Material Control / Children of the knock
It was four in the morning and Jacob was sweeping his way through material control. Another huge, mezzanine office, situated above the factory floor but below the R&D department. Aquamarine bannisters hemmed in rows of uniform desks, addended by a few kitchen areas. There was even a restaurant somewhere in the factory, though Jacob wasn't trusted enough to clean that place. This was the first floor of the factory - although ecosystem might be a more accurate term. For it appeared to be a factory, a headquarters and a series of office blocks rolled into on conglomeration.
He swept at each desk, arms cramping with the movement, doing his best to avoid hitting the letterheads and looking at the nametags as he worked. Tom bower - his desk was empty and easy to sweep. Gosia Fernandez - her desk was filled with pictures of family, post-it notes and model cars, harder to clean. Harry Redgate - empty desk, stacked sheets of paper, easy to clean. Things went on for that for a long while, with Jacobs thoughts wondering about each desk - each person's life. He found his thoughts drifting like clouds sheared in half by a mountain; for in each desk Jacob was able to see the very peak of these people's lives, and yet everything beneath the peak, the trials and the work, the families and the overtime remained obscured to the young man. How anyone managed to get to the point of having their own nametag was so far beyond him, and he found himself sunken to the mirth of jealousy. When will I finally live? God knows He thought to himself, sweeping at nothing.
That was one of the worst parts of cleaning for Jacob. Craning his neck like some repenting prisoner and sweeping at invisible stacks of dust as if it mattered whether it was there or not. No one would notice specks of dust. No one would notice if Jacob did his job at all. He could pour water over the factory floor and call it mopping, or he could just not bother mopping at all. It made no difference to anyone, the floor was simply the floor.
When he had applied for his job he hadn't known just how big everything would be. He had applied through an agency called DCL which was - as far as he could tell - a completely separate entity to the automotive company that ran the rest of the factory, which functionally just meant the 'real' company men were keen to sit away from Jacob during his breaks and avert their gaze when they saw him pass the hall. On one of his first days he had gone to buy a hot chocolate in a furtive attempt to keep warm. A middle-aged man from leatherworking had come down and simply asked him
"Can you do that?" Pointing at the cup, then at the vending machine. As if some great taboo had been broken by a cleaner buying a drink. He wasn't even in the company restaurant! The whole episode made the young man feel more and more ostracised, it was as if everyone around him was gradually changing a letter every day, painstakingly crafting a new language to better alienate Jacob. That was when he first noticed the feeling, though it had happened before - a feeling of not being real. It was only a small feeling then, but would come to dominate the young man in the future with devasting consequences.
It was not meant to be like this, this wasn't even Jacobs original job application. He was supposed to be a bartender in a bustling high street but when the pub owner - an elderly women dressed in a tattered Christmas sweater - told him that she'd found someone more suited he panicked. From nowhere, an agency named DCL suddenly offered him a job. He accepted instantly, as if running from something.
Can you start immediately? You'll be working at the automotive factory in Stockhampton. Thanks.
Those were the words from DCL. It was surprising, or maybe it wasn't, this was Jacob's first job after all and although something felt strange to him even then, he decided that the reality of earning a wage was more important than any thought of unease that the job gave him.
When he first arrived he walked through a series of ornate gates, metal bars dancing in a regal flourish. The gates gave way to rolling, artificial hills that probably glowed mint in the day, but here in the dead of night were nothing more than brackish purfunctories. Still, Jacobs breath was taken away when he climbed the hill finding a great pond that reflected a million dazzling lights from the cars and the restaurants and the office monitors. This place was more than a factory, it was a true headquarters for [the company], each light representing another part of production. [The company] was famous for its bespoke, handcrafted approach to cars.
When Jacob had told his grandfather of his new job his response was: Wow that's prestigious! I'm glad you're doing so well these days. Jacob wasn't sure how cleaning could ever be prestigious; his head faced the floor any time a real [company] worker passed by, ashamed to be wasting his life away so thoroughly. The floor is simply the floor, an oasis in between the wasteland of staring, judging eyes.
One night he hung between rows of office chairs split like a cleft palate and tried his hardest to hold back tears. The precipate: a desk. On the left of the monitor were pictures of kids (a common site for office desks) paired with a 'world's okayest grandad' mug. Next to that mug was a laminate card that read 'Andrzej Czurejno, line manager, office B2'. None of that was what reduced Jacob to the point of almost-tears though. No, the instigating object was a simple A4 sheet of paper that congratulated Andrzej on 20 years of service.
