A New Faith: Part 2: Chapter 25

Ben had been pecking away at his tablet throughout the flight while Rachel had dozed off. She had to get up at 4 am and she was not really a morning person. Also the time she had spent in Africa had messed up her sleep for good. She used to be a deep sleeper and could knock out an easy eight hours without waking up. The experience of the refugee camps and the relentless work meant that she was always in a disturbed state of mind. She would wake up numerous times because of nightmares. They had started fading away. However, deep sleep continued to elude her.  

Their ride had been waiting patiently at the arrivals gate at Dallas Fort Worth airport. The spacious back-seat had pull-out tables, like the bulkhead seats in passenger aircrafts. They nibbled at their egg and croissant sandwich while sipping crappy airport coffee. Ben was tired, too. He had to work late into the night to prepare for this trip. Finally, after fifteen minutes of silent chewing and drinking, Rachel cleared away the remnants of her breakfast and stowed the table back to the side of her seat. She turned around to look at Ben who was eating his last bite.

“So… why am I here in this godforsaken land?” she began. 

Ben daintily mopped his lips on the paper napkin and took one last gulp of his coffee. 

“We are going to be doing a quick audit of one of the largest SOZs in the US.”

The words audit and the acronym threatened to put her back to sleep. She rolled her eyes like a teenager while Ben continued his spiel.

“Well, SOZs are what has allowed us, the US, to re-shore most of our production from all over the world - China, India, Mexico, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, etc.”

The mention of re-shore and China in the same sentence got Rachel’s attention. Last time she had heard those two words together was in Gang’s office. He had said exactly the same thing as Ben. She remembered her promise to not repeat that conversation to anyone.  

She cautiously said, “yes. I think I know what you are referring to.”

“Do you know what they are, exactly?”

“Umm… factories… right?”

“Yeah… but do you know anything about them?”

She shook her head. Why on earth would she know anything about any factory in the bloody world?! 

Ben checked the time. They still had another thirty odd minutes before they arrived at their destination. At that point he was going to get busy with the audit. While he did that, he had organized a tour of the facility for Rachel. He had vaguely mentioned to them that she was a new hire at his firm and that he wanted her brought up to speed. 

Ben had been a freshman in college when the Great Recession had happened. He had been majoring in business, specifically, financial engineering. That was the hot new field when he was in high-school. He was good at math and this seemed like a natural fit for his talent. Plus there was the potential for raking in a ton of money in a very short period of time. What was not to like for a bright but poor kid from one of the dead-end industrial towns that were scattered all across the Midwest. 

He still remembered that first fall semester when the financial world had come crashing down. He had managed to finish college within three years but had been saddled with a huge loan and limited prospects of making serious money any time soon. Sure, the federal government had done everything it could to save the financial sector. Unfortunately, for him and many thousands like him, the head honchos at the "saved" banks had decided to use the government largesse and the cheap interest rates to line their own pockets instead of creating new jobs. 

He had bumbled around on Wall Street from firm-to-firm making barely enough to survive in the still very expensive city. He hadn’t made even a small dent in his student loan during those 6-7 years. Then the new-kid-on-the-block, crypto, had arrived. He had been completely sold on the idea of how the government was full of crap and that this new technology was going to make him a millionaire. He had used whatever meager savings he had and even borrowed from friends and family to make big bets on crypto. The initial few years, especially, leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic had been fabulous. He saw his portfolio grow and grow. Prudently, he had cashed out some of it to pay off his college loan and buy a condo without the need for a mortgage.

When the pandemic hit, he had been sitting pretty on a steadily growing pile. Those months and months of working from his tiny condo during the pandemic’s first couple of years had been exhilarating. Crypto had taken off like a rocket. He had begun making plans for cashing it all out. He was going to quit his job, buy a nicely outfitted Mercedes Sprinter van, and go enjoy van-life for a year or two. After that, he was contemplating starting his own crypto firm and try to become a billionaire. He had seen college kids becoming billionaires overnight and he was pretty sure that he was at least as smart as them. 

