Part 1, Chapter 4: The Factory by the Sea

And we're back. If you're listening through the back catalog, just a heads up that we have a new sequel series, don't tell Alice out right now. It is an entirely separate story from the first series other than that it takes place after the end of the first series and has some of the same characters. If you enjoy our show and you have the means, I would really love you to support our Patreon. It's the main way we are able to pay the small artistic team that makes this show. And it gets you all sorts of stuff including episodes at free and a week early, bonus episodes between every main one, directors notes on every episode, right with me sessions with Joseph Fink and a bunch more. You can also hop onto our store page in the DePateco shop and get yourself some Alice isn't dead merch. Finally, I have a new podcast called The Best Worst with Nightvails Make Bashwinner, in which we watch the IMDB viewer best and worst rated episodes. I genuinely think it's really fun and an interesting show and I'd love for more people to listen to it. So check out The Best Worst Wherever You Get Your Podcasts. Okay, thank you. [Music] I'm driving away now. Away from the factory. My feet are wet and my hands are sweaty. I'll try to forget what I saw there but I won't be able to will I, Alice. I'll never forget what happened at the factory by the sea. [Music] Alice isn't dead by Joseph Fink, performed by Jisek Anakul, produced by disparition. Part 1 Chapter 4 The Factory by the Sea The sea is crystalline. It's seductive. But the land feels angry and lost. There is no harmony here. The tranquility of the lapping waves sputters out in the land slumps into place. It's buggy as hell too. Got damn it. Oh sorry, another huge bug just died a messy death right on my windshield so. Ah, whatever. Delivery today was to a factory. I didn't recognize the name of the company but the factory was fast. It was right on the beach, a huge block rectangle of metal pipes and tanks and three towering stacks. Black smoke out over the water. One side of the building went into the high tide line, water just lapping up against the concrete foundation. The gentle white slope of the sand on either side. Weird right? Why would anyone build a factory like that? Why would they be allowed to? With the environmental hazards alone. Is this the world you left me? Leaderless and spinning? Sorry, off topic. The factory. I didn't see any other way out to the loading dock so I just drove right on the sand back up to it. There was a young man there. Very young. 18 at the most. Probably less. Probably less. The kid was wearing this gray factory jumpsuit with the company's logo on it in red. The logo was a dog, cringing in pain, praxis industries. What is this world you've left me, Alice? The farther south you go on this coast, the worst the drivers get. They're old and they're mad down here. Why are they so mad? Why are they in my lane? Why are you in my. Shit. Sorry, Alice. I know you hated it when I yelled. Hate it. You hate it when I yell. Hi, the kid on the loading dock said, "Hi, my name's Jackie. You got my delivery?" Sure, I said, right in the back. It wasn't much. I don't know why they needed a truck of my size to deliver it. Stray bits of wood, each individually labeled with a number and a letter. I couldn't tell much from the shape of them. "Cool, cool," kid said. "This is perfect. Hey, help me with this, would you?" Together, we took them off of the truck and put them piece by piece on a conveyor belt, which carried them through a chute into the factory. Black smoke out over the water, churning machines, I didn't see a single human being on the scaffolding. No one having a cigarette out on the loading dock, not a face in any of the grease-seered windows. No workers in sight. No parking lot, either. Just the beach. "Come on in, I have to sign off on the delivery inside," said the kid. He disappeared through a propped open fire exit. I followed right after, but he was already gone. Huh. There's a black fan parked by the side of the road. Man outside of it sitting on a lawn chair, he's got coolers next to him. Signs saying 50 cent clams, $2.00 crabs. "Tempting, but I am not going to stop." "Ooo, the popcorn store. Even more tempting. An entire store of popcorn." "I'm not gonna stop for that either." The suburbs never end here. Firework outlets, outlets that sell only uniforms of various kinds, churches like they build when they have no history, strip mall triangles, same architecture as the Taco Bell. Easily convertible into a raw stress for less if the church doesn't work out. I shouldn't judge. No one should. We all do lots of things we shouldn't though. Inside the factory, the air didn't feel like air, but some artificial replication. It felt hot and tight in my lungs. The hallway was the wrong shade of green, if you know what I mean. You know that green that isn't right? That is off from what it should be? It was that green. Bare bulbs, doors leading off from the hallway, all locked. I walked down the long, long hall, no sign of Jackie. In a dead-of-glass door, I pushed through when I was in some sort of manager's office. Cheap binders, red and blue, overstuffed with paper, and I key a desk with a computer still running Windows XP. There was a man there in the same great jumpsuit. On the wall was the logo of the company. It was someone drowning, gasping for air, and it said "praxis industries." "Hello?" I said to the man in the jumpsuit. "Oh sure, sorry," he said. "Just have to get the paperwork settled." It was Jackie, but he was older. I don't know how much, but at least in his early 30s, his hair had already started to grey a bit. He didn't have wrinkles exactly, but he had the places in his face where the wrinkles would be. I didn't know what to do. I pinched and pinched, but every time it hurt. So I did the only thing I could do. I picked up the uncapped, big pen on the desk, and I signed the forums where he was pointing. "Oh sure, thanks," he said. "Listen, I hate to be a bother, but could you just give me a quick hand with unpacking in the next room?" "No problem, if not, but it's a bit of a pain on my own. I couldn't say anything to him. I nodded. It was all I could do." "Great then," he said, and bustled off through the double doors. "I've been thinking lately of our pizza nights." "Doe from scratch, sauce from scratch, cheese from—well, from this door, not going that far." "I love the making of bread, the dough for the crust, flower and water in your hands, for