Tweet
It turns out that the life of the average sweatshop factory worker is no more comfortable in space than here on Earth. After a day spent working the craters, you must return to a cell (provided by your employers, a race of tall-shouldered, gruff aliens) where your only comfort is a pillow-free bed, a pile of brown food pellets and, if you've been performing well, perhaps an old VHS tape to keep you company (sans player, or TV). Out in the field things aren't much better. Space-suited bodies of fallen workers lay slumped against rocks, usually clutching an audio recording (dubbed, miserably, a 'failure log') on which their final words are recorded. There are no toilet breaks and you can forget about joining a union (for one thing, the only colleagues you ever meet are dead ones). While you're provided with a jetpack, useful for hovering over your workplace to gain a better vantage point on the day's work, if you step off the edge of a cliff and forget to engage the boosters... Well, let's just say there is no health and safety officer here on the Infinifactory floor.
It's not all bad here in the galactic factory, though. For one thing, the work itself is provides a glorious challenge and diversion. It's easy to forget about worker's rights when your job is, essentially, to solve spatial cryptic crosswords. Your task each day is simple: guide an incoming stream of cargo blocks to an exit point by laying a conveyor belt, segment by segment. When you're satisfied you've completed the task, you start the motor. The cargo must land on the conveyor and arrive at its destination intact, and in the correct alignment. In most cases, you need only send ten blocks to the exit to complete the day's work, at which point you're returned to your cell.
Read more…
More...