I can’t afford any more money coming out of my checks, Cyn,” George replied. “I have a hard enough time keeping food in the fridge and the cabinets.”
“But I’ll bet you’ve got money for beer,” she fired back. George didn’t rise to the bait, as he might have as recently as just a few months back; he’d finally come to recognize that this was just part of the routine of their conversations, especially over the phone. He’d taken the wind completely out of her sails for about a month, back when he admitted point-blank that yes, his drinking had gotten out of control at one point, and that this was a major contributing factor for the meltdown of their relationship. She’d not only thanked him quite calmly for his admission, but she had completely left the topic alone for almost three weeks. Now, here it came once more, a little poke to try and fluster him.
“I’m serious, Cynthia,” he said after taking a sip and setting the bottle aside on the table. “I’m already on the razor’s edge.”
“Maybe think about getting a second job,” she said.
“Sooo, what? Never have a day off? Never have time to spend with the kids? Pay for a babysitter or daycare on the days when I have them and be even more burned out?” Cynthia sighed loudly on her end of the line, causing George to shake his own head. “I maybe just need to look for a better-paying job, but I don’t have a lot of marketable skills,” he said.
“I know, George, I know. Did you get my message?”
“Yes, I’ll get them at noon. You told me a couple weeks ago, I already took the half-day at work,” he said. “Talk to you later,” he said, hanging up before they could ramp up again into hostility. He tossed the phone down on the table, sat down, and as he sipped more of his beer, looked through the mail.
And there among the flyers, he came upon what he could only think was perhaps a sign of divine providence; a full-page recruiting advert for the nearby Ganges Processing Center, looking to hire on new associates at 15.50 Imperial Credits per hour.
**
George gave her a mild grin as he tousled his son Eric’s hair, watching as he, Adam and Celia darted around their mother to head back into the house. “So, how were they this weekend?”
“Well, Adam wasn’t exactly thrilled about not being able to do much outside, but that Gamestation saw a lot of use. He can still move his fingers some, which helps.” Cynthia, arms folded over her chest, shrugging in her heavy red cardigan against the chill coming in from the porch.
“Kids are good at figuring these things out,” she quipped. “Everything went well, otherwise?”
“The boys hate sharing a room, and I think Celia’s pretty well disgusted with the place every time they’re over,” George answered. “But they’re complaining less about it, so that’s a small victory.” He reached into his heavy brown jacket and pulled out the flyer he’d folded up and tucked inside, opening it for her to look at. “I’m thinking about changing jobs,” he said evenly. Cynthia just looked at the flyer, then raised her eyebrows at him.
“I’ve heard things about that place, George,” she said cautiously. “People say it’s pretty brutal working there.” George smirked and shrugged his shoulders.
“Most people these days don’t like to put forth a genuine effort, Cyn. I’ll be fine. I have to do some kind of assessment questionnaire at their recruitment office, and after that they’ll set up an in-person interview, usually within the week.”
“Are you still going to stay at the plant until you hear something,” she asked, offering him back the flyer.
“Well of course,” he said, tucking the flyer away and running a hand through his unkempt hair. “Anyway, I have to get going to do that assessment. Are your folks still taking the kids down to Adventureland this weekend,” he asked, pausing two steps down off the porch to inquire.
“Oh, yeah, they’re still going,” Cynthia replied. “You know my father, hard-headed as ever.” George chewed on his lower lip for a moment, then gave her a look of genuine concern.
“He shouldn’t go on any of those rides with the kids, Cyn. He’s still recovering.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“The man had a heart attack, Cynthia, and not his first,” he pointed out. “I know you and I are done, but the man called me ‘son’ for nine years; I still give a shit what happens to him.” Cynthia seemed to hug herself more tightly, and gave him a silent, understanding nod before turning around and heading back inside, easing the door shut on the house.
George headed back down the front walk to his car, idling at the curb, and clambered down in, heading toward the Ganges Processing Center on the edge of Holek.
