THE SALESMAN

By the time Richard Salama pulled into the visitors’ parking lot of Alden Manufacturing, most of the people who worked there were preparing to head out for the weekend. 

It was 4:37 on a Friday afternoon, and the enormous brick-and-steel complex had already begun its weekly exhalation. Cars streamed through the employee gate. Men and women emerged from side doors carrying lunch boxes and jackets. Beyond the administration building, the factory stretched for nearly a quarter of a mile, a collection of high windowless structures connected by loading bays, covered passages and elevated ducts.

Salama checked his watch and hurried inside.

He was the regional sales representative for Sentinel Industrial Systems, a company that specialized in safety equipment for automated factories: optical sensors, emergency shutdown systems and devices capable of stopping machinery when a worker entered a dangerous area. Alden Manufacturing would be his largest account ever, assuming he could land it. After four months of telephone calls and emails, he had finally secured twenty minutes with William Caldwell, the company president.

The appointment was for 4:45. The receptionist glanced at his business card.

“I’ll let Mr. Caldwell know you’re here. He’s down on the floor dealing with something. He shouldn’t be long. Please, make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you so much.”

Richard chose an upholstered chair in an alcove along the far wall and placed his briefcase beside him. He had been driving since noon after a morning of meetings and a sumptuous lunch with clients. The reception area was warm and quiet. Through a glass partition he watched office employees leaving one by one.

He settled into the very comfortable chair, which reclined slightly. Soft music wafted overhead. He snuggled his head against the soft, cushioned backrest. His lids grew heavy, and he closed his bleary eyes for a moment.

When Salama opened his eyes again, the room was dark.

For a few seconds he had no idea where he was. His neck hurt and his right arm had gone numb beneath him. Then he remembered. 

He pulled out his phone. Two hours had passed.

He immediately jumped out of his seat and looked around. The room was dark and empty. There was no sign of activity. 

He went to the door and peered out at the quiet, vast expanse of the factory floor. There was no one there. 

He yelled, “Hello!” His voice traveled into the darkened offices and cavernous manufacturing areas, and echoed back.

Nothing.

The receptionist’s computer was off. Her purse and coat were gone. 

Salama went to the main entrance and pushed against the glass door. It didn’t move. The second door was also locked. A red light glowed on the card reader.

He stared through the glass at the empty parking lot.

Salama mumbled to himself, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

His phone showed no service. Close to the glass, a single bar appeared briefly, then vanished. Alden’s production buildings were largely steel and reinforced concrete, effectively shielding much of the interior from outside electromagnetic waves. There was no internet connection, and the building's steel and reinforced concrete effectively blocked cellular signals.

Salama searched the administration building. The internal telephone system was turned off. Every exterior door he found was electronically secured. He tried his phone again from an upstairs window, but the signal disappeared before a call connected.

For the first hour, he was annoyed. Then he began to feel something else: a sense of panic in realizing that he was truly trapped.

He walked back through the offices, calling out occasionally, although he already knew there would be no answer. The darkness seemed larger now. Every corridor led to another corridor, every window showed the same empty parking lot, and beyond the administration wing waited the vast factory itself.

He had never before considered how completely a building could empty. The factory seemed so much larger without anyone in it.

By ten o’clock, the possibility that no one would return until Monday morning had ceased to have any connotation of humor. He was also feeling quite hungry and thirsty and very tired. 

He established a plan. His first task was to get some sleep. He could wait until the morning to try to find some food. He arranged three reception chairs in a row and lay across them. The cushions separated beneath his weight, the wooden arms pressed against his ribs, and every time the building made a sound, he opened his eyes.

There were many sounds.

A metallic knock somewhere far away. A click above the ceiling. Pipes contracting. A ventilation duct giving a sudden hollow bang. Each time, Salama listened.

Once he was certain he heard footsteps. He sat upright for several minutes. He yelled, timidly, “Hello?” Nothing answered.

“Salama, get control of yourself! You’re imagining things!”

Saturday morning announced itself not with sunlight, which barely penetrated the building, but with pain. Salama's lower back had stiffened during the night. He found a bathroom, washed his face, found some crackers and chocolate in a vending machine and once again began searching for a way out.

