Part 4
“Fuck!” Margot screamed as her phone jolted her awake. Her hands clumsily fumbled for it on the nightstand. She looked at the screen. It was Karissa from FRN. At 6:37 in the morning. Way too early for this.
“……what?” Margot protested, her head still halfway asleep.
“WHAT. THE FUCK. WAS THAT?” Karissa screamed from the other end. “You cut the fucking ribbon for him? You were supposed to embarrass him, not endorse him!” she fumed.
It was way too early for this. “You didn’t see it…….” she trailed off, trying to get into character.
“A fluffy died in front of you! There are photos!”
“….look, I’m coming in. I was going to any-“
“You’re damn right you’re coming in!” Karissa cut her off. “Be here in an hour or you’re out!” With that, Karissa terminated the call.
“That would make things so easy……” Margot murmured to herself. She gave it a thought. If she was late, then she could be released from the organization without suspicion. It would mean she wouldn’t have to pretend to care about the shitrats anymore. Still, she had her part to play and if she didn’t work to smooth things over they’d send someone else who was serious about shutting the plant down. Someone more militant. Nope, she had to stay the course. At least until Fluffy Rights Now was discredited enough regarding their stance on the plant.
She looked at her phone. At least she had time for coffee.
…….
Margot walked in to the local office of Fluffy Rights Now carrying a large growler of the local Incabrew coffee. These hippies just loved that fair-trade shit and hopefully it could help her smooth things out with the local FRN office. To call it an office was being kind. There was a handful of old desks (wood only) and stacks of paper all over the place. The walls were covered in corkboards adorned with flyers and ideas for new leaflets. The posters of the abused and neglected fluffies looked out at Margot while she headed to the meeting room. No one was in the office space to greet her. Great, that meant they were all assembled and probably talking damage control.
As she went into the meeting room she placed the fair trade/organic/sustainable/whatever the fuck else brew on the table. This had only earned a cursory glance from Karissa and the others in the room with her. Those at the table looked to Karissa who then looked to Margot. She sat down, pouring herself a cup of the coffee. She looked up at Karissa, who stared back at her. The room became uncomfortably silent as the two women played verbal chicken.
It was Karissa who moved first. “Well?” She looked, causing the others in attendance to jump a little. “What happened there?”
“What happened, ” Margot began, “is that I challenged him before the ribbon cutting, just as we planned. He then gave me the mic before I was dragged away. I made our case and he brought me and the press in to make his.” She picked up her cup taking a sip. “He ended up showing me and the other press his operation. After seeing it… I couldn’t honestly condemn it without making us look inconsistent.”
“The fuck do you mean inconsistent?” Karissa yelled as she slammed her fists on the table. “We’re here for fluffy rights, and these fluffies are-“
“Treated better than other facilities that already have FRN’s stamp of approval!” Margot stared Karissa down as her jaw dropped. What Karissa and the other members of this chapter of FRN didn’t know that was Margot had spent many months of the last year gathering internal documentation on the actions of FRN. She compiled data to help Brennan paint a picture of the bare minimum standards of what the FRN called ethical. The hive was designed to far exceed them.
Margot took another long sip of coffee, another deep breath, and continued. “We have not had any information on the first power plant. Because of this, we assumed that the plant was going to run based on the design that was on Feeding Frenzy, but bigger. We thought this is how he was doing it and you sent me there to get enough public opinion on our side to try to force cameras in and expose fluffy cruelty. Please…… tell me if I’m wrong so far?”
Karissa narrowed her eyes. “No. Go on.”
“Thank you!” Margot chided. “Well, it worked better than we hoped. He led me and members of the media straight in there while giving me an ultimatum. And guess what? We were wrong. Totally wrong. I’m guessing you’ve got pictures, right?” Margot pulled out her own phone that had already been browsing press releases regarding the plant.
