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I. The Speech

The air inside the old factory was thick with dust and conviction.      They had scrubbed the floors, repainted the walls, and reclaimed the space from its past, but the scent of rust and oil still lingered.      It smelled like work—like history.

Emil stood on a makeshift stage, elevated by wooden pallets stacked two high.      His voice carried across the room, each word striking with certainty.

“This is not another failed experiment.      This is not a return to old mistakes.      We are forging a new path—beyond capitalism, beyond the betrayals of so-called socialism.      This time, we get it right.”

Applause.      Nods of approval.      They had heard these words before, but this time, they believed them.

Isolde sat at the back, arms crossed, expression unreadable.      She had stood in this same room decades ago, listening to a different voice, hearing the same promise.      The factory, reborn each time, looked different, yet the space was always the same—a decanter of sorts, enclosing the same history, slowly pouring out its essence, again and again.

After the speech, as people gathered in small circles of animated discussion, Emil approached her.

“You don’t look convinced.”

“I don’t mistake passion for direction,” she said.

Emil smiled, as if indulging an elder.      “This time is different, Isolde.      We’ve studied history.      We won’t repeat their mistakes.”

She exhaled, looking past him to the crowd.      The factory hummed quietly behind them, a machine just starting to remember its old rhythms.      “You misunderstand history.      It’s not something you repeat.      It’s something that returns to you, whether you invite it or not.”

He shook his head.      He didn’t believe in ghosts.      But the air, thick with the weight of their past, seemed to hum with the same unspoken inevitability.      It reminded Isolde of something trapped within glass—preserved, yet futile in its attempts to remain unbroken. . .

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II. The Experiment

The first weeks were golden.

Decisions were made by assembly.      Every worker had an equal say, an equal share, an equal stake.      The old machinery roared to life under new hands.      They printed new posters, declaring the rebirth of labor, the death of the boss.

For the first time, they worked for themselves.

But cracks, barely visible at first, began to form.

Meetings dragged for hours, circular debates with no resolution.      Some tasks were more desirable than others—some avoided the heavy lifting, citing ideological objections.      “Why should one person labor while another coordinates?”

“Because someone must,” Isolde murmured to herself.      Unheard.

Then came the first real crisis: a large order, a deadline, a need for efficiency.      The factory moved too slowly.      The assembly stalled.      Arguments flared.

“We need someone to oversee production,” Emil admitted.      “Just temporarily.”

A vote was cast.      A mediator was appointed.      He wasn’t a manager, they told themselves, just a guide.      But the balance had shifted.      The factory, like a vessel caught in an unrelenting tide, began to carry more than it could manage.

Isolde watched, saying nothing.

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III. The Cracks

The mediator, needing to keep things moving, made quick decisions.      The assembly approved them after the fact.      The difference was subtle, but it grew.

Some workers were better at certain tasks, so roles solidified.      Someone had to negotiate with suppliers.      Someone had to ensure deadlines were met.      The mediator took on these roles, because it was easier.

“We need structure,” he explained.      “Not hierarchy, just order.”

Emil, exhausted, nodded.      The structure, which had once felt so free, began to settle into something heavier.      Something permanent.      Like the decanter that holds liquid—only to release it back into the world, though it never truly escapes its confines.

One evening, alone in his office—the office that wasn’t supposed to exist—he flipped through old books.      The words were familiar, but they read differently now.      He found a passage from an old revolutionary text, underlined by his own hand years ago:

“The first illusion of power is that it does not exist.”

He closed the book.      His fingers lingered on the edge of the paper, as though searching for something that had slipped away, like water escaping through a crack.

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IV. The Collapse

The next crisis arrived without warning.      A strike—among themselves.      Some demanded higher pay.      “Shouldn’t work be compensated by effort?”      They were equals, but some were more equal in labor than others.

Emil tried to reason with them.      “That’s not how this works.      We’re breaking that cycle.”

“Then why do you sit in the office while we sweat on the floor?”

He had no answer.

Another vote.      A restructuring.      A new proposal:      an oversight committee.      The committee became a board.      Outside investors offered financial stability.      A small compromise.      A necessary evil.

By the end of the year, the factory had become what it swore it never would.

Emil found Isolde in the break room, sipping tea.

“We tried,” he said.      “So did we,” she replied.

Silence.

“Why does it always end this way?” he asked.

Isolde set her cup down.      Her eyes met his, trapped in exhaustion, as though each glance carried the gravity of countless broken promises, like a fractured decanter.

“Because we are human.”

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V. The Next Generation

Years later, Emil walked past the factory.      It was thriving.      Not revolutionary.      Not a failure.      Just another business.

Inside, a new group of young activists had gathered.      Their leader, no older than he had been, stood on stacked wooden pallets, speaking with fire.

“We are not repeating the past.      We are forging a new path.      This time, we get it right.”

Emil did not stop to listen.

From the distance, Isolde watched.

“And so it begins again,” she whispered.

~

Ricardo Federico Morín Tortolero

March 5, 2025; Oakland Park, Florida

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