Triangle Girls

Their fingers tink against the cloth-plates
as the fabrics feed under the presser feet.
The constant plink, plonk, tapping
of artificial fingertips like a hailstorm:
metal, plastic and rubber.
Row after row after row of fingers
rumbling under the knocking whine
of 10,000 needles rising and falling.

Each worker is as different as the array
of salvaged sewing machines they operate.
Most of them came in ships from overseas;
the castoffs of economic regress
Others were domestic models;
the castoffs from owners
eligible for upgrade.

Some, obtained in bulk lots at auction,
were second-run commercial gynomorphs
fed basic instructions and placed at their machines
next to armatures, operators, butlers and nannies;
until a government inspector primly requested
that they be clothed
in consideration of gender dignity.

The owners fed instructions to the repair closet
to dress all units during the next regular maintenance
in the various retro womens' apparels
for which the factory was known
(even the andromorphs and isomorphs);
which is how they got the collective designation of 'girls'

Their bodies rise neither day nor night.
Only their left arms feeding and arranging fabric
between needle strikes in the near darkness.
Occasionally they tilt their heads
(a built-in social feature)
to focus lensed, CCD or anthropic eyes
on their right hands moving
to cue the different thread toggles
of the master spools overhead
or on the bin of replacement needles.
It's just a gesture.
Their hands know the locations blind.

The owner and his family float somewhere
above the surface
counting profit and grumbling
about the two-thirds share the government takes,
which it feeds back to the consumers.
Someone still has to buy things, after all
even when they aren't needed to make or do anything.

Down below ground, in the factory,
the winders tighten the girls
with their steam-driven keys
skeleton-fit to each mainspring,
or fit to the spring-wound electric adapters
for those older models not powered by tension.

There are no heights to fall
down below the ground;
no oxygen to burn the clouds of lube dust
(nitrogen-only keeps parts from rusting);
and every single exit
is locked from the outside.

When destruction came it was by water
(All faults will settle given enough time).
A fissure opened for the fingers of the river,
feeling down deep into the subcity.
Consumers, dimly horrified, were duly evacuated
from their earthscraper tenements.
...but no one came for the girls

As the waters rose around their workstations,
few of them rose.
Some models followed deeper programming
to avoid hazardous conditions,
but when they found they could not,
they curled themselves up into tight spaces
and powered down.
Most just kept working.

A few adjusted their motions
for the added water resistance.
but most not.
A few attempted to repair
their misbehaving sewing machines,
but most not.
A few shorted out quickly,
but most not.

The owners were forced to build a new facility,
or lose their government license.
They couldn't replace the equipment
(The sewing machines alone
required digging permits in three states),
so they reluctantly abandoned their marketing claim,
"Assembled manually on vintage sewing machines",
in favor of a more conventional
molecular assembly plant.

If you have the right connections,
one of the owners' grandsons
gives secret tours of the abandoned factory;
diving down in small groups
to see the 10,000 antique robots
drifting in the wet dark.
A memorial where no one grieves,
because they paid good money
to say they spent it
on something unapproved.

It is (I have been told)
especially good for a date,
since some of the divers swear
you almost catch their eyes focusing,
when you're not looking directly at them.


[On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, killing 146 garment workers - mostly immigrant women. The factory had become known the previous year as a center of a garment workers' strike, resulting in the formation of many union shops to address wage, hour and safety issues. Ultimately, Triangle itself was not unionized. The following year, workers were unable to escape the fire in large part because one of two exits was kept locked by foremen to prevent suspected theft of fabric in handbags, which were inspected daily. Crowds watched many girls jump to their deaths from 9th story windows, sometimes on fire, several stories out of reach of the fire ladders. The incident led to the passage of 36 workplace safety bills in the New York legislature, and the beginnings of acknowledging issues of workplace safety and workers' rights.]