Safety Film, Part I

"...a vast work had been constructed for imminent horrors...I did ask here and there about it, but I was given no answer."
G. Vidal

The place was unknown to me, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. I won't say it was entirely familiar, but what place is, really. The roadshoulder was fractured and weedsprung, wavering in its covenant with wheel and tread under the steady push of dereliction. Almost every step had sprouted accidental shrubberies, miniature ecotopes of thistle, camphor and grasses that both padded my footfall and threatened to snare or trip me. My way gleamed secretly with shards of glass and quartz that were brilliant or dim, sharp or dull, and either brown or green or clear. The roadbed was of new black tar. There was no traffic on it, none, not a single car or truck through the hours I'd been wobbling along its cracked margin. Nor had the prospect the road offered changed in the slightest in that time: A perfectly straight, perfectly black run without relief or feature, marching clear to a horizon that winked and dished uneasily with the distance. Theoretical road, ideal thoroughfare. On either side stretched gigantic fields of corn, wheat and other grains. Only rarely could I see the hint of a barn or silo clamped by the vise of field and sky down stretches of what seemed like impossible distance. Far down the fields, too, I could see vaulted irrigation equipment spanning the anonymous bounty like rainbows of steel. At points the work of great machines was marked by standing columns of faint dust and diesel. I did not know where the road was going. I was not in a position to, having awoken with no memory of how I'd come to the little grassy hollow where I'd slept. The road was not signposted, and as I marched hour on hour through the day I looked in vain for any sign that the sameness would abate. The only signage was in the trash that lay windrowed along my passage. Wrappers, bottles, sunbleached bags. Batteries and dessicated fruitrinds. Mufflers, springs, cans, bolts, all of it labeled, branded and promulgated in gaudy language addressed to men possessed of more credence than I. Once I stooped to retrieve a newspaper crucified on a thornbush. The masthead put it five years in the past, printed in a city five hundred miles to the south. Under a headline reading "No Survivors" was a photograph of a mangled wreckage so utterly deformed that it might as well have been an abstraction. I walked on, counting my thistles and shards.

I did not notice when exactly the low farm fence gave way. But given way it had, on the side I was walking on at least, to a high chainlink fence crowned by sinister helices of razorous steel that guarded the threshold to a vast and barren clearing. I could see no buildings on the clearing, no machines, and no activity. It was summer, but the day carried a steely chill that had all but silenced the insistent surge of cricketsong, and I was considering raking together some weeds and papers to sleep on as the sun leveled with the earth and readied to forsake it. I looked about and considered. There was no cover on either side, nor any ditch or gutter, and no easy way past the fence. Just the endless avenue hemmed on either side and redolent of some gantlet to come. I walked on. At some point the sound of a car breached the oceanic monotony of the wind and footfall. I turned around to watch it approach. It was a large sport utility vehicle painted burgundy, and it was going fast. I could not see inside as it rushed by in full solo stampede. I stood sconced in the turbulent dust of its wake when I saw the brakelights come on. The truck stopped and reversed back up the road. I remained in place and looked on as it drew alongside me. The tinted passenger window sucked down into the enormous door and revealed a man in a crisp suit.

"Hey," he said. "You busy?"
"Not particularly."
"How would you like to be an extra and a grip in a film I'm shooting?"
I looked past him into the car. The man at the wheel had the detached air of a professional livery driver. Behind them sat a row of women wearing identical uniforms.
"Sure," I said. "What'll you offer?"
He gave me what I think they call a frank look. "It looks like just about anything we give you would be enough," he said. "Hop in."
The door behind his opened and I saw that there were in fact two rows of women in uniform. Those in the back were arranging themselves to make room for me. They inspired a feeling of tranquility. I gave the man a nod before climbing in and taking my place among the hindmost.
The driver fixed me with a look from the rearview. "Wouldye look what the cat dragged in."