By Christopher Dwyer
The pallet was sitting there for a second day. Three boxes wide, three boxes deep. Ten boxes high. Inside each box were ten kilos of SNaC pellets – a Supplemental Nutrition Concentrate and unimaginable wealth of sustenance to the hungry people who’d stacked it. Other than the food it contained, there was nothing extraordinary about the pallet, and it was identical to every one they’d stacked every day for as long as they could remember. Normally, pallets were hauled off by a Loader shortly after completion, but this one was sitting there in a dark recess in the rock wall for two days, like someone had parked it temporarily and forgotten about it.
Fillion leaned over to his coworker Avery and shouted over the pound and hum of the machines. “What’s that stack doing there?”
Avery didn’t look up, and shrugged. She already knew what he was talking about. She’d been watching it too.
“It’s been there since yesterday.” Fillion added.
“I’ve seen it.” Avery responded. “Some newb Loader probably forgot it there.”
“It’s not tagged.”
Avery already knew that as well. She shrugged.
“Should we tell a supervisor?” Fillion shouted.
Avery didn’t respond. She didn’t care about any misplaced pallets or talking to any supervisors. So the topic was dropped.
The next day, Zac from boxing came over.
“What’s that pallet doing there?”
Fillion and Avery shrugged.
“It’s been there for three days.” Fillion replied. “It’s not tagged.”
Zac stared at it, then went over to inspect it. It wasn’t in anyone’s way and seemed to have been forgotten there in the shadows. There was no tag to identify the shift that had left it behind. He went back over to Fillion and Avery, who were throwing boxes onto a new pallet.
“There’s no tag.” He announced.
Avery and Fillion shook their heads. Zac left, and Avery and Fillion assumed he went to report it. But he didn’t. He went back to boxing and watched the pallet too.
On Thursday morning the stack was still there. Nobody said anything until lunch, when Rona with the clipboard asked what it was doing there. The other three shrugged. She pretended to write something down, then walked away. It was expected that she was gone to fetch a Loader. But none came.
She did return later without her clipboard, and asked if anyone had been by for the pallet. Everyone shrugged like it wasn’t in front of them. The four of them stood there, silent, staring over at the neglected mound of food.
Fillion glanced at Rona. She looked back at him and he could see in her eyes that she too had a family to feed. “What should we do?” He asked her, and she knew what he meant.
She shrugged. “What would we do?”
Zac left the box machine and stepped closer. Avery stayed within earshot but kept stacking.
After a long moment, Fillion motioned for them to follow. Three of them followed him around some machinery, through a thrust of steam, to a dark spot in the corner of the giant cave where the shadow was thick. He pointed to the ground.
“What?” Avery asked.
He said nothing, but got down onto the floor feet first, then pushed himself backward and disappeared. It was an entrance that was too dark to see, but Fillion had found it. A moment later, he emerged again.
“Is it a cave?” Rona shouted just enough for them to hear.
Fillion nodded. “I found it a while ago. It’s pretty spacious in there. You could… hide things.”
“What about cameras?” Avery asked. Everyone looked around. The walls were black and wet. You’d never detect a thing.
“Not down here,” Rona responded. “They don’t have them to spare. They’re mostly for the subsectors.”
Silence fell upon them. Then they broke for lunch. Fillion was worried someone would rat him out and waited for The Inspector to show up and lead him to The Office.
But that didn’t happen. After lunch, Fillion tried to pretend he’d said nothing and never showed them the cave. He and Avery were slinging boxes, as usual, and not making eye contact. Then, as she heaved a box up to the top layer and was close to his ear, she said “how would we get them from the cave?”
He didn’t know the answer to that. He hadn’t thought about it. The cave was never meant to have a function. He’d never planned to heist a pallet of pellets.
Later, Rona reappeared to check the stock numbers and write them down. She stared at her paper for a long time then said to Fillion. “I find no record of that pallet. It can’t stay there though. It’s not safe.”
Fillion paused. It wasn’t in anyone’s way. From his station, Zac was watching on. Avery continued to work, but listened.
“Should I tell a supervisor?” Fillion asked.
“Do you know how it was missed?”
“No. That’s your job, isn’t it?”
Rona said nothing. She looked over and saw Zac watching them. Zac looked back down at the box passing through his hands.
