Felony

"Felony" by James Causey is a science fiction story set in a factory, where a production manager named Vogel's life is changed by the arrival of Amenth, a strange worker with a mysterious past. The story looks into ideas about who we are, feeling alone, and the results of what we do, all within the walls of a workplace. It also looks at what is beautiful and what is right and wrong through a science fiction point of view. As Vogel looks into Amenth's background and strange things happening in his factory, he finds out that Amenth is really an alien hiding from his own people because they think he is a criminal. Amenth is trying to build a device to escape. The story ends in a heated meeting where Vogel has to decide between wanting everything to be perfect and accepting that things can still be beautiful even if they aren't perfect, showing us what it means to truly belong, and what it costs to chase after our goals when set against the backdrop of an alien world.