Alas, crypto had been too good to be true and the whole thing came crashing down as one scandal after another came to light right when the pandemic was becoming endemic. Those college kids who had turned billionaires overnight had been ripping off their investors and customers. And people who were supposed to keep an eye on them were instead busy writing paeans to those kids. Ben’s fat portfolio dissipated like smoke right in front of his eyes. He had been so blinded by his faith that instead of cashing out sooner, he kept waiting and hoping for the portfolio to rebound. But the music had stopped and he was one of the unfortunate many who were left without a chair.

He had cursed himself for his over-confidence. The silver lining was that he had not quit his job. He and his girlfriend had broken up over the notion of living off-grid in a van. She was very much a city girl and didn’t really care much for roughing it out for months on end. A glamping weekend was just about the most roughing out she was ready to do. Ben had vowed that he would never speculate in his life again and buckled down to do his job. He had no savings, but at least he had no loans. He had survived the pandemic bust more or less unscathed. His paper wealth had vanished but at least he was on a solid foundation. He decided to rebuild steadily and with as little risk as possible.

He was the “due diligence” guy for a boutique investment firm. The firm’s speciality was investing the wealth of high net worth individuals mostly from the coastal states in the re-shored factories located mostly in the interior states. This was done in a way that the original investors could keep boasting their progressive credentials while making a quick buck - rather, many millions of bucks - from the factories that were almost a throwback to the era of slavery.

“Do you remember the early days in the pandemic when the global supply chains collapsed as country after country entered those crazy lockdowns? The massive shortages of all kinds of things…”

“Of course! I remember, my parents needed to replace their garage door when it was taken out in a tornado. They had to wait for months to get the replacement door shipped all the way from China. It was nuts! A stupid garage door! I think, even the wood was very expensive. My mom complained bitterly how they were forced to pay five times the normal because of some flooding in Canada.”

“Right. I mean… sorry about the inconvenience to your parents and all that. It was far worse than that. Folks had trouble manufacturing and transporting N95 masks, PPE kits, etc. to just deal with the immediate needs of the pandemic. Then there was a shortage of chips which are a necessity for most of the stuff we use in daily life. You know… cars, washers, toasters, whatever.

The haphazard lockdowns thoroughly messed up the global transportation system. Cargo ships and containers were stuck in wrong locations and the logistics had gone for a complete toss. Once the world figured out that aspect, there was a sudden flood of stuff coming to the US which was well beyond the capacity of the ports plus the cargo-hauling trucks and truckers. So we got shortages because of that. We fixed that over time. Just as we were settling down a bit Russia decided to invade Ukraine and the oil prices blew up. One shock after the other to the global supply chain was enough to force the American business owners and politicians to start thinking seriously about re-shoring as much as we could as quickly as possible. You may not know this, but the American taxpayers have been subsidizing this whole re-shoring business to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Rachel listened patiently. Ben tended to be somewhat pedantic when he went into this “explaining” mode of his. He spoke in full paragraphs chock full of information. Most of the time, it was vital information. So she had learned to focus her attention when he was in that mode. This definitely seemed like one of those instances. 

“The problem with re-shoring was that the cost of labor was too high to do so profitably. Sure, all that AI and automation was starting to show some real promise. But it was just not mature enough to make a big dent in reducing the labor costs. The American economy was running red-hot and unemployment was at its lowest ever level. The folks who were not working or even looking for work were wealthy enough to sit on the sidelines. 

On top of that, as you know very well, being a Texan and all that, many Americans didn’t want any poor immigrants blighting their neighborhoods. So we had all those dramatic deportations which scared away a whole lot of our cheapest and most diligent workers back to their countries. Heck, we even lost many boat-loads of highly skilled folks such as scientists and professors. The manufacturing sector that was just beginning to take off in the US ran into this wall of labor scarcity. For a while, a few states even tried to bring back child labor to get more workers for the meat factories and god knows what else. It was absolutely appalling!

