Shadow of the Factorum: The Interview

by K. A. Trent

  “Come on, it’s our stop,” Kerra said to me after what seemed like only a few minutes. “Get up, let’s go.”

  She led me across a bustling train platform, past moving stairs lined with chrome dividers, massive seating areas, small shops, all the while keeping a firm grip on my hand.

  “This is the south side of campus,” she explained to me. “The capitol building is about four miles north; it’s connected to the department of defense, the university, and a few other hotspots. We’re going to building 73-“

  “Hey!” A voice shouted from behind. Both Kerra and I turned to see a middle-aged woman dressed in loose clothing and holding a cup. Before either Kerra or I could respond, the woman flicked her arm and the contents of the cup spewed onto my face, soaking my dress in a sticky liquid and causing me to sputter as she suddenly moved toward me. “You’ll never be a woman, you piece of shit! Go back to the Factorum with the other animals!”

  Within a second she was on me, before Kerra could even react to intervene. The woman’s hand was wrapped around the neckline of my dress, the fabric tearing as she pulled me toward her. I cried out, pressing my hands to her chest and trying in vain to push her away, but I was too weak. I could run fast, I could read, I could write, but I would never be strong enough to fight off a grown woman.

  “Hey!” Kerra shouted, running toward her as she shoved me to the floor. I sprawled across the tile, my knee smacking into the stonework. The crowd nearby erupted; a group of women rushed forward, one kneeling beside me to ask if I was okay, the others rushing to confront my attacker. I tried to stand, but only managed to slip on the pool of liquid, slamming back into the ground.

  “Hey, hey, calm down,” said the woman who had come to my aid. “It’s okay, calm down.”

  “She’s fucking right!” A new voice yelled. “That THING isn’t a woman, take it out and shoot it!”

  “I need security on platform XB-22,” I heard Kerra shouting into her wristband. “I need it yesterday, please respond with ETA-“

  “Here, take this,” Another woman knelt beside me and wrapped her jacket around me, covering my head and helping me to stand up.

  “Okay, let’s go, go go go!” Kerra wrapped an arm around me and began to push me in a direction I couldn’t see. I tried to pull the jacket from my head, but dozens of hands were on me, some pulling at me, some pushing me in Kerra’s direction. I felt dizzy; the noise around me was growing but muffled and none of it made any sense. I thought I was screaming, but I wasn’t sure. Another splash of liquid against me, a hard object slamming into the side of my head. I tried to continue running-- I really tried-- but I lost my feet and slipped from the arms of the woman trying to hold me. Moments later, a dash of feet moved past me, a stampede in the midst of the train station; glimpses of light here and there, hands grabbing me, pulling me in one direction or another.

  “Kerra?!” I cried. My words were absorbed into the roaring crowd like water to a sponge; no one could hear me. Feet impacted with my back, I felt the rubber of a shoe slam against my right arm, I cried out inaudibly. A near-instant flashback to life in the Factorum rushed before my eyes; the rush of the crowd during meal time, the times they’d failed to feed us for days at a time, the struggle to remain upright. The brutal fate of those who failed. It was no different up here-- feet were feet, floor was floor, ground was ground. Despite Callie’s best intentions, I would now become like countless others: a stain, a smudge, the remains of a human being as insignificant as any other.

  Just as I’d given myself up for dead, hands wrapped around my arms, pulling me upward, dragging me upright in the sea of people. I didn’t bother to look, I didn’t care to see who it was. I focused on the scenery blurring around me, my senses swimming in my head, the taste of blood on my lip. I let it happen, I let my unknown saviors rush me through the crowd. They jostled person after person, blasting me through like a wedge until we were far past the perimeter and rushing through a back hallway devoid of any bodies. My head hung low, my feet dragged, and suddenly we’d burst through a doorway and into a room filled with metal crates. I was thrown unceremoniously to the floor, my arm unfolding before my sight, my forearm catching my head just before it impacted with the bare concrete floor.

