The NeoCola Factory

     A swinging rope bridge, with some planks missing...

     A giant chasm, with bubbling lava at the bottom...

     A mysterious figure with long billowing hair...

     “Who are you?”

     The figure only shook its head, as if to say no to something, and then it disappeared. In its place was a door made of obsidian, with letters too small to see from a distance.

     “Wait, come back!”

     The rope bridge swished and creaked in the wind, and the rope suddenly snapped. The hot lava rose to meet -

     “Donny!”

     Krissy shook her Grundo friend violently. “Donny, Donny! Wake up!”

     “Wha’?” Donny reluctantly opened his eyes to find the face of a young, female Brown Grundo shaking him. “What’s happening?”

     “You fell asleep on the construction line again!” Krissy scolded. “I know our job is boring, but you can’t keep dozing off like this!”

     “It’s just the amount of sleep I’ve been getting lately isn’t that great,” Donny apologized, getting up and rubbing his eyes before looking back down at what he was supposed to be doing: attaching pull tabs on to cans of NeoCola in the Kreludan NeoCola Factory.

     The job was so monotonous that he let his mind wander freely as he did it. As the assembly line silently brought him a can of NeoCola, he took a tab out of a box on his lap and hammered it on to the top of the can with a hammer. The job wasn’t much, but it was the first job one could have if they ever worked at the factory.

     ‘It was that stupid dream again,’ Donny thought to himself, taking out a tab from the box. Hammering it on to a passing can, he considered what it might’ve meant. He had heard rumors from the Red Grundos that worked as can-painters that the highest-ranking job’s subsection in the Factory had to be reached by a swinging rope bridge over a chasm of boiling hot lava, but he had personally never seen it. As he was only a Brown Grundo, nobody really paid much attention to him unless he did something wrong. If he could one day become a Cloud Grundo that cleaned the more important part of the factory, he could one day perhaps sneak a peek into the subsection and see what they did.

     “Donny, watch it!” Krissy screamed, grabbing a hold of his hammering hand. He came back to reality and realized that he was about to hammer a can of NeoCola without putting a tab on it first. “Seriously, what’s up with you today?”

     “Thanks, Kris,” Donny said gratefully. Krissy only smirked and sat back down in the seat across from him. Donny had only met the strange female Grundo when he started working at the factory about a month ago. She was a rare sight; not many girls worked at the NeoCola factory, and those who did usually left after two weeks for various reasons, such as the factory not being hygienic. Krissy, on the other hand, was a sassy, hard worker and did not seem to mind getting her nails dirty.

     A Purple Grundo dressed in a dull grey uniform entered the room. He rang a cowbell with a wooden spoon and yelled, “Brown: break time!”

     All the Grundos in the room put down the boxes of tabs, stood up with a bagged lunch in hand, and trooped down a small hallway in the west wall of the production room.

     Donny, who was ready to tab and hammer the next can of NeoCola, was shook back into reality by a smiling Krissy. “What’s up with you today?”

     Donny was mildly aggravated at his friend. Picking up his lunch, he muttered, “I told you, I haven’t been sleeping enough lately!”

     “Well, you can sleep and eat during the break... you can sleat!” Kris mischievously stole Donny’s lunch and ran down the hallway to the break room. “Now all you need to do is sleep!” she yelled around her shoulder as she disappeared into the dimly lit hallway.

     “Now, seriously, Krissy...” Donny began chasing the Grundo. Sometimes, she really was just too much.

     Donny ran past a large plaque on the wall, illustrating the various ranks of the NeoCola Factory. At the top of their food chain were the Glowing and Orange Grundos, who input something secret into the NeoCola formula nobody knew about. Since different ranks of factory workers hardly ever saw each other, nobody knew much about this. Only a handful of administrators even knew who the owner of the factory was.

     “I heard he’s green all over and dresses in black all the time!” a Brown Grundo behind Donny muttered as they passed the ranking plaque.

     Sometimes, Donny thought about why everything had to be rumored. Being born at the Grundo Adoption Agency at Virtupets and without any books to read, he was not very intelligent. However, he had drawn a simple conclusion: because all of the subsections, minus the Purple command workforce, were so divided, an invasion on the factory would be easy because nobody would know how to band together and stop the invaders.

     “Give me back my lunch!” Donny burst into the brightly-lit circular Brown break room. It consisted of an assortment of round tables with stools set around the walls and six moldy couches set in a rectangle around a coffee table in the very middle of the room. A table loaded with an odd assortment of expired food for the desperate was set to one side, with a couple of ragged-looking workers with frowns on their faces hopefully picking through the items.

     “You’re going to have to get it,” laughed Krissy. She was sitting on a moldy couch by herself, waiting for Donny to arrive. Smiling devilishly, she pointed to the counter of food. The male Grundo, horrified, saw that his lunch, packaged in an Illusen Lunch Box, was sitting on top of a Poisonous Jelly. A toothless, grey-haired factory worker was about to pick it up. Krissy’s victim recognized him as Zell, a worker who had been at the factory for many years.

     Donny quickly ran over to the table and snatched his lunch back before the slow-moving Grundo had picked it up. The old worker turned to look at Donny with grey, slightly milky eyes. “Was that your lunch?” he wheezed.

     “Y – yes...” the younger worker stammered. Donny had a hard time pulling his attention away from those eyes. They had a look of want in them, though Donny did not know what the worker could have wanted besides food and healthcare.

