Paranoia ✓

X: Rashad - Diaspora (Part 3)

Finally Jaheim and Rashad reached the final stop of the tour. "The Munitions Factory, or simply The Factory. A lot of things occur here. Let's start from the back since we're already here."

Jaheim led Rashad through the loading bay, where dusty, rusty pickup trucks rested in the back of the large complex. They walked up the sandstone stairs into the back door and immediately entered into the coolest place in the entire village. The air inside The Factory was strangely air-conditioned. Rashad was surprised thinking that such a place named 'The Factory' would probably be the hottest place in the village considering the content they produced.

Upon entry Jaheim gave Rashad a quick rundown of the factory. "As you can see many men here produce weapons and new devices that we use in the battlefield. Some simply produce the weapons you are accustomed to seeing, others produce new weapons that will help in the battlefield, such as weapons that can get past the Westerners' security screenings."

Off in the distance Rashad could hear a loud moaning sound mixed in with a cry of pain. Clearly the sound was coming from behind a wall, maybe from one of the many rooms that surrounded the facility on the contours of the inner factory. Many men melted metal into bullets using giant machines that Rashad had no clue how to work. Others handled sharp instruments, and some wore heavy protective gear as they tinkered with wires and sticks of explosives. The men in heavy gear looked like some of the Western astronauts that Ms. Reyes used to tell the class about when Rashad was in school—men covered in white giant fluffy suits. Although these suits were white, they had seen better days. They were mostly covered in soot and tears; yet, Rashad could tell they had originally been white as he spotted patches of tainted white spots across the heavy suits.

Again, Rashad heard the loud moaning and weeping noises and, having scanned the factory for clues, he gave up and turned to Jaheim.

Jaheim simply looked away from Rashad and mumbled. "Sometimes I find the women to be the better soldiers. They can take the worse beatings."

Rashad couldn't believe that the women were actually being beaten behind these walls. He agreed that women could take the pain of childbirth, something he couldn't possibly imagine. On that note, Jaheim continued. "Many of our new ways to tackle the enemy involve women. They provide skills, norms, and crevices that men do not possess."

With that Rashad decided to leave the topic alone, as he began to put some ideas together. All he knew was that the product the men in the astronaut suits made caused the cries he was hearing emanate from the walls.

Jaheim turned his attention to the right corner of The Factory from where they had just entered. "Here is the Engraving Facility. We will stop there in a bit in order for you to be initiated into the Kabish. But first, I want to show you some of the technology we possess in order to trick our enemies."

Jaheim led Rashad to the left corner of The Factory from where they had first entered. Towards the left of the loading bay was an office that was entitled, 'Hacking Center.' With such a name, Rashad pictured advanced technology to line the walls, computers with touch screen pads, headsets, and smart devices, much like the stuff Ms. Reyes explained the Westerners had. He imagined hologram devices, where three dimensional images and maps could be displayed before your very own eyes.

Yet when Jaheim opened the door, the first thing he saw were two men standing in the middle of the room with dirty headsets on watching some animated men shooting on a television.

The men were laughing and the man on the left was strangely different. The man was light skinned and did not fit in with the rest of the people in the village who were mocha and chocolate colored.

The white man spoke. "Did ya know that Clock Tower is basically set in London beneath Big Ben?"

Then the one on the right, looking a bit more similar to the rest of the villagers, nodded. "Yeah and that map Ruins, is basically the Royal Palace of Madrid, only in ruins."