**
George leaned forward against the bathroom sink, looking at himself in the wide mirror. He didn’t care too much for what he saw there; a pale, haunted man with dark green eyes and thinning red hair stared back at him, bags under his eyes, his plain black polo shirt and faded jeans seeming to billow out around him. He’d lost almost eighty pounds since being kicked out of the house a year ago, reduced to a fragment of who he’d been. His beard and mustache were neat and trimmed now, though he had, at first, let them grow sort of unchecked and wild, looking after a couple of months like a vagabond.
The George Collins in the mirror and the one on his own driver’s license hardly looked like the same person anymore. But he had to get a grip on himself, head out of this bathroom, and go take this automated assessment.
Splashing some water on his face and toweling off, George headed back out into the recruiting vestibule and approached the waist-high faux-granite top counter, behind which sat an average-looking young woman wearing a picture ID badge on a lanyard around her neck showing her name was Helen. “Hi, Helen,” George said after clearing his throat to snag her attention. She gave him no smile, just a look of surface-level attention. “I’m here to do the assessment,” he said.
Here she finally graced him with a tight-lipped smile. “Okay. Did you already fill out a front form and sign in?”
“Yes I did,” he said. She nodded and clacked away at her keyboard for a moment.
“Name?”
“George Collins,” he said.
“Okay. Date of birth?”
“April 8th, 1986. Canandaigua, 1st Imperial Territory.” She nodded again, then squinted at her screen for a moment and looked up at him.
“Okay, you’re going to go down that hallway,” she said as she stood up and handed him a red plastic clipboard with a single form clipped to it, pointing with her free hand around to her right, past the check-in counter area. “Second door on the left, and tell James that you’re assigned to unit five.”
“James, unit five, got it,” George said, skirting around the counter area and down a wide corridor of plush carpeting and flat, blank mauve walls. The first doorway on his left opened upon what looked like some kind of storage room, filled with neon colored vests and blaze orange traffic cones, and in the second doorway he spotted a wider chamber with six rows of folding tables, each one hosting several computer terminal monitors, keyboards and rolling desk chairs.
In the corner opposite the door sat a small brown desk, and behind this sat a short, stumpy-looking fellow, also wearing an ID badge on a lanyard. As he approached with his clipboard, George spotted the name, James, at the bottom. “James?” The man looked up from his own monitor with an instant, friendly smile that almost parted lips to reveal teeth, but didn’t quite go that far. “I’m George Collins. I was told to tell you I’m on unit five.”
“Right, follow me,” said James, bounding up from his seat. For a stout and somewhat rotund fellow, James moved with a kind of queer grace that could only have been achieved, in George’s estimation, with years of practicing such motions and behaviors. Up near the front of the room, the wall of which hosted a long dry erase board, there was another set of long folding tables. James guided him to the front-right-most terminal and pulled the chair out, then indicated George should sit at it with a wave of his hand.
“George, before you get started, I’m going to go ahead and do something that, under normal circumstances, I would never do, but I’ve been advised to go ahead with it,” James began. George didn’t like the sound of this right off the bat, but he just turned himself half toward the big fellow in the chair, looking up at him. “This is one of those kind of questionnaires where there isn’t really a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer, but asks you a lot of hypotheticals or poses statements, and you choose from a range from ‘Strongly Disagree’ to ‘Strongly Agree’. For most of these questions, a lot of people would be either ‘Agree’, ‘Disagree’, or ‘I don’t feel strongly either way’. Those are what we call ‘gray responses’.”
“Okay.”
“Ganges doesn’t want gray responses,” James said. “If your recruit candidate profile comes up gray, the system automatically tags you as an unsuitable hire, so you won’t get the job.” George raised an eyebrow at him, licking his lips.
“Um, James? Why would you tell me that,” he asked. “I mean, doesn’t that kind of go against what you’re trying to do in terms of getting people you actually want working here?” James did one of those quick looks around the room, assuring himself that nobody else was around to hear him respond.
