The Last Janitor

“Son,” the CFO said with grandfatherly exhaustion, “In recognition of your service to Henry and Sons, I made the executive decision to offer you this bonus.”

He handed Mallory charge a card, and to his surprise this one was warm.

“Back to your mother, son. Be good to her. And…” the CFO’s brow knit, before he rifled through his desk and pulled out a faded, wrinkled, blue kepi. “Tyler begged me to get this at Gettysburg.”

The CFO handed it to him, and continued to ramble until he waved Mallory out.

The Econoline-styled hallways buzzed, which Mallory minded: after the Second Battle of Blair Mountain, downsizing had left ever-fewer humans to make messes, and ever-fewer humans to report him listening to unapproved music. Mallory waved to the last security guard, ES-26, as they passed each other. From the shift of his rifle’s bump-stock, ES-26 noticed this time.

A cleaning bot came screeching around the corner, Mallory caught it before it he could hurt himself more and crouched down in front of him.

“Will-E,” he said, “What’s wrong?”

The bot kept pushing against him, his treads screeching, until Mallory found the tip of a sparking wire from its cube-shaped hull. He reached around, avoiding the sparking wire by an inch or so, to press the button that would have it go screaming over to IT. EI-26 was out on unpaid maternity leave, so the someone would likely come to yell at her.

Mallory kept to the far right of the halls as the staff kept on bustling, arguing with each other.

“You’re letting that other thing get to you,” EP-15 said. “The AI’s are arguing, not us.”

“I minored in ethics,” the other programmer said back. Mallory was pretty sure it was EP-11.

“Not political science.” EP-15 said.

“Just saying—”

They kept arguing down the hall and around the corner, only stopping when, from their cursing, Mallory presumed another one of the cleaning bots nearly made them drop their Starbucks.

Mallory was fanning himself with the kepi when he passed two more EPs.

“We’re down too many bits,” EP-3 lamented. “I can’t even watch Squidgame Golden.”

“Bitch still not letting you watch it?”

“Yeah.”

“Rough, dude. My husband is better.”

As he turned his second-to-last corner Mallory ran into another of the cleaning bots, whose tread-wheels were screeching as EP-4 held it.

EP-4 sighed, cooing. “I love how much you like petting. Good girl.”

Mallory squinted at Jenn-E and yeah, Jenn-E would give EI-26 more trouble.

Two more EPs were arguing two corners from the supply cabinet.

EP-99 said, “I took a Philosophy course, I’m telling you—”

EP-28 cut them off, “So what? The Freikorps—?”

“I’m not—”

“Fucking sounds—”

Mallory heard EP-99 and EP-28 fighting even as he gathered his equipment from the supply closet. He put on the blue kepi and headphones, then checked his calendar to make sure their subscription wasn’t due. He still had a week, thank God. He opened and scrolled through the Henry and Son’s™ app and its playlist of approved songs, settling on Looking Glass’s Brandy. Take it sleazy and all.

When he passed EP-57, the programmer had a cricket bat with Simon Pegg’s on it. EP-57 had, in the first weeks of the competition, come in wearing a scarlet T-shirt with Leon Trotsky on it as a joke. Now he and the friends who remained to him were marching as a unit, stone-faced, carrying bats and crowbars. One was wearing a cowboy hat and had a bandana covering their mouth.

EP-1 came in wearing a shirt with Henry Ford’s smiling face a bit after the Trotsky shirt. They had, according to ES-26, had a big laugh about it. That night, when Mallory passed EP-1 and his remaining friends, they trying to march together in-step. They carried wooden planks, pickaxes, one brandished a toy musket wrapped in copper wire.

While mopping the cafeteria Mallory lingered on one of the posters that had been put up, again. A smorgasbord of red, white and blue was a picture of two computers boxing, with bolded text underneath: ARGUMENT OF THE CENTURY! HENRY AND SONS™ NEWEST AI MODEL DEFENDS AMERICAN VALUES AGAINST HAL-AI™’s NEWEST MODEL AND ITS COMMUNIST MANIA!

Mallory mopped on, wishing once again that the cleaning bots could do the server rooms. The first, second, and third server rooms were Venusian as the air conditioning strained its best.

Mallory mopped on. As he did he heard dull thuds, yelling, until he stumbled upon the first cleaning bot, Wall-E West, laying in a pool of coffee and blood next to EP-15. Probably EP-15. There was scarlet mush instead of their face. Mallory gawked as Brandy’s opening verse repeated, he vomited onto both of them.

He called ES-26 with his walkie-talkie, and what he heard from the other side was tinnier than before: “This place is played out! One sec–fucker, get back here—"

The speaker topped out and ES-26 repeated himself. Mallory glanced to Wall-E West and EP-15 again, vomited, and stumbled away. First, employees were to get to safety, and then he would follow company policy and report an incident to the HR so an internal, unbiased investigation could be completed before troubling the busy men, women, and sheperdbots protecting and serving.

Too much; Mallory passed too much on his scramble out. EPs were scattered around the building, thoughtlessly and staccato. Henry and Sons™ ran a tight ship, yet each new corner brought a new body. Someone had punched the buttons to put Will-E back into cleaning mode, so he passed the little guy cleaning up skin scraps floating in a puddle of blood that would have been black, if not for the overturned bottle of Henry and Son’s™ Fiji Water™ diluting it slightly. Didn’t dilute the smell, though.

Mallory just about held his wits as he finally got outside and stumbled to his car. He made another call to ES-26, and got told again that this place was played out, and then more sounds that topped out even his phone’s speakers before ES-26 hung up on him.

He avoided accidents by seconds and centimeters; when he finally got to his rent-controlled housing, he stumbled into his apartment gasping, wheezing. He had left his headphones in the whole time, and finally took them out as he collapsed onto his couch.

“Six hundred twenty-three dollars and point one nineteen and twelve cents.” the CFO had said before finally waving Mallory out. “Largest bonus I’ve ever given.” The man paused before asking, “Do you know what those numbers also mean, son?”

Mallory stopped squinting at the charge card to meet the CFO’s eyes. “Alan Turing’s birthday.”