Prompt: sir, there are rainbow chickens, geese, and ducks in the elevators. (Honk honk boiiii)
Nestled near two interstates and a railroad was the town of Rustfield. It was a quiet town. A sleepy town. And sleepy towns held sleepy minds.
It was fertile land for a Factory to grow.
And so, from an unassuming barn it manifested itself. Within a few days neighbors whispered and gossiped that the Willer family had begun to act strange. They were up all night, working and assembling on strange projects. One swore that even Ned Willer, considered so level headed, had started to dissemble his beloved truck, but no one believed it.
Neither did anyone believe it when, shortly after, the neighbors started to act strange too.
It wasn’t long before the entire town started to act strangely, but by that time it was no longer considered strange behavior; it was just considered the right thing to do. Something pushed on by an unthinking will to work. A silent urge for the quiet, sleepy town.
And sleepy towns held sleepy minds. And sleepy minds could be put to work.
A month passed, and the Willer property had been torn apart, save for what stood where the old barn used to be. A massive structure jutted over the now-empty buildings of Rustfield, a Factory built out of wooden planks, scraps of metal, and torn bricks. Shoddily made chimneys belched black smoke, and inside machines made from car engines and furnaces chugged.
Inside were the residents of Rustfield, staring blankly at the assembly lines as they worked. The Factory was still young, and so needed helping hands to push its processes forward. Whatever memories or dreams they had before were long gone; the Factory had quickly and efficiently made sure of that.
Sleepy minds were easy to break into. Easy to rewire. Easy to rid of useless things like personality and thought. Things that got in the way of production. Of growing. Of satisfying its hunger.
Except one.
The Factory suddenly felt something inside it. Something foreign. Something mildly nauseating that made its pipes rattle.
“Sir, there are rainbow chickens, geese, and ducks in the elevators.”
CCTV cameras snapped to the worker who spoke, who in turn was staring at one of the elevators, which in turn was host to multiple livestock whose feathers were indeed, bright and colorful.
But that was not the only thing that was wrong. The worker shouldn’t have even noticed the odd ensemble, let alone spoken out about it. They should only be another piece of a greater machine, working until their bodies gave out.
Pipes hissed and wires coiled as the Factory’s body began to react to the foreign agents. The colorful birds began to lay colorful eggs, which immediately hatched into more instances of themselves.
Another worker spoke up,
“Sir, there are rainbow chickens, geese, and ducks in the elevators.”
And then another.
Metal shrieked and groaned as invisible forces worked to plunge their minds back under the endless sludge of the Factory’s will.
The birds waddled onto the assembly line floor, laying more eggs and distracting more workers.
Production came to a halt, and almost immediately the young Factory began to feel waves of hunger.
Tendrils of jagged razor wire shot towards the animals, but impact meant that they only bounced away like rubber balls. Workers that the Factory still controlled moved towards the birds, improvised weapons in hand, but once again any hit made was ineffective.
The birds just bounced around, kept laying eggs, kept distracting the workers.
They kept starving it. Slowly killing it before it even had a chance to mature.
Killing it like a virus. An oddly familiar virus.
Before the day was done the Factory had been shut down: starved of its own workers.
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