somewhere there is a factory. and in this factory are workers all in anonymous uniforms working their hands and fingers in a machined fashion that keeps this particular factory flowing like the rain does down the large windows that reminds the workers that there are places other than there. everywhere at all times there are these industries which work around the clock making every sort of something that makes life easier.
except this particular place prints a certain kind of paper. Rolls and rolls of it, flying out of a press like a water wheel, which is also an exceptional source of energy for a place such as this. In fact, that's exactly how the lights are lit and the machines are mechanized, by slow trickles of water through a dam of the river right outside.
and the workers in their toil, in their endless lever pulling and matching uniforms produce pink slips. Paper tirelessly perforated and inked and sealed and stamped and mailed and recieved and crumpled and cried over, reminding people that they aren't important anymore.
mark sheffield looked up through those large windows, saw a white dove flutter by. he blinked, smiled, tried to find it again before it passed to the last pane. "this place is a prison," he mumbled to bob parker, safety inspector, NO. 74, to his right, over his shoulder, marking off the celebrated and proper measurements of the pressured dials.
a steam whistle blew, an old sound signaling ancient time shift changes, the only relic left in a place that replaces parts more than it does men.
bob and mark sighed, waited for the next set of workers to pat them on their backs, give everything a once over and take over their shift. mark still gazed outside into the sky over the river into the clouds shadowing miserable tress, which tried their hardest to stretch their limbs besides smokestacks and concrete, the dove had flown away, gone forever in mark's mind, to somewhere where men aren't handed pink slips, beyond pastors of the apocalypse, passed places that use glass and steel to contain, to greener pastures.
that dove gave him peace. it gave him hope. he wanted that little white bird to have a palm frond in its beak, like those bible stories his ma told him about the flood. he wanted to be that dove right about now, floating and diving and flapping to some forever horizon like you see on a movie poster. he smiled, felt the pat on his back, and went home.
outside, the dove was just a broken white napkin the wind caught and put in a nearby tree.
