Posted by PK on November 10, 2003 at 03:10:56:
"It's still not right."
"Which helps solve what, exactly? I'm sure the poor sod starving out in God-knows-where
would be pleased to know you, sitting here in this comfortable pub, think it's a shame, but it
won't make any difference. Look Jane, I know how you feel. I felt the same myself. We were
brought up to think nobody should starve, everybody gets a fair chance and the good guys
always win, by divine right. Trouble is, it ain't necessarily so."
Jane shook her head again. She could never match Alicia in a logical argument. She wasn't
stupid by any means, and was well aware that she was arguing from sentiment more than
reason, but by the same token knowing that didn't alter how she felt.
"You've seen them do it?" Morbid curiosity would not be denied.
"Yes. I got the grand tour at the interview."
"And it didn't bother you? Wasn't it horrible?"
"Yes, it did at first, and no, no more than it has to be. It's bloody, of course, but not really
nasty. Some people give up burgers when they find out it comes from those cute little moo-
cows with their big brown eyes, I didn't."
"But it's people, not cows.."
"I know. And we're going round in circles, we've done this one. Jane, if this ever starts to
bother me, I'll pack it in. Until then, it's a job. And if I do pack it in, it won't be because
slaughterhouses aren't pretty. That's not ethics, it's squeamishness."
"Don't you ever feel sorry for them?"
"As much as you really do about those kids in Africa. It doesn't help so I try not to let it bother
me. Look, Jane..."
"Okay, okay. We're going nowhere. Let's drop it."
For the rest of the evening they made conversation about other things, but it wasn't the same
as it used to be. When they took their leave of each other Jane's manner was a little distant,
it not quite chilly. At the last moment, an implication of her week's work on the accounts
occurred to Alicia and she couldn't resist mentioning it.
"Hey, you remember all that fuss about fair trading? How the exploited third world workers
should get a fair share of the price for the goods they produce?"
Jane bridled, as Alicia had known she would. "What's wrong with that? Don't you think they
should?"
Too easy. "Of course I do. When did I say any different?" said Alicia mildly. "It's just that I
know what the company pays the volunteers. They make a decent profit margin, of course,
but a good percentage of what the customer pays actually goes back to the producer. I've
seen the books, it's an honest business, believe it or not. Eastern Foods complies with the
fair trading principle." She grinned. "Food for thought, eh?"
It was Wednesday before Alicia saw her first screamer. The weekend had passed without
incident, she had gone back to work and ploughed into her workload, which was becoming
almost comfortingly familiar. On Wednesday she turned up as usual, only to see a delivery
go off the rails. One of the young women being unloaded from the van went berserk and ran
for it.
Alicia reacted instinctively to block her. She had played football at school and field athletics
at University. She tackled the girl, grabbed her and held on. The girl tried to fight, with more
panicky fury than science, but was hopelessly overmatched in physical strength. Alicia waited
until she ran out of steam and collapsed into helpless sobbing. The security guard, who had
seen the whole thing, took his time coming over to pick her up.
"Don't hurt her," said Alicia. It was easy to be generous, the frail girl's blows had done her no
damage. "She's just frightened."
The guard nodded phlegmatically and took the girl's arm. She flinched away and clung to
Alicia, who patted her back.
"Take her in yourself, if you like."
She did, knowing full well what would happen. The girl, who knew no English, would not let
anyone touch her without going into hysterics unless Alicia held her hand. Alicia saw her
through the stripping, shearing and showering procedure and led her into the abattoir herself.
She held the girl's hand while she was humanely killed. The worker assured her that it was
quite safe to do so. She didn't stay to watch the butchering, but went up to her office.
Three hours later, while Alicia was engrossed in an analysis of shipping costs, Mr. Harding
knocked on the door and walked in. Dave, that is. She still wasn't quite easy with that.
"Getting on all right?" he asked.
"Not too bad, thanks. The database, though..."
"What about it?"
"It's crap. No match with the accounts package. You're duplicating effort. You need a data
exchange protocol."
Dave looked blank.
"I know a programmer who could do something with it.." Was she overstepping?
"Programmers. Can't afford one." He seemed distracted.
"Freelance. He's a bit eccentric, drinks like a fish, but he's good. Not too expensive, either.
He'll give you a quote for free. Up to you."
"Good. Leave his number on my desk, I'll think about it. Look..."
"Yes?"
"I heard you caught a screamer this morning."
"Yes."
"The lads said you did well." He still seemed uneasy.
