Sinister Sentiments by K.C. Finn Page B

if you’re suited to the task.”
    I don’t want to lose the opportunity, but it feels so impolite to just cry ‘Yes’ at the top of my lungs. Instead I clear my throat, wringing my hands together for the briefest moment.
    “You’re sure, Sir?” I ask humbly. “I’m just a simple clerk, really. I haven’t a clue about the running of a factory.”
    “Precisely,” Mr Metero says, pointing a bony finger at me. “If I gave control to one of the designers, they’d have ideas above their station, be wanting to experiment!” He stamps his foot for emphasis. “Disgraceful! And give power to a labourer, well, he’d be taking liberties casting tropical sunbeams over his own back yard.” Another stamp. “Criminal! We can’t have that. But you, my lamb, you’re in the middle. You know your place, and you’ll stick to it for me, won’t you?”
    “Yes Sir,” I say, hardly daring to believe my luck. “Of course Sir.”
    The gold and glass elevator is only for designers and senior staff usage. It operates by hand-crack from the ground floor, where a labourer is put in place to wind the locomotive device in both the upward and downward directions. Mr Metero rings a little service bell from a panel within the contraption, which is labelled Third Floor in a curling, elegant script. The gilded box begins to ascend after mere moments, and I peer out of the glass panels in its doors to watch the forbidden floors above me coming into view.
    We pass the designers’ floor, where the architects of weather sit at their titled desks, pencils and calculators in hand, then the scene is gone as a corridor the colour of aubergines comes into view. I chance a glance at Mr Metero to find the old man watching me, a knowing smile playing at his lips. He surely understands how exciting this moment must be for one who hasn’t witnessed the third floor before. He opens the elevator doors for us both, stepping back again to allow me first passage into the corridor ahead.
    The corridor leads onto a huge expanse. Here, at the head of the building, the ceiling has been removed to combine with the attic, giving rise to a ten foot space above where I stand. The Metero Factory’s roof is riddled with thick, rectangular panels of glass that display the sunlit sky above. Between the glass, there are pockets of open air that let warmth and natural light stream in. I almost wonder what Mr Metero does when it rains, but then I remember who he is. I’m sure that it never rains above the Metero Factory.
    Through the floor, huge brass pipes rise up towards the holes in the glass ceiling. I recognise the polished metal as that which belongs to the weather engines below, where some of my fellow clerks feed the customised punch-cards into the machines. Even as I’m watching the pipes, there is a sudden rumble from within one of the nearest ones. A whipcrack sound hits me like a physical force, followed swiftly by a slim bolt of lightning that shoots from the pipe into the sky. The lightning continues to shoot upwards for several seconds, and some bursts are longer than others, beating out some sort of code into the heavens. So this is how the machines in the sky receive their signals.
    “How do you find it, dear boy?” Mr Metero asks.
    “Fascinating,” I reply, too dumbfounded to even find another word to add.
    The old man takes me by the elbow, weaving me through the jutting tubes as my head spins in all directions to watch the signals fire off. I stumble a little, my gaze suddenly snapping back to ground level, where I find that Mr Metero has a little desk set up for himself amid the machines. It is an elegant piece of furniture, with polished oak and golden edging, and I find myself a little choked that he should think me worthy to sit at such a desk in his absence. He even has his own personal machine feeder atop the desk, ready to send custom weather out with his very own fingertips. There are fountain pens and paperwork and all manner of