The Hammer Room

Cren pulled the lever down for the two hundred and eighteenth time that day. Firmly. Smoothly. A continuous stroke from the upper stop to the lower, and held it. Like the clockwork that it was, the machine waited two and three sevenths of a second before transmitting the resultant shockwave back to palms, letting her know it was time to return it to the upper position. When her lever returned to its locked position, the leverman to her right would pull his, and so on around the circular room until the leverman to her left finished their cycle, and she would repeat the process.

A shift ended when the sequence had repeated three hundred times in the day, and everyone had pulled their lever three hundred times, and felt three hundred pulses, and all felt comfortable signing their name to the form in the timecard room that they had certainly provided three hundred hammer cycles, personally.

When Cren’s left-hand neighbor pulled their lever for the two hundred and nineteenth time, they grunted with some exertion. She scowled at them, but they were not looking. This was a new recruit, and it usually took several months to build up the endurance to handle all three hundred cycles without getting winded. There was little patience among levermen for a rookie who put any extra time between the crew and their after-work beers, and while the attrition rate was high for those in their first few months, it was rare for well-oiled cogs to clash.

As the rookie’s lever returned and Cren’s unlatched, she pulled. It was no different from the last two hundred and eighteen times until the very bottom, where it snagged for a moment before breaking through and landing on the lower stop, somehow a degree past the typical resting position. Cren took notice and began to worry immediately; doubly so when the echo hit her palms dull and dissonant, two and three sevenths of a second later.

Instead of returning her lever, she turned her head over her right shoulder. “Something’s broke.” she announced, officially to the foreman but just as much to address the glare from her righthand neighbor.

An echo of the first shock came back through the lever, maybe a second and half after the first. It was scratchy.

“Then why are you holding it down? Let up! Let up!” urged the foreman, who had risen out of his seat at the center of the room and was gesturing wildly with his hands, sweeping them through the air like a conductor.

A more diffuse echo came.

Cren was beginning to shake, partially from the exertion, and partially from the feeling of the indignation as the other levermen turned to watch. “‘Cause it’s broke. Something’s wrong down the shaft.”

“You’re still holding it down,” he thoughtfully pointed out, “Just let up.”

The others were beginning to grumble and moan about the delay, so against her better judgment, Cren returned the lever to its rest. It groaned almost imperceptibly as it came off the lower stop.

“See?” said the foreman, “Nothing to worry about,” and he strode back to his swivel chair.

Cren turned and watched like a greenhorn as the standard chain reaction made its way around the room. As the process walked away from her, so too did her concern, but not all of it. Maybe she was overreacting.

While levermen weren’t supposed to fraternize on the job, this was a technical matter, so she spoke in a low voice to the professional to her right, “You ever felt the lever pull different?”

His head snapped around to face her, “Yeah. Every day when I pull my three hundredth. Leave it be.” He looked back at his lever.

Cren was not one to argue, but she was certain that continuing to pull the lever would lead to disaster. The sequence had made it halfway around when she turned to the rookie on her left and said in a much less controlled tone, “I’m not going to pull. Don’t do yours either. Someone’s got to check the machine. Maybe we just don’t finish out the shift today.”

The newbie stared at her with a blank expression, then said meekly, “They’ll kick my ass.”

The sequence had nearly returned to Cren’s station by this point, but instead of readying her hands on the lever, she stood facing the foreman with a wide stance and crossed arms. The foreman was looking directly at her, obviously displeased but not saying anything.

Cren met his eyes and scowled. “Not doing it” she announced.

Instead, the response came from the leverman downstream of her, “for fuck’s sake,” he whined.

The rookie took their turn on the lever. Smoothly down (with a grunt), wait for the shockwave, release.

“It’s your turn,” the foreman nodded towards Cren’s station.

With some newfound deference, she repeated, “It’s broke, sir. Please, I don’t know what will happen if I pull again.”

“If it breaks, we end the shift and you all get paid for work done. The machinery is none of your concern. Pull the lever.”

The rest of the levermen were in working themselves into fits. Cries of “come on!” and “fuck’s sake” started reverberating around the circle. Standing where she was, Cren had the feeling that her immediate neighbors would have sucker-punched her if the foreman’s attention hadn’t been focused in their direction. She said nothing, but glanced back at the lever.

The foreman tried again, as much as he could try from his seat, “We all want to call it a day. How about you give it one more shot, and if it’s worse this time, we end the shift early.” The jeers turned inwards now, towards the foreman’s station, but he smiled. “The company cannot afford to accommodate levermen who can’t pull their weight.”

Recognizing the threat, Cren shouted back, “I can do my job, but the lever’s broke, and… You know what? Fine.”

She turned around, placed two hands confidently on the lever, and pulled smoothly through the stroke. The mechanism creaked as it passed the halfway point, then seized a bit just before the normal lower stop, then shuddered to the over-travel point below the bottom limit.

“See?” announced the foreman, as much to the whole team as to Cren specifically, “if you jus…”

The End.