Alicia shrugged. "I was on the spot, that's all. She was just scared, it was no big deal."
"There's a sort of tradition. You know how matadors get the ears and tail?"
What in God's name was he wittering on about? Matadors?
Dave looked at her.He seemed flushed. "If you catch a screamer you get the.. er .. trophy.
The prime cut."
Light dawned. Alicia mentally reviewed the pricing. She could make a shrewd guess.
"I see. You mean I'm supposed to get her cunt?" She was enjoying this.
He actually winced. She wondered if he would have if she hadn't been female. "If you'd
rather not, that's all right, I just thought..."
And have 'the lads' write her off as a wuss? No bloody chance.
"Free? That's the expensive bit, isn't it?" As if she didn't know.
"Er.. yes."
"Lovely. I'll take it, thanks. Any idea how to cook it?"
"No idea. Not much of a cook myself. Give that chap a ring, will you? I'll give him a listen."
He left hastily.
Alicia grinned. She knew it was wicked of her, Mr. Harding was just trying to be delicate and
she was not the sort of woman who comes all over emancipated whenever a man tries to act
like a gentleman, but she just couldn't resist a good wind up. She hoped he wouldn't be too
embarrassed to talk to her, he'd always treated her decently. She put the whole matter aside
and got back to work.
Shortly before five there was another knock on the door. She wondered what he wanted now,
but nothing happened. He usually just knocked and walked in.
"Come in," she called at last. "It's not locked."
It wasn't Mr. Harding, it was one of the abattoir workers, the one who had killed and
butchered her screamer.
"Miss...er... Featherstone-Sitwell?" He seemed almost as uneasy as Dave had.
"Yes?"
"Your package. Didn't the old man.. Mr. Harding tell you?"
"Oh, yes, right. Thank you." She stood up and took it. It was heavier than she expected.
He seemed to relax a little. "There's a bit o' leg in there too," he said. "The ...er..other is
supposed to be a treat an' all, but it's not right filling, if you get me..." he made a vague
gesture.
"Thanks very much, that's very nice of you, Mr. Higgins." She smiled. The name was on his
overalls.
He hovered for a moment, looking as if he was dying to say something else, then nodded
and turned to go. Alicia would have bet her shirt that he wanted to know if she was really
going to eat it. She resisted the temptation to ask him how to cook it. At the door he turned
and said, "It's Jack, Miss." and left before she could reply.
On the way home she wondered about Jack. His manner to her had been polite, even
deferential - she was admin staff and he was shop floor after all - but his visit revived
thoughts she had set aside after her first visit about how the workers felt about what they did.
She had never really spoken to one of them before. Did it bother them to kill all those young
women? Presumably not, or they wouldn't still be there, unless they all drank themselves
comatose every night. It seemed unlikely. Of course, they were no more or less implicated in
the situation than she was, she could hardly blame them for doing the hands-on part of the
work while she sat aloof in her office. That would be the same sort of hypocrisy she had
decried in her argument with Jane. Maybe they could detach themselves as she did while
working. Maybe some of them enjoyed it. Surely just the sight of all those naked female
bodies must get some reaction out of them, or did they turn that off too? It was the sort of
speculation she had been avoiding, but now that she was settling into the job, she had more
energy left to think and it was bound to resurface. Anthropology degree or not, she could
hardly fail to wonder about it and still be human.
She put the line of thought on hold when she got home. She was hungry. As before, she set
about preparing a quick steak dinner for one. She had mastered the art of preparing quick
meals so thoroughly she could do it half asleep, it never seemed worth the bother to do
anything more elaborate when it was just her. Besides, she didn't think a good steak needed
any fancy accompaniment. She was a purist. No baked beans this time though, employment
had restocked her larder. Peas and sweetcorn, mushrooms...and microwaved chips again.
Baked potatoes just aren't the same nuked. She moved around the kitchen swiftly, setting all
in motion, then she unwrapped the package. The steak looked much as the last one had, but
on top of it was her trophy. The neatly trimmed flesh looked delicate, and quite obviously
human. One piece of meat looks much like another but this was the most intimate part of a
person. She didn't want to ruin it. She decided to saute it lightly in butter, in a separate pan,
with a couple of herbs, maybe two or three minutes. She wouldn't mind if it was underdone,
better that than burnt.
It was hardly any time at all before the meal was done, and she was moving too quickly to
think. Turn this, drain that, switch the other off, and put it all on a plate. She sat the 'prime
filet' - so they called it in the advertising, she didn't know quite why - on top of the steak and
took it in. She flipped on the TV, but didn't pay it much attention. Alicia wasn't given to
excesses of sentimentality, but she had met this girl, however briefly, even held her in her
arms. The least she could do was pay attention while she ate her.
