Kia Sorento Four
He glances at his knife companion and opens the door to find a large warehouse. It looks like a UPS warehouse and has many ramps, conveyor belts, and workers all around packaging and sorting boxes. The only difference between this warehouse and UPS warehouses on Earth is the centerpiece, a gigantic blender. A large roller ramp leads to the mouth of the blender, starting at the ceiling of the warehouse. A single worker is standing at the base of the blender. The traveler decides to approach them.
“Goodmorning.” the worker says as he comes into view. She is a middle aged woman with short, dark hair. She is not conventionally attractive, but has the kindest eyes he has ever seen. Our traveler shivers, disgusted by the fact that he genuinely described a woman as ‘conventionally unattractive’. He shakes his head, trying to clear out his thoughts like an Etch-A-Sketch, before he fully processes her statement. He looks at his Veggietales wristwatch.
“It’s 2:30 in the afternoon.”
“Yeah it is,” she says, her tone implying that her statement was risque for an unknown reason. “You must be the new guy. I’m Luanne.” She sticks her hand out, which the traveler awkwardly shakes. He figures that there is no harm in going with the flow, and nods in affirmation to Luanne.
“Welcome to Circle 4,” Luanne says, gesturing to the room around them. “The Generalizers. These folks had certain genres of media that they refused to interact with because they felt they were all the same.” She points at the big blender.
“Folks go in the blender, we blend ‘em up, and put ‘em in the corresponding boxes.” She points to a pallet of empty boxes behind them. All of the boxes are labeled with things such as ‘Rap Music’, ‘Science Fiction’, and ‘Country Music’.
“You’ll be helping me here with the blender.” Luanne says, turning back to her work station. “Ope!” she says, pointing at the hole in the ceiling. “Here comes one now!”
A man falls through the ceiling and lands on the ramp. He rolls down the ramp, screaming, until he lands inside the blender. He tentatively stands up and bangs on the glass.
“Let me out!” he yells. Luanne ignores him and turns to the traveler.
“So here’s what we do,” she says as if she’s teaching a small child how to tie their shoes.
“First, we turn on the blender,” she says, doing just that. A green light turns on on the dashboard of the blender. The man inside can see it and freaks out.
“No, no, no! What are you doing!” he screams. Luanne ignores him again.
“Next, we select our setting. Seems this fella hated ‘those stupid gay musicals’,” she airquotes with a mocking tone. “Well put him on the smoothie blend.” She holds down a big button labeled ‘Smoothie’ until the letters glow white. The man inside the blender gets more frantic.
“Please, no, don’t do this.” He cries. The traveler cringes, his ears hurting from the pain in the man’s voice. Luanne once again ignores him.
“Finally, we just hit the ‘Start’ switch, and let her rip!” She says.
With a small click, the machine whirs to life. Soon, the man’s screams are drowned out by the sound of the blender tearing his flesh apart. The traveler cannot look away. He watches as the bones are powderized and the organs are popped. When he hears Luanne stop the machine, the blender is half filled with a dark pink liquid, the only remains of the man that was standing there not a minute before. Luanne turns off the blender and turns to face the traveler.
“Now, we wait for someone to pick up the pitcher and bring a new one.”
“Okay.” the traveler says, dumbstruck.
From inside the pitcher, the former human spoke.
“Hmm. That wasn’t so bad.”
“So,” Luanne smiles at the traveler. “You got it, or do you need to see me do it again?”
“Can you do it again? I think I missed a couple steps.”
“Sure thing, hon.”
Paul coughs from beside the traveler’s feet, calling him back to the task at hand.
“Oh, yeah, so,” the traveler says, gathering his thoughts. “Why this?”
Luanne looks confused. The traveler elaborates.
“Why blend them up? Why put them in boxes?”
“Oh! Well, it’s really a long story…”
“I’ve got time.” Our traveler looks at his blue Veggietales watch again.
“Oh, well, I kinda said that to get out of talking about it. It’s not that long.”
Luanne sighs and rubs the nape of her neck.
