The Cloud Factory
The night had begun with a familiar complacency bred by decades of routine. The old bag of bones dawdled through the detoxification chamber, dawned his crusty white jumpsuit, grabbed his wooden broomstick, and began sweeping the factory tile inch by inch. He performed the same laborious task every night during the two-hour break between shifts, the only time the Cloud Factory’s characteristic buzz was absent.
Routine and anonymity, Cornelius White thought to himself as he swept the linoleum floors of the laboratory.
Without warning, a high-pitched siren prompted a nervous staccato in White’s chest. Just a couple months shy of his centennial, he was surprised the old ticker was capable of such a lively cadence.
He removed his protective visor and wondered if he could ascertain the alarm’s cause. He knew that kind of curiosity – even the slightest distraction from his work – could get him canned. And everyone knew what happened to undesirables who weren’t employed assets.
Routine and anonymity, he thought, pulling his protective visor back over his head.
The alarm was certainly not routine, but what business was that of his? There would be consequences if he acquiesced to his curiosity's incessant nagging. A moment later, a loud whoosh hissed across the room from where two spry lab technicians entered the laboratory. Without a word, they took a seat in back-to-back cubicles and began typing on their touch-screen monitors like virtuosic pianists.
For White, that night had begun the same way as the last million nights. Then the alarm had sounded and now there were live technicians at the Cloud Factory during shift break? Despite the compulsion to continue his routine, White risked it and broke his usual sweeping pattern, waddling down the aisle between the technicians’ cubicles. His vision was still remarkably acute despite his age, and White realized the technicians were typing messages to each other.
ALPHA: Cause?
GAMMA: Running diagnostics.
ALPHA: Readings?
GAMMA: Substandard.
ALPHA: Error source?
GAMMA: On campus.
ALPHA: Here?!
GAMMA: Yes. Condensation chamber.
ALPHA: Humidifier?
GAMMA: Status unknown. Further tests needed.
ALPHA: Estimate to completion?
GAMMA: 3 hours…
ALPHA: But Sunrise is in…??
GAMMA: Less than 2.
ALPHA: I’ll call reinforcements. NOW!
While Gamma continued playing a concerto on the touch-screen, Alpha ran right past White without acknowledgement. The janitor’s knobbed knees knocked together like two branches in a breeze. Not many were privy to the inner workings of the Cloud Factory, but everyone knew they had been the world’s salvation after America torched the ozone all those generations ago. If there was something wrong with the condensation chamber, sunrise would ignite the earth’s surface. But what could the janitor do about it?
Routine and anonymity, White tried to reaffirm.
For an undesirable like Cornelius White, they were the two most sacred pillars of a wholly unsacred existence. The janitor was one of the dwindling few able to remember a world without that mantra. Society once revered the elderly for their wisdom and experience. That was before. Back when people spoke to one another. Back when people left their homes to mingle. Back when face-to-face interaction was valued and time spent with fellow human beings was normal. Generations had come and gone since and with them, any compassion toward those too old to work. Sure, radicals had tried to amend the political climate, first by negotiation, and when that didn't work, by force. But to no avail. White swept those floors to prove he wasn’t a burden to society, to earn his right to live. But when were rules worth breaking if not now?
“Aww, screw it,” he mumbled to himself.
He dropped his broomstick and walked down the large aisle just as an army of technicians flooded past him – almost through him – into rows of pod-like cubicles. Wordless troubleshooting soared through invisible corridors above White’s head and yet, no one took notice of the waddling janitor. It had been decades since the old man wondered if he was a ghost. But the years showed him his place in the world, his value to others.
All undesirables were invisible.
The trek to the Condensation Chamber took nearly an hour. The massive glass cylinder housed coils of smoke stacks looping upward further than White could see. If the chamber were functioning properly, the cylinder’s innards wouldn’t have been visible behind the glass. White’s sweeping never took him outside the factory’s main floor, but he had seen images on the security screens of the chamber filled with thick curtains of steam and fog, the very lifeblood of the clouds bellowing into the heavens. Those veins now ran empty.
Suddenly, something caught White’s eye, a small yellow square flapping on the other side of the cylinder. Walking around the chamber’s circumference, White saw sprawling cursive on a yellow post-it note:
If you can read this, activate the system with the following voice command –
'undesirable saves inhumanity, a Cinderella story.’
White gasped. He had heard whispers of activists who fought for the rights of undesirables and for traditions long faded from humanity. They often argued that humanity’s humanity had died with the undesirables persecuted and executed for their inability to work. It made White wonder how intuitive it would've been for one of those young technicians to actually get off their butts and walk to the supposed source of the problem, and yet the Condensation Chamber was empty.
The janitor couldn’t resist the tear that fell from the corner of his eye when he realized the beauty of what would probably be defined as an act of terrorism. Only undesirables could read handwritten cursive. Only undesirables had the courage to use their voices. This was orchestrated so that only an undesirable could bring the clouds back.
“Cinderella story indeed,” White whispered to himself, wiping the tear from his wrinkled face before reading the voice command.