The air crackles with ice and i pull down my earmuffs. The endless corridor runs between the five storey high racking systems on each side and fades into frigid murky darkness at either end. A golf cart darts into view from the shadowy northern end. It’s Irene. She’s normally not one of the bad ones but still, i press myself behind the nearest pallet of boxes. I try not to move.

I can tell it’s Irene from the decals on the bonnet. Sophisticates drinking rum on a tropical island paradise. Flamboyant macaws careening through balmy blue skies. Lush coconut palms bending against the flaming sunset. Pure escapism.

Except there’s no escaping this place. Not for grunts like me.

The air around here makes me want to retch. Tubby Rawson’s crew can’t be bothered to fix the fans along the sector 42A riser. They claim not to have the right tools. Hah! The forklift fumes are left to pool here like the fat lazy coils of some monstrous snake, worst on cold days like today.

Today my sense band says it’s two degrees inside. Whilst two degrees is better than minus six on The Outside, the regs say workplace temperatures shouldn’t go below thirteen. Squeezed by global austerity, no company obeys the regs nowadays – especially not Overlord Logistics – and ragtag employees like me hang to our jobs as tight as bats on a wire to support ourselves and our loved ones.

My Lydia for instance, tending each day to the ragged mannequin of bones that used to be her mother and watching her slowly expire between the grey walls close enough to touch, foggy with droplets of cold sweat. Lydia, with your dark eyes of pain, sucked-in cheeks, tangled dark tresses and hacking cough. Oh Lydia.

Sector 42A is where today’s MaintLog says i need to be. I’m here. Good.

Except that i should have been here by midday. It is now seventeen minutes past. One of the many reasons i don’t want Supervisor Irene’s attentions focussed on me right now.

The retching rises up. The prickly folds of my scarf tighten around my choking throat. I hold it in, desperate not to attract Irene’s attention. Peering from side to side, she is approaching my hideout with mincing menace between the towering racks.

I tear my gaze away and look up through the haze of jaundiced light penetrating the yellow roof panels high above, higher than the Golden Gate bridge and covering the cavernous expanse of more than twenty football fields. Hundreds of trusses march across the roof like rows of coat hangers in the frosted glass wardrobe of a giant.

Irene is definitely looking for me. There is no other reason she would travel so far from her little cardboard office, way off in section S1E. What does she want with me out here? Okay, so i have been running late across some of my sectors this week. But she knows my hinnsburger is in for repairs and that the rusty voleo runs much slower across the myriad of jawed grablets that need daily checking. Anyhow, my stats are within bounds – i know, i grocked them this morning.

My face spasms into a frozen rictus as her flat footfalls slow and stop. I daren’t look up. Not even when i hear her icomm buzz and hear the machine gun fire of her answering voice. I wait until the last faint whine of her gaudy tropical golf cart disappears into the background warehouse clatter. Then i emerge and massage my stupid stiff neck.

I work like a crazy hound the next few hours. My hands are shaking. One time i feel the sharp edge of a cluttick slice right through the glove, deep into the base of my thumb. I see the dark stain spreading but keep on working. It clots up soon enough.

Then its knock-off time and i’m queuing up for the autotrain back to the dorms. A little brown mole encased in a stained overcoat shoves his way through the crowd towards me.

Yegor clutches my arm and looks up at me, his bright eyes brimming.

“They were looking for you, you know. All of them. Did you do something bad Gleb? Did you? What did you do?”

“Nothing,” i say, “i’ve done nothing.”

“You must have done something. Your face was all over their screens. That can’t be for nothing. They specially sent sups out to find you. But they couldn’t. You must have had your iloc switched off. Was it switched off Gleb? Was it? They’ll dock you for that you know.”

I shake my arm free and grab him by his dirty coat, lifting him up onto his toes.

“Listen you miserable piece of shit,” i hiss into his round face and puckered pink lips, “i’ve done nothing. Nothing. So shut the fuck up.”

I shove him back against the indifferent crowd.

“You must have done something,” he says with quiet satisfaction, before turning away into the masses.

I reach the turnstiles and swipe my card. Nothing happens. I try again. Still nothing. Fuck. I turn and shove my way into the adjacent line. I try again, again nothing happens. The little screen glows red. Fuck fuck fuck. People muttering around me. Pressed in on all sides. Going nowhere. Uniforms approaching. My head buzzing. What the fuck.

“Sir, we have some news for you,” says the first uniform. Polite like.

I slip between two old women and try to force my way back into the crowd. The crowd resists, the bastards. Wanting me to be caught. I make one last despairing lunge before two of the uniforms grip me tight.

I yell out meaningless shit whilst everyone looks at me, apart and curious.

“Please come with us, sir, we have news for you,” says the one with braid on his shoulder.

“Get fucked,” i yell, “leave me be!”

But they pluck me up as easy as lifting a tea bag. Before i know it, i’m standing in an office across from two large men with decorated shoulder boards who are thrusting brochures at me.

“Here, let me take off your gloves sir. Have a look sir. It’s the jackpot you’ve won; you’ve won the jackpot you see sir. Take a look.”

My exposed hands are shaking; the bloodied base of my thumb still throbs from where the cluttick sliced into my flesh. I let the brochures fall onto the desk unseen.

“This is bullshit,” i say dully, “i’m done for the day, let me go.”

“But sir, you’ve won a BMW!” cried one of the aids in the room, leaping forward in his excitement.

“And a holiday sir, a three week trip to the Caribbean, all expenses paid, for you and your missus,” says one of the shoulder-board dudes.

“They’ve been looking for you all afternoon, trying to tell you sir, you’ve won the jackpot,” chimes in the aid.

I look disbelievingly at the BMW brochure. It’s their top of the line model. Quarter of a million dollars worth. I pick up the key ring and finger the smooth bob with its embossed logo.

“Plus three weeks in the Caribbean, sir, staying at their top five star hotel. A welcome bottle of Bollinger for you and your missus. All expenses paid and a daily allowance for drinks, sir.”

The brochures remind me of the graphics on Irene’s cart. Tropical sunsets, glamorous people sipping drinks at the wet bar, even the goddamn macaws.

I don’t drive.

Even if i could drive, where would i go? I see the roads every day through the grimy windows of the autotrain, six lanes each way of jam-packed transporters and self-drive cabs. Moving at a snails pace through the wasted landscape of twisted tree skeletons, icy winds, brown skies and frozen mud.

There’s nowhere to park at the dorms and even if there was, the local hoods would molotov it at first sight. What the fuck would i do with a BMW?

My Lydia. Too sick to travel and tending to her dying mother. She couldn’t leave the dorm – and i couldn’t leave her. The Caribbean. Oh man. As out of reach as the stars, so long obscured by the dun skies. As out of reach as ever for a grunt like me.

Goddamn.