So it was with a noticeable waddle that I made my way down the assembly line to my assigned station. The warmth in my shorts was passing rapidly, leaving behind a cloying, salty chill I figured would remain for awhile. It would be a constant reminder of the red smear of mini-clown lipstick I’d scrubbed off with my bare hands as I’d rushed from the mens room.
    I was, I admit, a bit late at this point; but the line must never stop. The line must never stop, so Gail was working with Chuck, staying past her breaktime and probably muttering curses under her breath. The nicotene demons had her soul, and every minute unnecessarily sans-tobacco was a wasted one. I, as the responsible party to her momentarily delayed gratification, would bear the brunt of her hatred. This is a cross I’ve borne a few times without incident.
    I approached the cab of this, the latest brand new Furd Expulsion to roll down the line. The familiar ribbon of the sticker feed snaked into the cab and wiggled in testamony to the fact that Gail was busily applying the “Do Not Attempt To Grow Marijuana In Glove Compartment” decals in my stead.
    Gail was not alone, of course; Chuck worked beside her, quickly connecting the already installed wiring harnesses to the hydroponic grow-lamps he carried in his satchel. I waited outside as the two finished on the truck, imagining the tight confines of the cab the way I had experienced it, hundreds of times a day, five days a week: Chuck’s lithe form squirming out from under the dash while Gail, kneeling on the plastic covered upholstery above him with legs spread to offer him room, held her sticker gun aloft with the taut sticker feed suspended above them both on its way out the gaping door to the decal spool below the nearby mezzanine. As meaningless as I found the job, the warm camaraderie found in the tight confines of an all American truck chassis made it bearable.
    Memory converged with reality as I watched Chuck spring to his feet, Gail clambering out after him. Nicotine withdrawal reared up and cast its wild, hungry eyes at me.
    “Jesus, where the fuck were you?” she demanded as she quickly ripped off the fastener holding the clicking sticker gun from her forearm and shoved it into my chest. I hurriedly caught it and twisted it in my hands so as to keep the anti-pot adhesives from sticking to eachother. Stepping closer and clenching her yellowed teeth in a voracious grimace, her good eye rammed into my soul as her lazy eye lolled about, quite possibly looking at my ID badge. Both eyes were equally dark and sunken into her head, framed by the sandy hair straggling forth from her orange hard-hat. Atop which, incidentally, a portrait of the Marlboro Man smiled down upon me with beatific confidence and cool smokiness. Chuck walked up behind her and lay a concerned hand upon her shoulder. She jerked her head around to draw a bead on his placating smile.
    “Gail, gail, just go on break, it’ll be fine,” his soothing, yet carefree tone and ready grin seemed to diffuse the situation. As she turned back to me, only slightly mollified, he winked over her shoulder at me, and I wondered again at our earlier conversation. Surely the whole robot-from-the-future-where-zombies-fight-the-50-foot-apes story was some elaborate joke. This was Chuck, work mate of almost a year. “Let Joe get to work. The line is moving,” he continued somberly, “The line must never stop.”
    “..must never stop,” Gail and I both mouthed along with him. As mantras go, it was weak. But we shared it, and it made us brothers and sisters so long as we worked the line.
    Gail moved to brush past me and paused, pointing her finger up into my face.
    “Next time..,” her arm shook with the ravages of severe withdrawal and her sleeve fell back, exposing the long line of Nicoderm patches running up to her armpit. She concluded, “uh, there better not be a next time.” Clever pseudo-threat apparently finished, she rushed off down the line, clenching and unclenching her fists as she muttered imprecations against me. I turned back to see Chuck already dipping into a bin of hydroponic lamp tubes and filling the satchel he wore around his neck.
    “Forget her,” he shrugged, “C’mon. Next one’s almost here.” We both looked up-line and saw a partially assembled Expulsion slowly creeping towards us. The workers at the immediately preceding station had just finished successfully bolting down the center console deep fat fryer and it was soon to be our turn to shine.
    Strapping the decal gun to my forearm and testing the firing mechanism (which went “pop-pop!” quite satisfactorily) , I nodded and said, “right. Back to it.”
    We turned, poised and ready, waiting for the Expulsion. Twenty seconds before show time, at least. I restlessly checked the sticker feed going up to the 5 ton decal spool suspended above us. Why Furd Motors felt they needed five tons of “ Do Not Attempt To Grow Marijuana In Glove Compartment” stickers on tap prior to each shift was a mystery I’d often contemplated. Another glance at the slowly approaching chassis and my mind drifted back toward lunch.
    “Uh, Chuck.”
    “Yeah, Joe?”
    “About that shit from lunch, you know, the whole time traveling android thing…” but I had no chance to complete my halfway thought-out question, because at that very moment I heard the loud crack of a solenoid firing above me. I looked up and had just enough time to see that the release hooks for the decal spool had opened and 5 tons of futile admonishments were falling straight at me.
    “Watch out!” was that Chuck?
    Suddenly I found myself sliding across the factory floor on my ass, rolling wildly and grasping at metal supports and railings as I went. I finally thudded to a halt with my shoulder barking painfully against a painted iron guard-rail next to the slowly moving Expulsion we had been awaiting moments before. I sat up, trying to regain my breath, rubbed my screaming clavicle, and looked back to see the decal spool laying at a rakish angle. A crazy laugh rang out from the mezzanine above and I looked up to see a blur with jolly colors disappear into the waiting spools of decals. A soreness in my chest caused me to belatedly realize that Chuck must have shoved me out of the way. I now remembered his hands roughly shoving me away from danger, knocking my wind from me.
    Only then did I think to look beneath the decal spool. Chuck’s eyes were unfocused, frozen open, hands outstretched toward me as if grasping, and his one partially visible leg was twitching violently, making little skittish noises as his non-slip boots hopped and slid across the painted shop floor. I could not see the other leg; it was blocked by the five tons of glove box stickers resting upon his shattered back.