Parandaia

Chapter Two

The whirring of the giant machine rumbles the floor and makes my whole body vibrate.

"Keep up the work, Incapers! Only seven more hours to go!" Yells Head Incaper Zelowes. Then he shuts his office door behind him and does whatever he does in there. The worker next to me says that he naps and plays games on his recreational tablet all day. Even though he has 'Incaper' in his title, he doesn't actually ever do any incape work. He just marches around the factory supervising for the first of our eight hours.

I hate incape work. The Official Career Superintendent of the United States picks the best jobs for everyone based on their school results, all the way from first class when you're three to tenth class when you are twelve. Tiblai is in sixth class because he eight.

I was in the exact middle of my class, scoring exactly average. I knew absolutely everything the school teaches us, but I prefer to not stand out. I hate attention, even if it means doing incape work until I am married. When I get married, I must take a test to determine what my Permanent Coupled Career will be. Everyone must get married before their twenty-fourth birthday, or you will keep your Low Work job for life and will have to live by yourself until you die. I don't care how much I dislike people, I still want to get married so I can stop doing this incape work.

I pull the lever down again, adjust the new batch of Caperts on the conveyor belt, and repeat. After I adjust the Caperts, they continue down the belt to the next workers and around the room to the other end, right behind me. Then they fall into a bucket for delivery and the Transporters - those who scored three points below the average fifteen out of thirty - package them up and send them off.

The muscles in my upper arm ache more and more each time I pull down the lever to open the little metal door that keeps the extra Caperts inside the machine. I switch arms every hour, and massage them during our five minute break at twelve thirty. We work from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon: exactly seven hours and fifty-five minutes. The government agreed this time was a good set time for the work and education of our country. Low Work, Permanent Coupled Careers, and Education Classes all have the same hours.

The time goes by slow, and when the five second alarm rings its shrill beeps signalling our break, Xylahn comes over to me. Xylahn is the one that told me that Head Incaper Zelowes just sleeps and plays games on his little electronic screen all work day.

"Hey there," I say to her. She's definitely pretty: Wavy chocolate brown hair that ends at her hips, piercing green eyes, and a short, skinny figure. I think that even if we were allowed more than two meals a day, she would still be very thin.

"Hey, how're your arms?" She asks, and I smile. She always asks me this when I look like I'm in pain.

"I'll be fine. How's your stomach?" Her job is to push all defective Caperts into the little trench along the far side of the conveyor belt. Since she's so short, just about five feet, her stomach always gets scraped by the moving belt underneath it when she leans across the belt to dispose of the defects.

She gives a tiny little giggle, despite the heat, exhaustion, and boredom of incape work, and the light twinkling sound of it helps relieve some of the tension in my chest. I always get stressed out during work because I don't want to get an Eppagifo from mistakes. Two mistakes a day equal one Eppagifo, and three Eppagifo equal an Eppaclisay. The thought of an Eppaclisay always brings back the memory of that neighbor getting handcuffed and dragged out of his home and his screams and all of his items being thrown out into the streets. Then guilt always bites at me for taking his mattress.

"My stomach is fine, thanks for asking." I smile and Fralanna, another friend of hers, calls her over for the last few minutes of break while I rub my arms. The alarm beeps again all too soon, letting us know that we have fifteen seconds to return to our stations. One more alarm, and I pull the lever as the conveyor belt begins moving again.

My arms shake after awhile and both my forehead and the back of my neck are sticky with sweat and I just feel plain disgusting, but as the final alarm of the day rings and I collect my Purchase Points for my work day through my Reference Code, I think of how every Point I save up, the more income that my family will have to slowly transition to living a better life.

I sigh with relief as I step out of the Incape Building door into the fresh, cool air outside.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey there reader-people! Hope you like this new chapter! If there are any typos, please please please let me know! The Caperts will make more sense later. If there's anything you think would be cool to have in this story, please feel free to tell me! Thanks for reading!!!