ch2: [ level 45 ]

As the last gadget ran off the assembly line, 829 was exhausted. It had been a long shift and he was ready to disconnect into another level. A few more things to tidy up and he could hit the out button. “Hey, A192, what’s The String about tonight?”, asked 829 to the mechanism that sat next to his work section. “Oh! It’s a good one, I screened last night that we will finally enter the wooden room and look for the function that was missing”, Elated A192, who was always ready to talk about this topic. “Maybe now we will be able to input the code into that transceiver”, continued A192 as he blankly stared off into the vast factory floor. 829 considered his co-worker for a second, thinking how odd it was that A192 never had recovered completely from the last upgrade. Since then, he had behaved very differently, but 829 could not pin-point exactly what the difference was. For a brief cycle, 829 felt a pang of fear, since he was due for an upgrade himself. This passed quickly though, remembering that AA192 was a mechanism that was from an older generation. He had heard that his line had been flawed since the first day of production. Poorly designed as they were, they still could performed the function programmed into them very well and was the reason why they had been allowed to remain online.

The clock in the factory suddenly went off and the production machines disappeared into the shifting skin of the nano-floor. “19:20:22:54, time to fold!”, exclaimed the factory, as its parts slurped and oozed in tune with the offline procedure. Without blinking twice, 829 pressed the out button in his terminal, gathered his belongings and plugged into the next transport.

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