The steak was fine, as the last had been. The filet was unfamiliar but quite delicious. Not
being a lesbian, she had never had that part of a woman in her mouth before. She wondered
if it tasted the same raw. The thought intrigued and amused her. There was something
disturbingly decadent about eating something that had cost a person's life to provide, and she
let herself enjoy the sensation. She was not homophobic, the fact that she was eating
another woman and thoroughly enjoying it didn't worry her at all.
Sipping a glass of wine afterward, she did wonder how the girl had felt being led into the
abattoir to be killed and chopped up. Had she been pressed into volunteering or did she just
panic at the last minute? Did it make it worse knowing she'd be eaten? Alicia hoped not.
There was no point agonising about the girl's death after the fact, but she hoped she hadn't
suffered. She dismissed her concern as futile and watched TV for a while. The evening
passed with half an hour's excercise with hand weights, washing up, more TV, a book.
Later, in bed, Jack crept back into her mind. He wasn't bad looking in a rugged sort of way.
Was he married? Useless speculation, she knew, but she wondered if he'd be good in bed.
She really DID need to get laid. Would he think about me as meat while we did it? She
constructed a number of perverse fantasies around that idea as she masturbated, then she
fell asleep.
Over the next week her career came together. The computer expert, "Just Rafe, full name
and bank number will be on the invoice", turned up on Friday at eleven - first thing in the
morning for him - unshaven and hung over. Mr. Harding was not impressed until he sat down
at the computer and made it sit up and beg. Dave didn't understand half of the conversation
on specs between him and Alicia, he followed at a distance until they disappeared over the
horizon.
"Good enough hardware for what you need," he finally pronounced. "Database platform's
okay. Programming amateurish. Too polite to say the data structure's shit. Oops. Get it done
by a work scheme trainee, did you? You need some customising work, data transfer routines
and a bit of tidying up. Cut man hours on input - woman hours" - he grinned at Alicia - "by
half and improve functionality 500%, one week, maybe two. Total rewrite, one month. Up to
you. After that, upgrades and crash callouts, charged by the hour. Up to you." He shrugged
and glanced at Dave.
"How much will that cost?"
"Depends what you want."
Dave looked at Alicia. She nodded. Don't fuck it up, Rafe, she thought.
They got down to money..
A few days later she had another idea and put it to Dave in the cafeteria.
"You know those spitting machines we use? The Grey-Loco J-3000a? Too expensive for
private use?"
"Yes?"
"We can get more, really cheap. You were right, they went bust. The Grey-Loco firm bought
the design from Hills, overproduced and crashed. They got bought out by an asset stripper, a
subsidiary of a bigger concern. The equipment got mothballed and forgotten, it's sitting in a
warehouse. We can get them for peanuts."
"What for? We have enough of 'em. They're overdesigned, the ones we have will last.."
"Hire them out. Package deal with the live roasters."
Dave thought about it. He gave her an appraising look. "Where are you getting all this from?"
"Off the net. Rafe upgraded the software. I got a search engine to download into a
searchable database so I can...."
"Stop." Dave held up a hand. "Numbers. How do we know it will sell? I don't want a dozen
more expensive white elephants on my hands."
"Dead easy. Live roasters are advertised over the Net already. Poll the clients by e-mail.
Stick a questionaire on the invoice."
He nodded. "Put out some feelers."
Alicia grinned. "Is that an order?"
One week later her name was on her office door, her trial period over and her salary doubled.
Dave complained they'd had to order an extra long plate to fit her name in. In the meantime,
Alicia came to realise that Dave really did run the company. His partners were financial
backers, the men on the floor were just holding down jobs. He was Eastern Foods, and she
had his confidence.
Now she was a permanent member of staff, she found that the other members would talk to
her in the cafeteria. Previously only Dave had, the others seemed to feel it would be
unseemly to lunch with a trainee. Roxy would talk to her on the rare occasions she used the
place at all, but she wasn't really an employee, but a piece worker hired by the day according
to whether her language range matched the current intake. The floor workers, of course, ate
separately from staff. From what she had seen so far, her new social status was a mixed
blessing. The staff were not an amusing bunch. Jennings from shipping was a dull stick of a
man who knew everything there was to know about shipping and nothing else. Most of the
customer sales staff were unimaginative airheads whose sole qualifications were an ability
to talk on the phone and read a catalogue. Jackman from advertising was an obnoxious
chancer who obviously fancied her, from the crude attempts at suggestive humour he
inflicted on her. Most of the time she preferred to eat on her own. She noticed meanwhile
that there was no technical staff worth mentioning, just a handyman. That gave her an idea.
