Revenge of the Seven Magnificent Women

1. THE FACTORY

Little had changed in China since the war, when the Japanese had invaded the local territory. A small town stood by a river whose course had only changed slightly over recent years, gouging a straighter path when the water raged and careered through a narrow gorge, now taking it through the north part of the town and bringing down many of the houses as it did so.

It was overlooked on one side by a sheer cliff which was covered by trees and rose vertically to some 800 feet, which, being on the west side of the town, meant that the sun disappeared behind it early in the afternoon, casting the village into darkness nearly an hour before the next village down the river.

The village itself was expanded after the Japanese were pushed back and the local military had moved in. They were camped in and around the area for nearly a year. A small industry had been struck up by the army to produce logistical items for the troops.

Some of the temporary buildings had long since disappeared, to be replaced by ramshackle structures, which had been put together by recycling materials from the older ones. Only one substantial military building remained. This was known as the ‘factory’. It consisted mainly of a cheap form of breezeblock, and the one-inch metal window frames hadn’t been painted since they were originally fitted. They suffered heavily from rust and all the joints where the glass was fitted were deeply pitted with black mildew. Some of the glass was of a very cheap nature and gave quite a distorted rippled picture when you tried to look through it. Other missing panes were filled with old brittle Perspex, and some were just blocked with plastic bags or pieces of plywood. A lot were painted black to stop people looking in.

Amazingly nobody had deliberately broken any of the windows as the panes of glass were cracked and still insitue (the area did not suffer from hooliganism the way we do in the West), although some had cracked through the sheer age and distortion of the building due to its lack of proper foundations. The old windows used to open, but now the hinges, catches and the retaining bars, were rusted up, holding the windows tightly shut. These served as collection points for blue bottles and dead insects, and were popular anchor points for the many spiders’ webs that stretched aimlessly up towards the ceiling.

The walls had been painted many times in different colours, and large areas of the latest cream colour had long since started to peel, showing large bits of the different fading colours down to the base block work.

Along the walls were black conduits covered in mildew, each containing one or more sets of electrical wires that were way past the non-existent health and safety checks. The rubber surrounding the thin wires had perished in many places, and their colour had virtually disappeared, although in the odd joint, it was possible to see what was left of the positive and negative coding. It was only by luck that some were tight enough not to rub on the metal conduit surface in the fuse boxes where they had used nails to replace fuse wire. Even so, they could give a severe shock when brushed against or when old metal hooks or wire coat hangers were hung on them.

A six-foot wall surrounded the building itself, with rusted barbed wire on the top, some of which dangled over both the inner and outer side of the wall. The outside of the wall had posters which had long since faded away showing Mao Tse-Tung, with some other red hieroglyphics around them which were difficult to read.

Attached to this wall were the remains of a metal double gate which had seen better days and was now permanently open to the entire world. The left-hand one leaned inwards towards the centre of the courtyard, or entrance, with the top hinge long since rusted away and precariously held by the bent bottom hinge. Otherwise it would have fallen over and probably squashed some of the workers, many of who were of small stature. The only thing stopping it from falling now was the old rotten frame of a rickshaw propped on its tail with its two handles jammed against the door frame. One of its handles had seen better days and would soon break into thousands of small pieces ably assisted by woodworm.

The other rusty painted door had long ago lost its shine and only looked reasonably presentable because of the 10 or 15 other coats of paint. The shackle or locking mechanism was a sliding bar with a padlock, well rusted up and which hadn’t seen a key for 20 or 30 years. This one was propped open by several old oil drums, on top of which laid many pieces of rubbish which had, at one time or another, been of importance to the workers. These included rusted old wrenches, screwdrivers and other tools; their wooden handles had long since decayed into dust; there were also a few rusty screws, a couple of bolts with nuts that didn’t fit them, and a rusty bicycle chain which somebody had idly placed in a circle round the odd bits and pieces to stop them from rolling around. All of them were in a small pool of water which was a deep rust colour. Bottles and tins lay in profusion throughout the courtyard.