“Honestly, I normally would agree with you, but we’re under a lot of pressure right now to fill the vacancies we’ve got in the facility,” he said quietly. “We need to onboard at least three-hundred and fifty people to get back up to standard numbers, and if we don’t do that in the next month, we’re going to start seeing some major heat down here.”
George might normally have dismissed the man, but for the hint of panic he could spot in James’s eyes. The recruiter seemed to wholeheartedly believe and fear the kind of scolding that might be coming from on high if he and the others in the recruitment office didn’t shore up the workforce. George nodded at him and said, “Okay, you got it. Strongly agree or strongly disagree only.” James gave him a tight-lipped look and patted him on the back, then returned swiftly to his own desk.
George faced the monitor, used the mouse to hover over the ‘Get Started’ button, and clicked it to begin his assessment.
**
George lit a cigarette, leaning back against the fence strafing the concrete walk into the plant as the first glow of the rising sun, muted by a blanket of gray clouds overhead, illuminated the parking lot. He took a long drag and nodded to Kelly, one of his fellow line workers, as she slipped past him toward the door. Another line worker, a burly fellow named Clint, ambled up slowly to a stop and gave a quick point at him.
“Could I get one of those off you, George,” Clint asked. George said nothing, just pulling another cigarette from his pack and offering it to the other fellow, followed by the lighter. Clint held the first inhale for a long moment, releasing a thin stream of smoke with a satisfied sigh. “God damn, I always tell myself I’m going to be good and stay off, but with Kevin home now, with his shit going on in his head, it’s just stressing Colleen and I out to the breaking point.”
“What happened to him over there,” George asked bluntly.
“His unit got ambushed, it was just him and a couple of other guys that managed to survive,” Clint replied, shaking his head. “I mean, you can’t imagine what that’s like, George. Afghanistan has been unchanged for hundreds of years, but the Empire somehow thinks that just because we’ve got this massive army and all this tech that we’re just going to put boots on the ground and shift how things run?” He snorted, hocked a wad of phlegm off to one side, and shook his head again. “It’s a stupid fucking war. My boy should’ve never been made to go there.”
George offered no reply, thinking instead about the war’s surrounding circumstances as a whole. He himself hadn’t been directly affected by it, but there were few people in the Weiland Empire who didn’t have an opinion to voice on the matter. The High Council had moved five years earlier to send forces overseas, largely because there had been a great deal of pressure to do so after His Holiness, Emperor Orry, made a sweeping address to the nation. In his oratory, the Emperor implied that the nation of Afghanistan was housing in secret the mastermind behind the attacks on the Empire on September 11th, 2001.
But George didn’t care much about such things, especially since they’d happened so long ago now, and because what did the ongoing war over there have to do with him making enough money to support himself and pay for child support and medical coverage? To his point of view, the two were as far separated as could be.
Returning to the moment, he tried to think of what to say to Clint. “Have you taken him to see a psychiatrist,” he asked. Clint scoffed.
“I’m not going to pay some quack to tell me what I already know about my kid, that he’s got PTSD. That’s kind of a no-brainer. What I really want to know is how we can help him get past it,” he said, tossing the butt of his bummed cigarette. “I’ll see you in there, bell’s gonna ring in a few,” he said, shuffling off inside the plant.
George was about to head in as well, when his cell phone buzzed at him. He checked the screen and found himself looking at an e-mail alert. He opened his mail, read the new message, his heart quickening as he read the body of the missive. He felt the smile spreading over his face, and as he pushed the phone back into his pocket, he thought about how he was going to handle this news.
In the long run, he just waited until the shift foreman, Carl Jackson, arrived in his usual dark blue jumpsuit, offering Carl a firm handshake and a heartfelt thanks for his time at the plant, but he’d gotten a new job offer, and they wanted him to start the very next day so long as he could come in that morning and do some paperwork. Carl was friendly about the news and the suddenness of the notice, and even offered George his personal business card, in the event things didn’t turn out how he’d hoped.