Then a strange thing happened. I don’t understand politics… you know that. In fact, it bores me to death. Show me numbers and I am a kid in candy-land. Anyway, my boss explained it to me a while ago. Somehow, the moderates from both the parties got together to formulate a new policy for bringing in cheap labor. For starters, they created these special opportunity zones or SOZs that were exempt from most of the usual laws and regulations - federal, state, and local, especially, the big ones that affected the profitability of manufacturing. You can imagine - minimum wages, benefits, OSHA, environment, etc. All were gotten rid off or reduced to bare bones. Then they created a new visa category, specifically, for bringing in cheap labor from all around the world.”

“Voila!” Ben rarely used non-English words. This must be the punch-line. Rachel knitted her brows and concentrated hard. 

“Suddenly, the US manufacturers had the best of all worlds. They had, practically, unlimited cheap labor. They had no major transportation costs… no containers… no cargo ships… no ports… no expensive oil for those ships… no logistics risks… no natural disaster risks… just nothing. They already had unlimited cheap energy… both clean and dirty. Warren Buffet and his ilk had bought out all the freight rail lines and upgraded them to run round-the-clock on cheap electricity.  

The national security folks were not particularly happy because their main business was maintaining the US military presence in hundreds of bases all around the world. But they quickly adapted and got into the manufacturing business.

Cash from all over the world flooded into the US to invest in this incredible opportunity. My boss made out like a bandit. And dozens of other CEOs continue to do the same. Everyone wanted a piece of this pie. There was no stopping for the first few years as the manufacturing ecosystem got built out. It is starting to get saturated for some product segments. After all, we can manufacture all we want… but we can’t yet manufacture new customers, can we?”

This was a bit of lame humor from Ben. He realized that it was not a good look and frowned. 

“Okay… “ Rachel’s voice trailed off. Was that the punch-line? She still couldn’t figure out why Ben was telling her all this. More importantly, she was still quite irritated that he had made her fly all the way to Texas for listening to this lecture and driving around in this hulking car. She hated flying, Texas, and driving - all of it equally - from the bottom of her heart. 

Seeing that mixture of bewilderment and irritation on Rachel’s face, Ben exclaimed, “The point, my dear Rachel, is that instead of looking for grants to build out your refugee camps why don’t you look for investors. If you can guarantee a return on investment (ROI) of say, 7-8%, I can even convince my boss and our clients to pony up several hundred million dollars for it. I can easily see several billion dollars showing up in practically no time if you up the ROI closer to 10%.”

He looked at her triumphantly. This was the big idea that he had yesterday evening at Hari’s bar. After sleeping on it and then explaining it to Rachel, he became even more convinced that this was indeed a brilliant idea.

“Invest in what? A refugee camp?” Rachel was thoroughly confused. Ben was not making any sense at all to her. That Chinese diplomat, Gang, had also left her hanging with his vague questions about the possibility of refugee camps generating revenues for China. What the fuck was all this crap? She was looking for financial aid for the poor refugees and these guys were looking to make money off them? She knew that Ben was not an asshole. He was a decent middle-aged white guy who meant well. 

“Tchaah… Rachel… c’mon. Don’t you get it? 

That refugee camp will be producing some stuff, right? I mean… people there will be doing something with their time. It is not as if they are just going to be sitting there twiddling their thumbs. That will create a revenue stream. What if you could use that to pay the investors who pay for creating the camp itself?” 

Somewhere deep in Rachel’s mind she felt that some sparks were trying to catch fire. She looked out the window trying to process it all when her eyes fell on what must have a been a humongous white wall that stretched across the entire horizon. Whatever Ben had talked about for the last thirty minutes threatened to disappear as she stared at that wall. She turned to Ben with her hand pointing at the wall.

“What on earth is that?”

“Aah… that would be the largest manufacturing factory in the world. In human history, actually,” Ben said matter-factly. 

“We are going there?” Rachel communicated this not in words but through wild gesticulation. 