“If it’s still there tomorrow, we’ll need to find a way to get rid of it.”
“Tell a supervisor?” Fillion repeated. He could afford to misinterpret nothing.
“Or a Loader.” Rona responded.
Fillion looked up and caught Avery’s eye. Then he looked over and caught Zac’s eye. All any of them had to do was tell one of the Loaders. But nobody did, then they went home to sleep on things. What would they do with a whole pallet of kibble that had been hidden in a cave? They were crazy. They weren’t going to have anything to do with such high risk behaviour. That was the end of it.
The stress worsened their hunger.
On Friday, lunch was finished but they were still starving. They were always starving. For the amount of labor expected, there wasn’t enough nutrition in the kibble to sustain them day after day. A hundred grams a day in five pellets with unspecified caloric content wasn’t enough to keep them going. The faces in the subsectors were gaunt because they were slowly starving. An entire extra pallet of kibble would go a long way to keeping them from suffering. And more importantly, those with kids would never have to see them hungry. For a while.
Avery and Fillion were grabbing and stacking like robots when Zac appeared.
“They taking that pallet away?”
Both ignored him at first. They knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
“She said it has to be gone by the end of shift.” Fillion eventually said without stopping.
“Did you tell a Supervisor?”
“No.”
“A Loader?”
Nobody answered.
“You gonna?” Zac asked.
“Why don’t you?” Fillion said. “I’m busy.”
Zac didn’t waste a moment. “Should we put it in the cave?”
Avery watched Fillion, and didn’t stop. Fillion was impatient with Zac, and under pressure. But he said nothing. He just kept moving boxes. Zac kept waiting and risked drawing heat if he lingered without purpose for too long.
“What if we get caught?” Fillion asked.
Silence. Both looked at Avery. She saw them and knew what they were waiting for.
“If there were four of us it would take approximately two minutes to get the full pallet into the cave.” She said abruptly. “If we worked together. I’ll only do it if it’s four of us.”
Rona appeared as though summoned. “What are you doing?”
They were startled.
“Nothing.” Zac responded.
“I can see that.”
Fillion and Avery kept loading. Zac leaned into Rona’s ear. “In order to make that stack disappear we need help.”
“Did you tell The Supervisor?”
“No.”
“Inspector?”
“No.”
“Loader?”
“No.”
“Has anyone else been notified, made mention, or acknowledged this pallet?”
Zac looked at Fillion and Avery, who both shook their heads without stopping.
The box machine suddenly jammed up. Zac was absent from his post, and the boxes were making a crumpled mess. The line shut down and an accusatory whistle went off.
Zac ran back to his post. Everyone else went back to their duties. White hats were everywhere, and Zac took a beating from an Inspector.
It was quarter to midnight. They would be finished in fifteen minutes. It was hard to believe a pallet would sit there all week, unnoticed by a Supervisor, or Inspector, or Loader. But there it was. Nobody seemed to know it existed except them. They were betting on it.
When the big red digital clock read 12:00, Zac was still angry from his beating and headed expressly for the pallet, disappearing around its back, and pulled the first box down to march it into the shadows. Fillion saw him do it and knew this was the decisive moment. This was the line between walking away or gambling their lives.
He moved quickly across the floor to the pallet, doing the exact same as Zac had done. Avery followed, and from a direction nobody expected, Rona joined them but was too small to reach the top layer. As Fillion passed her a box, he looked into her eye. They would do anything for their kids, and could die trying.
They worked as efficiently as unorganized people could. Soon there was a heap of boxes and uncountable pellets on the floor of the cave, and four people heaving and asking themselves what they had just done. They’d made efficient time.
“What do we do with the pallet?” Avery asked. “It can’t stay there.”
“There’s a spot in the back.” Fillion whispered. “In the shadows. I’ll put it there. We can break it down and get it out piece by piece later.”
“So what now?” Rona asked.
Nobody knew what happened now.
“Put some in your pockets,” Fillion said, leaning down and opening a box. “Just this one. I’ll open a bag and you fill your pockets.”
He tore open the corner of one of the bags. It felt strange. He’d sealed thousands of them, but never opened one.
“Not too much,” He whispered. “Don’t get greedy. Just enough for a few meals for your families. There’s more here later. Nothing happened.”
