Futuretrack 5 by Robert Westall

them off me.” Then she was gone.
    A straggle of Unnems passed in single file, shouting in unison and not a sound to be heard above the cacophony. Four were wearing Polaroids; they couldn’t all be razzling Techs. I put my Polaroids on; found my pay slip, chewed up bits, and stuffed them into my ears. Suddenly deaf, I plunged in.
    The chewed paper helped, up to the swing doors. Beyond, the noise was as bad as ever. I could feel my eardrums pulsing, like someone was pressing their thumbs in; could feel the chewed paper moving…
    Mustn’t stand still; I was attracting glances.
    The dome was so full of fag smoke it was like walking through a stinking autumn mist. The far end was invisible, apart from patterns of winking lights. That was the awful thing: too much light yet somehow not enough. No steady light you could read by.
    Fading into the haze, bank upon bank of machines with figures crouching over them, endlessly pulling handles. A factory? But what were they making? Levers were pulled, lights flared, there were fake electronic explosions, buzzes, whinings, bleepings, the sound of cars driven fast and badly. But nothing emerged from the machines.
    As I watched, one crouching figure stopped his compulsive lever-pulling and began to beat on his machine with his fists. Rocking it on its foundations so the bolts that held it to the floor began to lift. I stepped forward, appalled at seeing a machine so abused.
    The machine emitted a high-pitched shriek. Two white-coated men ran up, plunged a syringe into the guy’s backside through his thin denims. He gently collapsed. A third white-coat pulled up a long tube on wheels. They slotted the inert body into the tube and wheeled it away.
    The rhythm of the other workers never faltered. Only the black man next door raised his head; shrugged and went back to his handle. I went across to him. “What happened?”
    Shrug.
    “Where they taking him?”
    The black man wriggled his broad shoulders, like I was an annoying fly. I turned to the abandoned machine.
    “Mind out!” I was pushed aside by another white-coat, who bent to the floor with an electric screwdriver, tightened up the bolts that held the machine down. He checked it with a vigorous tug to see if it was stable and departed, saying, “Carry on.”
    The glass top of the machine was a glowing mass of Supermen, rockets, atomic explosions, all very badly drawn; and a series of numbers ranging from one thousand to one trillion. I pulled the handle at the side; nothing happened.
    “Putcher money in, lobo,” shouted the black man, never taking his eyes off his own machine.
    I pulled out one of Sellers’s Unnem credits and put it in the now obvious slot. Pulled the lever. A coloured light danced an intricate pattern round the crude screen and died. I saw I’d scored a trillion. Was that good? I pulled the lever a second time, in exactly the same way. Techs are trained to perform exactly the same movement, over and over again.
    I scored a trillion six times. The machine put up a green metal flag, burped at me repeatedly, and dropped ten Unnem credits into a tray by my knee.
    “Jammy sod,” said the black man.
    To cover my confusion, I put another credit in the slot and pulled the lever again. Nothing happened.
    “Push your flag down, lobo,” shouted the black. “Where you been all your life—down on the farm?”
    How did he know what I was doing, when he never broke his own frantic rhythm?
    I was in bad shape; the noises and lights were beating in waves, my head was splitting. But I had to keep my head down; feel my way carefully. Dangerous to wander about aimlessly…
    Like any Tech, I lost myself in the machine; forgot the Supermen and rockets; saw through them to the crude electrical circuits beneath. The machine was badly worn, standing on an uneven floor. Some parts were overheating, near going on the blink. This gave the machine its personality, its bias. Playing on this bias, I began to win steadily. Letting the