Where Have They All Gone

“Toot, toot, stand still, get in line.”

While considering his strategy, Lynch suddenly heard a commotion. Following the sound, he looked toward a small loading area not far from the entrance, where a dozen or so shabbily dressed workers were gathered.

Three men in formal attire, acting like foremen, were blowing whistles and waving wooden clubs to maintain order. The short clubs whistled through the air, occasionally striking the chaotic workers.

“You, thirty seconds late. Three pennies docked from your pay. No backtalk, or it will be three more next time.”

“You aren't allowed to go. You just got into the factory and you need the toilet? Is this your home? Hold it in.”

“Smack! You bunch of lazy bums, move it! Sign in and get to work immediately. Dawdling about, do you think you’re getting paid for nothing?”

The foreman shouted with an arrogant air, but Lynch’s eyes brightened as he listened. That was it! This was not like the fingerprint scanners back home; here, attendance was recorded in a ledger.

Soon, the foreman, acting as if he were guarding against thieves, checked off the workers' names one by one against their faces before carefully returning the book to the guardroom, checking it once more with caution before he left. However, the moment he turned to walk away, a figure appeared out of thin air inside the guardroom, beginning to flip through the dense registration list.

The attendance records were dense, with every start and end time meticulously noted. Lynch recalled the question scrawled on the back of the graffiti, ‘Where have they all gone?’ After a moment of thought, he began to examine the list carefully.

These people arrived and left every day, and the times were recorded in great detail. There were no instances of someone having a sign-in record without a corresponding sign-out record. However, there were frequent cases where workers who had been coming in every day suddenly stopped appearing. For day laborers, this was a normal occurrence.

Could it be that the child was just talking about these workers?

Lynch was somewhat skeptical. If little Janet’s condition hadn't been so clearly abnormal, he might have believed it, but now, doubt remained in his heart.

Let’s see how things develop first.

As he thought this, movement came from outside the guardroom. Lynch quickly lurked, and sure enough, the three foremen entered again to retrieve the attendance book.

People were arriving from outside; this time, it was the workers finishing their shift.

These workers looked visibly numb and exhausted, moving like a group of zombies toward the factory gate, standing in a line in a daze as they waited for the foremen to call their names. The three foremen first thoroughly searched everyone’s pockets to ensure no factory property was being taken out before taking the roster to call the names one by one.

“Peter.”

A hand was raised tremblingly.

“William.”

A listless voice replied: “Here.”

“Mary.”

A similarly listless middle-aged woman said: “Yes, sir.”

“Lika. Where is Lika? Did he not finish his shift?”

Who was Lika? Someone asked, but most workers simply looked at one another, too lazy to even speak, shaking their heads in fatigue.

True enough, no one cared about a coworker they didn't know.

The foreman did not press the issue and skipped to the next name. Soon, the identities of the departing workers were verified, and they were herded out of the factory with clubs before the register was returned to the guardroom.

Lynch noticed that the three men’s expressions were somewhat stiff. They did not converse; they merely exchanged a glance and hurried toward the workshop. Lynch frowned and opened the register, discovering that among the names of this batch of workers, there was indeed an empty space where Lika’s name should have been.

He flipped back further. Every day was much the same; this group always finished their shifts together. It had been at least half a month, so how could no one know Lika?

At the very least, they should have had some impression of him, right?

While he pondered, the three foremen hurried back to the guardroom. They exchanged evasive glances before the leader finally opened the register and wrote a few lines. Afterward, they left the guardroom in silence, and soon, their laughter—as if intentionally amplified—drifted in.

Lynch reappeared and flipped open the register again. His mouth twitched; the sign-out time for the previous group had already been written next to Lika’s name. It looked exactly like the entries from the previous days.

Lynch realized something was wrong. The earlier parts of the list were completely normal. Was it really kept like this all along?

Seeing how practiced and calm the foremen were, this certainly wasn't their first time. They were definitely hiding something. Did this Lika suffer an industrial accident and die? Or were they all missing, just as little Janet’s question suggested?

But that didn't add up. If a person didn't go home, their family would surely come looking. It would be impossible to cover that up.

The more he thought, the more confused he became. Lynch shook his head, deciding to put his questions aside for now.

He hadn't found any substantial abnormalities yet. Relying on a guess alone made it too easy for them to come up with excuses. Confronting the foremen now would only make them alert and would not help him uncover the truth.

It was better to go inside and take a look first. These foremen weren't day laborers; they wouldn't be able to run. He could settle accounts with them once he found the problem.

Having made his decision, Lynch took one more look at the register. Janet Scott, employee number 324, workshop 8C. Lika Hollin, employee number 122, workshop 10E.

Returning everything to its original state, Lynch lurked and left the guardroom, ignoring the three foremen who had begun to chat normally, and entered the factory floor with ease.

Although it was called a screw factory, it actually produced small parts like gears and connecting rods. Each building was divided into several workshops, and the workers were fixed in their respective workshops most of the time, performing unchanging tasks.

The air was filled with the smell of grease and metal dust. The roar of steam-powered machine tools echoed repeatedly, the escaping steam making the air stifling and humid, while coal smoke and ash turned the factory into a smoggy, hellish landscape.

In this environment, dozens of workers repeated the same monotonous work, numb and mechanical, like walking corpses.

There were also two foremen in the workshop, patrolling back and forth, occasionally raising their clubs to strike in front of the workers, shouting loudly to wake them from their half-asleep state.

The first step of the investigation was to determine if there was anything related to mystery—whether a mystery relic or mystery document—in the factory ‘now.’ Lynch did not alert anyone. He circled the factory floor as fast as he could, ensuring he passed within three meters of every location.

Little Janet’s 8C area was normal; there was no strong sense of repression from his intuition, and Ms. Luna gave no warnings. Lynch thought for a moment and then crept toward workshop 10E, where Lika Hollin was supposed to be. Since he hadn't finished his shift, he should theoretically still be here. The foreman in charge of attendance must have come in earlier to verify the situation.

The situation in the workshop was no different from 8C—lifeless and lacking vitality—but there was no sign of a missing coworker. This made Lynch wonder if he was being overly sensitive.

To be safe, Lynch activated his phantasmal sound ability, projecting his shout to a point several meters above his head.

“Lika, is Lika there? Your family is looking for you.”

All the workers were completely unresponsive. They didn't even bother to look. However, a foreman came over, club in hand, looking around in confusion for the person who had called out while muttering curses:

“You bunch of idiots, why are you asking again? I told you already, there has never been a person named Lika here. Get out of here!”

After searching for a while and finding no one, the foreman assumed the caller had been scared off before he arrived and turned away in annoyance. Behind the cover of the machines, Lynch wore a strange expression.

There was no such person? Was that a lie?

No one had reacted. It was impossible for a coworker on the same production line to not know him at all; there should have been at least a few who knew him, unless there truly was no such person. Surely they couldn't have all forgotten him?

But his name was clearly in the register. Where did this person go?

Hiss, wasn't this exactly little Janet’s question?