Everyone was given a path. There were shifters and sweepers, sorters and feeders. There were pickers and porters and air drivers. There were loaders and unloaders, ramp workers and water spiders, grounders and stowers and freighters.
Emmett was declared an unloader. Third shift, where they always "needed bodies." He signed the paperwork, wrote the word "Void" on a check.
The woman who gave his interview said there were levels to every path, opportunities for advancement, for greater benefits. She made it sound like a game you could win.
Nothing's binding, she said. People bounce around, find their niche.
Emmett came to realize, as she spoke, that your path meant nothing, really, except the position where you started. It was only a piece of jargon.
I don't have a permanent address at the moment, he told her. But I will soon.
That's fine, she said. You're not alone.
There was nothing but farmland where they built it, and it rose up now from the fields of dead corn like a vast anomaly. A dozen warehouses, two runways. A parking lot fit for a stadium. It looked, from the window of the shuttle bus at night, like a lonesome galaxy in the borderless dark. The sodium lamps in the lot gave off orange coronas, and the fainter beacons of the taxiways arranged themselves in trembling constellations.
The people on board the shuttle were too visible in the harsh light, the shapes of their skulls apparent in their faces. They tightened the Velcro straps of back braces, ate strong-smelling soups and curries from Tupperware, struggling to reach their mouths with their spoons as the bus shook and jounced. They watched porn on their phones-slack-faced, mouths ajar. They played word games, poker, Candy Crush. They spun the reels of cartoon slot machines. They rubbed at scratch-offs with pennies. They stared with glassy resignation at absolutely nothing.
The guard shack was chaotic, men with wands shouting over the high-pitched keening of the metal detectors, herding the workers. The guards were not TSA, belonging instead to a private security firm, and they looked to Emmett like Neo-Nazis who'd recently finished prison sentences-Viking braids, bleached goatees, tattoos of Iron Crosses on their forearms.
He sat with the other recruits in an office annex, listening to Scott, their "Learning Ambassador," break down the workers' basic duties and the company's expectations. He was a small and energetic man, pacing to and fro, his lanyard ID badge swinging pendulum-like. Broken blood vessels lent his cheeks a rosy appearance, and he had a little boy's haircut, his bangs clipped short in a perfectly straight line.
You might think of this place as a warehouse, he said. But here at Tempo, we like to think of it as a ware-home.
They were made to click through a series of training modules on computers from the early aughts. They watched video clips, wherein a softspoken female narrator highlighted recent company achievements over a soundtrack of jazzy Muzak. The clips underscored Tempo's ethical commitment to creating a better world. But if Emmett learned anything from them, it was the extent to which the company's maneuverings had touched all realms of commerce. They were in the business of both fulfillment and distribution, shipping their own parcels-the orders boxed and sorted at smaller regional hubs-along with the parcels of anyone willing to pay. They'd begun to build retail warehouses, in competition with Walmart and Target. They'd been buying regional supermarket chains, and would use their network of distribution centers and their fleet of trucks to deliver groceries directly to the doorsteps of eager customers. In the video, a Tempo delivery driver in her familiar evergreen uniform handed a paper sack of bananas and grapes and baguettes to an elderly woman, who smiled and waved as the green electric truck pulled away.
Officially, it was called the Tempo Air Cargo Distribution Center, but Scott called it simply "the Center." It was Tempo's largest distribution hub, and had been built here in Nowheresville, Kentucky, because of its geographic centrality. Some of the workers commuted from Bowling Green or Elizabethtown, but most came from the forgotten hamlets of the surrounding counties, places with names like Horse Branch and Sunfish, Spring Lick and Falls of Rough. There had once been coal mines and tobacco stemmeries in that area, auto plants and grist mills. But all those enterprises had fled or been shuttered. Now Tempo had arrived to take their place.
What we're doing here is regional rejuvenation, Scott said. We're creating long-term opportunities.
The recruits were called upon to introduce themselves and offer a "fun fact" about their lives. When Emmett's turn arrived, he said he spent his free time writing screenplays. Really, there'd been only one screenplay-an evolving, never-ending autobiographical work that he'd abandoned and revived a dozen times. But he feared that admitting this would make him sound insane.
How bout that, Scott said. We have a screenwriter in our midst. What are they about?
Just my life, he said. They're autobiographical.
Hey, I better look out, Scott said. Maybe one day you'll write about this. Maybe one day we'll see it on the big screen.
Then he called on the next recruit, whose "fun fact" was that a miniature horse had kicked him in the head as a young boy, leaving him without a sense of smell.
Emmett moved to the warehouse-the ware-home, rather-and began what Scott called the "Skill Lab" portion of training. An enormous digital clock hung near the entrance, red numerals burning through the haze of warehouse dust. Beneath it, a scanner and a flatscreen monitor were mounted. You held your badge to the crisscross of lasers, and when the system read the barcode, your image appeared on the screen. They'd taken the photos on the first day of orientation, the trainees backed against a blank wall, unsure whether to smile. They looked like mugshots. When you saw yourself appear onscreen-the past-self who'd taken this job, who'd embarked on this path-and you gazed up at the red digits, measuring time by the second, you knew, unmistakably, that you were on the clock. It was the only clock, as far as Emmett knew, in the warehouse.
On the wall, near the break room door, a large sign read: We've worked 86 days without a lost time accident! The number was a digital counter. Emmett wondered what had happened 86 days ago. Each night, the number rose-87, 88, 89-and whatever had caused this loss of time receded further into the Center's collective memory.
It was a huge, hangar-like structure, an intricate maze of conveyor belts, all churning and chugging at once. The racket was like a subway train perpetually arriving at the platform-the clattering rhythm, the screak of friction. Bays for trucks took up one side; on the other, loading docks for planes. The floor was studded with steel ball bearings and rollers, so the shipping containers-"cans"-could be towed easily from the docks to the belt lanes. It was all so labyrinthine and vast that Emmett felt what he might begrudgingly call awe. He'd never gazed at the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral, sunlight turned to scattered jewels by stained glass, but he imagined the feeling might be similar.
When it came to the work itself, there was not much to learn. If they remembered nothing else, said Scott, they should remember the Eight Rules of Lifting and Lowering.
Approach the object, feet shoulder width apart, bend at the knees, test the weight of the package, grip opposite corners, lift smoothly, pivot or step without twisting, use existing equipment.
Unloading the containers of air cargo onto conveyor belts was the one and only dimension of his work, the same task repeated, ad infinitum. They showed him how to latch the cans into the lanes, how to break the yellow plastic seals. They showed him the little hydraulic knob that lifted and lowered the conveyor belt. (This was the "existing equipment" mentioned in the last of the Eight Rules.) They showed him the "small-sort" belt for loose envelopes and small parcels, and the "irreg" belt for unboxed freight-tires, axles, machine parts, etc.
And that was it.
It's a simple job, really, said Scott. Put boxes onto a conveyor belt until the can is empty, then bring over a new can. Do the same thing. Rinse and repeat.
Most nights, as he left, he saw the Blood Bus-an RV outfitted by the Red Cross to function as a mobile blood donation center. A fat man stood outside, calling out to the workers as they spilled from the shuttles. Hop on the bus, give your blood to us! he shouted. Hop on the bus, give your blood to us!
The man was always slick with sweat, his face purple and engorged from the exertion of...
