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The wall that lined the road to the Factory was built of square blocks roughly stacked. They had the look of something churned out in vast quantities by equipment ancient and decrepit; though less than twenty years old they were pocked and chipped as if by decades of weather and wear.

The road itself was hardly any better - a rutted dirt track, at times kicking up vast dust clouds and at others a filthy mud trail.

The road curved around and between the barren slopes that surrounded the Factory. Grigor often thought that those hills looked like manifestations of his state: humble, low, and bent. Even so, he always tried to position himself by the tailgate of the military-surplus truck that ferried him and his fellow workers to the Factory, just so he could look at something other than the worn and dejected faces of his comrades. He would spend the entire trip to the Factory - the whole hour and a half ride - staring out at the bleak scenery. No trees, only the occasional nondescript shrub. More often than not the weather was grim too; cloudy but not storming, just a persistent, even, drenching rain. But still Grigor would stare out over the landscape and dream. Until the Factory came into view.

Though the road led to the Factory, its route was so curving that on at least half a dozen points on the road they would be travelling directly away from the hulking building. The first few turns revealed only the chimney, that single heavy column that belched black filth into the sky night and day, but then the Factory itself would rise above a hillside and Grigor would feel the fear settle into his heart again, as it had every day for the last eight years.

When the truck would finally rumble to a stop in the weed-strewn yard Grigor would be the first out, though he was likely the least eager to enter the Factory. He would turn to face the building: a broad face, stained with the acid rain created by its own waste, grime-sheeted windows (many broken or cracked) mocking the notion of transparency. Grigor would wait until the last man had passed and would join the line that slumped through the massive iron gate to their twelve hours of toil.