The Vertical Mobility Solutions Escalator Company, based in Naples, West Virginia, is the world’s second largest supplier of moving platform and stairway conveyance equipment in the world. They are also claim to be the world’s best maintained, given that the purchase of every product comes with a lifetime inspection and safety schedule twice as often as any competitor. Maintenance and inspection work are done every 3 months, not Bi-Annually as most of the other top 5 or 6 companies do. The inspections are usually carried out by short balding men who seem to relish climbing up and into the stairways or ramps. They seem to almost bath in that odd green light beneath our feet, doing their work slowly and carefully, confounding the casual observer as to what exactly they are doing or how such an apparently complicated device seems to function.
Some had wondered about that green light, that flashes up at our soles as we are carried swiftly up and outward. It seemed bright and perhaps a little strange but then we looked upward as the stairs flattened and we continued on our way. On Christmas Day, some looked down and thought they saw a flash of movement. The following day, some looked down and know they did.
The Vertical Mobility Solutions Escalator Company sent out greeting cards, labeled “Happy Birthday, we’ll be seeing you soon!” The eggs hatched and anyone caught in the mall to return that ugly sweater or at the airport returning from a holiday was casually eaten by the hatchlings. Mall security detachments were powerless, their tasers could stop only teenage shoplifters, not reptilians. It was over as soon as it began the ships arrived and descended in turn at escalators and moving sidewalks the world over. They descended steadily on long stairs that climbed slowly down from ships, they’d come to collect on their scheduled maintenance contracts, since they’d all now come to maturity.
_
Written 12/8/2008 approx 10:15pm
Submitted to 365 Tomorrows 12/8/2008 10:51pm
Rejected by 365 Tomorrows 12/28/2008 1:26 AM