a cog in the machine: the Ellara series book one

chapter three

My job is quite literally just pulling a lever. This factory produces consumer products for the people in the sky kingdom above. And sometimes I have to laugh as it's the broken remains of these consumer products that we end up using to make more of them.

My pulling a lever brings down a stamp press that stamps a fresh picture of one of those animated princesses onto freshly made plastic cups, ellara I think this one is. I have no reason to keep up on social media or trends. I don't use new consumer products like that.

My own single coffee cup, which is glass and not plastic, is a dull black color and full of cracks that I had sealed up using non toxic super glue. So, yeah. This seemed stupid to be making thousands of new plastic cups a day when 30 percent of that would probably just wind up being rich people's garbage we'd have to deal with a week later. But, at least this job paid for my food, and usually the repetition kept me from thinking about-

I had to stop what I was doing to hit myself in the head for thinking about that S- word I promised myself not to think. But this was only for a brief moment before I went back to pulling the lever down, letting it go back up and repeating the process.

A certain coworker that I normally don't acknowledge looked at me. “Jen, are you ok?”

“I'm fine!” I snapped, not stopping my work again as I said it, “and don't call me that. How many times do I have to tell you, call me by my legal name J17.”

“But our government issued legal names are boring!” S131 rolled her eyes, “Everyone calls me Sarah.”

“Maybe I like boring. Have you ever thought of that? Huh, sa-ra.”

Suddenly our boss came into the room. “J17,” I immediately stood at attention, “excellent work, as always. “Sarah, stop bothering our employee of the year and get back to work.”

I had been lying to S131 when I'd said I was fine. I wasn't fine, and it was because of her. Remember when I said that people can make you feel certain things that embarrass you when they don't feel the same? Well, I was starting to feel those things towards S131 and I hated it. Rejection is usually the worst. But you can't get rejected if you never express these feelings to anyone, ever, right?

This is exactly why I don't like taking my breaks because I actually have time to stress over the stupidest s**t. And I really don't like that at all.