Ghost in the Machine

I took a look in the mirror. I saw no reflection back, and sighed. Going back to the factory was a very grueling job for a 9 year old, and though this wasn’t the ideal way to do it, I was glad to get out of work. I was worried about my brothers and sisters, still toiling hard with hardly any breaks or relief.

We weren’t allowed to go to school, because there were so many of us, and with me being so young I didn’t think I’d make that much of an impact. I turned around and walked out of the small living space on the 8th floor that shouldn’t have 12 people living in, but this was just how things were. I glided across the old weathered floors that I’d never make creak again and left the place I called home.

I phased through the window and glided my way down to the busy street, full of horses and new machines that were amazing to my younger brother Jimmy, but terrifying to me. The polluted cobblestone streets had greenish yellow liquid flowing along either side, filled with a mix of industrial runoff and other things I didn’t want to know about.

The air was filled with a haze, and everyone walking around had some form of brown-stained cloth around their mouths to avoid breathing in the toxins, most of which came from the factory I worked in. It was, after all, the main source of income for a majority of the people who lived in this small city. I was heading to that factory. I had questions, and a plan.

The large, imposing steel gate was now ahead of me, tucked into a corner of the city but not so far as that it wasn’t walkable. This was a city planned around walkability and convenience. The convenience was mostly for the people at the top of the food chain, though. Everyone else would go through the workers’ entrance and make their way among each other through the maze of machinery, ductwork and assembly lines.

I walked through the gate and headed into the massive 4-story factory.

“He’s been gone for ten years! I am tired of hearing about it. He’s been gone longer than he’s been alive at this point” my mom Liza responded to one of her coworkers, venting as usual. Great, another argument must have happened between her and my dad. My mom worked in the upholstery area, which was responsible for making seat cushions for these new scary machines that puttered down the road and coughed out black smoke.

“I get why he brings it up though - Everett said that he was still distraught over the fact that nobody ever found a body. We all know it was a coveru-”

“HEY! Quiet over there, ladies! We are behind schedule!” the foreman yelled to my mom’s coworker. He likely overheard the conversation and didn’t want to cause another riot like what happened around the time the event occurred.

The two women, after giving each other a glaring look, went back to work.

I went past the other workers, including my multiple brothers and sisters (because I didn’t want to distract them) and made my way to the quality control zone on the 3rd floor of the factory where my dad worked.

He wasn’t at his station - maybe he was taking a break?

I went to the 3rd floor break area, which was a very dingy and poorly lit room with an assortment of a few tables and chairs. My dad was sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands. He was thinking deeply about something, and I had a feeling from the conversation I witnessed between my mom and her coworker that I knew what it was.

“It just doesn’t make sense…people don’t just disappear like that. Willie would be 19 today”, my dad muttered to himself. I felt a tinge of sadness seeing him feel defeated. I knew I’d get back at this company for what they did though.

A bell went off. My dad and a few other guys walked out of the breakroom back to their post. I had seen enough of my family today and went on to the 4th floor.

The 4th floor was completely unlike the others and had its own private elevator. Workers did not have access to this floor at all. It was gilded in Greek revival themed columns, marble flooring and had indoor plans. Fountains lined the center of the floor, with an open air atrium flanked by meeting rooms. This was where the higher ups worked and did business dealings to further their mission.

I had been here hundreds of times at this point, unseen of course, and picked up quite a bit on what was being built, the concerns engineers had throughout the process, and the corners that were cut in the name of ‘financial sustainability’, which translated to getting the product to the masses as quickly as possible, with any means necessary. The masses in this case were the upper class members of the city, their friends, government officials and the oil magnates.

“Looks like we’ll have at least twelve cars completed by the end of the day. Did you see that Albert’s wanting yet ANOTHER burgundy car? It took so much time to get the dyes together to make it what he liked. The upholstery department was throwing a fit!” a short, slender man with dark hair and rimmed glasses said to another. They were both wearing suits, smoking cigarettes outside in the atrium area.

“This will be his seventh car. There’s so many other things I’d do with that money! These babies are at least a thousand a pop!” the other man said. This man was quite tall, had a huge red beard, big round belly and suspenders holding up his twill pants. He was the lead engineer of the building and very close to the owner, but was nearing retirement. I gathered that the other man was to be his replacement and that he’d been preparing him for succession.

I looked around a bit. Where was the owner? I wondered. I guess it didn’t matter anyway. Wasn't stopping me!

As I was walking past the two men, the larger one started having one of his famous coughing fits. I chuckled as I went through the atrium area and into the center control room. I always found it interesting that nobody really understood how the tech for these machines was even created. This room held all the answers though.

