There’s a factory somewhere that manufactures meaning. Nobody knows where it is, but we all buy what it makes. You can’t survive without it. Every morning, I wake up to the same alarm sound — like a shriek filtered through cheap optimism — and I clock in at my terminal, typing things for other people who think they’re changing the world by moving numbers around. The boss says we’re “innovators.” I say we’re dream janitors, sweeping up what’s left of hope.
At night, I scroll through faces that look like me: sleep-deprived, smiling, sedated by purpose. They post about “grind culture” and “mindfulness,” like saints of a new religion where salvation costs $9.99 a month.
I used to believe I was different. I wrote poetry. I loved someone once. Then I started to feel the product wearing off. It began small. A crack in the script. I’d catch myself staring at my reflection in a window not recognizing the thing looking back. Like someone had replaced me with a cheaper copy, printed on recycled despair. My laugh started to sound overdubbed. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant and resignation.
I told my therapist. She smiled, a perfect mechanical crescent, and asked if I’d tried “meaning supplements.” She handed me a sample pack. They were glossy pills the color of television static. “Swallow one before sleep,” she instructed.
That night, I dreamed of the factory. Rows of bodies in chairs, their eyes wired open, pupils projected onto screens. Every time one blinked, a machine printed out a new slogan: Live. Laugh. Persist. The air was thick with burnt plastic and serotonin. I tried to run, but my legs dissolved into assembly lines.
When I woke up, my mouth tasted like melted silicon. The mirror showed me someone else entirely. It was the same face, but smoother. Cleaner. My pores had been edited out. My thoughts too.
I went back to work and everyone looked perfect. No one blinked anymore. The boss said we’d hit a new quarterly record. He clapped, but the sound was hollow, like hands slapping a coffin lid.
Now, sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can hear the factory humming under everything: under the city, under my heartbeat, under the polite noise of civilization.
We’re not employees. We’re inventory.
Every morning when I swallow the next pill, I understand a little more: the product is us.
Sisyphus Shrugged 