“But how much glue do we used to bind the materials together?” they asked the man standing before them.
“More than a dollop and less then a wallop” the man replied. But that was the kind of answer they had come to expect from this man who considered himself an artist, and what they were doing art. As an artist, he told them, he could not give others some recipe to greatness. They had to learn the judgment of true art for themselves.
Both men could appreciate that if what they were doing was art. But the morbid collections of wood, metal, glue and human flesh before them could hardly be considered art. Either their supervisor was nuts, or this artist facade was his way of dealing with the awful duty assigned to him by the higher ups. There was a distinct possibility of both being true.
Many of those working for these evil men suffered some sort of mental breakdown. The trauma of all the things they did, all the things they saw, was just to much for a man to handle. Those who didn’t show some sign of mental deterioration after the first month were usually gathered up by the high ones and taken away for some other duty. For those were the ones without a conscious.
These two men were fine so far, neither having suffered very much mentally. They had both lasted three months without being transferred. But less who weren’t driven insane were transferred from their detail since they only worked as part of the cleanup crew. There was less stress involved since those they dealt with didn’t resemble anything even close to a human any more.
Their tasks were simple. To take the “leftovers”, and other materials, and follow simple designs in an attempt to turn them into something useful for the higher ups. A way of recycling the mess if you will. So far they had little success, for they lacked the sophisticated tools and training needed to make something of value.
The men were glad they did not have the tools and training they needed. It was easier to watch one creation after another slip down the disposal chute, then to live knowing they produced something in which an ingredient was human flesh. They feared that if they did succeed, it would only prompt more killings. Killings so they could mass produce whatever it was, and ship it off to distant countries so that they could fund their ongoing war with the people of neighbouring Isandule. A war of metal creations, and not one that required real people, or a real army.
The two men had had real names once. Back before they decided to join that which pretended to call itself a government. But after they had joined and been sent to this cleanup center, they had come to be known only as TY2200 and X3000. Even the man before them had forgotten his name. He was known to them only as Sir, or B22.
B22 had come long before the others. He had been working for the so called government for years. The number 22 indicated that. He was the 22nd supervisor to be appointed, in the first group of supervisors to be appointed Each group was 3000 strong at it’s fullest. As were the executive branch, Bs were the supervisors, everything else were the pawns, that was how it had always been. Everyone reduced to a series of letters and numbers. Only the highest powers were allowed to keep their names. Not that it mattered.
The pwns, and even the supervisors and executive branch were meaningless to the higher ups. When a person died, his or her identity was re-assigned to someone else. When they ran out of numbers, if they ran out of numbers, they would start expanding the groups to 6000 each.
B22, he knew he was the first B22. A twisted achievement. Looking at the men before him hew knew he was looking at the third TY2200, and the seventeeth X3000. Unlucky number that one. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Not anymore.
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