They each filled their pockets with hearts racing and pounding into their throats. Every second spent there was a second they weren’t at their posts. The shift was nearly over, they had to get back to work. Surely the box machine had not been free of jams for an entire eight minutes straight.
Zac was the first out of the cave, with pellets spilling from his pockets. He hobbled off to his post and the others emerged from the cave and immediately went to their places to resume work for the last four minutes. They had to act normal. Nothing was happening.
The whistle finally blew and each of them jumped. They were frozen in a moment, then at once burst toward the exit.
The Inspectors revealed themselves from behind the machinery and blocked their paths. Fillion, Avery, Zac and Rona were caught with pellets rammed into their uniform pockets. Pellets they had taken just to be able do the physical work that was demanded of them.
“I’ve given you everything!” Avery hissed as they were handcuffed. The Inspectors agreed, but reasoned that treason is treason.
They were taken down a long hallway. Rona wondered what would happen to her children. She was angry and desperate, and knew it was a set up. “You left the pallet there!”
The Inspectors denied nothing.
“Why?” Fillion asked. “All we do is work for the City. Our contribution is all that we have to give – our body and soul. We’re starving, what do you expect from broken people?”
They stopped walking. The Lead Inspector pushed a lift button. “We placed wagers,” he dryly stated without making eye contact. “You are replaceable.”
Rona became frantic. “I was doing this for my kids! Just to feed them! You bastards!”
“They will become wards of the City now.”
“And you’ll put them down here!” Fillion hissed.
The Inspector shrugged. “It is the circle of life.”
The lift arrived. They were loaded inside.
Avery was not surprised, and couldn’t waste time being angry with herself. She had to come up with a plan, but panic clouded her thoughts.
They were going up. All the way up.
Up they went for minutes, the lift grinding and scraping its way as it tested the strength of its pulley. The seven-level freefall might be better than what awaited them above.
When the lift finally stopped and poorly aligned itself with the outer door, it opened and a rush of cool air flooded in. It was more oxygen than they’d ever breathed at once, and it coursed through their veins like a super power.
“Get out,” The Lead Operator commanded. He prodded Fillion forward, who glared back. Avery, Zac and Rona climbed hesitantly out of the lift to the ground outside. Only Rona had ever seen the surface before, but it had been so long ago that she barely remembered it.
“You are banished from the City henceforth. Well wishes!” The Lead Inspector yelled over the hum as the lift door closed.
That was it. No firing squad or pleading. They were banished but not executed. They felt a premature sense of relief.
Zac wasted no time and burst forth in a sprint, trailing SNaC pellets behind him and disappearing behind a large air intake fan.
Fillion turned to the remaining two. “Our chances of survival increase if we stay together.”
Avery and Rona nodded.
“So what now?” He asked.
There was a scream from the direction Zac had gone.
Everyone jumped. No other sounds followed.
“Got your box cutter?” Avery asked, concealing hers between fingers.
Fillion reached to the back of his coveralls. “I do.”
“I don’t,” Rona said with an edge of panic.
“Stay between us. And stop talking.” Avery whispered, inspecting the shadows around them.
Something about being outdoors felt stimulating. Real air was vitalizing and the breeze brushed their skin and teased sensations they’d never felt. They felt powerful but terrified. Freedom came with vulnerability.
None of them knew where to go, so each stayed in their spot. They inspected the darkness, and listened for any more sounds but there was nothing over the drone of the intake fans.
Then there was something. Something heavy was dragging across the gritty ground. Shhhhhhhht. Silence. Shhhhhhht and the snort of an animal. Sniffing. Shhhhhhht. Silence.
The trio sat crouched in horror, boxcutters ready, anticipating an arrival. They held their breaths.
The first monster appeared from behind the same duct Zac had been last seen rounding. It was a giant on two legs, and its dark scales reflected the scant light of the city surface. It had a snout like an aardvark’s with jaws like a wolverine, and their scent was leading it toward them.
“What the fuck is that?” Rona asked.
“Shhh!”
Then came the second. As large as the first, towering and fierce, with great oversized claws dangling from long arms.
Groters. They were real after all.
Then came the third. The creatures knew when exiles could be found here. There was always noise. Well wishes.
Avery, Fillion and Rona crouched, waiting as the monsters shuffled toward their fresh meat.
END
