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Melancholy Hearts

Chapter Two

Taj shifted slightly in her padded seat to stretch her legs, trying to fight off the pins and needles forming in her toes.

"Sitting in one place for four straight hours... yeah, I can see why you guys are getting restless down there." She mumbled to herself. She had no one to talk to during her work hours, yet she had decided long ago that she wouldn't go brain dead from it. Even if it sounded crazy, talking to herself kept her mind going, kept her on her toes.

Or, as of right now, on her butt.

Her job, if it could be called such, was in a clothing factory on the east side of the Work Zone. Her soul task was to repeatedly sew on button after button to the shirts presented to her. Even though she found it quite easy, it still drove her to the verge of insanity to do it for eight hours with only a one hour pause to break it up. Though the break helped much more than could be put into words, it also made her disgusted, for it was occupied with several speeches by government cronies.

The Work Zone, as it was referred to by all the citizens, was one of the main circles of buildings in the city. The entire city was arranged to look like a target if looked upon above. The very middle, being the bullseye, was where government workers and other high up officials worked and slept, and being on the rich side of things people like Taj where forbidden from going inside it. The second was the Market, the place where the people could go on their off time to spend the few credits they received. The third was the Work Zone, and the fourth was the Residential Zone. Everything was kept spotless more or less, and crime was something that one would hear of almost every day on the one channel they had on the TV. If they were lucky enough to have one.

Taj remembered how Amias had one day said out of the blue, "We don't need to be by those slobs anyway. We have everything we need right where we are." She had thought at first that he had been talking about the separation of the poor and rich, but after she had mulled it over during her work she decided he had meant something entirely different.

"We don't need these walls; we are fine next to our supposed 'predators'." She stole a glance around the room to make sure no one was listening.

In the small room there were usually only three others around her, but today there were only two. One had simply disappeared, no explanation behind it. To Taj, this was a regular occurrence and was brushed of quickly. Not like she had known the other rabbit personally. She had made sure she had no relations with anyone in this place for this exact reason.

Each person had their own little bubble. No one was friends, no one talked to each other. It was almost an unwritten rule that no one was to ever make any kind of contact with the others.

Either way, no one would ever hear her muttering, not with the sound of the machines frequently booming in the background. One thing that Taj prided herself in was her ability to use such annoying things to her advantage, but it wasn't as if it was hard to come up with.

As she stitched the final button onto the shirt she was working on she started to twist in her seat. To her right was a chute that the completed shirts would go into, being dropped down to the floor below to be packaged and moved out to the markets.

If anyone in the city wanted the shirts, they would have to push their limits in their field of work. Now, reader, this society did not have regular money as we do. It did, however, have credits. These credits were held on a small data pad that each person would wear on either wrist, and if they wanted anything they would have transfer their work number to the vendor they were buying from. The vendor would then take the credits that the product was being sold for. They were much like the debit cards that we use, except that many other things resided on the data pads, but we'll get into that later.

As for the whole "push their limits in their field of work" thing, it is a pretty simple system behind it. Each person within the city was monitored and tracked, each job completed and uncompleted put on record. These would add up to what they were allowed to purchase during that week, based on a one to ten scale. If a person wanted to buy a shirt, or just any clothes really, they would have to score a seven or eight depending on what type of clothes they wanted.

Simple right? Anyone would be dumb to think so.

As she heard the shirt hit the bottom of the chute, with the small clink of the newly added buttons and the soft thud of the cloth itself, Taj looked to her left and grabbed a shirt out of the pile. She considered herself good at the task, if one could get good at something so simple. She didn't allow herself to show this talent off, however. If she did, she would then be expected to have the same speed throughout her days of work, forcing the grading system for credits to be altered for her. She would simply save her energy for when she really needed or desired something and act as if she was being overworked.

She placed the shirt onto her work small workstation to begin the bore some task once again. The workstation was really just a small table that she had been assigned to, nothing fancy. It had a drawer for the thread and another for the buttons, but beside that there was nothing special about it except for the small metal piece that showed two small words, almost unreadable from where Taj was.

Taj Octavium

There was no reason to have her name on the desk. She was escorted each day in and out of this place with a special headset put on to make sure she couldn't see anything. She thought there was no reason for it, but in the end the government didn't really have to have a reason.

Simple as that.

Maybe it was security, but why would a shirt factory need security? She had thought this to herself throughout her first year there, but had soon given up. No reason for her to waste energy on something she would never know.

From above there came a harsh voice, one that certainly belonged to one of the Enforcers. They were like the police, except lethal force was something that they didn't hesitate to use if a person refused to comply. Armed with Bergifs, which were rifles that could be switched from electrical stun rounds and lethal rounds, and simple batons, they were not a forced to be messed with. Just seeing them made Taj's legs shake with fear.

"First period work is over. Remain silent and wait for escorts to take you to the Speeches."

Two Enforcers walked in, two rabbits dressed in full black and wearing helmets that covered almost all their face but left their ears out, and put the headgear on the four workers. Taj's world went dark, but it didn't go silent.

"Fuck the speeches! They're trying to brainwash us!" The voice came from the room next to hers. The next thing she heard made her almost throw up. There was a loud bang, followed by a scream.

Then the thud of a body hitting the floor.