20 years.
Hi-vis jackets dotted in between each few chairs and Jacob thought of spending twenty years at [the company]. Or twenty years doing anything.
He desired nothing more than to be a good corporate citizen and see his life filter through time slowly, like workmen going through those strange turnstile gates. He blinked his glassy eyes and thought that his life would never even start. Jacob would be twenty one tomorrow and he had nothing to show for it. There had to be some way to get into a place like this, not just as an agency cleaner but an actual leatherworker or handyman or anything, maybe he had done something terribly wrong when he was in school. Should he have chosen design and technology over history for his A-levels? Should he have put in more work then instead of going out climbing trees? His thoughts drifted to childhood. Setting fire to ping pong balls on the school field. Telling his brother he could unstick his braces by plunging his head in cold water. Keeping a terrible secret with his priest that day.
His thoughts went on and on trying to discover a genesis for his self sabotage. At least his family were proud of him finally getting a job, it was his first gig since coming home. The screams of section still haunted him, he was infinitely glad to be out of the mental hospital that he had spent all summer in. He put the thoughts of screams and shackles from his mind.
At the end of his shift he's outside with his co-workers. A small lady named Gemma flicks cigarette paper around in his mouth. They would mostly communicate through grunts and vague complaints, especially outside in the winter cold. That was shit. Uh huh. So much shit. Yeah. I bet day shift did nothing again. Jacob had come to the realisation that in the nocturnal cold, they had became a different species. Sordid and spiteful like the creatures of an outdated sci-fi novel. A cleaner was a species. A race. Something less than human, something not quite real. They sat in between the bus stops, carefully avoiding the real employees and watching their breath turn to smoke in the morning air.
He got the bus home and slept, waking for his next shift. Another sun descended upon the city-factory, the little Fiume.
Another day in paradise. He would say upon walking into the cupboard that doubled as an office for the cleaners. They laughed, not understanding the joke and returning to two-syllable conversations in Polish and Bengali. Jacob had an accent too, nowhere near as interesting as Anetta and Simon - his Polish comrades, nor as quiet as the softly spoken Bengali who remained nameless to everyone else. Jacob was from Essex and still spoke with the plosive roughness as someone from that area. 'Urban', his university classmates had said. That was when he was still in university of course. He had been kicked out after an incident with a needle and spent a week in a mental hospital. Jacobs crime - the one that meant he would be sentenced to the looney bin - was that he didn't want to be around anymore. Not here, not there, not anywhere. He felt slightly less than real, like a shadow that grew and shrunk alongside real but never really had the chance to be anything of note.
A car horn blared in the background and Jacob was awoken from his thoughts. He walked from his cupboard, out on to the mezzanine balcony, down the steps and to the rows of car machinery. Oiled columns of guillotine blades, torrid beasts dissected by the [company]. Jacob was overtaken in an instant. A feeling, ineffable in power but completely legible. And his feeling was this: there is indescribable power and freedom in speed; the wheels of a car propel man to his greatest nature. In that moment Jacob heard words spoken like the pious hallucinations of a nun. He could have sworn though, that the sound was real.
'There’s nothing to match the splendor of the sun’s red sword, slashing for the first time through our millennial gloom!’
His body rocked with the last revelatory attempt at masculinity. He had to be free and only the tumult of an engine might grant that. By the god's he swore, he would be an engineer.
Silverfish churned in his hoover as he decided finally on what he had to do with his life. His path was set out along the rows of car parts and coloumns of office desks. He would make a car, a testament to the glory of speed. That - and only that - was what might make Jacob feel truly real. Something more than a shadow. He felt renewed in the leatherworking area and resolved to make a plan for the next few years of his life. Jacob (he thought of himself as if spectating his own life) would become an apprentice at this very company and work his way up to a point where he could build his own car. Silverfish would be traded for bolts and hoovers to hammers. He would contribute, so fully and so admirably, to society. It was with that vigour that the young man swept and brushed and cleaned the shit from the toilets. It was with that vigour that he endured the sub zero walks and the spurned looks. He would be something! He would outrun this terrible ennui that had for so long turned him into a shadow.
