Revolt of the Rats by Reed Blitzerman (ap literature book list .TXT) 📖

Seated next to her, Boomer traced the looping arms on the page with his index finger. “They’re passing something, moving one piece at a time.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought too. The factory is set up to move all these orders. For starters, what if we just try to move some ourselves, from welding, through assembly, to the shipping department? Only one at a time, starting with the orders for Escargot, since they’re our biggest customer. There’s more, but let me explain...”

By the time the food was gone they had the outline of a plan.

Boomer found an order Margaret was confident they had parts for, and pushed it on a cart to assembly. Kahle assembled the parts in a plastic frame to form a kit, and buckled it shut. Then he walked the assembled kit to shipping. Over an eight hour shift, they moved seven orders. Two of them shipped. On the second day, they did nine kits through assembly. Four of them shipped.

It was Friday morning, and after a week they had expedited seventy orders. Twenty-six of them had shipped. Kahle meandered amidst forty-four pallets still stuck in shipping. That book was no help. It reminded him of the math class word problems he always hated so much. Digging foxholes would be more fun.

Cold rain blew in the open shipping doors, agitating clerks who scampered with buckets; plunking them underneath the roof leaks.  A bearded man in an ocean of plaid slashed his clipboard through the air or pointed as appropriate, keeping his employees in furious motion. When he saw Kahle he made a bee line for him in loping strides.

Without extending his hand, he said, “I’m the shipping manager.” His chest heaved as he took large ragged breaths. “You got your junk all over my shop. This stuff is no good. You need to move your stuff back to assembly right away.”

Kahle said, “I don’t understand why these aren’t shipping.”

The shipping manager put a massive fist in Kahle’s face. “You’re not blaming this on me.”

“I really don’t understand.”

The shipping manager asked, “What does the red tag say?” Then he bent over and snatching one off the pallet, sticking it under Kahle’s nose for good measure. “These are incomplete.”

The old red rage came on and Kahle stuffed it down. “We packed them the way the drawing said.”

The shipping manager’s face was swollen with irritation. “You don’t have to understand.”

“This is not my fault!”

“Well, you did something wrong.” The shipping manager punctuated each word with the clipboard, poked in Kahle’s direction. “You take parts, little dude, or I crush you.”

Kahle slumped and the man backed off just a fraction—“I’ll give you till the end of the day.”—then he tucked the clipboard under his arm and stalked off.

Kahle copied notes from the tags then paged Boomer and Margaret. She arrived first, accepted the list, logged in a computer terminal, and started reviewing the drawings. Boomer glided in as she typed.

Fifteen minutes later she softly swore. “The bills of material are wrong!”

“What’s that got to do with quality?”

“It’s a shopping list.” She took out her red pen and started making notes. “The wrong parts were on the list. So you packed the wrong parts. These orders will be way late. Hello, pissed off customer. We need to fix this.”

They trooped across the shop floor to the engineering department on the second-floor mezzanine. After a right at the top of the stairs, began a long narrow galley.

Kahle snuck a look at Beezor's office in the corner.  The shades were drawn, and light crawled around the edges of the closed door. The Red Queen was in study. Not one of them even considered disturbing her. Her ass-chewings were already legendary.

In the galley itself, all the flaking steel desks were empty,  except for one at the end. The foreign exchange engineer occupied the cobwebbed darkness beneath the 3rd-floor stairs.

He was staring at his computer screen, lit by a green glow, intently reviewing drawings. His only company was a  glass of water and a hard-boiled egg. When they surrounded his desk he looked up, startled.

“Dieter Machs, how can I help you?” he asked, in almost perfect English, his German accent detectable as a lilt on the consonants. He adjusted his black plastic frame glasses and ran a hand through long black greasy hair. He wiped the other had on his black shirt as if removing a sheen of sweat. He twisted, and the steel chain between his wallet and his belt clanged against his desk. “What is the problem that you are having?”

Margaret extended her hand. Dieter took the slip of paper and started reading.

She asked. “How can these be in production when they’re not even complete?”

“Well, I cannot know this. I can say that as part of Motomax Future we expedited several models into production.” He said it singsong and fluid, like a doctor calming an agitated patient.

Dieter pulled the drawings up on the computer. “Perhaps these got overlooked.” After a few more clicks of the mouse, he seemed satisfied. “Give me an hour or two and I will have this done for you, ok? You leave the list with me.”

When they hadn’t moved he restated the instruction. “Come back after lunch.” Like a precision instrument, he swiveled back to the screen, absorbed again in his work.

The three of them left, the conversation clearly over. They sat in the cafeteria drinking coffee, gloating as everyone around them dined on leaden meatloaf. When the cafeteria cleared out, they went back.

Dieter was as good as his word. He had updated drawings for them, with signed approvals. His watchful eyes followed them out the door.

Margaret took the lead. “Follow me.”

