Heinz is that conscientious worker who always completes every job before him. Yes, Inspector 451 always does his best to get the job done. His eyesight is gone, so he must wear thick glasses to see. He sacrifices for the good of all. Working in the factory is about producing that marketable good. People aren’t marketable. He hunches over his own little project. He slips a part into his pocket. It’s for his own little invention. He whispers, “that will be good,” to no one because around him there are hundreds of other workers in similar circumstances. They hammer, sand, and paint their parts hoping not to be fired. They are as much a part of the factory as the walls and floors. Their lungs coated with varnish, their ears accustomed to the sounds no longer hear laughter if there was any, just the familiarity of the tapping of hammers, the scratch of the sandpaper, and the sinking suspicion that it will all end unceremoniously with death in the same spot they spent twelve hours standing.

Heinz looks out the window. The buildings are grey, and the fog is thick from the chimneys. Everything is as it has been and always will be. No one will object to this existence because it’s all there is to be had in this world. Long live manufacturing, so it goes and it will always be this way because original thoughts have left them. Takes one man to change entire existences, oh it wasn’t Heinz’s intention. He was only a catalyst for change; a man with such pure intentions could end of killing other men and changing the course of history by his simple act of stealing from the company. There would be punishment for crimes, but they would not be paid by him. Everything could be made right by sacrifice, yet who would make this concession to save humanity? 

Heinz walks out of the factory, free finally to do what he was put in this world for. Head down, eyes lowered in acquiescence. He is resigned, yet something is struggling to emerge, a thought, an idea struggling to make itself known. His first resistance was in the form of stealing. No one would miss a single key. He stole once a week to manufacture his own machine.

Typewriters were meant for government forms only. Never meant for typing out some meaningless prose or worse (poetry).