“Just remember that there’s a spot here for you if you decide to come back,” Carl said, holding the card out between pointer and middle finger. George thanked him, took the card, and tucked it into his wallet, back behind his driver’s license. He’d forget it was there within a few days, and for the moment, it didn’t matter; he was about to be in a much better financial situation, so why would he ever think about coming back?
**
“Now, this is how we do every new group of associates,” said the late-middle-aged man standing at the front of the room. The entire wall behind him was segmented into three long dry erase boards, the right side partly blocked from view by a pair of folks seated at laptops on a long folding table. They each wore a purple zipper sleeveless vest, while the gentleman leading the introduction wore one that was blaze orange and yellow, the back hosting the word ‘Tutor’ in white block lettering. “You’re only going to be with us today and tomorrow this week, and then you’re on the schedule and in our system, full-time, starting next Sunday. Your group has been hired to work front half nights,” he said, beginning to pace at the front of the room, his hands folded behind his back loosely, head slightly inclined as he looked at the floor, but continued to address the new associates.
George, seated at one of the smaller round tables with three other nervous-looking middle-aged men and one waifish young woman, felt a queer kind of tension coming off of the tutor as he spoke. It reminded him a little of the sort of feeling one might get from a drill instructor for the Imperial Military. “Front half nights means that you will work Sunday night through Wednesday night, four ten-hour shifts, from 5;30pm to 4am. I know what you’re thinking, that’s ten and a half hours,” said the tutor, his ID badge naming him ‘Neal’. He pivoted on his heels to face the new hires, back straight, shoulders set wide, once again bringing to George’s mind a drill sergeant. “That is because you will not be paid for your half-hour lunch break at midnight.”
George took a couple of quick notes in his pocket notebook, marking down his workdays and hours. A hand went up from one of the other men at his table, and though Neal let out an audible sigh, he pointed at the new hire with his hand raised. “Are the breaks always at the same times,” he asked.
“That’s a negative,” said Neal. “Your half-hour break will be Center-wide, always at midnight, but your two fifteen-minute breaks will vary depending on your department, and your department manager will check in with other department managers before your shift to determine what time each group will take their fifteens. Now, if you’ll open your Welcome Guide, we’re going to go straight to page four, which should be of interest to any of you who have dependents at home.”
George flipped to page four of his Guide, and felt his breath catch in his chest; according to the first sentence of the page, health insurance coverage began immediately for all associates, and if they had dependents to cover, they could do so within twenty-one days from orientation, meaning he could cover all three of the kids immediately.
“Your healthcare coverage begins right now, tonight, ladies and gentlemen,” said Neal with a tight grin, pointing to a replica of one of the two HR folks’ laptop screen projected on the dry erase board just behind and to his left, George’s right. “The cost is only twenty dollars to you per paycheck, and your spouse and children are only an additional five dollars each, per our contracted program. Dental coverage is available, but you are not auto-opted in, and have twenty-one days to add it for five dollars per week, or fifteen dollars for yourself and up to four dependents who qualify. For those of you who are divorced, you may cover your children, but not your ex-wife or ex-husband, per Imperial mandate.”
George sat with a blissful smile through the remainder of the talk-through, and when it was over an hour and a half later, Neal informed them that they could all go home, that they would be counted for a full ten-hour day. “Tomorrow night, though, we’ll be showing you all around to your assigned departments. Each of you should have a single sheet with your department assignments and an overview and expectations in your onboarding folders, so read through it when you get home.”
And George did so, the moment he got back to the grubby flat that was his home. Sitting at the kitchen table, he opened the yellow folder with it’s large green ‘G’ on the cover, and pulled out his Assignment Overview-
Employee Designation: GC6886
Initial Department: Packaging
Area Manager: Hannah Wolf
Task Overview: GC6886 will retrieve order items from Placement walls assigned each night and place them neatly and securely in a system-designated shipping box. GC6886 will apply assigned and printed shipment sticker to box once it is filled and taped shut, then place package on the Outbound Conveyor Line. GC6886 will perform this process throughout their shift in accordance with Safety and Quality Guidelines.