Her desk was upstairs in the main building, in a glass-walled cubicle that barely fit a desk, two chairs, and several bookcases. She scooped binders of paper out of the chairs, stacking them on the floor in a corner.

“The Boys” waited as she pecked through the list of orders, looking for the missing parts. She tallied the list, and double checked her work.

“Of the forty-four orders still open we have parts for twenty, leaving twenty-four orders still to fill. I’m sending an email to Hamish Rosenbloom in sales with an update. It’s his account. Some of these will clean up late Escargot orders. I think he’ll be pretty happy.”

Hamish called before they left. “Finally, an answer. How soon can I have the twenty?”

I believe I can see the future

Cause I repeat the same routine

I think I used to have a purpose

But then again

That might have been a dream

Nine Inch Nails – “Every Day is Exactly the Same”

The Healing Room

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KAHLE WAS SOPPING HIS neck with a handkerchief when his pager vibrated with a text from Queeg. "Come see me."

Nausea radiated out from his stomach in waves. Queeg usually avoided him. So why the sudden interest?

Maybe he was going to get written up. He hadn't really been paying much attention to his department. Thanks to the seniority system, his inspectors were his parents’ age. They didn't need much help. The production supervisors were entertained to see someone in quality actually get their hands dirty. He doubted they’d squealed.

He was calling Queeg’s desk when a second text arrived.

"Meet me in department 765."

Kahle mounted his bike and arrived at the rear of the plant before Queeg. He surveyed the area. Department 765 was a factory graveyard. Physically, it was a wire cage thirty feet wide by fifty feet deep, packed tight with pallets on racks and shelving. Parts hung off the edges like the arms of cadavers.

Queeg parked his bicycle, took several limping strides and said, "Welcome to the healing room." He actually smiled at Kahle's blank look. Then he said, "Reject parts come here from all over the plant. We ‘red tag’ them as bad and shelve them. Sometimes if an order is short, they cry to Bodge. He writes a deviation and lets them go. Part healed. We ship them to the customer."

"I thought engineering had to sign deviations?"

Queeg stood in rock solid silence and then proceeded on as if he'd never been interrupted. "And since you have time to help production..." Queeg gave Kahle the fish eye and continued. "You can work on clearing this place out, man. I've already scheduled you for the next six months approved Saturday and Sunday. Best get started, bucko."

Gary turned on his heel and promptly left.

Kahle stared at the dusty shelves without seeing them. He was going to be chained to this room until the next ice age. He was so close to Beezor yet so far away.

In his mind's eye, she was at the safety railing to the engineering mezzanine. Her jet black hair blew loosely behind her in an impossible wind. Her khaki slacks and dark green shirt ruffled. Her perfume, this time, the gunpowder smell of cordite, carried to him on the breeze.

Her eyes, liquid and black, stared across the plant floor, searching for him. Seeing nothing she shook her head, returned to her office and closed the steel door. A green light pulsed beneath it.

The Cage

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KAHLE WAS TRAPPED. Everyone strolled beyond the chain link cage of Department 765, enjoying a casual Saturday, laughing and drinking coffee.

Department 765 was like a boil, distended with every reject part made at Frampton. Racks formed a cavern around him, loaded with components:  plastic connectors, bowl-shaped aluminum stampings, circuit boards in anti-static bags, pill-shaped filters, and bits of twisting copper pipe were stacked higgley piggley without labels, their original purpose lost. He imagined the parts all cascading off the shelves, raining down on him in waves, pounding him into unconsciousness.

He propped his box fan in the cage opening where it exchanged one block of hot air for new, pushed the dust from one shelf to the other, where it combined with his sweat to form a paste. Where it dried, concrete-like chips formed in his clothes, his hair, and the folds of his neck.

He stared at his hands wishing they were around Queeg’s throat, cutting into his beard, squeezing off his sellout hippie banter. His anger transferred from Queeg to Bodge, the brains behind cutting off the air conditioning.

His rage expanded to include all of Motomax, Wesley Brummert, Bee Wasikowska, and mostly himself. How could he be so stupid? How could he be so reckless? Now he was trapped belowdecks on the sinking Titanic, waiting for the band  to stop playing. He squeezed his eyes shut to choke off the thought. Blood rushed to his head and he fought off a rising red tide.

The lights flickered.

A text arrived from Boomer. “Where you at, Tiger?” It lanced his anger like a popping soap bubble.

Kahle tapped the keys. “765."

“Roger that. Intercept in five.” Boomer arrived on his bicycle hauling a six pack of water. They split the bottles and Boomer sat on a coil of hoses, nursing his drink.

Kahle was pretty sure his dejection came out in his voice. “This place is a dump.”

“Yup.”

“Queeg’s got me scheduled in here every weekend until all this garbage is gone. It’s punishment.”

Boomer half-turned his head, like a dog on a scent. “How do you know that?”

“Someone's been watching us. And apparently they told Queeg.” Kahle’s face was flushed red, the anger rising again. “We need out from under