The alarm blares. Ermine jumps awake, as he always does. The pulsating red light chases away his dreams—whatever they were. He rises, washes himself in the shower, eats the porridge. He shudders as he forces down the vitamin-infused, chemical-tasting slop. He has no one to talk to, but there are many ears in the factory. He starts his shift. He shivers and softly groans as he trudges along the grey, bleak factory floor. Where the only other colour is red. Ermine stands by the console near the end of the conveyor belt. Ready. He watches intently for imperfections. Body after body slides by. A limbless big-bellied body with lots of ears and blinking eyes. A body with lots of arms and wriggling fingers. Finally, a body with an imperfection slowly passes by. The heart is on the outside. It likely won’t survive transportation. It may get infected; it may pass the infection on to other bodies. Ermine presses the big, red button on the console. The conveyor screeches painfully to a halt. Ermine grabs the body by its little arms, wincing at the smell of old cheese emanating from the heart, and heaves it onto his trolley. Its many mouths grunt as it lands with a heavy thud. He strolls with the trolley over to disposal unit three. He observes the fleshy mass, presses his finger on its beating heart, and pushes down. It instinctively shudders and groans. Ermine pulls out a serrated knife with a sharp edge and stabs the heart; it lets out a final parting sigh. He waits until the flicker in its eyes is gone. He doesn’t know why—a ritual, perhaps—but it seems right to make sure that the light is gone before he drops it down the chute. He waits until he hears the splash, then presses the button; the button releases potassium and sodium hydroxide. He turns the heat up to 150C. The mass of skin and organs rapidly reduces to sterile DNA-free liquid. He can’t risk imperfect DNA infecting the other bodies; that’s why his job is so important. He just wishes he had someone to talk to about it all. He keeps working, finding imperfections, taking them down, slaughtering them. Eventually, the alarms blare and the red light pulses, and he goes to his room. Ever since the war with the Reformationists broke out, the factory has been working at one hundred percent production. Pumping out bodies for their sensory and internal organs, limbs, skin. Nothing goes to waste. And it’s just Ermine left, all on his own—the one-man skeleton crew. It’s been this way now for a long, long, long time. He eats the porridge. He showers. He goes to bed; he dreams. The alarm blares. Ermine jumps awake, as he always does. The pulsating red light chases away his dreams—whatever they were. He rises, washes himself in the shower, eats the porridge. He has no one to talk to, but there are many ears in the factory. He stands at his console and watches the bodies go by. Big-belly bodies with many eyes, little bodies with not enough space for all those ears, long bodies with many interlocking arms like ladders that hold each other’s hands. An imperfection on the conveyor belt. Its eyes are wide and bulging as it gags and gurgles. It has one mouth and it’s choking on the arm that’s growing out of it. It won’t last long. He presses the button and thunks the body onto the trolley and takes it over to the disposal unit. He presses down on the squishy body to feel for a heart. It’s a big, round mass of hairless flesh. It’s hard to find a pulse. He decides to stab under its choking mouth. It gurgles for a while, and he thinks about just dumping it already, but that always feels like the wrong thing to do. So, he waits until the eyes glaze over. Then he dumps it down the chute. He presses the button to release the hydroxides. He turns up the temperature and goes back to his station. The alarm blares. He goes to his room and eats the porridge and goes to sleep; he dreams. The alarm blares. Ermine jumps awake, as he always does. The pulsating red light chases away his dreams—whatever they were. He rises, washes himself in the shower, eats the porridge. He has no one to talk to... He has no one to talk to. Ermine stands at his station and watches as they go by. He yawns and squints, blinking the water out of his eyes. He sees one going past. It’s round and has lots of eyes and ears and a mouth. They make eye contact and Ermine feels a strange feeling stir from inside of him. It feels as though he’s staring into those eyes for an eternity. They sparkle fiercely and the moist, red lips bend upwards so curiously. As soon as it came, it departed. Ermine stands for a moment unblinking, unbreathing. He slams the big red button, grabs his trolley and runs. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s halfway down the conveyor belt by now—will he even know which one it is. There! He knew it the moment he laid eyes upon it. It’s looking at him, its mouth upturned and its tongue licking its moist, red lips. Gently, gingerly, he lifts the body onto the trolley and takes it back to his room. He doesn’t know what’s come over him, but he places the body onto his table where he eats porridge alone. It has one long arm, one short arm, and long slender fingers. It has no legs, but it sits upright on its own when he places it onto the table. He sits across from it and looks into its eyes. He’s never seen eyes that sparkle like this before. It has noses and ears aplenty. He smiles and licks his lips. “I’m Ermine,” he whispers into its biggest ear. All its eyes blink in unison and its lips quiver. Ermine stays up all night speaking to the body and doesn’t know when he falls asleep. The alarm blares. Ermine jumps awake, as he always does. The pulsating red light chases away his dreams—he dreamt of the body. He rises, washes the body in the shower, feeds them the porridge. He has someone to talk to. At last, he’s not alone. He starts his shift. The factory is cold, and grey, and bleak, and miserable. The only other colour was red—but now there is blue. The blue eyes of the body, he props them on his console and speaks to them all day. He wheels them in his trolley and laughs. And then he sees it; one of the bodies has a pus covered sore. He presses the red button and stops the conveyor. He smiles at his new confidant and tenderly lifts them. They’re soft and warm. He places them on the trolley and heads over to the imperfection, grabs the imperfect by a stump—that may have become an arm one day—and pulls it onto his trolley with a dull thud. Ermine detects a change in his new friend. They seem almost agitated. Their eyes are darting around, and their mouth has clammed up. He rolls the trolley to disposal and takes out his knife. He