Queen Bee doesn’t answer, she’s too busy transferring the calculations—completed at the latest dehumanizing warehouse tour Emi is trying to leave behind—regarding the minimum amount of feed needed to maintain product quality for each of the farm’s human cattle.
Do you think I’m right?
“Yes, of course.”
You clearly aren’t even listening to me.
“Naturally.”
Emi sighs, backtracks through a puddle, then makes the tiny adjustment needed to avoid the even tinier rock that stopped her progress so thoroughly. In the long thin windows stretched to the length of the two warehouses running beside the road, inmates gather to watch her pass, most of them laughing at her ineffectiveness like she is a prison guard. If they realized she is, in fact, a prisoner herself, they'd hate her even more. I’ve decided to start a revolution to take over the farm.
This gets Bee’s attention. “I vote we don’t get ourselves executed.”
You don’t get a vote; this is my house.
“Oh, please, Mrs. Jones...you sound more like your father than Mr. Jashi.”
Emi concentrates on the road, refusing to look at the window, especially when her peripheral vision catches one of them pointing a moon at her, while the fully human inmates laugh at her struggle to admit the truth: You’re not wrong.
“I’m never wrong.”
Except when you lie.
Do you see ‘Thou shall not lie’ listed here? An official looking document, titled Jashi Farm’s Commandments, that Bee has just created with the information she has gathered thus far, appears in Emi’s overlay:
- Whatever is labelled Human, is to be considered an animal
- Whatever we are under contract with, is a friend
- No animal shall not wear clothes
- No animal shall not sleep at least eight hours per night
- No animal shall not drink enough water
- No animal shall be killed until finished
- All animals are to be treated according to their current weight
The wheelchair catches again on the road, causing the still mending hyoid fracture in her neck to be set back a day or two in recovery. Do you think it’s true? Did he leave my leg like this to stop me from escaping?
“To protect his investment.”
I can protect myself just fine.
“I meant me.”
A message from Jashi pops on her screen: [Jashi: How many new facilities are needed for proposed reorganization?]
Bee types back: [Three. Transferring blueprints.]
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[FILE TRANSFERRED]
“That should buy us some time.”
To do what?
[Jashi: Heading to AkuTaga’s to find engineers.]
Bee types, tricking Emi into thinking she is about to mistakenly send her response to Jashi: [To trick the animals into starting a revolution.]
The message is deleted before Emi can think Bee, wait! Hilarious…where do we start?
A waypoint leads Emi to the retinal scanner of Warehouse Three. Bee bypasses the lock within seconds, using the workaround she claims Jashi just gave her this morning. “Head to the terminal. We're planting the seeds of a virus.”
The sound of socializing inmates separated by the distance of their individual stalls and shelves—to limit the spread of viruses—fills the voluminous steel box with echoing conversations that mix with the sound of droning of machinery working to prepare for the evening feed of rice, vegetables, and greens by turning them into a fine powder and mixing it with water.
Within the otherwise unintelligible noise, Emi catches the inmate in the nearest stall yelling to the man at the base of the tall shelf across from him. “New attack dog for his secret police…looks like this one is a bitch.” Chuckles fill the air.
Bee uses the PA system that hangs from every shelf to project the snarling voice of a ravenous Rottweiler: WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
Many of the laughing inmates fall back from the edge of their stalls, as if afraid they’re about to be eaten. Others, including the one who called her a bitch, only laughs harder. “Look at the pig. What happened to your pudgy little leg, piggy?”
Emi continues down the main path, straight for the central terminal. Are we dogs or pigs?
“You can be a dog and a pig; it’s very common.”
Now that every Human in the place has noticed her, Emi speeds up like she is suddenly moving downhill now that the end is in sight. Shaky hands reaching for the terminal, she lifts her shirt and plugs herself in, ignoring the catcalls and screams of ridicule poking at her back. A glass bottle shatters at her feet, sending the milky contents splashing into her cast and the voices crashing to a halt.
The heavy silence hiding behind the groaning machinery reveals every movement of the turning bodies struggling to get a look at the inmate that just wasted product and will soon be cut into for cutting into Jashi’s profits. “An eye for an eye,” Jashi will probably say as he winks his monocular while raising the scapula.
A new file appears on the terminal screen: Important Documents. Bee adds a document to the otherwise empty file: Jashi Farm’s Commandments.
Emi unplugs herself, pushing for the exit as the inmates begin to yell once more, most of the men back to catcalling as they lean against their stalls or make crude gestures like construction workers on their lunch break. Meanwhile, once-liberated females who are jealous of both her freedom and attention yell from the upper shelves, “Traitorous bitch…whore…slut…”
Bee tries to lighten the mood: “They’re not wrong.”
Emi doesn’t laugh, she’s not certain Bee is even joking given the things she has revealed knowing about Emi’s past. Do you think it will work?
“We’ll know soon enough.”
How?
…
Twenty minutes after Jashi bowed away, graceful but ungrateful for the overly salted dinner Emi sweated over, the answer appears: [Jashi: What happened to their clothes?]
Despite the pile of dishes still left to be cleaned, and the chaotic child who has just taken one and smashed it into a million pieces atop the wooden tearoom floor, Emi smiles while Bee responds with another impromptu list. [Benefits of Nudity in Close Quarters:
- Better skin health (reduces costs, increase sales price)
- Improved sleep quality (increase sales price and goods available for sale)
- Increased fertility (increase inventory)
- No laundry costs
- Faster body analysis (increase sales price and shorten time to finished goods)
- Lower cortisol levels (increase quality, quantity, and cut costs)
- Gives the product a false sense of freedom (leads to ownership over the process and cuts costs)]
Bee adds, trying to distract him from thinking too much about it: [I vote we adopt the practice in the household as well.]
Emi takes over: [That was Bee, she was kidding. We will be keeping our clothes on.]
Bee: [Vote is standing at one for and one against. That makes you the deciding voter Mr. Jashi…don’t forget just how gross her Hachijo Prison uniform is.]
[Jashi: Nudity clause—Rejected.]
Take that, Trotsky.
Bee: [Traitorous bitch.] “Your cast still smells like rotting milk by the way.”