And that was all the paper said. It didn’t provide any pictures to give him an idea of what his equipment would look like, but George assumed that would be for the next night. When he finally went to bed, he found himself wondering why Ganges would refrain from letting anyone see such materials before starting their actual job.
**
As he followed along with the tour group, a small transmitter hooked to his belt and an earpiece set in his right ear, George listened as best he could, his eyes flitting everywhere around the broad warehouse floor, half a dozen different conveyor belts humming and rumbling along loudly to his right. Red plastic totes chuffed along on those conveyors, each one carrying either a single item, or several, depending on where it was heading throughout the sprawling campus within the exterior walls.
“Right here,” Neal said, using broad hand motions to corral his group of new hires toward a section off to the side of the main front walkway. This secondary area appeared to host a cage filled with crates, each one hosting different sizes of work gloves, safety knives, and reflective vests, as well as a few radio parts and batteries. On the floor directly behind him now was a pallet jack and several wooden pallets, as well as some traffic cones. “What we’re going to do here, I’m going to demonstrate quickly for those of you unfamiliar how to use a pallet jack, and how we move them around the interior of the facility.”
He did a swift figure 8 around the cones, then had each member of the group perform the same task. George, having used plenty of jacks at his previous employer, had no problem with this simple task. When they were all done, Neal clapped his hands together. “All right, I want you folks to hang tight here for a minute, I’m going to go and fetch your area managers, and they’re going to take over with you for the remainder of the night. Now, before I go, did anybody need to give me information for medical coverage for dependents?”
George, along with several other of the newcomers, handed over printouts to Neal, and he bade them a wordless farewell with a wave of his fingers after collecting their walkies and earpieces, as well as their papers, in an empty red tote. George panned his eyes around, taking in the conveyors once more, wondering where within the facility he’d be placed.
It was only a few minutes before three different folks, wearing orange-and-blue vests and the kind of bright smiles that made George think of terrified mannequins, came rolling up on them from the direction Neal had headed away in. Each carried a lightweight notebook computer of some kind, crooked on one arm, and a radio on their hips.
George found himself transfixed by the shortest of the trio, a young woman who looked no older than 21 or 22. She could claim no title tied to beauty in the classical sense, nor in any fashion to which George Collins could himself could nod his head. What instead pulled his attention to her more powerfully than the other woman or the male area manager coming upon the new hires was the cast of her eyes.
He had seen eyes like these before, and recognized what lay behind them almost immediately. She shared the kind of glassy, reflective optics of Imperial vets returned from the battlefields of Afghanistan. The male area manager raised his hand quickly and addressed them, though George’s gaze remained fixed on the small young woman, whose ID badge identified her as ‘Hannah’. “All right, folks, I’m Michael, and I’m the area manager for Select Team 1. So, if you’ve been hired for the Selection Department, follow me,” he announced, turning on his heel and leading about half of the group away, back the way they had come.
Next came the taller of the two women, another young lady who had a somewhat more demure countenance, but whose frame and manner of speech, once she spoke up, spoke to a kind of gruffness associated typically with folks in the Imperial Midwest, the 4th and 5th Territories. “Okay, folks, I’m Sally, I’m an area manager for Ship Dock. If you’re here for Ship Dock, come with me, we’re going to go under this transom junction and head for the back of the warehouse, but first, you’re going to want to grab yourselves one of those yellow safety vests. Anyone and everyone coming to the Ship Dock, even if it’s just to run an errand or bring something down to us, you have to have a vest to step onto the shipping floor. First violation’s a warning and a write-up, second event is an immediate termination. Let’s move.” And so she guided five more new hires away, leaving only Hannah.
“Okay, folks, so this must mean that you’re my new packers, all riiiight,” she exclaimed with an energetic pump of her free fist in the air. Oh, Christ, she’s overcompensating, George thought. This can’t be good.
He would find out how ‘not good’ over the course of the next couple of weeks.