"Mister Meats! I need see you at the dock office." The voice of supervisor Rittula Staint boomed over the intercom. The crackly audio echoed throughout the racks of hoag ribs, hoag steaks, and hoag intestines, until finally reaching the ears of Arnold Meats. Meats, being the maintenance man extraordinaire that he was, ignored the announcement and continued replacing the cross bar he was working on.

Another announcement, the same words, this time marinated with frustration, echoed throughout the walls of Rutledge Foods warehouse 12, freezer 42. Meats ignored this as well. He knew what she wanted. He also knew he couldn't do anything about it.

Meats finished tightening the last bolt on the cross bar and sighed as he stared out across the freezing expanse. He imagined the racks as a city made of metal and meat. He loved the serenity of the freezer on a Sunday. Even when the automated systems were pulling pallets and adjusting counts they were always close to the front end. Far away from his little slice of perfect isolation. He could have fallen asleep up here if he closed his eyes, except they would freeze shut.

The repeating of the announcement continued, as did Meats decided ignorance of it. After nearly half an hour Meats felt rhythmic vibrations begin to work their way up the rack he was hooked on to. His spirits lifted as he looked down. It was Siobhan, tapping a wrench against the lowest bay.

"I'm not coming down! Not until she comes out here to ask me herself!" Meats yelled defiantly, a devious grin spreading across his face. Siobhan was his favorite person on the entirety of Liberum.

He would have specified that she was his favorite Tar-Khali person on Liberum, but that wouldn't quite do it justice. He certainly liked her more than any humans he knew. Arnold watched as she shook her head, the scaled curtains of her traditional Tar-Khali headdress shifting back and forth.

"She's not going to walk three miles out just to talk to you. You'd better head her way before she writes you up." Siobhan bellowed up at him. It didn't take much effort for her to bellow. Her bass registered voice tended to carry easily.

"She knows it's not my fault." Meats grumbled, beginning the process of unhooking himself from the rack. He pulled his safety gear and his toolbox onto the cherry picker and began descending. This took a little while as he'd been nearly a hundred feet in the air.

When he'd finally reached the bottom he looked up at Siobhan. She was big, even for a Tar-Khali woman. He'd heard that the Tar-Khal lived far longer than humans and didn't stop growing until the day they died. If that were true Siobhan must have been nearly as old as the city itself. Why she was working in this warehouse that, according to her was farther from her home than he could fathom, was a mystery to him.

"Same shit?" Meats asked, strapping his toolbox to the side of the cherry picker.

"Indeed." Siobhan answered, adjusting her headdress. She'd nearly exposed her eyes and as far as Meats knew that was some kind of sin in the ancient Tar-Khali religion. She'd said the eyes were like wells of memory and you only exposed them when you confessed your sins to Mohk.

Mohk was a god. Not the god. A god. Siobhan had been very specific about that part. She'd also been very specific that Mohk was a god of unfathomable inter-dimensional knowledge. It was all the same as far as Meats was concerned. He'd never really believed in much of anything himself.

"She knows I'm not IT. This shit's been going on for weeks. I'm not going to magically know how to fix it today." Meats complained, shrugging as he secured his harness to his machine. He glanced around. Something was missing.

"Where's yours?" Meats asked, gesturing towards the cherry picker he was standing on.

"In the shop." Siobhan answered, jabbing a thumb towards the South end of the warehouse.

"She made you walk all the way out here just to get me?" Meats asked, his anger beginning to build. Staint had always been an ass but making Siobhan walk all the way out here was near torture to the cold blooded Tar-Khal. Plus she was old, you didn't make old people do that sort of shit if you had any conscience to speak of.

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"Don't get excited. I was only a few rows away knocking ice off of G-233." Siobhan explained, giving Meats a slightly stern look. She didn't have quite the same disdain for Staint as he did. Then again, Staint had never shown the same disdain for Siobhan as she had for Meats.

'Maybe she's right. Maybe I am a little too ready to jump down Staints throat. I keep chasing after these gotcha moments and I might as well just aim for her job.' Meats thought, remembering the last time Staint had tried to fire him.

