The Long Return
In a cyberpunk future, a night guard encounters a stranger prowling around a massive factory.
Late in the night during Park Yeon-seok’s guard shift at a faceless shipping factory, he donned his coat and pocketed his keys and left the guard shack to walk his section of the perimeter. The black street gleamed like onyx in the acid rain. White streetlamps stood every fifty feet along the sidewalk, and the two-lane cargo road that paralleled the factory’s massive stone wall and iron fence was quiet in both directions.
Behind the wall and the fence sprawled the concrete labyrinth itself, one quarter square miles of warehouses, office buildings, roads, dumpsters, and shipping bays, at all hours belching out long silver trucks full of freight and at all hours swallowing up the empty returning. Park’s route was dark, but that was no bother; his manager forgot his new flashlight in the breakroom, and now it was in his pocket.
Park’s perimeter amounted to a small corner on one side of the work site, though he occasionally did a full lap. This night as he rounded the usual corner, he found himself down a totally dark street. The streetlamps were turned off. Park turned on his new flashlight and scattered it down the road.
A jagged, toothy glint in the iron fence cast his light back at him.
It was an oblong shape, tall and narrow with the bars severed smooth and the remaining fence forced inward. Even in the chilly rain there was an unusual heat in the air. Up and down the street there was no getaway car, no van canvassing the area. There was only the fence and a man-sized hole cut into it.
Park stepped through the hole. The grimy concrete wall stretched up into the night like a remorseless judge. He half-expected to find a similar hole in the concrete, as if made by a cartoon. It was untouched. Park followed its perimeter, crunching the gravel underfoot and listening. There was only the clunking of distant machinery and the patter of rain.
He passed a slate gray door inset into the wall, intended for use as a service entrance to the conglomerate's electrical grid. It was slightly ajar, so slight that without being next to it, it appeared flush with the wall. But it was still open. Park tapped a button on his uniform that sent his location to the company’s security team, and then he pulled the door aside and went in.
The hallway was straight and dimly lit and caged with protective mesh. Above, catwalks and ladders snaked with an endless ascension of panels and cables. Periodic doors with special locks granted access to more panels, replete with twinkling lights and quietly whirring fans. The end of the hallway curved and met another door, this one closed, but with its special lock melted straight through. Park shined his flashlight on it; the air still shimmered from the heat.
He gingerly pulled aside the door and found himself inside the conglomerate’s campus staring at a service alley. A white truck long unused sat peeling in the rain, behind which wooden crates sat rotting, half-covered by an old tarp. At the end of the alley the shape of a man moved hesitantly in the dark. As he walked his head swiveled left and right, as if he were expecting road signs. He disappeared around the corner, and Park followed at a careful distance.
The main road smelled of diesel and mud, and the shoddy roadwork was only fit for vehicles unconcerned with two to three inches of variation. The occasional yellow light, pinned over a blank entrance door, reflected in uneven crescents on the oily ground. Large hangar doors loomed with unfamiliar, industrial warning symbols riveted to their fronts. There came from somewhere the rumble of a freight truck choking to life. And all the while, the man kept moving at his steady pace.
Abruptly he stopped and pressed out a hand, as if searching for a light switch. Park stopped behind, and when nothing occurred for several moments, he turned his flashlight on the man.
The man turned without concern. Park recognized his frame as that of an old service android, meant to perform outdoor work when conditions were too demanding for humans. The android wore only a thin layer of clothing. Many of his marketable features were weathered down to hardware and his protective neck sleeve had split, exposing cordage to the acid rain.
“Hello, officer,” the android said cheerily. “What can I do for you?”
“You’re trespassing,” Park said.
“And I am sorry about that. Unfortunately, I borrowed this pen,” he said, holding up a black office pen, “and I have been trying to return it, as it is not mine. I only borrowed it accidentally after signing for a package delivered. I tried to return it in Corinthia, but no one would take it.”
“Corinthia?” Park said. “That’s eighteen hours away.”
“My map said there should be a returns office here, but there is not.”
“You didn’t think to check a map before you drove all the way out here?”
“I could not obtain a rideshare,” said the android, “so I had to walk.”
“You walked all the way from Corinthia?”
The android nodded, unbothered.
Park rubbed his neck. His flashlight danced on the android’s exposed, wet cables.
“Give it here,” Park said. “I’ll return it for you tomorrow.”
“Is that alright?” the android said happily. “I’d very much like this returned. It is not mine and I did not mean to steal it from the delivery service.”
“I said I’ll take it,” Park said. “Give it here and get the hell out of the rain.”
The android dropped the pen in Park’s hand with a courteous smile, thanked him, and walked right back the way he came. Park stood for a second longer in the rain, and then he dropped the pen in a different pocket from his flashlight and walked back the way he’d come.
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The cyberpunk novel, Miles..................... Pen it.