feels around for a heartbeat and manages to track it down. It’s quite close to the surface. He sticks his knife in, and the imperfection gasps its last breath. He turns to press the release button and sees that his friend has tensed up. All their eyes are closed. He touches them and they flinch at his touch. His heart pounds in his chest, he loses his breath, his hands shake wildly as the horrifying reality begins to dawn on him that this beautiful body... Is afraid of him. Of course they are. He stomps up and down the factory floor, punching his own stupid head—of course, he is a danger, he is a threat, he is the bogeyman, of course they’re afraid. Why shouldn’t they be? He turns to look at the poor quivering thing. Their perfect azure eyes locked away behind vaults of soft, supple flesh. He puts his hand to his mouth and sobs, shoulders heaving, he falls to the ground as his knees give way. He crawls. He slithers on his belly like a repentant snake. “I’m sorry,” he whimpers into the body’s largest ear. “Please forgive me. I’ll never do it again I swear—never again.” Ermine stops working before the alarm blares—a first for him. He takes the body back to his room and places them onto the table, he spends the rest of the day whispering to the body, stroking them gently, so gently. “Please open your eyes.” “Look at me, please.” He pleads and begs for hours, until he falls asleep. The alarm blares. Ermine jumps awake, as he always does. The pulsating red light chases away his dreams—he dreamt of the body—The body! His eyes widen and dart upward. Euphoria washes over him. Their eyes are open. Their beautiful cerulean eyes glance down at his wicked and pitiful frame—I’m sorry—he whispers in the dark. Their eyes blink, their lips turn slightly upwards. They understand him, they must. They forgive him. Ermine hugs the body and interlocks his fingers in the hand of the body’s smallest arm. Their fingers clasp together. Proof, he thinks, that you don’t really need a brain to feel love. Just a heart will do the job. Ermine washes the body, feeds the porridge to the body, waters the body. The body wets their lips, they twitch. Their eyes blink separately, and sometimes in unison—affirmations—he knows it. On the factory floor they race up and down on the trolley, laughing. Ermine whispers secrets into his confidant’s ears. He plops them onto his console and watches for imperfections. The bodies whir by on the conveyor belt. Finally, he sees one; a body without fully formed skin, intestines spilling out over the conveyor. Ermine presses the button, places his friend onto the trolley and takes off. He winks. ‘I have a plan,’ he whispers. He collects the spilled insides and pushes them back into the imperfection, wincing at the stench of rotten flesh, and very carefully heaves the imperfection onto the trolley. He races to storage, places the perforated body on the floor, and pats them gently. He turns to his friend and smiles. They seem to sigh in response. He’ll come back later to take care of them, he promises. And he is true to his word. For the next two weeks he collects dozens of ill-formed bodies in the warehouse and tries to fix them. He feeds them porridge and even finds treats from the canteen. Tins of peaches, jarred sardines, dried olives. All the things he denied himself and swore that he’d share with his colleagues once the war ended. On one occasion he breaks out the party hats and banners and holds an impromptu celebration for all of his new friends. He is not perfect, this he knows, but nevertheless, Ermine tries to care for them as best he can. And in those few weeks Ermine believes that he has found true happiness. He is no longer alone. The alarm blares. Ermine jumps awake, as he always does. The pulsating red light chases away his dreams—he dreams of his friends. Ermine rises. He looks over to the body and his heart jumps into his mouth. He slams the palms of his hands into his temples and screams. He rushes to his friend. They’re pale, their eyes—some are closed, some are only half open. They barely respond as he tries desperately to speak, to whisper into their biggest ear. He begins to dart from one side of the room to the other, hitting his head—think Ermine, think!—he screeches, cursing his impotent self. He replaces the saline drip. He tries to feed them, but they will not eat. Slowly vomiting the food back up. He squeezes the soft flesh to see if he can feel something inside and all the eyes dart open, but for a brief moment, and they release a gasping, sighing groan. They’re bloated. Every day he feeds them, but they have no other orifice. Nowhere for the waste to go, and they’re filling up. He had feared this might happen, but everything had been going so well, and he did not know what to do. He places the sighing body gently on the trolley and races as fast as he can to the medical room, it’s more a cupboard. He takes everything he can and piles it onto the trolley and races to the canteen, places the body down on one side, the side that most closely resembles a back, and with trembling fingers, he injects them with morphine. Now, the eyes are all closed, and the breathing is slow and shallow, and he pokes their flesh with a knife. No reaction. He breathes deeply and pleads with any higher power that might be listening to please let this work. He makes a small incision. They bleed. There is nothing there but blood and tissue. He goes deeper, and deeper, wiping away the blood—searching for a stomach, a clog, something, anything. He doesn’t know. They bleed and bleed, and he cries and cries, his shoulders heaving. He’s killing them—the only thing he’s ever loved. The body opens an eye and looks at him, as he’s elbow deep, their lips twitch ever so slightly upwards. In this single glance more words were shared than all of the words that he had ever spoken. He spends the rest of the night hugging the body and doesn’t sleep. In the morning, as the alarm blares, he gently lays his dearest, and only, friend down into the disposal; he presses the button to release the twin hydroxides; he turns the temperature up to 150C. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have the words. But he cries all day. He lumbers over to the warehouse where all of his friends are stored. He takes them all one by one and ends their suffering. Years have passed. He’ll never forget the body with the perfect, cerulean eyes. He weeps loudly as he disposes of another imperfection. It hurts him to do it, but he knows it's for the best. He can’t risk them suffering needlessly. That’s why his job is so important. He just wishes that he had someone to talk to about it all.