What Are They Really Making?

It was late at night, and she was walking through the overflow car park with her friend Dave. Dave had been a close friend since childhood, and the two of them were inseparable, though their relationship was purely platonic.  The car park was behind the out-of-town shops, and next to the scrapyard, which was full of shadows cast from the huge piles of discarded belongings.

Leaving the car park, they began to walk past the shops. She noticed that there was a small green light outside the back entrance to the DIY shop on their left, so they walked over to investigate. Her father had once been employed at the store, so she was familiar with it, and as she approached she noticed that the light was coming from a small monitor mounted outside the door, and that it most definitely had not been there before. Dave examined the monitor, and quickly deduced that it was actually a thumb scanner. All was not as it should be - why would a hardware shop need such high security that people would need to be scanned in by their thumbprints? Dave was apprehensive, intruders were obviously unwanted here, and he wanted to leave before there was any trouble. She, on the other hand, was excited by the whole situation, and Dave knew her well enough to realise that she had no intention of simply returning home and forgetting all about it. When she pressed her thumb against the scanner, Dave knew better than to try to stop her, but he never really believed that her print would be accepted, and was unsurprised when her attempts failed. He also knew better than to hope this setback would cause her to give up, it just made her more determined to get inside. While trying to figure out a way in, she slammed her palm against the heavy, white door, and they both stood open-mouthed as the door simply swung open. Overjoyed, she grabbed Dave’s hand and dragged him through the door into the dark corridor which now beckoned.

Despite the security efforts on the outside of the building, there seemed to be nothing to stop them from wandering round now that they were inside. The emerged from the corridor into a huge square room, from which a number of other corridors snaked off into darkness. The perimeter of the room was slightly raised, and there was a small set of three stairs leading down into the sunken inner part of the room. The floor on the perimeter was a dull grey, but the walls and everything else in the room, including the floor in the centre, was a bright, clinical white. All of the fixtures - the handrail on the stairs, the door handles, etc - were all made from a shining chrome. Right in the centre of the lowered middle section of the room was a huge chrome machine. It looked like a large pillar, about a metre in diameter, which extended from the floor to the ceiling. It had a number of panels and switches built into it, and near the ceiling it had a number of mechanical arms. As she approached it, she was struck by thoughts of all the cheesy late-night sci-fi flicks she had seen, and how this room and this machine would be at home in any one of them. 

She stared at the machine for some time, examining it from various different angles, but she couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be used for. While she was looking, she happened to notice a ridge on the wall opposite her. Upon further examination, she realised that the walls were in fact shop fronts, which had all been shuttered and painted white. It was a detail that would be very easy to miss unless you happened to be specifically studying the walls, but now that she had noticed it, she felt a growing sense of apprehension. It was only now that she realised that Dave had been quiet for a very long time, and when she turned round to check on him, she couldn’t see him. She searched round the room, but there was really nowhere for him to hide. She tried to tell herself that he’d just gone outside, out of fear of getting in trouble for trespassing, but somehow she knew that this wasn’t the case.

She looked back at the machine and tried to fathom what could have happened to her friend, when she heard someone clearing their throat behind her. She spun round in a panic, and found herself face to face with a man she’d never seen before. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, with black hair, but he was quite unremarkable. She could have passed him in the street a hundred times and never noticed him. He was wearing a white lab coat, which buttoned down one side, almost like a dentist’s tunic, over grey trousers. The coat was lined in a silver material, and had a silver insignia on one side. His hands were clasped behind his back. Although his demeanour was calm, and he was smiling, she knew that she was justified in feeling afraid of him. There was something menacing about him that she just couldn’t put her finger on. She considered running outside, but he was blocking her way out. Still very calmly, he asked her what she was doing here. She tried to act naturally when she replied that she was looking for her friend, but she knew her voice was wavering. The man said nothing and continued to stare at her. She broke from his gaze, and ran down the three steps into the centre of the room, and ran behind the large machine.

Suddenly, dozens of people swarmed into the room from the various corridors. Some were wearing the same outfit as the man, but others were dressed normally, and seemed to be simply strolling and chatting. Nobody seemed to notice her as she stood in the middle of the room, staring, just as nobody paid any attention to the machine. Hearing a grunting noise, she looked down, and was even more surprised to notice a small pig standing next to her. Again, nobody seemed to notice the pig, or any of the other animals which suddenly seemed to be wandering round the room, so she stooped to look at it more closely. Her rational mind was telling her that this was just an ordinary pig - that she’d stumbled into some animal testing laboratory, and this was one of the subjects which had escaped from its enclosure, but she couldn’t shake the nagging feeling deep down that she needed to protect the animal because it was somehow extremely close to her.

She started to feel as though she was in some sort of strange dream. The people continued to swarm around her, but still nobody seemed to see her. She couldn’t understand why the man in the lab coat had not followed her and asked her to leave, she didn’t know where Dave was, and she couldn’t understand where the pig had come from, or indeed where it had now wandered off to. She gazed round the room in a panic, and felt a rush of emotion when she noticed that there was in fact one person who seemed to have noticed her. Casually leaning against a wall, with one ankle crossed over the other, was a Japanese man wearing a Japanese-style school uniform. He had long hair, down to his shoulders, and she felt an immediate attraction to him. In his hands, he was carrying a tiny kitten, and was very gently stroking its back. Somehow, she felt that she knew this man, and she knew that his name was Hiroki. She started to approach him, and he stopped leaning and took a step forwards. He was smiling, and she knew that he would not try to hurt her, but she still felt slightly afraid of him. As she approached, she tried to speak to him, but she couldn’t seem to form the words. The room had started to become blurry, and she felt herself start to sway. As she fell, seemingly in slow motion, she could see Hiroki, still holding the kitten, leaning over her and smiling, until the image slowly faded to black.