The Clang and Vibration

The lives of seemingly insignificant people in an industrial sci-fi backdrop.

The clang and vibration. He hated these sounds. He hated more that he was making them and that, with a bravery he couldn’t muster, he could stop at any time. But that wouldn’t solve anything, the sounds would continue, echoed by the men and women who stood alongside him. The sounds of sheet metal being hammered into place stretched out all around, giving the feeling that it was he who was being enveloped by steel rather than the monotonous foundations of the building reaching above them.

 

He couldn’t breathe, though this was nothing new. The collar buzzing intently around his neck was designed to give only enough air to function and cut off enough to inspire panic. At the word of a guard, it could cut his throat instantly. Knowing this was enough to stay in line but the choking was a sadistic bonus.

 

So he continued to strike the rivets. Uncaring of the lethal fumes, ignoring the impending exhaustion and accepting of his confinement. Soon he would be pulled from his work and led back to the large, empty, filthy room and left till they were needed again.

 

He deserved this. Whatever he had done, for he could not remember, must justify this punishment. That he was allowed to see and hear at all was a gift that he should be thankful for. He could not hate those that had granted him that. Some part of his mind disagreed aggressively, but that part could not survive in this life, so it was sent to the back of his mind where it would not interfere.

 

After years of this, the fear no longer shook him, the hate no longer manifested into anything tangible. It just became a grey background to the swing of a hammer and the reverberating thud of a rivet being driven into a steel wall. It was life for all, not just him, and he should accept his place among them. And he did.

 

It started with a ping. Not a thud, or a clang, or a vibration in the wall. But a soft ping played once through the speakers that usually blared obnoxious sirens. A guard’s visor raised towards the sound and paused, showing an emotion Francis had never seen before, uncertainty. The work continued but the pause stretched for 10 seconds more before…blackness. The large industrial lights built into the floor turned out and, after a second of blackness, were replaced by the dim blue glow of emergency lights all along the platform.

 

Francis’s attention was immediately to his neck. The constant buzzing that had invaded his mind had stopped, the collar had gone dead. He didn’t know what to do. It still clung to his neck but the danger was gone. He didn’t act, just stared. The man to his left turned and looked at Francis. A madness appeared in his eyes as he made the same realisation. And he did act.

 

The mad-eyed man turned to the guard behind them, now bellowing down the platform at his compatriots whose radios had all died. So pre-occupied, the guard did not see the man approach him so confidently. So preoccupied that he may never have been aware of the hammer piercing his helmet before it sank further and crushed the life from him.

 

He couldn’t understand what he saw. His protector, his guard had been killed, taken away from him. He had nothing. But the part of his mind, forced into exiled, used this opportunity to return to the fore and brought with it an overwhelming anger. He hated this guard and he hated the mad-man for taking away his chance at revenge. Without thought, he was on top of the guard’s still body, driving home his own hammer onto any part of the guard his chaotic swings could land. He lost all awareness of the world around him, only concentrating on the repetitive swing of his arm and the fire of anger that raged through him, stoking it with memories of what he had lost and what this man had done.

 

Blood covered his face and in the background, primal screams and desperate, sporadic gun-fire could be heard. Francis could feel and hear none of this. He swung till he nearly collapsed. Too exhausted to put his hate into action, he lay over the corpse, which was no longer recognisable as a man.

 

For an undiscernible amount of time, he lay there. Drifting in and out of sleep he had been denied for so long. Fear of being kicked awake pulled him out from deep sleep while exhaustion pulled him back in. In time, he woke naturally, unsure if his eyes were truly open thanks to the dim light. Standing once again, the lights on the platform’s edge illuminated one side of the scene and shadowed the other. Bodies lay shattered and bloody everywhere. Guards lay at intervals, killed by dozens of crushing strikes, with bullet ridden bodies scattered around them. Workers lay everywhere, many as dead from a hammer as from a gun. Moaning could be heard from wounded and dying, but it was too dark to tell them from the dead.

 

He was alone. That’s all he could think of. There was no one else on the platform. The familiar metal shutter that led to their cells sat at one end, apparently untouched in the fighting. To the other was the guard’s elevator that he and his kind were always kept far from. The bodies seemed thickest there. Over the edge of the platform was the same abyss. A moment of doubt took him, “maybe I should run!” but it was quickly crushed. He knew what to do. Picking up a hammer, he moved back to the wall and did what he had always done. The clang and vibration. There were no better sounds.