A Quarter More

In-processing was more unpleasant than difficult. Endless waiting in eternal lines to be poked or prodded or squeezed or scanned for a few seconds and then moved into the next line. Mac saw more than a few people get sick of all the standing around and leave without even making it through the screenings—especially during the initial three hours out in the pouring rain. Then, after all the unpleasantness of the lines, he found himself sitting in a large auditorium with about two hundred others for another eight hours.

Mac’s leg bounced, brushing the knee of the person to his right as he sat at the cheap plastic table and sipped on even cheaper imitation coffee. It was a step up from the large auditorium and the chairs that seemed designed for discomfort the way they forced you to lean forward, out over your knees. The ‘hospitality’ room was overcrowded and a handful of the candidates elected to wait out in the corridor instead of sipping their coffee elbow to elbow with anyone insane enough to have not fled the building already. One thing was certain; Octagion Computing Solutions wasn’t splurging on amenities for pod riders—the colloquial slang that people had come up with for the living computing machines that powered AI data centers after the Fair Work Rights Act of 34 passed.

He always swore he’d never be a rider, but then life happened and he saw the check his neighbor got after a quarter-stint so he said what the hell. Mac was a little worried about getting greyed out or the comagens not taking full effect or any of a dozen other risks he’d had to sign waivers about, but a small voice in his head kept reminding him that just ninety days inside would get him out of the little slice of hell he currently seemed trapped in.

After a brief respite with the ersatz coffee, the lot of the remaining mental fodder were herded through a seemingly endless labyrinth of sterile, grey corridors. It was only about eight hallways in total, but OCS had spent a lot of time and money to get them to quickly and quietly switch around because one of the guys on the board thought it would be ‘totally far out if you made everyone go through an endless labyrinth’. While nobody else on the board was particularly against the idea, it did fall to the head of Facilities Management to point out that none of their eighty campuses had the physical space for anything like an endless maze. Unfortunately, the guy with the labyrinth idea was the nephew of the founder of OCS so everyone had to spend a lot of time and energy figuring out how to do the impossible. The project, while very entertaining—or perplexing, depending on your point of view—was an unmitigated fiscal disaster that cost half the board their jobs. The nephew was promoted to COO.

The maze of unlimited nepotism finally spit them out at their destination, which unfortunately for any lovers of art and beauty among the group, was yet another blank hallway, though this one had the distinct honor of being lined on both sides with chairs that didn’t look designed to torture their inhabitants. They were instructed to sit and wait in silence. Even as they were sitting a dozen of them were called by name and led around a corner, some to the left and others to the right. Mac was hopeful that he would be among the first group called, but he was disappointed. He had nodded off when his name was the last called for the fourth group and he felt like he might be dreaming as he floated down the corridor and took a left into another unremarkable hallway before being shown into an open door to his right.

The office wasn’t spacious, but for the first time since he arrived Mac didn’t feel cramped or squeezed in. A pleasant looking older gentleman in a plum button-down and maroon tie beamed at Mac and beckoned for him to sit in the first truly comfortable chair he’d seen all day.

“Terribly sorry about the rain,” the man said with sincere pity in his voice as he produced a thin folder from a drawer on his side of the desk and slid it across the immaculately polished surface toward Mac. “But it is better to get processing over and be done with it, don’t you think, Mr. Sands?” he tapped his forefinger on the folder a few times before inching it a bit closer.

Mac took the folder from the desk, producing another smile from the man on the other side. He opened it and started scanning the first page, a thin, yellow sheet covered in checkboxes. He recognized the form. He’d filled out the preferences sheet as part of his final application.

“We like to check with every candidate before they plug in to make sure they’re still comfortable with the preferences they’ve selected as well as to go over any questions you might have before signing final consent, whether those questions are about your selected preferences or other aspects of your contract.”

“And if I wanted to make any changes?” Mac asked as he scanned through the field of boxes and the words next to them, trying to make absolutely certain that he’d filled it out correctly. He’d tried to check as few boxes as possible. The recruiter had informed him that you got the max payout if you didn’t check anything and each mark you put in a box was a half percent deduction from the total. Mac had wanted a clean slate but there were some things he just couldn’t—or simply wouldn’t—do. He didn’t want to spend the next three months having his brain used to come up with political propaganda or have his processing power allocated to pointless theological debates and squabbles—which were the vast majority of discussions in the field as far as he was concerned. He’d checked five boxes in total, but his recruiter had reassured him that checking fewer than ten made him a fairly good candidate. He’d tried to bargain him down to three but Mac was nothing if not stubborn once he made up his mind.

The man in the plum shirt—whose desk nameplate read Dr. Aris, Human Resource Optimization Specialist—smiled warmly, leaning forward with his hands clasped.

"Changes are perfectly fine, Mr. Sands. We want you to feel one-hundred-percent secure," Dr. Aris said, his voice dripping with the practiced empathy of a funeral director. He pulled a sleek stylus from his pocket and produced a datapad from another drawer hidden from Mac’s sight. "Let's see. You’ve opted out of Political Rhetoric, Theological Apologetics, Celebrity Crisis Management, Interplanetary Crypto-Mining Schemes, and... ah, yes, Generative Creative Writing. A very sensible list."

"They said five was the sweet spot if I wanted to keep the tier one bonus," Mac said, his eyes tracking the glowing notations Dr. Aris was making on the margins on his digitized version on the datapad.

