Time in the factory ain't reliable. What I mean by that is, five minutes on the clock can be an hour's weight in blood, sweat, and tears. Greenhorns is always complaining about this, which I never did understand. The factory has always been like that, for as long as I . . . I can . . . remember . . . .
What were I saying?
Anyway, there's this new Hoss we just hired, real green, first week on the job. I decided to show him a bit of the ropes, you foller me? After I taught him the proper way to unjam the stirrers, I ain't really too sure how he handled it, so I figured I should take it upon myself to educate the little greenhoss on the makin's of time. One afternoon, I went over to his table where he was busy foldin' and sortin' -- nothing I love more than the sound of a factory full of busy, hard-workin' employees all foldin' and sortin' -- and told him to foller me. His eyes got real huge like big ol' lug nuts. Maybe he thought it was gonna be something like what I showed him with unjammin' the stirrers. Weren't anythin' like that, though. This were regular stuff.
I took him down to the room where it all gets made, all the time. To get there, we had to go down through the three levels of the factory. I have the Masterkey, which I used to let us in through the airlocks. The first airlock hissed open, and we walked through hallways with green potted ferns on every shelf. Some greenhorns have asked what those is good for, but how else are we supposed to hide the chameleons?
We got to the elevator and took it down to the next floor, where I let us through the airlock again. This floor is where we have the scales that measure the blood, sweat and tears. All that comes from the employees, and it seeps down here through pipes, then they weigh it and decide how to pay those hardworkin' Hosses.
The last level is where it gets made. Time. I gave little Hoss a Zoot suit to protect himself, then put on one myself and opened the door. With a puff of gas the airlock hissed open, and there they were. The time flies. They was zippin' around, weaving little green strings behind them. We collect those strings and spin 'em up into balls of fabric and sell them in different increments. It's only one of the ways to make time for things, but it's a good 'un. People call it the string theory of time.
Like I say, we sell them balls in different increments. Say a company comes to us and wants to order a certain amount of time. They can order it in anything from hours to minutes to seconds. Of course, enough hours adds up to days which become weeks and months and years and so-on, but we don't sell it like that. Hours is as high as we go.
The little green Hoss pointed to the pipes juttin' from the ceiling of the fly room.
"What do those do?" he asked me.
"Why Hoss, that's where the waste comes down."
"Waste?"
"Sure. That's what we feed the flies on. Wasted time, wasted lives, wasted dreams." I nudged a pile of somethin' brown and splotchy with my foot. Looked like a deflated soccer ball that'd started to melt. "This right here was made by a parent who didn't go to her daughter's game. What a waste. But the flies love it."
Right as I said it, a whole swarm of the little critters buzzed over and started feastin.'
"So . . . what was all the soap for?" greenhorn asked. "The soap that the gnomes were stirrin'? I mean, stirring."
"Why Hoss, you don't expect people to make use of this time just as it is, do you? It comes outa flies and waste, boy! Naw, all this time has gotta be cleansed. Made new. Time redeemed, if ya speak like that."
Little greenhorn nodded, eyes still huge. What is it with these kids? Anyhow, I took him back up and sent him back to work.
An you know, it hadn't even been a minute since we'd gone down. I guess time don't always fly.
The Truth
This was a fun one to write. Work on Thursday seemed to drag exceptionally slowly, and so I wrote a bit of this in my head over the course of the ten-hour shift.
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