“Yup. I want you to see it and we shall talk some more in the evening on our way back to New York. Now I gotta check my email. I think, we shall reach in five minutes.”

Five minutes meant that they were still 2-3 miles out and yet the wall was clearly visible. Rachel watched in awe as they approached it. They took an unmarked exit that seemed to be going nowhere. The car slowed down in a couple of minutes as the driver came within a couple of hundred yards of the gate. 

The driver flashed something at the security and they were waved through. They probably had far more security at the UN than this place. The wall was not particularly thick. It seemed to be made of iron and then coated with white paint on the outside. The inside looked the color of rust. It was tall - almost fifty feet straight up. A massive coil of razor wire was perched on top of the wall. All this reminded Rachel of prisons and top-secret military installations. 

There were no structures or trees within twenty-five yards of the wall. No one was going to be able to climb it unless they had some specialized equipment. Maybe tunnel underneath the wall. Although, if the wall was towering fifty feet above the ground then surely it must be buried several feet below the ground too. And then there must be some solid concrete foundation on which this whole thing would have to rest on. The tunnel would have to be mighty deep. And who knows how long it would have to be in order to get clear of the wall and the all-seeing state-of-the-art cameras hooked up with the best AI that money could buy.  

The inside of the campus was laid out neatly in a grid. Some of the grid squares consisted of massive blocks of buildings, the largest she had ever seen. These damn structures were probably visible from space!  The driver knew exactly where to go. There were not many signs along the roads. The few that existed were entirely graphic in nature. At a distance, she could see some taller buildings. They looked like dormitories. Clothes were drying out in balconies. That must be where the workers lived. Within ten minutes or so, the driver pulled up to a building made almost entirely of glass. This must be one of the administrative buildings. Both Ben and Rachel got out and did some stretching. They had been sitting on the flight and in the car for hours. Then Ben motioned Rachel to follow him into the glass building. 

There was no reception, but Ben knew where to go. They chose to climb the stairs up a couple of floors and then Ben waved his tag at a plain white door. The door clicked open and they went in. It was a large office packed with cubicles. Each one was occupied and there was the usual buzz of a typical office. Ben walked over to the corner office and they were waved in by a short plump white guy sitting behind a standard-issue office desk. Nothing fancy anywhere. Just utilitarian office furniture all around. 

“This is my new colleague, Rachel. And this is Chad, the chief accountant of the Wichita Complex.” Ben made the shortest introduction one could make. 

“Good to see you Ben and nice to meet you Rachel,” Chad responded unenthusiastically and equally briefly. It seemed that accountants continued to nurture their apprehension about outside auditors, Rachel thought. He was clean-shaven and was wearing a half-sleeve button down shirt of some beige shade and a flimsy blue tie. The khaki trousers were all wrinkled as if he had been sitting in them for hours even though it was still early in the day. 

“Ohh… right. The tour. Let me get that going before you and I get to work,” Chad said as he picked up the phone and called someone. In a minute or two, a young blonde man with sleepy eyes knocked on the glass door. 

“Show her around… y’know our usual tour for first-timers,” Chad ordered the young man. The young man nodded and held the door open for Rachel. Even before Rachel had left the room, Chad had turned to Ben and asked him where he would like to start.

“Hi - I am Jake. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” said Rachel. This dude was really young. Maybe in his late teens. He was tall and had longish brown hair. He was wearing similar clothes as Chad. Maybe this was some sort of a uniform the employees had to wear. 

“Would you like to get a drink or eat something? It will be lunch in an hour, anyway. 

We can start the tour right after that. It will take us a couple of hours at most.”

The breakfast sandwich and coffee had not been much. Rachel was famished.

“Yeah… I would love to get something to eat first.”

