Those who could not fight worked in the factory. They were too old, or too young, or physically disabled. They worked quietly, the assembly lines moving 24 hours a day. They took shifts, each person worked sixteen hours, had eight hours for sleep, food and private time. They assembled pre-packaged meals for soldiers. The factory made more than 100,000 meals a day. They rejoiced, quietly, when they heard that: it meant there were 100,000 soldiers still alive.

They slept on the factory floor, when it was their shift to sleep, on musty old piles of blankets and rags, arranged in neat rows on the cold concrete floor. They were always quiet because they knew someone was always sleeping. They had not left the factory since they came here: ideas of day and night were meaningless. The meals were always the exact same cold nutrient bars they packaged up for the soldiers. When their shift was over they mostly slept, but sometimes they showered, sometimes they stared in to space and ate their food, sometimes they used their ten minutes for the day in the privacy booth.

The privacy booth was made of cheap green plastic. It was a converted porta-potty with a light on a dimmer switch, a tiny bench, soundproofing on the walls, a buzzer on a timer to tell you when your time was up. The privacy booth was the only true peace because you didn’t have to come out until your ten minutes were up, no matter what. It said so, right on the booth. Not even Itzach Davidson, commander of the entire United Army, could order you out. That’s what kind of place it was. Of course, try to stay in there eleven minutes and you would be shot in the head.

Nobody knew what everyone else did in the privacy booth. If they had known, it might have brought them some comfort to know how much like everyone else they were. The fourth most common thing people did in the booth was sex (two people could go in the booth and they would get a full twenty minutes). The third most common thing was masturbation. The second most common thing was crying. The first most common thing was simply turning off the lights (darkness existed nowhere else in the factory) staring at the blackness at their feet, and pretending they were not there.

That’s what Tom was doing: staring at the feet he could neither see nor feel. He new the metal pads his feet rested on were scrunched up against the plastic door – it was the only way he could get his wheelchair in to the booth.

Tom was still staring at the darkness when he heard the robot’s voice. “Resume work”, played a cold, sharp voice, designed for maximum compliance, “or you will be shot.” The voice was so loud it pierced right through the booth’s soundproofing. Tom could hear voices, shouting, pleading. He could not hear what they were saying, but he imagined they were pleading for the person who had stopped working to choose another form of suicide, one that would not leave blood on their clothes, get blood in the soldiers’ food.

He could hear the robot counting down from five, four, three, two, one. The shot was so loud that he felt the privacy booth shake. Then, almost immediately, he heard the robot again “Resume work, or you will be shot.” The voices of protest, male and female, rose in volume and number. Tom wondered if another person had decided to follow a friend or lover in death. The robot started to count down, then it interrupted itself. “Do not approach the robot.” It said. There was a burst of gunfire. The sound of each shot merged together, like a long loud crack, like a giant was breaking a redwood in half.

The cries had evolved in to screams of terror. There were no more words, just screaming. The screams were moving around the factory, all around the privacy booth. People were abandoning their stations.

Tome realized what must be happening and it was like cold water had been pumped in to his veins. He felt disconnected from his body, from reality, like his soul had backed away from this realm and was bobbing back and forth slowly in another realm made of cotton and ice and a dull ringing noise. He could hear his heartbeat as if it was coming from somewhere outside of himself. Tom knew that it wasn’t just a mass suicide. If people were running, the security robot must have malfunctioned and just started killing people for no reason.

Tom whimpered in fear as he hear the robot count down and shoot one person after another. Every time the gun fired he would flinch, every muscle that still had nerves going to it would tighten involuntarily. He knew it would kill every person in the factory, and it would kill him when his time in the privacy booth ended. Tom’s only hope was that he could hide in the booth until the plant manager called someone and got a password to turn it off.

Tom huddled, shivering, feeling dizzy and near vomiting, as more people than he could count were executed. He figured maybe half the plant was dead. He prayed that his time in the booth would last just a little bit longer.

The lights flicked on, a loud buzzer sounded, and the door unlocked and started to swing open. Tom lunged forward and grabbed the handle, shutting the door. After the next round of gunfire he heard the robot say “Your time in the privacy booth is over. Leave the privacy booth or you will be shot.”

Tom wondered whether leaving the booth would work. Maybe the stupid robot would think he was still in the booth, no matter where he went in the booth, and shoot him at zero. Tom flung the door open, wheeled himself out. The chair bumped as it went from the plastic floor to the concrete. Tom’s heart was beating so hard it hurt his chest.

