It all started with a click...
WELCOME TO THE FACTORY
A brass sign creaks in front of your face, so close you can smell the tang of metal. You'd expected another sterile webpage but instead you find yourself standing barefoot on a cold concrete floor. The factory you've been so informally welcomed to is a large empty black space. The lights are dim and you can see but a few feet in front of you into a void defined only by the presence of swept cement.
In the distance there are whizzing sounds and loud bangs alternated with whistles and the ringing of shrill bells. You could turn and run back to the safety of the bright lights and the Places You Know, instead you walk towards the noise and are rewarded by the sight of the presses. Large shiny gold and copper toned machines, they gleam before your eyes, well oiled, well tended, well loved. Well welled.
The presses are in action. Sheets of paper rife with words flick between brass fittings, expelled in puffs of steam. You look up to see how tall they are but your eyes fail you for the great machines seem to tower endlessly towards the roof. There is no evidence of a solid canopy in this place, the light dwindles as the machines rise and eventually disappear into the dusk of the heavens.
Are you alone? Initially you think so, then a grinning young lady swings between machines, moving with an alacrity born of practice. She swoops out of the darkness and grasps a pipe here, a brace there, hurling her body through the dark spaces lit by grated bulbs. Then she is gone.
By some of the presses are stacks of pages are bound by brown twine. Pfffoot! Pfffoot! The machine expels them at regular intervals. You pick one slim bundle of paper up and another appears in its place almost immediately.
Walking on, you find your feet no longer scraping against harsh bare concrete. Soft carpet cushions your toes as you discover the reader's alcove, a space defined by bookshelves. In the alcove you are most certainly not alone. There are many high backed arm chairs ranged in comfortable solitude. Gazing across, you can see the tops of other people's heads, their faces turned towards manuscripts like the one you hold in your hand. Some of them glance up, smile a brief distracted smile and return to their reading.
"Please, sit." A warm, wise voice with the timbre of falling leaves alerts you to the woman by your side. She is dressed in a long black robe cinched at the waist with a silk tie. Her hair is likewise dark, falling straight past her shoulders in one long follicular cascade. Her skin gleams with health and good humor as her crimson lips curl to smile at you. You meet her eyes and see that they are full of stories, stories once told, stories being told and stories yet to be told. She is mother to them all.
You sit as much out of a desire to please her as a desire to take the weight off your feet. Her smile grows wider and she nods with approval before drifting back out of your field of vision. You are left with the manuscript in your hands, a pleasant weight on your lap.
The twine feels rough against your fingers as you free the pages and begin to read....