The room was massive, about the size of one of the circus tents my parents took me to back when I was about seven. Within the room were multiple wires and cords throughout, snaking their way to the center of the room. In the center of the room was a large round structure with a donut shape, large enough to fit an entire vehicle and horse through.

A panel sat off to the right side of this device. Nobody was in the room - it looked as though everything was finally automated in here. Lights blinked, noises whirred from the structure and images surrounded the panel. I had a feeling nobody would see this kind of thing in their lifetime. Definitely not my parents!

As I approached the large panel, I thought about the code to provide inputs to the structure after years of trying to catch someone doing it, and finally seeing someone enter it a week ago.

This was the part I hated. It hurt to interface with technology but I highly doubted anyone would’ve expected me, of all people, to be able to do it. I pressed my hands to the panel and my vision went blank temporarily. An image appeared in front of me, obstructing my vision.

“CODE REQUIRED”, a very strange, mechanical sounding voice echoed into my head.

"7-8-3-9-0-2-6", my consciousness pulsed the code into the machine.

“ACCESS GRANTED” the voice briefly stated, and my vision returned.

The room, which was dark when I entered, was then lit up with lights that I had never seen before in any home, rich person or not. Lights also framed the floors and ceiling, bathing me in a blueish glow. The large vat, the size of a bathtub, rose from an area on the floor to the left of the structure. I remembered this vat - it was where my body was inserted to feed the machine organic matter.

The structure itself started to give off warning sounds but nobody was there to stop anything. Tiny spider-like machines were glowing while running around, designed to help maintain the structure.

A moving image appeared in the center of the round structure, and it was of a man with a button up shirt made of material I had never seen before. He looked annoyed but ready to have a conversation. Oh, and the man had three eyes, one on his forehead. His skin was a blueish color. Initially I was terrified to see this man but after years of going to this factory and hiding off to the side within this room as people spoke with him, I became somewhat used to how he looked.

“Good afternoon, Henr-” the voice abruptly cut off, as the person on the image looked confused.

“Is someone there? Wait, is that a child?” he said inquisitively.

“You can see me?” I responded. The man nodded.

“Where is the security in the building?! How did you get into the comms link?!” the man yelled, demanding answers. He appeared to be sitting at a desk and picked up a small transparent rectangular object that I didn’t comprehend. I saw brief flashes of images on the device.

“Yeah, I'm not Henry. I don’t think Mr. Ford is even here today. I’m Willie and I’m here to put a STOP to your crazy plan! I know what you guys are doing here and it’s sick!”

“Well, Willie - you’re just a little boy. What are you going to do about it?” The man’s voice echoed throughout the room.

“I know how to deactivate everything and cut off your power source,” I responded. The workers were completely unaware they were also building parts to maintain this structure. Only a handful people in the world knew this was even happening. The engineers weren’t even aware of this device and how it was being maintained.

“You have no idea what you’re doing, kid! This is a key way that we can progress humanity and I can’t have some kid ruining it! We put way too much funding into this power cell. I’m about to make some calls”, the man said, pressing furiously on the rectangular device.

“I can’t have the world polluted by your ideas and crazy factory worker death rituals!” I yelled back. I had seen too many of these. Every week, without fail, factory workers were disappearing and nobody knew what was going on with them. I thought back to my body disintegrating as I screamed in pain in the vat, knowing I wouldn’t see my family again.

“You won’t stop our plan. We are the elite and you can’t stop us. We may be Moon people and don't have the physical means to take over your planet, but we still have ways to control you all while powering our colony. Do you really think this is the only structure on your planet?” he responded with an annoyed tone, while chuckling. Someone else came within the screen’s vision and looked at me in shock. He shooed them away angrily.

“Hey, even ONE of these getting destroyed is enough for me!” I yelled back.

I was done trying to converse with this monster. I pressed my hands on the panel and, allowing my consciousness to glide into the internal workings within the device and dodging electric currents within, I began the destruction sequence. This was what was taking me so long - years and years - to figure out. The image disappeared from within the donut structure and was instead replaced by a pulsing red color.

“DEACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATED. ARE YOU SURE? REACTIVATION IS NOT POSSIBLE,” the familiar mechanical voice from earlier informed an empty room.

>CONTINUE

“I can’t undo it. My job is done here,” I said to no one. The mecha spiders were making squealing noises. The walls began shaking. Just a few floors below, the workers continued toiling away in the factory. At least they won’t be put up for sacrifice anymore.

My vision was obscured again, and I knew at this point I was now part of the structure. As long as I was in here, the world domination plans would at least be impacted temporarily. I was now on a search to locate the other devices throughout the world and get rid of them. It’d take decades, maybe even centuries, to do, but this was my mission.