Altered Perspectives: Challenge #1

Picture a sprawling city. It can be any kind of city, from any era: wood and tiles; brick and mortar; glass and steel; plastic and neon. It’s a thriving city, healthy enough to have a bustling warehouse district, though it’s not as busy as it used to be. Parts of it are starting to fall into disuse.

Perhaps industry is starting to move elsewhere, or businesses have found better facilities in other parts of the city, or someone is buying it up to convert it to a different use. Either way, the warehouse district has started to age in patches, creating areas with a rundown feel to them. Trucks or wagons don’t rumble down those streets like they used to. Foremen’s voices don’t ring out over the fences so much. The streets are starting to fall into poor repair as the city isn’t investing time or money in them lately.

In this district, focus on a single building. It was once a busy factory, but it hasn’t been used for that purpose for a while now. Once upon a time, new things were made inside it, packaged up, and shipped off somewhere else. Consider that time, when things were all go here.

What was made in this factory? Was it a complicated process, like building pieces of technology, or something simpler, like bottling drinks or weaving fabric? Were its wares made by hand or machine? Was it powered by anything? Did a lot of people work here, or just a few overseers, or no people at all? What kind of vehicles used to pull up to the big doors to take the goods away?

The sign on the door is faded now, but what did it used to say? If there was a logo, what was it?

What caused this factory to be closed down? Was the real reason the same as the public announcements? Who was the last to leave and lock the doors behind them?

Now, a few years have passed since the industry in this factory was wound down and its doors closed for the last time. Dust has settled and spiders have spun impressive webs.

What is left inside? When it was closed down, was it gutted? Has any of the equipment been left here to age along with the building? Machinery, chairs, looms, tables, a lone broom? Build a picture of what this place looks like inside and out. Is it still hale and whole? Has the weather been kind to it?

What kinds of creatures might have moved inside and made themselves at home? Focus on one type of non-human creature in particular. Are they native to the area or imported? What do they eat, and what effect do they have on the building? Do they live individually or as a group? How many generations have lived inside this old factory?

A person is now approaching this abandoned factory. Perhaps they have a key; perhaps they do not. Either way, they mean to enter the building; they have a purpose here. Picture this person in your head. What do they look like? When they pause to glance up at the building, what expression are they wearing?

Tell us the story of this visitation, from the perspective of one of the creatures who calls the factory home.