"Oh, it is. Absolutely. You're looking at a mere two-point-five percent deduction from the maximum payout. Quite reasonable," Dr. Aris nodded knowingly. "Though, I do feel obligated to remind you if you were to uncheck Generative Creative Writing, for instance, we could restore half a percent. It’s mostly just processing trashy romance novels for the North American market. Very low cognitive load. Most of it is finding synonyms for 'throbbing' and ‘hunk’. Almost entirely harmless, even if the comagens don’t take full effect, I assure you."

"I'll stick with my choices," Mac said firmly. The thought of spending ninety days trapped inside a digital loop of discount historical romance sounded like a specific type of torture the waivers didn't cover, and for a moment he imagined a nice bonus payout on the back of a settled loophole lawsuit, but decided not to let greed lead him down a road where he was at war with one of the largest corporations on the continent.

"Completely understand. Safety first, I always say," Dr. Aris replied, completely unfazed. He tapped the stylus against the datapad, bringing up a glowing digital signature line at the bottom of the screen. "Now, since your queue is quite clean, you’ve been assigned to the General Subnet. It’s a very steady, mundane partition. You’ll mostly be handling automated inventory routing, global shipping manifests, and localized traffic flow algorithms for metropolitan centers. It's the plumbing of the digital world, Mr. Sands. Routine, repetitive, and completely devoid of existential dread."

Mac felt a small wave of relief wash over his shoulders. Plumbing he could do. He spent his whole life dealing with things that were broken, misaligned, or stuck; doing it with data streams instead of a wrench didn't sound half bad.

"Sounds manageable," Mac said.

“Very good, Mr. Sands. Now we’ve got just a few more small details to double-check and I’ll have you on your way to the processing center.”

Mac braced. He was trying to think of what else they might try and trick him into at the last minute. His mind flashed through all the paperwork he’d done in the three rounds of applications before being invited for candidate screening. What was it they were going to try to talk him into next? He flipped through the pages in the folder he’d been given. Copies of all the waivers, in triplicate, his signature highlighted and magnified with special tape wherever it appeared. Something about that unsettled him, but he decided it was nothing to get cold feet over. After that came the standard candidate information forms he’d filled out. Last but not least was his time commitment statement.

“You know, I really do appreciate you guys taking the time and energy to go through all of this before I … get started, but I think everything here looks good and I’m pretty happy with all of the preferences and everything. Is there any way we could just skip all this?”

Dr. Aris slapped the desk and let out a bark of laughter. “A man who’s ready to get to work! I like you, Mr. Sands. Truly, I do wish we could just get down to business, but I’m afraid my hands are tied. Bosses and such, am I right?”

The Doctor then proceeded to double check every letter and word on every single line of all of the paperwork contained in the file he’d given Mac until he finally reached the last page; the time commitment statement. He let out a long sigh and grinned at Mac.

“I know you’re going to think I’m a used car salesman with a PhD,” Aris began, his fingers drumming rhythmically on the desk as he spoke, his voice rolling off his tongue like so much silk. “It’s just that I was informed this morning of a predicted processing shortfall,” he let the words hang in the air between them like a time bomb.

“A processing shortfall?” Mac repeated back.

“Yes, even with round the clock work from our planning and logistics departments these things happen from time to time. Can’t be helped.”

“And I’m guessing you’d like me to help with this shortfall by extending my time commitment?”

Aris laughed again and shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. I don’t get paid a dime more if we manage to exceed processing demand and I don’t lose a single credit from my salary if we experience a temporary shortfall. I simply thought you might want to know that I’ve been authorized to triple your payout … if you were interested in increasing your time commitment.”

“By how much?”

“Just double. Pretty fair when you consider your pay triples, if you ask me. At the end of the day though, it’s entirely up to you. I’m sure you could think of something useful for all those extra credits, but I’ve got no dog in this fight,” Aris shrugged indifferently and scrolled to the bottom of his datapad. “I’m ready for you to sign your final consent if you’d like to skip out on those extra credits, Mr. Sands.”

Everything in Mac’s being told him to just stick with his quarter stint and be happy with the sizable sum of credits he was already guaranteed for what sounded like fairly inoffensive work. He tried to shut the idea of what triple his expected payout might mean for his life, but greed was screaming at the top of its lungs into every cell in his brain. What was another ninety days? He’d be out cold from the comagens, anyway, and the work didn’t sound like it was soul or mind destroying.

“You’re sure it’s triple? And I still wouldn’t need to change any of my preferences?”

“Absolutely positive, Mr. Sands,” Dr. Aris answered, his smile warmer than ever. “You certainly could change your preferences. I do feel an obligation to inform you that if you were to double your commitment and submit a clean preference sheet, I’ve been authorized to increase your pay an additional two-hundred percent. I’m sure a man of principle such as yourself doesn’t care, but I believe in informed consent above all else.”

#

Perhaps if Mac had known that the person configuring his neural net connection was new on the job and was going to think the checked boxes were the only thing the rider had agreed to supply computing power for he wouldn’t have agreed to double his time. Perhaps if he’d known the depths of literary hell that some people would be willing to plunge with his mind he would’ve run screaming from the building right then and there. Unfortunately, Mac didn’t know those things, nor did he know that he had an undetected genetic quirk that would keep the comagens from taking full effect. If you’d like to hear the true horror of what he experienced, I suggest you look him up in the Ashcliff Meadows Facility for the Mentally Deranged. I don’t have the heart to tell you everything he suffered at the hands of attention-starved twenty-somethings.