By that time, they had come back down to the ground floor of the building. Instead of going out, Jake swiped his tag on another plain door and they entered a small cafeteria. He walked to the vending machine that must have recently been loaded with sandwiches and snacks. Everything looked fresh. He swiped his tag and motioned Rachel to make her selection. She decided to go for a panini that seemed to be packed with thick chunks of mozzarella and slices of tomatoes and bunches of basil. The bread looked like it had been taken out of the oven only a few minutes ago. She also selected a ginger ale to go with the sandwich. Jake settled for a bag of chips and a coke. They went and sat down at one of the tables to eat. There was no one else in the cafeteria at that time. Maybe it was too early or maybe they all ate at their desks. Rachel tore into her sandwich and washed it down with the ginger ale. Jake seemed to be staring at something intently on the blank wall behind Rachel. He seemed lost in thought. 

After they finished lunch, Jake led the way out of the glass building. They went around the corner to a small parking lot and got into a small electric golf cart. It was a cool but sunny day. There was a light breeze. Jake continued to be quiet and distant. Feeling rejuvenated after that hearty lunch, Rachel decided to do what she was good at - ask lots of questions and listen carefully. Ben had not given her much of an introduction to this campus. He had left it up to her to figure out what was important and worth knowing about. 

“Sorry, I forgot to tell you my name. I am Rachel. 

What shall we be seeing today?”

Jake glanced at her blankly and then he gave her a shy smile as he realized that he had not been a good tour guide.

“Right - I was told to show you the floors of at least three factories and then a quick tour of the accommodations of the workers. Also answer any questions that you may have. To the best of my knowledge, that is. I am kinda new here, too. I joined about three months ago.”

Rachel gave him an encouraging smile in return.

“Which factory floor are we visiting first?”

“Let’s go see the one where we make all kinds of computers - phones, tablets, laptops, VR goggles, etc.”

Jake tooled around the campus passing by many open bays where loading and unloading activities were going on. He stopped at a large building that seemed to have no windows at all. Just huge walls and the roof. It was not very tall but it was wide and long. Wider and longer than probably any building Rachel had ever seen. It must be as long as an airline runway and maybe wide enough to accommodate two runways side-by-side.

Jake parked their cart and led her to a small door, again plain, and swiped his card near the knob. They walked into a blast of air which seemed almost strong enough to blow off their clothes and hair. It was probably doing exactly that. It was trying to get rid of all the dust on them. After walking through the blower, they entered another room where they put on blue suits that covered them completely and were perfectly sealed. The suits had their own oxygen supply. They were thin and Rachel had no problem hearing what Jake was saying. 

Through another blower chamber and they stepped into the largest contiguous room that Rachel had ever seen. It felt like the room had no far walls. At least that she could see. The ceiling stretched away to the horizon, it seemed. The room was organized in the form of a typical manufacturing floor with assembly lines stretching into the distance. Rachel noticed all of this sub-consciously. She was transfixed by the sheer number of workers that were in the room. There must have been thousands of workers in that single room. All wearing colorful suits and busy assembling the intricate devices that were ubiquitous in the world. It was not as if there was pin-drop silence or anything like that. It was just that she would have expected such a large number of people to make way more noise than what she was hearing. The machines buzzed and she could hear murmurs. And the line supervisors made their rounds on their Segways. 

She and Jake just stood in one corner of the floor and gawked. Clearly, even though Jake had seen this already, it was still new enough for him that his awe was quite similar to that of Rachel. The closest assembly line to them was about ten yards away and one of the workers there took a small break from whatever intricate task she was doing. She had to look through what seemed to be a massive lens with an in-built light to perform her task. She stretched her neck in either direction. Then she stared directly at Jake and Rachel felt as if they knew each other. There were no signals but Rachel noticed that Jake had a goofy smile plastered all over his face. Was the dude in love with that girl or what!

The girl was quite clearly of Asian origin. She was pretty. Rachel let her gaze wander up and down the assembly line and she suddenly realized that more or less every worker seemed to be a woman. And most seemed to be Asians. At least as far as she could tell. 

“Are all these... women? Why am I not seeing any men?” 

“Ohhh… yes. I mean, no. Most are women. I think, the ratio is about four to one. Maybe more. Most of the men work in the loading and unloading sections. The assembly is pretty much all women.” 