  “Jenny, we got it,” a voice above me said as I rested on the ground. “Start recording, we want people to see this.”

  I rolled my eyes upward and saw a thin girl with jet black hair and a dark gray sweater accompanied by a larger, more muscular woman dressed in a rough button-up blouse. She was holding something in her hand. A gun. A pistol. A projectile weapon of some kind. It gleamed under the overhead lights, her hand partially obscured by her sleeve.

  “We’re recording,” The younger girl nodded. I moaned and tried to push myself upright; it was like picking up a bag of hardcrete, only I was the bag.

  “This is a message to the Proctorum Elicate directly from the Black Swan. There are no transgender women on Ereen. Keep our culture pure!” The woman turned to me, glaring down at me with barely an expression on her face. The pistol came to bear, aimed directly at my head. She was going to kill me. Make it fast, I pleaded silently

  It happened fast, all at once; the door to the room slid open with a start, footsteps pounded against the concrete, the woman over me screamed as her body jolted back and forth as if it were being punched. Then I saw it, the blood splatter erupting from her back, the trickle flowing from her mouth. Her hand relaxed, the pistol fell and clattered against the concrete in front of me. Once, twice, three times. It came to rest, the barrel pointing directly at my face. The world around the muzzle blurred, my vision became absorbed by the black hole in front of me, down, down, down, into the barrel until finally, everything faded, my senses became detached and I floated away, finally switching off, like a screen. It was over.

  Chapter 9

  “You didn’t foresee it happening?” I heard Kerra’s voice, shouting as my eyes slit and artificial light from the ceiling leaked through. “I saw it coming, I told you it would happen. I told you a dozen times, why didn’t you do your job?!”

  “What can I say? Our security teams were engaged elsewhere.” A woman’s voice that I didn’t recognize.

  “Doing what, checking tickets? Cleaning your weapons? What could have possibly been more important than-“

  “Look, we have a lot to do, every single day,” the new voice said. “We can’t just watch the Prime Minister’s pet project. Send it back where it belongs, it’ll be happier there anyway.”

  “The girl had a gun to her head. If I hadn’t intervened when I did, she would be dead right now. Do you not understand that? She would be dead, and it would be your fault-”

  “My fault?” The voice said. “That’s laughable, Constable. Really. You marched that… thing into a populated area and expected no one to notice. You’re aware that the Black Swan operates heavily in Luna, you know that the... subject isn’t well liked by everyone. Maybe you could try keeping your pet to less hostile areas in the future?”

  “Fuck you,” Kerra shouted. I heard the familiar ‘beep’ from her wristband as she terminated the call.

  “What do we do?” I heard Callie ask.

  Callie was here?

  “Go ahead with the day as planned,” Kerra told her. “We’re on a deadline, and the longer we delay, the worse it’s going to get. I’m not the biggest fan of… her… but I’m not going to watch her get killed. Sent back underground? Sure. But killed? Absolutely not.”

  “I can’t believe you still want to send her— She’s awake.”

  The jig was up. Kerra turned her head and looked at me. I opened my eyes the rest of the way and looked around; I was on one of those wide, cushioned chairs-- I thought that Callie had called it a couch? I sat up groggily and looked around the room. It was some kind of an office. We’d had them down in the Factorum, for the foreman, and higher ranking workers, but none of them were this nice.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” Callie asked me. I nodded.
My head was pounding, my arms were shaking. What had happened? She made her way over to me and sat beside me on the couch, wrapping an arm around me. That smile again. That irresistible smile that triggered feelings within me. Feelings I couldn’t identify. Kerra looked on, her arms crossed, tapping her foot impatiently.

  “Look, I know that was scary, but we have to keep moving,” Callie said sweetly. “We’re at the salon. First thing we’re going to do is shower you and get that stickiness off of you, and then we’re going to work on getting rid of those scars-- at least the ones on your face. Now normally we’d use a medical procedure to get rid of them, but we don’t really have time so we’re going to put you in a long sleeve dress and cover anything that’s left showing with makeup. Don’t worry hon-- you’re going to be positively beautiful.”