The factory was basically dark, the lighting fed by long thick black bedraggled electrical wires hanging from the ceiling with cane hats fitted as lampshades. The bulbs were of various sizes, shapes and wattage, and a good number of them were just empty sockets waving in the breeze created when people entered the room, although still live from the electrical supply. There were some switches around the walls, none of which seemed to be screwed on, and the main one near the door was missing its cover which had come undone and was rolling around on the floor, exposing the 70-year-old wires with perished rubber casing.

Rusted metal bars supported the flat roof from underneath, which over the years had been smothered in grease, tobacco stains, and other things that had been made in the building. On top of this was a ceiling of rusted and damaged corrugated iron. It was held on precariously with bolts, of which many were missing. Pinpricks of sky appeared through these holes, which had been enlarged over the years due to the water seeping through, forming circular patches on the floor, creating slight indentations due to the poor quality concrete. The interior walls were made of large blocks basically covered in white emulsion. Many small holes had been drilled in order to put up shelves, notices or hooks, most of which had long since gone, although old wedges of wood protruded which were used as the equivalent of the modern rawlplug in order to be able to screw into the wall tightly. A few shelves remained, some hanging at precarious angles; others were full of old rusty tins, some with dirty paintbrushes with paint congealed solidly around them.

The floor had concrete expansion gaps every now and again which had been filled with tar, most of which was now missing; there were several large cracks running across it, and some actually went up the wall showing the structural defect of the building. It basically had a very clean floor with no dust, but there was a lot of discarded sackcloth here and there and odd piles of boxes, litter, and discarded food tins with discoloured labels.

Along two sides there were a couple of benches attached to the walls, some two inches thick by three feet deep and six feet long, thick with grease and oil paint and other bits and pieces which had accumulated over the years. Laying on top were normal tools, most of them in a very poor condition, one or two electrical pieces in various stages of being repaired (but long since discarded through the lack of parts), and the proverbial rusty old vice attached to the side of it.

In the middle there were makeshift work surfaces made out of all sorts of old pieces of thick plywood or old doors – anything to produce work surfaces for the minimum price. In total length they were some 20 feet long by five feet wide. There were various containers from plastic through to thick cane and even interwoven bamboo.

The boxes were filled with different components of tablets and phones of many well-known makes, including screens, keypads, cases or chassis, buttons and springs, and circuit boards. Each box contained a full assortment of items which formed a complete tablet, the missing item being only the vital chip or processor. When complete 60 boxed tablets were packed in each cardboard box.

During the day the place would have been bubbling with about 15 Chinese women who could assemble one complete tablet in a mere couple of minutes, but now the building was deserted and so quiet that you could hear the odd mouse or rat scurrying around in search of food.

The building itself had initially been used to make ammunition during the war when there had been banks of machinery driven by the very old generator that still sat in one of the corners of the room. The machinery had been especially made to mechanise the making of rifle ammunition, but when the war finished, with typical ingenuity they had been converted to make lipsticks for the West – mainly for the American troops and airmen from the ‘Flying Tigers Squadron’ which was stationed nearby. They bought them in copious numbers in order to curry favours with the ladies on their R&R (rest and recuperation) breaks in the area. Once the Europeans had disappeared from China and Burma (and other countries nearby), the machinery rapidly deteriorated through lack of use, and much of it could be found in a huge pile of junk to the western end of the village.

There was nothing much else in the main room except for a door into a separate machine room. This had been built by putting up a wall, cutting off a quarter of the building. A sign in the local Chinese dialect was placed at a drunken angle over the top of the door threatening people who dared enter without permission. The room was lit in a similar manner to a snooker club in the old USA, with a large converted machine table on which there were 12' x 12' green sheets of Bakelite-looking green plastic printed with silver circuits running throughout. Next to the workbench there was a surprisingly modern computer-driven piece of machinery, which had an arm that lent across and etched in electrical circuits before they were sealed by yet another machine. These chips were virtually identical to the real thing, but obviously there was no guarantee that there weren’t faults or bugs within them, and there was certainly no copyright for them.