“Where do all these workers come from?”

“They come from all over the world. But I think, most of them are from Asia. Like… you know… Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc.”

Rachel started walking toward one of the assembly lines but Jake softly asked her not to go too close. She felt like a slothful giant standing in the midst of this sea of young women working away tirelessly. She had always found it difficult to guess the age of east and southeast Asian people. She was mesmerized by the almost metronomic rhythm of their work. 

“How many phones do they produce? Like in one day?” she asked just to make some conversation. Jake was one of the quiet types. In any case, he was back to staring at that particular woman. Or was it a girl? Jake just shrugged his shoulders to indicate his ignorance. 

“How old are these workers?”

“The youngest, I think, are about 15-16 and the oldest are probably in their late 30s.”

Rachel whirled around and asked incredulously, “are you saying that this facility employs children?”

Jake just stared back at her. He was furiously thinking, "did he fuck up and say something wrong? Why was this chick getting all worked up? She looked like a government-type. Was she here on some official inspection? No. That wouldn’t be the case. Chad would not have let her out of his sight then. She was with that other nerdy-looking guy."

“Uhh… dunno. Is that… like… bad or something?” 

“Hell, YES! Why are there little girls working in this factory? Where are their parents?”

“I think - we should go back to Chad’s office.”

Rachel realized that she had shown a bit too much emotion in that outburst. She should have kept her mouth shut and simply observed the place. 

“Naah… whatever. Let’s get on with the rest of the tour. Not my problem… if these are kids,” she said indifferently. Jake was thinking of calling Chad and checking in with him. Eventually, he decided to not do that. He didn’t like Chad one bit. And this chick seemed to have simmered down anyway. Might as well do his job instead of raising eyebrows. He was the one who had blurted out the age like an idiot. He had been busy staring at Lan and not been paying attention to Rachel. His answer had obviously slipped out of his mouth, inadvertently. Not gonna happen again!  

“Sure. Let’s go to another factory.”

The next factory was dedicated to processed food and the one after that was for household chemicals. Unlike the first factory, these didn’t have assembly lines. Instead they had a lot of piping and heavy equipment that was being operated, again, by a whole lot of young women. In those two factories, they had to wear different kinds of suits. The ones that were there to protect them from exposure to potentially toxic fumes and liquids. The operations were phenomenally complex. Yet, they all seemed to be seamlessly moving along. After an hour or so, Jake turned their cart in the direction of the dorms. 

No kidding about that! The residential complex looked exactly like college dorms. Each high-rise had hundreds - maybe, thousands - of apartments. Three people were allocated to each apartment. Each apartment had a small bathroom. There was no kitchen in the apartment nor were there any washers/dryers. There were huge industrial sized laundromat machines in the basements of each high-rise where people could wash their clothes. The cafeterias were fantastically vast. Each hall would probably seat at least five thousand people in one go. The open spaces spread out among the high-rises had parks, gymnasiums, movie theaters, malls, and restaurants. It was a ginormous self-contained city. Rachel took all this in as Jake showed her around as quickly as possible. Since the facility worked round-the-clock spread over four shifts, there were a few people hanging around the common areas.

Jake turned around the cart and started retracing their way back to Chad’s office. Rachel was silent on the way back. This was quite some operation. She had no idea anything like this existed on US soil. She had heard about such factories and campuses in China and other poorer parts of the world. She was finally beginning to understood what Gang was talking about. 

Jake and Rachel walked into Chad’s office just as Ben was wrapping up his work. He made some final requests to Chad and then thanked him and Jake for their help. He nodded at Rachel and they walked downstairs to their ride. This time around it was one of those generic sedans that was used by taxi drivers. The driver, though, was the same as the one in the morning. 

Ben saw Rachel eyeing the sedan and said, “it is a short ride on the way back. We are hitching a ride on my boss's private jet from Wichita City. My boss was meeting some of the investors there today. I was told to get on the flight to provide an update on the way back to New York.”