“Now… tell me if I’m wrong here…. But there is a lot of space for each pen of fluffies? Much more than you see in Enfield Farms, where you saw Mitchell here….” She motioned over to Mitchell, who shrugged as he was put on the spot. “He was posing in the pens with the fluffies with a great big smile on his face! And FRN gave the farm a glowing write-up, if I’m not mistaken. Then look at this!” She pointed to pictures of the nurse fluffy going into a pen. “This power plant uses the Carter method! Any foals that happen along are raised by nurse fluffies to prevent smarty syndrome! FRN signed off on many farms that haven’t been updated to the Carter method. Again…… tell me I’m wrong!!” She stared down Karissa once again. Karissa just tightened her lips, considering what had been said.
Margot continued, building up steam. “These fluffies get more space, toys, care… hell, they even have FluffTV! Than many other facilities FRN has given it’s blessing to. So yeah, what was I supposed to do? Tell them ‘No, we’ve been full of shit this whole time, our standards are now suddenly higher out of nowhere!’? I do that, then all of the operations that we have been endorsing will now put us on their shit list. Then that will only mean the other chapters are now going to have to backpedal when their approved operations aren’t suddenly up to snuff. And then many of the farms that donate to us and put our logo on their webpage….” She threw her arms out in a mock explosion, spilling some coffee in the process. “Fuck! Well… you see what I had to consider, on the spot? What would you have done?”
Karissa’s brow furrowed, looking down at the table. She could see the rest of the room’s eyes on her, waiting for her response. She turned things over in her head, trying to figure out if there was any wiggle room she could use to still assert superior authority. She couldn’t find any, at least not yet. “Fuck……” she sighed, still looking down at the table.
……
Brennan, clad in the Torgl-tech overalls worn by all employees, walked outside around the plant by the back employee parking lot. He moved to an entrance by one of the now-repurposed loading doors. He pressed his thumb to a lock, and moved inside. He pressed two foam ear plugs in as he entered a roaring area with enormous holding tanks with a network of pipes and tubes leading in and out of them; the gas processing hub. The fluffies were good at shitting and their shit was especially noxious. He walked by some of the employees who were at a console monitoring the methane refining process and pushing the good methane to next section to turbines where it turned the generators. For the past few weeks they had been running at only 60% capacity to ensure the system had been running efficiently. In a few days they would be cranking it to 90%.
He watched the monitors, looking for leaks and possible blockages. When he found none he patted one of the workers on the shoulder and gave him a silent thumbs up. The worker nodded his appreciation, not wanting to scream over the cacophony of machines working in tandem. The worker watched as Brennan walked back to the wall that separated this area from the hive. As he saw Brennan type in a code and enter a thumbprint into the lone door that led into it, he looked over to his coworker, giving him a look of confusion. That door did not lead in to the hive, but had no other visible exit, either. His coworker shrugged. Officially, the story had been that much of the proprietary technology had to be carefully kept under wraps. It was supposed to be a main duty of all plant operators to keep the secret to what made the process work with their lives.
On the other side, Brennan shut the door, removed his earplugs and took a deep breath. Despite the constant suction it stunk. He looked up at the real heart of the plant. The Mark 1 had a producing area called the wall. Brennan decided to call this area The Kremlin. In the space between the hive and the gas processing plant was essentially a narrow hallway only about ten feet wide that raised to the height of the plant ceiling. A quarter of the width was taken up by a twenty by forty grid of fluffy stables; allocating space to hold up to eight hundred fluffies. Many of the fluffies were crying to be let out, wanting to get away from the trashies they were forced to num and the sowwy boxies that kept them confined. They were not yet up to capacity, but were working on it. As long as the hive kept producing foals, there would be new fluffies to feed the wall.
