The Factory

“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love”—Leo Tolstoy—

Sweat dripped down her forehead into her eyes. She tried to wipe it off with her wrist but found the plasti-gloves twisting when she tried. Zormna Clendar adjusted her right glove, pulling it back around at the wrist. Her perspiring hands made it difficult, and the plastic made it near impossible to grip. Just as she was about done, sweat dripped down her forehead into her eyebrows, dribbling large drops into her eyes.

“Aarrgh!” Zormna growled, yanking off the plastic hat that covered her mop of fiery gold hair. 

Within one second, her supervisor snapped up and marched over to her

“Where is your hat?” he demanded.

Zormna stared down at her feet and pointed to the floor. “It was too hot, sir.”

Her supervisor picked it gingerly off the floor. He held it by one finger in front of her face with a snarl. “You are to wear a hat by health code regulations.”

“Yeah, I know,” Zormna said. “It is just that when I put it on, I sweat, and it drips all over and I can’t see a thing.”

The man tossed the hat into a bin behind the process line. He pulled another plasti-hat out of the dispenser, and he handed it to her who was now biting her lip and blinking back the perspiration that was still running down her face.

“Then control your sweat,” the man said.

Zormna took the piece of plastic rubber and pulled it on her head. Her curls squished to her scalp against her ears. She watched her supervisor marched away, brisker than a Surface Patrol Alea, checking on the rest of the line with less disdain. Zormna sighed with the closing of her eyes. She had to wait it out.

It had been nearly two weeks since she had been convicted of endangering her fellow officers and disrespecting her commanding officer. Her punishment, Zormna had decided, was severely disproportionate to her ‘crime’. Losing her position in the Patrol for a month was bad enough, but the work they had her do in the uppercity was without a doubt an unreasonable workload. She had spent the last two weeks working three jobs: the first in a food processing plant that supplied uppercity restaurants, the second as a waitress in one of the

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 27.02.2018
ISBN: 978-3-7554-7880-5

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