MY CONTACT AT THE RAT FACTORY

I have a contact at the rat factory. My contact is a worker at the rat factory, although I shouldn’t say too much. He’s part of the division that makes the rats - a ratmaker - but he knows about rat strategy and marketing too. He’s well placed within the rat factory. His name carries weight in rat manufacturing circles. He feeds me information about the rats, and his information is always reliable. Many, many rat bloggers have commented on the reliability of my information pertaining to new products from the rat factory, which should tell you everything you need to know about the clearance level of my contact at the rat factory.

The rat factory’s location is a secret. They create rats and ship them worldwide. That’s all you need to know. The rats they make are legendary. Think of a rat. You just thought of a rat factory-created rat. Picture a rat. You have just mentally evoked an image controlled and licensed wholly by the rat factory, and if you were to replicate that image on a commercial product you would be viciously and relentlessly litigated. There is no other name in rat manufacturing. No one could compete.

The rats created at the rat factory are made to spec for the area in which they are to be shipped. It makes sense good business sense, if you understand markets. Different rats are popular in different parts of the world. People in Buenos Aires would reject a rat celebrated in Oslo. A rat shunned in Manila may be the toast of the town in New York City. To implement a one-rat-fits-all policy would be to ignore the deep-rooted and meaningful, yet seldom articulated, hyperlocal cultural appeal of rats. It would not work.

Just because rats are an essential part of the ecosystem, not to mention a must-have flair piece for cities everywhere, it doesn’t mean the rat factory’s output remains the same year on year. In fact, R&D remains constant at the rat factory. My contact tells me that not a day goes by without a rat engineer rushing to the CEO’s office, a blueprint clutched in their trembling hands, eager to show off their latest innovation. Stronger tail. Shinier fur. Bigger appetite. A small hatch to store a key, pill or coin. Eyes that are redder and more bulbous. Scrolling text in the irises if you look hard at them. Teeth as sharp as a blade and as hard as a diamond. A ferocity toggle. Loop for carabiner. Rarer meats. More flexible webbing. Like a shark, the rat factory would boil to death in accumulated carbon dioxide if it remained still. My contact informs me that each employee greets their colleagues each morning with a simple phrase: “progress or perish”.

Nothing drives my contact at the rat factory more crazy than when people spread rumors about what the workers are throwing into the big pit in the middle of the rat factory. “There’s no pit” - direct quote. “Why would anyone throw perfectly good food in there” - another quote from my contact at the rat factory. I think he’s right. It would make no sense.

The rat factory is also famous for its rat accessories. Rat saddles, rat holders, rat sticks, rat collars and leashes. Little hearing aids for the rats. Tooth sharpeners. Rat antennae, or "Rantennae", as the marketing has it. The workshops they’re made in line the walls facing into the center of the rat factory, where there is nothing of note. Workers making their way from one part of the rat factory to another hug the walls, never venturing too close to the center, due to personal preference and also to keep an eye on what their colleagues are working on. My contact tells me they often give each other advice and trade inspirational quotes. There is no reason for not venturing out to the centre of the floor.

Due to its market leader position and its reputation for pushing the envelope vis a vis what is technically possible in what we call a rat, scrutiny of the rat factory’s purchases and acquisitions is inevitable. My contact at the rat factory insists that the large amounts of low-grade meat purchased by the rat factory is not being used in construction of new model rats. It has a different purpose.

“What if rats experience a downturn in popularity?” I recently asked my contact. “What if a PR disaster causes people to view rats unfavourably? What if the good name of rats is suddenly somehow linked forever to, for instance, a massacre horrifying in its mercilessness and overwhelming in its magnitude?” When I asked this, my contact at the rat factory simply gnashed his teeth and whispered down the line, “Do you hear it?” I listened carefully and could hear voices cheering, perhaps, in surprise, and then falling silent. “Soon,” my contact at the rat factory told me, “what people think of rats will mean less than nothing.” I understood what he meant: that the excited yelping in the background was a timely reminder that it is not the rats that bring us so much joy, but the lifestyle they afford us; that the sudden silence represented the frailty of progress, the flickering flame of modernity so easily snuffed by those who did not gather the kindling nor light the spark; that for all of us such earthly concerns as rats must eventually become meaningless as we grow old and die. My contact at the rat factory farewelled me gently as he hung up the phone. I will speak to him again soon.