To get the process going Brennan had to double down on his previous design. The Kremlin managed not only to gather enough fluffy shit for methane, but make the food delivery system self-powered. The walls of each box were made to lean slightly to twist on a central axis and the bottom had pressure plates. If a fluffy were to shift in their box, it would push the side of it’s cage which would shift it’s angle. This would cause discomfort with the next fluffy over. That fluffy would then shift, forcing the other side on his box to move as his legs squirmed on the pressure plates to generate electricity. This meant that when one fluffy shifted, all the way down the line other fluffies would be forced to shift, turning the dividers and pushing on their own pressure plates. This generated enough electric and kinetic power on its own to deliver the organic waste along the troughs in front of the fluffies for them to consume. It would usually take an hour of shifting before the wall of fluffies would situate themselves comfortably.
He went to a station that monitored the Kremlin and smiled. They were only barely above half capacity and already had enough natural gas stored to do a burn hard enough to red-line the turbines for three days. Not only were they going to get good fertilizer sales but they may have to start selling excess gas to other companies. This was going very well. He walked to wall of fluffies, looking for one in particular. He went up the stairs to reach one of the walkways, walking to where he found it.
The blue unicorn fluffy that had caused the incident in front of the press looked up at him, puffing his cheeks up and stomping inside his compartment. This set off a chain reaction of fluffies next to him to squirm and get comfortable once again. “Dummeh hooman! Ou said smawty would get mawes fow enfies! Smawty was gettin hewd! Dis nu hewd! Nu wike! Wet smawty out ow ou get sowwy hoofsies!”
Brennan smiled, gently patting the smarty on it’s head. “No, I said you would get mares. Nothing about enfies; mares! I also said you were getting your own herd.” He gestured to the length of the Kremlin. “Here it is! This is your herd! There are many mares here with you. More mares than most smarties get in their life….” He gave the smarty’s face a backhanded smack. The smartie screamed, evacuating itself and squirming in it’s confines. This ended up making the shifting motion of the dividers more frantic. Brennan chuckled. Fucking magic!
Brennan walked back to the door, taking a moment to check the security feed. No one was near the door, so he popped his earplugs back in and exited. He ensured a firm latch on the door behind and strolled on to the entrance as his phone buzzed in his pocket. Inside the Kremlin he couldn’t get a signal; it had been enclosed in a Faraday cage to prevent any possibility of a live stream from inside. He had a text message from Margot. It was simply to words: Call Me.
Brennan made the long walk back to his office and secured the door. He dialed her phone from his and put it on speaker. She answered “Brennan! I’ve got bad news and good news……” she trailed, letting him linger a bit.
“Well…. Don’t play guessing games with me. You know I hate those.” This didn’t stop him from imagining multiple scenarios from her ambivalent greeting.
“The bad news…… FRN is not going to take you off their radar,” she said, obviously trying to build up Brennan’s runaway thought processes. “This brings me to the good news…. They want to look at the hive again. They want to see the fluffies inside it and see how happy they are.”
This was unexpected and he couldn’t quite see where this was going. “So they’re going to see the happy shitrats again? To what end?”
Margot was nearly bursting from holding this back. “Because…. given what they’ve seen FRN has done a 180. They don’t want to look at the hive to highlight cruelty. They want to use it to create a new benchmark for ethical fluffy industrial practice. They want you to be a fucking poster boy!”
Brennan was speechless. He knew that the hive would work as smoke and mirrors, but not this well. So many things were running through his head, not all of them good. If he got more eyes on the facility, then there would be more questions. More questions meant new answers that he might not want to give.
“Bren? Are you there?” Margot asked after the long silence.
“That’s awesome, babe! I knew you would come through for me!” He tried to hide the new anxiety in his voice, hoping she wouldn’t catch on. “Geez! A warning light has come on in the plant, I’ll need to call you back! Great work, babe! Love you!” and he disconnected without waiting for a reply.
Brennan immediately picked up his office phone and dialed Everett Brooks. Though it was Everett’s direct number it went to voice mail, as it usually did. “Everett……” Brennan paused, trying to stay calm and collected. “We may or may not have an issue….”