The Factory Page 12

  After the 9 a.m. chime, the rain only got heavier. When TRAN delivered the day’s first haul of documents, the old paper gave off the usual dusty smell, only damper. Not long after, I walked upstairs to the bathroom, but it was closed for cleaning. It wasn’t urgent, so I headed back down. On the way, I saw one of the overweight women coming up from the basement. Cradled in her pudgy arms was a black bird, just like the ones I’d seen at the river the day before. She had a tight grip on its wings, but it wasn’t trying to fly away. It was definitely alive, surveying its surroundings. I stopped to watch, but the woman ignored me and kept walking up the stairs. Once she was past me, I turned around. Over her shoulders, I thought I could see black feathers. I couldn’t do anything but stand there, listening to the rain getting louder whenever somebody opened the front door. What was she doing with that bird? If she was carrying it upstairs, it must have been in the basement, in the Print Services Branch Office. But where? It was dark in the stairwell — too dark for morning. When I finally regained the power to move, I made up my mind to ask Itsumi about the bird, but she was talking to one of the middle-aged women at the printing station. In the dark corner of the shredder station, a figure was sitting, reading a newspaper. Probably the Captain. Maybe it was Hanzake. The Giant was standing up straight, almost like the Captain’s Power Tower, or maybe it really was the Power Tower, wearing the Captain’s hat. I turned back toward the morning container, grabbed a handful of pages and fed them into the shredder. I wasn’t thinking about anything at all, just feeding paper into the machine. Then, as soon as the shredder swallowed the last pages, I became a black bird. I could see people’s legs, their arms. I saw gray, and a little green. I thought I could smell the ocean.