I have a thing I’ve been working on/coming back to for a couple years now. It’s a sort of modern fantasy setting somewhere in the 60s-80s.

The basic premise is that “magic” is real and something people can do, but it’s not supernatural or extraordinary. People can manipulate material the same way you would move a part of your body. This allows people to do telekinesis, as well as slow down particles to create cold patches or freeze liquid, and speed particles up to warm an area up or create a flash of fire (or start one with fuel for it).

You can work out your magical abilities like you would a group of muscles. While you could expect most people to be able to telekentically lift about 50lbs, someone who took training their magical abilities seriously could lift 400lbs, or freeze a path across a river, or burn up all the air in the room, but it would be a serious exertion (and no one person is magically moving mountains).

The real magic comes when a group of people plan and coordinate. A team of people could raise an impromptu structure from the ground, or rain fire from the sky.

So what do we do with this slightly different world?

At the opening of the story, the protagonist has just arrived in town. They’ve been framed for murder, and have to move to a new town and assume a new identity whenever they think that the police are closing in on them.

The protagonist notices soon that magic of any scale isn’t anywhere to be found. Magically raised structures are mostly dilapidated, and rare. There are never any crews maintaing midday ice bridges over water, only permanently constructed bridges like you’d see for a major river crossing. The only time they saw someone actually use magic was to warm up some soup, soup for their family. When asked why, townsfolk say that it’s just the way it is, or that stuff like that just doesn’t happen anymore.

They take up work at the place the locals call The Terrible Machine. It’s a monolithic structure that almost seems to be alive. Just looking at it from the perspective of a single person standing on the ground, you can’t make sense of how it works or what it does. And also it’s an allegory for capitalism.

In addition to being physically exhausting, as production work often is, after a shift working at The Terrible Machine, the protagonist feels dead inside, like something is killing their spirit.

After a few weeks, the protagonist is approached by another person on the production line who asks them what they think about a recent strike at an auto plant. The protagonist, trying to be as nondescript as possible, sort of shrugs and says “it happens.” The coworker invites them to a meeting after work.

The meeting takes place at a bar by the hotel that the protagonist is staying at, which is clearly a magically raised structure. It’s packed. People from all over the plant are there. The meeting is to feel out how a vote to unionize would go, and from the feeling in the room, it’s apparent to everyone that they have more than enough support.

Some time later, the protagonist is called into the manager’s office. The company knows about how the protagonist has been framed for murder. They also know about the unionization effort. The manager tells the protagonist that if they manage to sabotage the unionization vote, the charges against them will go away. If, however, the plant is unionized, the company will lead the police to the protagonist. This would be the end of the first act.

The protagonist thinks about it, but ultimately feels they have no choice. They have to sabotage the unionization effort, or they will be caught, and probably face the death penalty, for a murder that they didn’t commit.

So the protagonist continues to go to the union planning committee meetings, looking for opportunities, but comes up empty. Eventually they resort to trying to appeal to individual coworkers with anti-union rhetoric, but they’re not exactly a Pinkerton, and this is mostly an excuse to frame such lines as clearly bullshit.

After a while of this going nowhere, and the protagonist becoming more and more concerned with being arrested, a few new people show up at the union planning meetings; engineers of The Terrible Machine. They reveal that the reason that everyone feels dead inside after a shift, and once working there for a few weeks, sort of all the time, is because The Terrible Machine makes use of the workers’ magic without their knowledge. This is the line i want to end that bit on “The reason everyone feels like shit all the time is because The Terrible Machine takes part of your humanity from you. It alienates you from yourself.” This would be the end of act 2.

After this, the workers are not content to merely unionize. They recognize that this machine cannot continue to exist and set about to destroy it. The protagonist reads the room and realizes that their best bet is with their fellow workers, and joins the crowd marching on the machine.

As the group approaches The Terrible Machine, exterior bits start flying off. A section of pipe buries itself in the ground. A tank bursts, throwing its contents everywhere. The machine is torn apart as if by a thousand angry hands all ripping and tearing wildly, working together to rip steel and stone and concrete into a pile of visual white noise, leaving it a smouldering mess.

That’s where the story ends, with the protagonist among a crowd of workers who have rediscovered their power, and torn down The Terrible Machine.