separate and then merging into a silky hole. The yeast and gluten making it a living thing." It moves when you poke it. It breathes into your hands. "Our hands covered in flower, we open a bottle of wine and we eat the pizza we made, and we just watch whatever's on TV and fall asleep in a wine and bread coma." "I think love is cooking together. I think it's making something with each other. That's what I think, Alice. I don't know what you think. Turns out that I didn't know what you were thinking at all." I had some idea of what would happen. I pushed through the doors, no sign of him, of course. It was the factory floor, a great arc of a roof with skylights over towering machines, automatic processes that I didn't understand and no workers at all. Metal hands, building metal things, and no human beings in sight. I wandered down the concrete aisles, the sound of the machines pounding in my teeth, and eyelids. Machine after machine, Alice. Imagine the scale of them. Picture it for me. And then, Jackie again. He was older in his 50s or early 60s. The promise of his wrinkles made good. I felt dizzy and sick. The thrum of the machines became a home in my gut and it tasted hot metal. "Great," he said. "You made it." He was piecing the wood sections together, fitting them into some sort of structure. I still couldn't tell what it was. "Jackie?" I said, "What is going on here?" "Jackie," he said. "Huh. No one's called me Jackie in a long, long time." "Jack, I prefer Jack." Leave the younger man's name to the younger man. The howl of the machines echoed back from the empty scaffolding and walkways. And on to Jack. Older and stooped. He gestured at what he needed and they helped him fit some of the wood bits and other wood bits, following his instructions and not my own understanding. I didn't say anything more. But once we had done whatever we did, it didn't look like much. A cube but missing some bits maybe. He pressed a button and the whole thing rolled on the conveyor belt through the tunnel of machines and out of the factory. Jack gave me a thin, sad smile. "Only one more stop now," he said. "Come on then." He stooped his way out of the building and it followed him. Of course I did. [Birds chirping] Crossing inland now. Grassland and canals. They're supposed to be alligators here, right? That's a whole thing with this area. Gators or whatever? I haven't seen any alligators but I saw a cow drinking from a stream. We can like the first part of a scene from National Geographic. The second part didn't happen. No gator leaping from the water with its jaws open. Cow just drank. What is a cow doing in a swamp? Are there wild cows? There aren't, right? [Birds chirping] Outside the door, a narrow concrete ledge over the water. Blue water, white sand. The light slapping off the ocean against the factory, wearing it away one gentle touch at a time. Jack was there. Already he was so old his hair was pure white and his eyes were clouded. He was easily 70, probably 80, maybe more. "Well, this is it then," he said. "Help me with these last few pieces." And I helped him with those last few pieces and as they locked into place, I understood and when he gestured I didn't ask questions. I helped him carry the coffin we had built to the edge of the factory and dropped it into the water. And when he reached from a hand, I didn't hesitate. I eased him into the coffin as it floated. He nodded. He didn't seem scared. My hands shook but his were steady. "Just push me out then," he said. The coffin bobbed in the water. He laid his head back and put his eyes up to the sky. On the inside of the coffin's lid was the company's logo and red. The logo was two people lowering a coffin into the sea. "Praxis industries," it said. "And God helped me," I pushed. The coffin took off into the tide and with each wave it was a little farther out. Jack's hand so small, so frail, reached up and pulled the lid closed. I stood there watching as it went out further and further and then was gone. The factory kept on turning, machines making machines. There was no one inside. It smelled like the sea and it smelled like smoke and steel and it smelled like algae and mercury. Once he was gone and once I felt myself start to breathe again, I stepped off the edge, way steep into the water and I walked through it around the factory. And onto the sand, white as bone, white as heat. And they got in my truck. What as I was dripping into the torn plastic seat, dripping on the books, stacked on the floor, curling the pages, hands on the key, engine back on, driving away. The way across the sand away from the factory, out back onto the road, away from the factory. And that's where I am now, driving. As I always am and we talk, we. Of course we don't talk, I do. You vanish. You aren't. You are a gap, a nothing. And I talk into that nothing, I let my words float away like Jackie on the waves, like, like Jack on the waves. I let my words vanish and I just keep driving. Flower on our hands, sauce on our hands, our hands on our hands. Something forgettable on the television, leg upon leg, that was a life. Alice, that's what it's made of. Hand upon hand upon leg upon heart upon couch, upon a day where we made bread together. And now a coffin floating away on water is blue as anything under a sky, as blue as anything away from the factory. Away from the factory by the sea. Fuck it, right? There's a denny's in two miles anyway. There's that. Alice, honey. There's always that. [Music] [Music] And now the answer to our riddle. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the dead are born, because the dead grow and eat, because the dead make bad decisions and good decisions, because the dead sit at tables or on the floor talking about food and decisions they've made, because the dead love, because they love, that's why. But also because the dead work and make things for the rest of the dead, and then the dead slow and relax and lean back onto the time that's given to them. And when there is no time left for them to lean on, they fall. And the dead finally die. And that is why the chicken crossed the road. [Music] This has been a production of Night Vale Presents. Find out more about us and our shows at NightValePresents.com. [Music] [Music] Microsoft Word.endarisくこう Air.nc & Type Wirter Microsoft Word NB Microsoft Word.endar Airport Microsoft Word.endaris Microsoft Word.endaris Microsoft Word.endaris Microsoft Word.endaris Microsoft Word.endaris Grив, Kell, or Lyq拿 Greá! resiliency pl명 grv dv Grv grv grv grv grv grv # # #