I was sitting in my living room and decided to get up and watch some cartoons in the bedroom. Lying down in my bed I felt wrapped up in clouds. The animations on the screen were indistinct, but they grew larger until I found myself falling or flying through brightly colored masses. The colors faded to white and gray as the clouds drew back from me.

In front of me, rooting into the clouds, was a large, beautiful building. It was built on the scale of a skyscraper, but radiated age and nobility. I was carried forward and stately figures began to resolve. They were seven feet tall or more, and mechanical in appearance; their bodies composed of soft, silver metal, smoothly curved.

Behind them, a wrought iron fence guarding a small door was watched by dozens of scanning security cameras, each with a solid red light on top. Immediately I had a sense of wrongness, that my presence was not needed or desired, although none of the guards made any motion or sound. One camera, on the ground to my left, just on the other side of the fence, began to blink green. I leapt over the fence towards it. The guards still remained motionless, but they radiated less unwelcomness and more fear. As I stood in front of the camera with the green light there was a beeping noise. Each of the other cameras stopped their eternal swiveling and their lights turned green. With a click the small door unlocked.

Inside was a dark, smoky place, the very antithesis of the ornate exterior. Blank-faced men and women bustled around wearing crude leather aprons. The walls were lined with primitive-looking machines. The one nearest to me produced a dark oil; the next machine immediately canned it. As I watch, one of the blank-faced men then unscrewed the newest can and poured it into the next machine, a range of monstrous proportions. Slabs of meat were coming up a revolving elevator system from the floor. The men and women took it and cut it with large, ugly looking knives. There was a sound of hissing as the meat cooked. Conveyer belts took the cooked meat and carried it away into the distance.

While I could not see it, I knew that conveyer belt was empty long before it reached its end.

As I entered the dark room, a whistle blew. The workers slowed, then stopped, turning aimlessly. In my mind I felt the cessation of great gears grinding, forever stilled.

All things came to silence, and I knew that the name of this factory was Civilization.

NOTES

• The factory: civilization, beautiful and organized on the outside but filled internally with the brutality of nature.
• The ornate beings guarding the exterior: I think of them as angels, which are personifications of ideals we believe to be true: justice, honesty, integrity, hope, and love. Are they real, or just a commonly held belief that helps to guard civilization against the beasts (you and I) that make it up?
• Inside, meat and fire: We are carnivores, slaughtering animals and burning our resources, but still remaining hungry.
• The factory shuts down: What if we let our illusions fade? Everything might just halt. Is that better, or worse?

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