The Factory

Prologue

There's a place around here. We call it The Factory. It's a building run by the government, where they take you and kill you. The elimination process is purely subjective. If you do something they don't like, and you get caught, you get sent there. They have spies and officials all over, watching, waiting for someone to mess up. The government calls it a "disciplinary action", Mom and Dad call it "power abuse".

It wasn't always like this, of course. Our town used to be normal too. The whole COUNTRY used to be normal. We live in Washington, in America, in the year 2139 A.D. The country's lost a few of those "freedom" and "equality" ethics it had when our founding fathers came from England.

You don't go to school until your eighteen, anymore. High school and college are things for people with power and their children. Normal, middle class, people graduate middle school and get assigned jobs then. Dad commented the other day on how similar to communism our so called "democracy" has become.

I'm fourteen now, and am working in the Harvest Fields. That doesn't sound so bad, does it? They're not for food, though. We don't eat normal food anymore. That's what The Factory's for. The Harvest Fields are for regulated procreation. They're not actually fields, they're rooms. Massive rooms, filled with women tied down to these beds. I'm not even sure how human we are, any more. They use chemicals to create the pietas inside the womb, so that it grows faster. It's horrible to watch, there's constant screaming from the women who are in labour. I won't even call them mothers, they never get to see their children.

Once a baby is born, they send it through a series of health examinations. If it's healthy enough for a normal life expectancy, then it's sent off to go to a family, who will tend to it through elementary and middle school. The government and their families are the only ones who still use the natural birthing process. Thanks to the chemicals, many of the girls are born barren, they're sent to do various jobs. In the event that a girl CAN reproduce, she's sent back to the Harvest Fields, to continue the process. If the baby is still born, they send it directly to The Factory. I'll explain more about that later.

The jobs are selected by gender too. Girls are sent to work in the Harvest Fields, or the hospitals. Boys are more useful, they work in the mines, or The Factory, or the power or water plants. My little brother will be old enough to get a job soon, I hope he doesn't get The Factory. That's where father works, that's how I know so much about it.

It's where we get our meat. They take the corpses and dismember them, then turn them into something resembling hamburger and mass produce it. It's nauseating to think about, but it's probably more sanitary than our vegetables. There's so many chemicals and pesticides in them, they're no more naturally grown than people anymore.

I'm telling you this because you NEED to know! It's no longer safe here...Someday I'm going to get out of here. They say it's still safe over seas. In Europe, and Asia...

Someday I'll be safe again.

I'm writing this so you will be too...