It wasn't the fact that she always tried to catch him in some sort of convoluted web of lies that pissed him off. It wasn't even the fact that she did this at least once every three months. It was the fact that she, instead of knowing that it was him, wanted it to be him.

It never was him, It couldn't be. He'd never done anything but his job. Hell the last two years dealing with Staint it had almost felt like he was working even harder as a way of being passive aggressive.

It didn't matter. She always wanted it to be him. He knew why. It wasn't something he wished to think about on days that ended in Y.

"You need a ride?" Meats asked as he finished securing himself.

"No." Siobhan replied, her headdress once again shifting from side to side. Meats thought about his wording for a moment. She was a rather literal type of lady.

"Do you want one?" He asked, smirking. A grin, toothy simply due to the nature of the mouth it was created by, spread across Siobhans face.

"Yes." She replied, stepping onto the cherry pickers rear platform. As they began their journey back to the dock office, Meats listened as Siobhan hummed the same Tar-Khal hymn she always did. If it weren't for the sound of the back end scraping the concrete, it would have been the perfect tune to watch the racks roll past to.

As Meats held the throttle steady and began to space out, Siobhan tapped him on the shoulder. He let off the controls letting the machine come to a gentle stop. Meats followed Siobhans claw, directed out into the racks. He strained his eyes, bringing into focus a singular case of hoag steaks lying among the base of the racks.

"Huh... Well I'll be damned. Good eye." Meats said, glancing over at Siobhan to ensure the irony wasn't lost on her.

"Indeed." Siobhan responded, chuckling a bit. The duo changed course and navigated their way to where the box lay. Meats unhooked himself from the cherry picker and picked up the case. It was empty.

"Weird, almost looks like something chewed on it." Meats commented, inspecting a corner engulfed in frayed cardboard. A slow, growing cold spread along Meats fingers, prompting him to pull his hand away. The bottom of the case was soaked in what Meats could only guess was blood, as were the fingers of his glove.

"It's wet?" Siobhan asked, hooking a claw into the soggy box and holding it at eye level.

"Yeah, how though?" Meats asked, confounded. Freezer 42 was one of the coldest storage facilities in the city, and was therefore kept at a cool -10 degrees Fahrenheit. Your feet would freeze to the floor if you stood still long enough.

"Meats? We need to get going. Best not to think too hard about it." Siobhan said, placing the remains of the box on the back of the cherry picker.

"Guess you're right. I don't get paid enough to think hard. At least, not about this." Meats agreed, glancing up into the racks. As he hooked himself back up he watched Siobhan. He couldn't quite tell, it may have been a trick of the light, but she looked worried. Siobhan never looked worried.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Deep within the chilly depths of Rutledge Foods Warehouse 12, Freezer 42, a case of Ole Chesters Homestyle Hoag Steaks tipped off of its pallet on the ninth level. Twelve pounds of frozen hoag tumbled through the air from a height of eighty five feet. One would have expected this to result in a rather radical change in shape for the cardboard receptacle, yet not a sound was made, nor a corner bent as it collided softly with the concrete.

The box sat there for a moment, as if time itself might have fallen behind and the explosion of frozen flesh and plastic packaging was inevitable. Nothing happened. Another few minutes passed. Still nothing.

'Where's the boom? There's usually a big boom.' the box thought, anxiety building behind its corrugated walls. This was highly abnormal. Just a few months ago it had seen a box of sausages fall from only about thirty feet, and it had burst like a beached whale.

'What even happens to cases they find on the ground? Ooooh, I'll probably be tossed out like garbage! The indignity of it!' The box continued to itself. Then another question crossed it's packing tape.

'Why am I thinking? I've never thought before. Why do I remember that other box? I've... never had a memory before.' The box thought, a multitude of existential crises passing through its labels at once.

Then, as the light of true self awareness began to dawn upon the box, it exploded. Chunks of frozen hoag steaks burst from the side of the box and scattered along the concrete floor like a protein rich confetti cannon. Silence fell as the motion sensing lights dimmed before shutting off once more.

Then, a sound like dice being rolled across a damp felt table resonated throughout the darkness.