The boy and the man, hand in hand, followed the cloud from street to street, over grassy fields, steep hills, and deepened valleys, until the cloud had reached such an elevation that it was no longer distinguishable from the other clouds that filled the sky around it. It was at this point that Mr Ackerman looked downwards from the sky and found himself at the gate of the great factory. The guard at the gate smiled warmly and beckoned for both Nigh and Mr Ackerman to come in. But Mr Ackerman hesitated, he was no longer sure of what awaited him and the little boy inside and was suddenly quite afraid. "I'm just an ordinary man," he said backing away. The guard put a reassuring hand on Mr Ackerman's shoulder and let him through the open factory gate. Now flanked on either side by the guard and the little boy, who was still holding his hand, Mr Ackerman began to walk tentatively forward and the awkward threesome soon made their way to the huge double doors that marked the factory's entrance. Sweating profusely, Mr Ackerman took a deep breath and before he could protest, watched as the guard unlatched the giant latch and push the huge factory doors wide open. What Mr Rudolf Abacus Ackerman saw then was at once the most amazing and beautiful thing he had ever seen. Rows of singing white haired women sitting on a vast and spiralling assembly line. In front of each, a small and perfectly formed cloud floating only inches above a frost covered silver tray. Men cranking cranks and pulling levers upon huge machines made of silver and bronze. Hundreds of workers suspended in mid-air by string, pulleys, and wire peddling upon small contraptions whose pedals and gears were linked to bigger gears and those to bigger gears and those to bigger gears yet. Above them giant fans blowing the larger completed clouds towards smokestacks high along the factory's vast lighted ceiling, creating huge cloud shaped shadows that drifted over the men and women working a hundred feet below. He saw several raised platforms, upon which sat workers surrounded by huge control panels of blinking and flashing lights, buttons and knobs of every imaginable size and colour. Frost covered golden tubs housing hundreds of tiny floating clouds waiting for inspection. Suspended from the ceiling a giant clock of a sort he had never seen before flanked on all sides by a towering flank of gauges and meters. And rising out of it all on the tallest platform yet he saw the elder cloud maker who, from his perch high above, directed the flow of the entire factory with graceful waves of his left hand while calling out through the megaphone in his right. "Nimbus 200 of 3000, Stratus 44 of 53, Cumulus 27 of 413..." and on and on. Nigh tugging at his sleeve, Mr Ackerman entered the cloud factory and the whole of the cloud makers in their hundreds turned to face him. On his platform high above, the elder cloud maker stopped conducting for a moment and smiled. They took Mr Ackerman's jacket and hat and led him up the very steps of the platform that Nigh had visited the day before and so delivered him to the chair upon which his name was engraved. As the look of astonishment on Mr Ackerman's face began to slowly turn to a smile, Nigh realised that he had never truly seen Mr Ackerman smile before and now, as his misty eyes gratefully surveyed the hundreds of cloud makers in his midst, Nigh saw a single drop of moisture fall upon Mr Ackerman's cheek. Now, whether this was a drop of precipitation from one of the great clouds above or a single tear of his own he could hardly guess. As Rudolf Abacus Ackerman smiled the biggest smile that Nigh had ever seen and began silently to work.