“So, these people would just throw away entire genres, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Like, they’d never watch any sci-fi things because they thought it’d all be like Star Wars, right?”
“Yeah.”
“They just, um, completely generalized the entire genre, ignored any variants or unique qualities or subgenres within the group, yeah? They put the whole genre in a box. You see where I’m goin with this?”
“I do not.”
Luanne sighs.
“They completely ignored the complexities of different genres and wrote them off as all being the same, and essentially put them in a box. We’re doing the same thing to them.”
“Ooh,” the traveler says as it clicks. “That’s a mouthful.”
“Tell me about it.” Luanne says before she turns back to the blender. She begins the earlier process again, this time with a thin, tan woman. Luanne turns back to the traveler and lowers her voice.
“Frankly, between you and me, I think we should have just gone with the classic ‘fire burning pitchforks’.” Her whispers are accompanied by a jabbing motion. “But, hey, I’m not the boss.” She turns back and hits the ‘Start’ switch, watching the blender swirl. Only the traveler noticed the fact that there was more than one person in the blender.
Unfortunately, this innocuous detail soon becomes a major plot point. The blender starts to rock back and forth in its base. Luanne jumps back.
“What the-?” she starts, but is cut off by the pitcher tipping over onto her. Gallons of human spills all over the warehouse floor, covering the floor in the dark pink sludge. The traveler stands still as the initial tidal wave hits, the blood from his foot mixing in with the blood of the sinners. When the initial shock wears off, Luanne flips.
“Oh no.” she says, her hands reaching for her head. “We gotta fix this.”
She drops to her knees and starts scooping the people off the ground. Standing up, Luanne looks at the traveler.
“How many were there?” she asks.
The traveler begins to count on his fingers.
“Three.”
Luanne looks around at the massive puddle before speaking to it.
“Okay, y’all,” she says, panic still strong in her voice. “Can all of you hear me?”
Three voices announce their presence from within the sludge.
“Yeah, we can hear.”
“Yup.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Luanne takes a deep breath, calming herself, before continuing.
“Okay, folks, what are you guys here for?” she asks the sludge.
“Country music’s all the same.” one answers.
“I can’t stand rap.” another says.
“Really? Your racism is showing.” says the first.
“How can you like Eminem but not Dolly?” says the second.
“I hate Italians.” says the third.
The traveler swears that he can see about ⅔ of the sludge move, seemingly distancing itself from the other component.
“Okay, guys,” Luanne says hesitantly. “I don’t know how to put this, but…” She trails off. “We’re not gonna be able to separate you guys. We’re just gonna pack you guys into three boxes, but they aren’t gonna be separate. Or even the right labels.”
Luanne puts her head in her hands, upset by the idea of mislabeled boxes. The voices protest.
“Are you kidding me? Not only am I stuck in a box for all eternity, but it’s the wrong box?”
The other voices grumble in irritation. Luanne shakes her head and reaches for the shop broom.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” she says as she begins to push the sludge to the center of the puddle. She looks up at the traveler and points at the fallen blender pitcher.
“Can you do something about that? Thanks bud.” she says before returning to her broom. The traveler looks around for something he can use.
“Hey OSHA boy,”
Paul mocks from across the room. The traveler looks over to him.
“Use the forklift.”
The traveler grins. He thinks back to his teenage years. At the age of 15, he was the first of his friends to get a fake ID. They tried to convince our traveler to use it to buy alcohol, get into clubs, even to go see R-rated movies without a real grown up. But from the moment he got it, our traveler only had one intent in mind for his fake ID: getting his forklift certification. Now, having the chance to show off his favorite skill, the traveler could not contain his excitement, climbing on the nearest forklift.
However, in the interest of brevity, we’re not going to show him using the forklift.
The traveler climbs down from the forklift, satisfied with his work. He calls out for Paul, who is on the seat he just left.
“Where to now, Paul?”
“See that conveyor belt that goes into the wall?”
“Yeah?”
“Hop on.”