Around Tom there were dead bodies everywhere, and live workers huddled behind anything they could. The robot was standing tall by the door to the plant. It was as tall as a human. Rising from its tractor-tread base was a thick pole, with a swiveling machine-gun around the middle, and at the top a bulb with a loudspeaker and camera. The gun had a red laser and it was pointing to a conveyor belt, behind which was a skinny old man. “Return to work, or you will be shot.”

Escape did not seem like an option: the robot was guarding the only exit. Hiding didn’t seem to work – he didn’t see anything he could be sure the robot couldn’t shoot through. Even if there was, the robot could also simply move to where it could shoot him. The countdown ended and the robot shot through the conveyor belt, killing the old man.

He could hear scattered hisses from throughout the room. Without looking he knew it was people sucking on their anti-anxiety inhalers.

Tom was moving, rolling as quickly as his arms could push him. The countdown started again. Tom did not know if the robot’s red laser was pointing at him or somebody else, he did not have time to look. He stopped his chair near the body of a large old woman. He leaned over and grabbed her arm, pulled it towards him. He tried to pull her body up in to the chair, but has he pulled one wheel left the ground and he dropped her. He tried again, dragging her up and towards him. The countdown ended, he saw muzzle flare and someone in his peripheral vision go down. He got both his hands under the dead woman’s armpits and slowly dragged her over. He was sliding her across him, and knew this time if his chair started to tip he could not simply drop her, she would take him down. When most of her body was on him, he reached around and grabbed the waist of her pants. With a grunt he managed to get the entire weight of the dead woman on top of him. He adjusted her arms and legs so they were not dragging on the ground or interfering with his wheels. He wasn’t sure, but he thought most of his body was protected by the corpse. He peeked behind her head to see there the robot was, he turned his wheelchair towards it, and then he pumped the wheels as hard as he could, accelerating towards the thing.

The robot just had time to start saying “Do not...” before it fired. Tom could feel the shots shake the body and the chair. He forgot to pump the wheels and momentum carried him into the thing. The chair fell, the body tumbling off of him. He looked up and he saw that the robot had fallen too. He grabbed the rubber treads and pulled himself towards it, grabbing the gun as it was pivoting towards him. He held the gun, fighting the motor, hearing gears strip. He shouted for help, but the workers were already rushing over. They stomped on the thing, cracking the plastic housing on its head, and they reached in and pulled out wires. They snapped circuit boards with their bare hands, even though the sharp points of solder pierced their skin. The motor stopped whirring and the loudspeaker was quiet.

The helped him in to his wheelchair and he realized that his chest was bleeding. He inspected the bullet holes, feeling them with his fingers. He could feel the three bullets lodged in his ribs.

Tom went outside briefly. He was surprised to see it was night. He enjoyed seeing stars and feeling a cool breeze. He went back in quickly and helped the survivors salvage as many Meals-Ready-to-Eat as possible. It wasn’t more than half an hour before the cleanup crew showed up. Their job was to assess damage, fix equipment, replace the security-bot, and get the plant working again as quickly as possible.

The head of the cleanup team debriefed Tom. She was a tall, older black woman with a cane and an authoritative air. When she had finished, Tom said “I have a favor to ask, I want to be transferred.”

“This is not a merit based system,” she reminded him with bored anger, as if she had said these words too many times, “You do your job to the best of your abilities or you get shot.”

“I want to fight,” he begged, “I want to be transferred to the front lines. I think I’ve proven I can.”

She shook her head sadly. “Believe me, you’re better off here.”

He leaned towards her and whispered “These people, they’re already dead. The robot started killing them and they ran,” he paused, “they ran because the rules say to avoid getting killed, not because they really cared. If I’m going to die, I want to feel alive first, I want to go out fighting.”

She looked to the side, thinking. When she spoke, it was half to him, half to herself. “It takes a lot of resources to get a soldier ready to go to the other side. There’s training, surgery, outfitting. Personnel will have to decide whether you are even worth the investment. I can make a recommendation, though…” She looked him in the eyes. “If they choose you for combat, you can’t change your mind. You can’t say no and you can’t come back. You understand that, right?”

“I do.”

Seven years after the war ended, Tom would think about that day. It was normally in the late morning and early afternoon. It was after he had gotten his Styrofoam cup of coffee from the shelter, after he had scrounged up a newspaper from the bus stop, after he had read everything worth reading, but before his buddy Carmen got back from her canning route with a bottle of fortified wine for them to share. While he was still sober enough to think about such things, he would sit and think, sometimes for a minute and sometimes for an hour, about the terrible mistake he had made that day.