     “I’m sorry, sonny,” Zell responded, and he proceeded to take the Poisonous Jelly. With a twang of pity, Donny turned around to go reprimand Krissy. However, he had barely gone two steps when a voice behind him demanded, “Wait.”

     Donny turned around hesitantly. The senile factory worker had gone stiff, his milky eyes beginning to swirl. The Poisonous Jelly had been dropped on to the floor. Donny quickly looked around: there was nobody nearby whom he could call for help, and he seemed to be rooted to the spot.

     Zell began to speak in a voice quiet enough for only Donny to hear. “You – tunnel – highest – Glowing – Orange – ” he mumbled incoherently.

     Donny, who was now looking for somebody who could help, stammered, “You wait here, Zell, I’ll get some – what?” He froze at the mention of Glowing.

     “On the eve of the next shipment of NeoCola to Neopia, a glitch will cause a secret gateway to open underneath the Brown department break room when an Illusen Lunchbox is placed on top of a Poisonous Jelly. Only two will know of this, and creep down the tunnel to a swinging rope bridge over a crater of lava. On the other side, one of them will find the great secret that hangs over them like a storm cloud.”

     After this, he began muttering again, “Thunder – rain – end!” being the only things that Donny could discern. Then, without warning, the old Grundo collapsed on to the linoleum floor.

     Donny was captured in paralysis. Krissy appeared by his side and demanded, “Donny, what have you been doing? How long does it take –” She stopped scolding her friend when she saw Zell on the ground.

     As both of the younger Grundos looked at their elder, he appeared to dissolve before them into a small pile of sludge. Nobody else was watching except for Donny and Krissy, too transfixed upon the disturbing scene before them to call for help.

     Then, there was a rumbling. This woke Donny and Krissy from their mesmerized state. Looking around, the two Grundos noticed that all of their fellow workers had already gone back to work. Nobody else could feel the earthquake.

     Sporadically, there was a green light that shot up all of the walls, making a cage-like pattern. Wires behind the ceiling and floor combusted, and the lights went out. Krissy screamed, for one of the wires underneath the pile of sludge poked through the ground and directly through the pile of sludge. A gigantic, gaping, swirling vertex appeared, with the sludge in the very center. Like a whirlpool, it swirled around and around, little bits of electricity zooming around its edges.

     Cautiously, Donny stepped towards the swirling mass of energy. Zell’s words came back to him: “A glitch will cause a secret gateway to open... to a swinging rope bridge.”

     Vividly, the dream came back to him.

      A swinging rope bridge, with some planks missing...

     He knew what he had to do. Without thinking, Donny jumped into the swirl. Krissy screamed, “You stupid Grundo! What do you think you’re doing?” but Donny did not hear her. Krissy let out an exasperated sigh and followed after her friend, despite the strange consequences that might follow.

     It felt to the Grundos as if they were being pushed through a swirly straw. In what felt like only a few seconds, they found themselves at the edge of an extremely high cliff with a strong gust whipping against their faces. Standing up, a prophetic sight met Donny’s eyes: there was the rope bridge over a crater of lava he had been dreaming about for so long. A figure with long, billowing hair stood on the other side.

     “Who are you?” Donny called. He was not going to wait for the masked person to get away again. He stamped off across the bridge, despite Krissy’s imperative scream to stop immediately.

     The ropes snapped and the planks behind Donny began falling into the lava, but he kept on running. The figure was now shaking its head.

     “Oh no you don’t!” When he was about three-quarters of the way to the other side, Donny jumped and grabbed a hold of the figure. The Grundo was about to remove the stranger’s hood when he spotted the words on the door behind.

     “You – are you –?”

     “Yes,” a voice like a squeaky hinge said from underneath the hood. Taking it off, the figure revealed a head like a chicken. “It is I, the owner of the NeoCola Factory.”

     “Dr. Sloth?!” Donny exclaimed. “But – what – huh –?”

     “Brown Grundo Donny.” Dr. Sloth smiled and took his attacker off of his shoulders and placed him on the last part of the bridge still remaining. “You – I am displeased with you. You know that nobody pays attention to you unless you mess up... and you certainly have...”

     With a malevolent smirk, Dr. Sloth slowly began approaching Donny on the remainder of the rope bridge. “You should have realized... curiosity kills the cat...”

     “No – no!” Donny stammered. Behind him, Krissy spontaneously dissolved into a pile of sludge in a similar way Zell did.

     Dr. Sloth declared, “You are hereby – fired!”

     And with a claw that contained more force than was necessary, Donny was pushed off of the bridge, with the red hot lava rising to meet –

     “Donny!”

     Krissy yelled, and shook her Grundo friend. Donny woke up, gasping. He found himself on the production line, where un-tabbed cans were beginning to build up into a small pile.

     “Seriously! What’s up with you lately?” Krissy said. “Boss is going to fire you if you keep falling asleep!”

     ‘Boss...’ The word rang in Donny’s mind. He opened his mouth to talk about his dream, but then realized that it was a dream. Further down the production line, Zell was still a Grundo, Krissy was still a living creature, and Dr. Sloth was not their boss.

     Or was he?

     Donny never did find out. Because of his sleepiness, everyone in his rank was eventually bumped up into the next job except for him. He was doomed to tab NeoCola cans for the rest of his life, until an Illusen Lunchbox next sits on top of a Poisonous Jelly...

The End