She did some more research on the Internet. She knew there was something there about
everything if you could only find it, and she found it. The first breakthrough was finding a
message board for connoisseurs of cannibalism, real and imaginary. From there the network
of links spread in any number of directions. She left messages, sent e-mails and tracked
down leads in what time she could fit in between the jobs she was supposed to be doing. It
wasn't too hard after Rafe's upgrades, which actually did save time once you worked out how
to use them. Like a dog with a bone, she wouldn't let go. She even persuaded Rafe to
upgrade her owm moribund computer with some less than state-of-the-art spares he had, for
a minimal fee and a few drinks, so she could work on it at home.
For the next bit she had to talk to someone from the floor who knew about the J-3000s and
asked in the cafeteria. After some initial disbelief and unease, she was directed to ask Eric, a
black man from Barnsley with a typically dour Yorkshire sense of humour. He admitted that
he knew a bit about them.
"They reckon Ah'm t'gaffer on t'job because Ah've read t'manual. Pity daft beggars can't read
thi'sens." It was an understatement, he had a shrewd working knowledge of machinery. They
had an informative chat over lunch. Alicia paid for it.
When she was ready, she collared Dave in his office and announced she had an idea. He
looked interested but wary. "What about?"
"It's the J-3000s," she started.
"Ah, yes. I've been meaning to have a word."
She gave an encouraging lift of the eyebrows. "Made a decision yet?"
"Well, we did get some feedback. Quite a bit, really. The numbers look all right. But it turns
out there might be a problem."
Alicia nodded. "They work fine as spitting machines on the line, but the luxury features
intended for the private market don't work that well. That's one of the reasons they didn't take
off, apart from the price."
Dave nodded. He knew all of this. "So?"
"They were invented by Merle Hill, an amateur, not a real engineer. When the Libertarian
Reforms made consensual cannibalism legal, Gray and Loco saw an opportunity. They were
enthusiasts too, not businessmen. Mass processing didn't take off in the US, so they aimed at
the private market. They went under, we got them cheap."
"You've done your homework, but...."
"The basic machine is sturdily built and works fine, just not the complicated bits. I remember
you said the belly slitting gadget doesn't always work."
"Needs a bit of tweaking, that's all. We're getting the hang of it, but..when did I say that?"
"You said, 'it worked that time' as if it didn't always. During the tour." Dave looked surprised
but Alicia ploughed on.
"There's a guy I know in America who got one of the originals secondhand. He's an inventor
and he's got one to work, all the fancy stuff like the stitching and stuffing. His problem is the
same as Grey and Loco had. Testing. You can't expect to get a whole bunch of women to
volunteer to be slit open and skewered just to test a machine. My guy found a way to
simulate it with dummies. He's been working on it for years, and now he reckons it works."
Dave shook his head. "Pie in the sky. Look, love, I'm sorry, it's all very interesting but we're
not in the R&D business. I can't afford to buy a whole load of kit because you think it just
might work..."
"We don't have to. Just get Eric to try the modifications on one of ours. He's a nuts and bolts
man, loves mucking about with machines."
"And how much will that cost? What does your American friend want for it?"
"That's the good bit. Nothing. Think about it, he's an enthusiast too. He can't get anybody to
use the thing. Not surprising. Whereas we..."
"Have a whole line of them going through every day." For the first time Dave didn't look as
though he was humouring her.
"What can we lose? A bit of time, a few parts."
"A ruined roaster..."
"Not a total waste. She could still be butchered if we mess her up."
Dave sipped a cup of tea that had gone cold. He hadn't got where he was by overlooking
opportunities, but he didn't take stupid risks either. "If it works, what do we get?"
"The hire business. Maybe we can sell them, too. If they take off on the luxury market we
clean up. The holding company doesn't know what they've got. Grey holds the patent, but
he's working as a postal clerk or something, we can get it for a commission, I'd bet, which
means..."
"If it works, we pay. If it doesn't we don't." He gave Alicia a wry grin. "Did engineering and
business while you were doing that anthropology degree, did you?"
"I can mend a fuse. The rest is just putting things together.There's a lot of talent out there,
you just have to find it."
"And use it, right, get us the plans and pass them on to Eric. If he says it's a go, we'll try it."