In the extremely narrow back streets of the village, typical of thousands of others splattered throughout the local area, there were rows of terraced shacks containing sweatshops and small businesses which stripped down old television sets, computers and other electrical items for the gold and other valuable components. The narrow alleyways had a gully in the centre of them which yielded occasional spurts of dirty brown water. The smells varied as you walked along the roads, some rancid, whereas some parts seemed almost perfumed from the abundant cooking that seemed to go on all day long and far into the night. There were areas with rancid choking smells that made you wretch and reach for loose fitting garments with which to cover your nose and mouth.

The occasional rat swam in the stew of life, dashing from view at the slightest sign of any movement – that is except for the very largest, which would just sit there and stare you out, almost challenging you to come closer.

Power cables were draped from rusty angle irons, which were bolted precariously into the sides of the buildings, often cracking what little plaster there was. Some cables actually draped across the windows affecting the view of the buildings opposite. Bins overflowing with rubbish blocked any easy access down the thoroughfare, with rickshaws and old rusty bicycles propped up all over the place. Occasionally there were prams with and without babies, but most of the babies were strapped to their mother’s backs, the prams usually stacked with possessions instead.

Occasionally there was a doorway where people could drink and take drugs. The smell of incense and opium was everywhere as drugs were freely taken by the male population, with women in old dresses (still with illegally bound feet) hovering between the tables and the soiled mattresses spread precariously out all over the floor.

2. THE BIRTH OF THE TABLET

The building, which had little to distinguish its age from any of the others, was churning out fake electronics, diligently copied from items brought over from the West to China itself; reverse-engineering was prevalent here. Indeed it was a culture and an art form.

The owner of the factory was called Ching. There was nothing that would make him stand out in a crowd in China, although he did have a slight limp caused by a piece of shrapnel which he picked up in the Korean War when he had been forced to volunteer to fight the Westerners. His hands were small and obviously hadn’t done much manual labour – they still bore scars and marks from the war, including what was left of severe frostbite. Indeed he would do everything he could to get out of doing a hard day’s work. He had spent a lot of time in America where he had improved his poor English, making him more acceptable throughout business and commerce. Having been educated at one of the universities, he managed to get into Silicon Valley in Pasadena, California, where he learnt his trade in computers.

He was well aware that computers operated through complicated little chips or processors, wafer-thin and fully enshrined with massive capabilities. Indeed, had these been available to the Nazis during the Second World War, they would have surely won.

Ching had followed a story that was going about at that time, whereby another company was trying to create its own chips to get into the market. Every computer and tablet needed one – indeed even the smallest calculators contain them.

One company endeavouring to break into the market had employed a whole load of people who had not been involved in the original manufacturing of chips and put them into a building where they were told that they would have to design a brand-new chip of their own. In particular, it was of interest to the owner that the computers start quickly as this became a feature of this particular chip, although it was still little more than just a copy or forgery.

Ching had hatched a plot early on that he would reverse-engineer one of these chips and tablets and produce thousands of cloned or fake copies. There were a variety of tablets on the market and all of them seemed to look alike. They had become so successful and superseded laptops – even the Blackberry. He was now well on the way to accomplishing this as he had acquired a second-hand computer chip making machine which punched out these large sheets with masses of small chips on them. These then passed through another process where they were chopped up into small chips, approximately 1 by 1.5. It was a simple matter to copy the tablets, and having looked at the market he decided on one particular well-known make in which to place his own computer chips. His was not a sweatshop as such, because it was a highly technical process, and the machine continued automatically throughout the night pushing out its lucrative product.

Chow, who had been employed by Ching, had been promoted to a supervisor position, and was particularly proud to be trusted to watch over the product. However, he had his own personal problems and suffered domestic abuse and domestic violence from his wife and mother-in-law.

At this time of year it became dark early, and