He entered the factory through an unlocked interior door and stopped. The production floor was enormous. Rows of machinery disappeared into darkness. Conveyors crossed overhead. Robotic arms stood frozen above workstations. Yellow safety lines marked narrow paths through presses, assembly stations and equipment Salama could not identify.

He imagined that during production the place must be deafening. He wrote himself a note to discuss that with Mr. Caldwell, and perhaps show him their line of hearing safety earmuffs.

He continued his search for an escape. Now his footsteps were the loudest sound in the building. He tried loading docks, maintenance entrances and shipping doors. All were secured. The emergency exit wouldn't open. Salama pulled harder, then stopped and examined the mechanism. He made a mental note to ask Caldwell who supplied it.

As the hours passed, the scale of the factory began to disturb him. He would walk down an aisle for several minutes, turn around and find that the door through which he had entered had disappeared into darkness. More than once he retraced his route simply to reassure himself that he knew the way back.

Late in the afternoon he heard scratching behind several cartons. He froze.

“Hello?”

Something small and gray shot across the aisle and disappeared beneath a pallet. Salama jumped backward, sending a bolt of pain through his back. Two small, beady eyes reflected his phone light.

A rat! Salama suspected that this one was not alone.

As the day wore on, Salama began talking to himself, simply to hear a human voice.

That night he tried sleeping on a vinyl bench in the employee lounge. It was too short and curved downward in the middle, but it was better than the chairs.

Around two in the morning, he was jarred awake by a metallic crash somewhere deep in the manufacturing area. The vast factory was dark, illuminated only by scattered nightlights. Despite his trepidation, he forced himself to investigate.

He crept along the passageways, listening for another sound. He finally came upon the source: a small metal canister that had fallen from a shelf. Relieved, he returned to his vinyl bench.

By Sunday morning, Salama was exhausted from lack of sleep, extremely hungry after scrounging for a few crackers and soda, and thoroughly demoralized. There was no longer anything useful to do. Salama spent the morning searching the building and vast manufacturing areas. He tried pushing open the same doors he had tried before, this time a little harder, to no avail. 

But he had not anticipated the severely depressing effect of being totally alone. To make matters worse, his cell phone battery was now at critically low levels, and would go to zero during the next few hours. 

By afternoon he had begun talking louder, simply to amuse himself and hear a voice; any voice. He reviewed his sales presentation. He mentally argued with Caldwell about prices. He wondered whether Caldwell would even remember who he was. 

Sunday night seemed endless. By this time, Salama was exhausted, filthy and unshaven. His shirt was smeared with grease, his trousers were wrinkled and his tie had been stuffed into his jacket pocket. His back had progressed from aching to outright rebellion. He could no longer find a position that did not hurt.

At 10:30 that evening, he wandered into the shipping department and discovered what, in his present condition, looked remarkably like a bed. It was almost four feet wide, perfectly flat and covered with thick rubber. Unfortunately, it was a conveyor belt. It was almost four feet wide, covered by a continuous belt of thick rubber and perfectly flat. He pressed a hand against it. Compared with the chairs and the bench, it looked magnificent.

The control panel was dark. The machinery around it was silent.

Salama climbed onto the belt, folded his jacket beneath his head and stretched out. For the first time in two nights, his spine was straight. Within minutes, he was asleep.

At 5:15 Monday morning, a timer activated somewhere inside the automated packaging system. A green indicator illuminated. The gears and motor slowly warmed up and began to hum. Then, the conveyor belt began to roll. 

Salama awoke with the sensation that he was moving. He opened his eyes. The ceiling was passing overhead.

“What the hell?”

Ahead of him was a rectangular opening in a large packaging machine. He rolled toward the edge.

He suddenly realized his predicament, but too late. The belt carried him inside. Something pressed against his legs, anchoring him down. A mechanical arm swept around him and a wide sheet of transparent bubble wrap snapped across his body.

Salama grabbed at it, desperately trying to pull it off. The arm circled again and again. Plastic tightened around his legs.

“STOP!”

Another revolution caught one arm against his side.

He twisted desperately, trying to pull the other free. The machine responded by wrapping both arms against his body.

“HELP! STOP THE MACHINE!”

Another layer crossed his chest. Then another. The plastic tightened. Salama tried to kick, but his legs were already bound together. He tried rolling sideways but discovered he could no longer roll. The mechanism continued circling with patient mechanical precision. Around his waist. Across his chest. Over his shoulders. Again and again.