  I smiled weakly and nodded. She leaned over me and showed me a thin rag before she began to wipe it across my forehead. I felt the stickiness leave gradually, and eventually she moved on to my neck. A few moments later she motioned for me to stand and remove my dress, which wasn’t a bad idea considering it had been torn at the shoulder. I allowed it to fall to the floor and stood naked in front of both Kerra and Callie. Kerra glanced up at me momentarily and then quickly returned her attention to her tablet. Callie silently ran her hands across my body, wiping in places and biting her lip every once in a while.

  “Hair’s a mess,” she laughed. Laying a hand on my shoulder briefly, she stepped to the side and reached down beside the couch. After rummaging through a box for a few moments, she returned with a new dress, this one white with spots of pink in a pattern that I didn’t recognize. “How do you feel about flowers?”

  I smiled nervously and allowed her to lift the garment over my head, sliding my arms into the sleeves and then lowering as she dropped the hem and tied the sash behind me.

  “Come on Kerra, tell me she doesn’t look adorable,” Callie gestured to me as if she was presenting me at auction. Kerra looked up briefly and shook her head.

  “You can put lipstick on a Garkat, doesn’t make it a girl.”

  “Okay, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Callie said, motioning for me to join her. As I did, she took both of my hands in hers and let me to the door of the office. The motion sensor tripped and the door slid aside to reveal a massive room filled with chairs beneath strange, dark domes. It was so surreal-- mirrors lining the walls, tools unlike any I’d ever seen lying on counters. Was this some kind of torture chamber? In the midst of it all, a single person walked toward us, a woman with olive skin and short black hair. She smiled at me. “This is Donna, she’s going to take care of you today,” Callie said, smiling at Donna.

  “I’m so very glad to meet you,” Donna said to me as she placed a hand on her hip and looked me over. “What’s your name?”

  “We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Callie explained. “I was thinking we could take care of that today.”

  “Oh, you probably should,” Donna nodded. “You know, considering what’s happening tomorrow. Come on sweetie, let’s get you started.”

  I looked at Kerra for permission. She gave me a nod and I allowed Donna to lead me across the room and to one of the large padded chairs. As we walked, I noticed another woman standing off behind a desk, carefully wiping down a countertop. She was wearing a grayish dress made from a silky material that reached her knees and had longer sleeves than any I’d worn so far.

  “Teegan, say hello, please,” Donna waved, catching the woman’s attention. She looked up briefly and nodded to me. “Teegan is our environmental services worker,” Donna explained. “We have two Desh workers that regularly clean for us.”

  So this was a Desh: Ereen’s lowest class.

  “Okay, the first thing we’re going to do is put those feet of yours into a sonic bath; they’re not going to look great in heels when they’re this rough. They might hurt a little too, and you don’t want that!” She pressed a button on the side of a basin at my feet and I watched it fill with liquid. I flinched a little as she took me by the ankles and guided my feet in, but the flinch deepened as the water began to bubble. It felt like the water was rubbing my feet, but she assured me that it was normal. “Next what we need to do is find a foundation that matches your face-- it’s all about looking natural, especially for you. You don’t want to look fake, not at an event like this.”

  Everyone kept talking about this event that was coming up, but I still had no idea what it actually was. Was anyone going to bother to fully explain it to me? Did I even have the right to ask? From the corner of my eye I could see Kerra and Callie talking near the entrance to the… Whatever this building was. The conversation seemed heated-- were they arguing?-- but I couldn’t hear any of it.

  “Sweetie, attention over here please,” Donna tapped my cheek gently but firmly.

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” I said apologetically.

  “Now, now, none of that,” She laughed. “I think we’re going to go for the more…innocent look. You’re a child, so you should look like a child. You don’t really want to turn heads, you want to make them feel sorry for you. Yeah, I’m sorry to say it, but that’s what works.”

