Bliss

3 - Sky

"Miss Binasco, you're late!" Elper calls out from the other side of the break room. I shake my head and punch in my card, then head over to the locker rooms to get changed into the proper factory attire.

I work as a Non-Perishables Technician, but the name in itself sounds too formal and too complicated for what I actually do. A few months ago, I was assigned the job of stacking three cans of non-perishable food--doesn't matter what kind, really--into boxes that have already been filled halfway with trail mix snacks, a small pack of beef jerky, four bottles of water, and a small can of tomato juice. Once those are in, the next technicians--the Sunday Technician--puts in the main Sunday meal, covered with a shiny wrap to keep the "freshness" in, and passes it on where it could be sealed and then put in a truck. From there, each Monday the food packages are distributed to each home, unlabeled with a name but with a serial number.

I guess the most important job of this whole ordeal is the Sunday Technician. The Sunday Meal is the most important because it is the biggest, takes the most time to be made--there is an entire other department for it where the meal is constructed--and is savored the most among our country. We are lucky to live in such a safe, wealthy neighborhood, because the meal we have on our only free day of the week consists of steak, mashed potatoes, and celery. Always. But it tastes amazing and way better than the food we have for the rest of the week.

"Sky, look at me," Elper says. I am mid taking off my shirt when she approaches me. "You were just in time, but if you didn't run as well as you do, you'd actually be late, and then what? You know the punishments for being late, right?"

"Three strikes, I know," I mutter. I change my running shirt for a gray one and then put on a white, thick cotton lab-like coat over my clothes. On my hands, I slip on the antibacterial gloves, and Elper offers to help me with the hairnet. I let her, since my hair has gotten too long to manage. She takes it out of its ponytail and wraps it up under the net, and when she's done, she spins me around so that I can look her in the face.

Elper's face isn't old, but it isn't young either. I can guess she's middle aged, but by her hands, I can tell she must be older. Either that, or her job, which is too evenly sear the steak until only a little pink is left in the middle, is too hard on the skin on her hands. There are burns around her wrist, I've noticed before, but nothing to the extent where her job seems dangerous, or tiring.

She has blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale, almost invisible, lips.

"Three strikes and what?" she asks, raising an eyebrow. She's so much taller than me; her gaze is intimidating.

"Three strikes and you get deported."

"To where?"

I sigh. "Nobody knows. But wherever it is, it isn't here. Look, we've been over this before. And I wasn't even late. But I will be if you keep me here even longer."

"You already punched in your card," Elper points out.

"But I'm not in my seat, am I?"

Elper raises her hands in defeat. As I start to walk out of the locker rooms--the orange lockers, the yellow walls that smell like mold, the flickering white lights--she calls out after me, "Just be careful, Binasco!"

I push through the crowded hallway leading to Department F, my shoulder bumping against those of men and women, all much older than me. I can imagine myself here in twenty years: shorter, somehow, with already-graying hair at the roots, still packaging cans, wearing the same white thick coat that will soon make me sweat in the rising heat of the high-ceilinged rooms. I would be thirty-eight, married, with blue bags under my eyes. I would move out of the standard homes of five females to the standard homes for families, all the way in a different neighborhood where men do not have to be separated from women. Unlike Maya, who got the job of chaperoning us inside our house, I would be in and out everyday, caring for a child that isn't mine but has been assigned to me, with a husband who remains a lifelong stranger, and a job with a frightening monotony.