The Lost Soul Factory

The damned souls, lost in a wasteland of confusion and regret, eventually find their way to this place of endless toil, a spirit factory, where they tend to the mechanisms of time that in turn trap them within these walls for eternity. There is no lunch break or holiday cheer, not even an employee of the month, because the product here is only misery and gloom, combining the worker and the customer into the same person. A soul – in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions – is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects (such as rivers) have souls. The latter belief is commonly called animism. Soul can function as a synonym for spirit, mind or self; scientific works, in particular often consider soul as a synonym for mind. The Modern English word soul is derived from the Old English sáwol, sáwel, first attested to in the 8th century Beowulf and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50, and is cognate with other Germanic and Baltic terms for the same idea, including Gothic saiwala, Old High German sêula, sêla, Old Saxon sêola, Old Low Franconian sêla, sîla, Old Norse sála as well as Lithuanian siela. Further etymology of the Germanic word is uncertain. One possible connection is with a root for "binding", Germanic sailian, related to the notion of being "bound" in death, and the practice of ritually binding or restraining the corpse of the deceased in the grave to prevent his or her return as a ghost.