The layers became thicker and tighter until his entire body from ankles to neck was enclosed in clear plastic.

Then everything stopped. Salama lay rigid on the conveyor. Only his head could move.

The word sounded absurd in the empty factory.

“HELP!”

Silence.

Then the conveyor started again. Salama felt genuine panic. Ahead, the belt disappeared beneath an overhead handling system whose purpose he could not understand.

“NO! NO!”

He tried to move, but completely enveloped in plastic, he could do little more than writhe helplessly.

He was being delivered to the next machine like freight.

A metal assembly descended from above. Salama watched it coming.

“STOP!”

A padded clamp closed around the bubble-wrapped portion of his lower legs. The conveyor stopped. There was a mechanical click. Then his feet rose. His shoulders slid across the belt. His head lifted last. The factory turned upside down.

Within seconds Richard Salama was hanging ten feet above the floor, suspended by his ankles, wrapped from his feet to his neck in bubble wrap.

The hoist stopped. He swung gently. Blood rushed toward his head.

“HELP!”

His voice echoed through the shipping department.

“HELP ME!”

Nothing.

Salama forced himself to stop. He could feel his heart pounding against the plastic. He was upside down, unable to use his arms, unable to reach the floor, unable even to wipe the sweat running into his eyes.

For the first time since Friday night, he was not merely trapped. He was truly helpless.

The bundle began to move and rotate slowly.

The conveyor passed through his vision, followed by the loading area, then darkness, then the conveyor again.

The overhead mechanism lined him up with other packages similarly hanging, oriented perfectly for morning shipment. 

Minutes became difficult to measure. His neck hurt. His head throbbed. He tried shouting periodically, although he knew no one was there to hear him. He occasionally flapped for no apparent reason. 

Eventually he closed his eyes.

Then came a sound. A door. Salama opened his eyes. Voices. Footsteps.

One by one, rows of fluorescent lights flickered into life.

“HELLO!”

The footsteps stopped.

“UP HERE!”

A worker appeared at the end of the aisle. He looked around.

“UP HERE!”

The man looked up and froze. Another worker joined him. Then another. Within minutes a small group stood beneath Salama, staring.

“Would somebody please get me down?”

No one moved.

Finally the group parted and a tall man in a dark overcoat approached with two managers. Salama recognized him immediately.

William Caldwell stopped beneath him. He looked up. Salama looked down.

“Salama?”

“Mr. Caldwell, nice to meet you.”

Caldwell stared.

“What are you doing up there?”

“I've been waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me?”

“Since Friday.”

“Friday?”

“My appointment was at 4:45.”

“Yes, I know. I got tied up in our manufacturing area. When I came back, they told me you'd left.”

“I hadn't.”

Caldwell looked at the bubble wrap.

“What happened?”

Salama closed his eyes.

“I fell asleep in your reception area. Everyone went home. The doors locked. Your telephones shut down. I spent Friday night on three chairs, Saturday night with your rats and most of Sunday trying to get out.”

“Last night I made the unfortunate decision to sleep on your conveyor belt.”

One worker covered his mouth.

“The conveyor started this morning. Your packaging system wrapped me, transported me here and hung me from this hoist.”

Caldwell looked at the machinery.

“None of the safety systems stopped it?”

“No. And that’s why I came to see you.”

Caldwell's expression changed.

“Not one sensor?”

“No, apparently not.”

For several seconds neither man spoke.

Then Caldwell asked, “Mr. Salama, remind me exactly what Sentinel Industrial Systems sells.”

Salama's face was red. His hair hung toward the concrete. His shirt had not been changed since Friday. His trousers were filthy, his back hurt, his neck hurt, and his beard was three days old.

“Automatic personnel-detection shutdown systems.”

Nobody spoke. Caldwell looked slowly around the factory. Then he turned to his production manager.

“How soon could we install something like that?”

The manager glanced upward.

“I suppose the sooner the better.”

Caldwell looked at Salama hanging upside down above him, swinging gently.

“Mr. Salama, I think you've made your sale.”

“Good. And before somebody else says it, yes, I realize you have a Salama hanging here and it looks like a deli.”

Caldwell smiled.

“Now, would you mind getting me down?”