  She looked at me apologetically, but I wasn’t sure what she had to be sorry for so I remained silent. She went to work on my face, rubbing a cream on my forehead, then my cheeks, and eventually my nose.

  “Well at least I’m not a sadistic bitch!” I heard Callie practically shout from across the room, my eyes darted over to her and Kerra for a moment, but Donna stepped beside me, obstructing my view. She stared into my eyes, occasionally looking at a small tablet computer as she chose different colors. She explained to me that she was using eyeliner, and that it would make my eyes appear to be a bit larger. Larger eyes were considered more feminine, she said.

  “Okay, this part is done, at least I think,” She said as she examined her handiwork. “This type of makeup will last for about a week. It looks pretty natural, so you can definitely play the part of the confused kid. Sorry, I want you to succeed and I know what sells. Now let’s take care of your hair.”

  I barely paid attention as she began to manipulate my hair, which was now well past my shoulders. Instead I tried to listen intently to whatever Callie and Kerra were saying to each other. The best I could do was capture snippets of the conversation: “I swear Callie, when the universe made you it had to choose between brains and tits and obviously-“

  “I was thinking about doing bangs,” Donna pulled my attention back to the matter at hand. “That looks sweet and innocent, but maybe a little bit of maturity is in order too so… No, not bangs.”

  “We need to pick out her dress,” Callie said, walking by the chair with Kerra in tow.

  “We’re really going to keep calling it a ‘her’?” Kerra called out after her. “Still a male.”

  “And you’re still a bitch,” Callie vanished into a back room.

  Kerra sighed and took a seat in one of the oversized chairs while Donna continued to work on me. Finally, she announced that she was done just as Callie appeared with a pink velvety dress bundled up in her arms.

  “Okay,” Callie said, walking over to me. “This is way formal, but it’s long sleeved, the neckline isn’t too low, and it covers your legs, which is kind of what we need. I’ll need you to stand up so we can put it on you, and then I want you to get used to moving around in it. I know you’ve been walking around in a dress for a few days but this is different-- there’s more fabric and it’s kind of restrictive, so it’s going to take a minute for you to really get used to it.”

  At her gesture, I slid out of the chair and undressed in front of them, Donna raised an eyebrow, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. Callie instructed me to raise my arms above my head, and then, gathering the material from the bottom of the dress, she slid it over my head. I panicked for a moment as my vision was obstructed, but the world returned once again as the fabric passed my eyes and the garment fell into place. It was like nothing I had ever felt-
- the material was smooth against my skin, it was light, it breathed. I would have felt as if I were wearing nothing if not for the weight of the skirt tugging at my waist.

  “So, um, mirror?” Donna gestured toward a long mirror attached to the wall and Callie smiled as she gently took my hand. And led me to the mirror. She stood in front of me for a moment, using her finger to move a strand of hair aside, and then moved, allowing me to take in my image. I gasped audibly, and heard a soft laugh from both Callie and Donna. The person standing before me in the mirror looked nothing like me.

  I’d seen myself before a few times-- more so up here than in the Factorum-- and I’d never liked what I had seen. It has always been a young male, head shorn, skin pale, a long horizontal scar across his cheek. He’d had no identity, and I hadn’t been proud of him. He was empty, like a shell. The person I saw now was a girl with vibrant brunette hair, a slender face, soft pink lips, and an innocence about her that projected my innermost feelings. This was me. They had found me, they had pulled me out from within the field of debris that comprised my soul. This was me.

  This was me.

  I was finally here.

  Chapter 10

  “You’ve read a lot of books,” Kerra told me as the car moved down the street. We weren’t on the tram, and we weren’t walking. Today we’d taken a car. I sat in the back seat alongside Kerra, the hum of the electric motor punctuated the background perfectly. I sat with my hands folded across my lap, gently caressing the soft pink fabric. “You should pick out a name.”