It made him shudder.

  Warren left Adam’s office and made a beeline for his desk. Despite the false U-turn through the hallway and all the deceptive coffee station detours, it was literally twenty steps away. It should have been a quick and easy trip, now that it didn’t require all the switcheroos. And yet, halfway there, his vision became obscured by a large, human-sized obstacle, one he’d hoped very much to avoid at all times. This time, it stopped him dead in his tracks. “What were you doing in there, Page?” the obstacle asked.

  Warren looked up and came to a screeching halt before slamming headlong into it. “It’s none of your business, Brent,” Warren responded.

  Brent Doyle wasn’t about to take that for an answer. “It’s some of my business, actually.”

  “Nope. Not a bit.”

  “As part of the supervisory staff—”

  “Which you aren’t.”

  “As a senior associate—”

  “We started the same day. We’re at the same level.”

  “As a concerned member of this organization...” Brent waited for Warren to counter that.

  Warren shrugged. “I’ll allow it.”

  “...it actually is my business.”

  “And why are you so concerned, member?”

  “Because what you do around here impacts everyone else’s well-being, including mine.”

  “I don’t think that’s the reason.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “What do you think the reason is, then?”

  Warren knew he was being goaded. It was the theme of the day. He clutched his tablet tighter. “I think you’re jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of what?”

  “Of me.”

  “Ridiculous. You’re smaller than me, weaker than me. Dumber than me.”

  Warren’s wrist jingled. “Oh look. My social esteem just shot up by two-thousand points.”

  “Not possible.”

  Warren held his bio-cuff out for Brent to see. “I mean, you heard the chime just now. That would be impossible to fake.”

  Brent’s features tied up into a knot of disgust as he read the screen. The smiling face seemed to be laughing at him. “You stole those points.”

  “How again? I was standing right in front of you when they arrived.”

  “You cheated somehow. That’s how you got them.”

  He wasn’t far off. But Warren wasn’t about to admit that. “Stealing and cheating are your specialties, Brent. Not mine.”

  “You gamed the system, then. It has to be that.”

  “I did what was asked of me. And I earned them. Just like everyone else.”

  Brent’s suspicious grimace shifted to a confident smile too quickly for Warren’s liking. “Then why did they show up in the middle of the week instead of on payday like everyone else’s?”

  “I got a bonus.”

  “For what?”

  Warren didn’t have a ready answer other than admitting he’d just finished massaging his boss. And that wasn’t going to fly. “I repeat: it’s none of your business.”

  “Aaaand we’re back to that now.”

  “Actually, we never left. I’ve just been saying it in different ways while you’ve been trying to work your way around it.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Don’t you have a job to do, Brent? Or someone more significant to persecute so you can get ahead?”

  “I like persecuting you best.”

  “It’s a waste of time. You won’t get anything out of it.”

  Brent shrugged. “Personal satisfaction? That’s enough, I think.”

  “You know, the bosses probably don’t like seeing you antagonize other technicians like this. And you know they can see you doing it, right?” Warren’s vision shifted suspiciously along the high ceiling of the office space, back and forth between the corners where the eye-in-the-sky cameras hid. “And if they took notice and decided to do something about it? I can’t imagine that would bode well for you.”

  Brent’s vision-shifting matched Warren’s. His awareness of the heavy surveillance in the office rose. “I’m helping enforce their policies. I’m sure they wouldn’t oppose.”

  “So you doubt their capabilities to enforce their own policies, then?”

  “You little—”

  “How many social esteem points are you willing to lose just to attack me further? Is it really worth that much to you?”

  Brent was busily mulling over the pros and cons of continuing his assault when reinforcements arrived, in the form of a woman the height of a small child, with the temperament of an agitated terrier and the wild hair of a show poodle. “Hey, Doyle?”

  “What, Doris?” Brent asked brusquely while keeping his eyes trained squarely on Warren.

  Doris Smaltz leaned against the wall casually, as if they were catching up on their weekend activities. “Mira came by looking for you earlier.”

  Brent’s demeanor shifted immediately. His interest in something more significant was suddenly piqued. “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “No. My guess is she noticed your nose was absent from her rump for a minute and she missed its snuggly warmth.”

  Brent’s head whipped around. “Your assumption is wrong. And unappreciated. But mostly wrong.”

  “My mistake.” Doris winked at Warren. “I told her I’d send you her way.”

  Brent tightened the knot in his tie until it sat directly under his chin. “Thanks, gargoyle.”

  Doris beamed. “My pleasure, rump-snuggler.”

  Then Brent pointed at Warren sternly. “I’ll figure out what’s going on with you later, Page.”

  Warren shrugged. “It’ll still be none of your business.”

  Brent Doyle gave each of them a warning look that had no real authority behind it. Neither withered from it in the least.

  Doris rolled her eyes as he walked away. “What a knob. He’s more of a robot than the robots are.”

  “Thanks for running interference, Doris,” Warren said.

  “Hey,” Doris said, leaning in close and lowering her voice, “I may not be able to influence our ridiculous technological overlords around here, but I’m all for short-circuiting the ridiculous human dimwits whenever possible. Especially that one.”

  Warren dropped into his chair and smiled for the first time all morning. “Vive le resistance, eh?”

  “Yeah. It gives me a real charge.” Doris’s gaze pivoted to the empty desk to the left of Warren’s. “Any word from Josh?”

  Warren’s smile dissolved as he looked sadly at the neighboring workspace. Josh Render had sat there for the five years prior, working shoulder to shoulder with Warren and becoming his closest friend. It wasn’t hard to see why; they shared a wit, and an intelligent curiosity about the way things worked around NeuTech. They bonded over video games, music, a shared love of potato skins topped with ranch dressing instead of sour cream, and a mutual distrust of the techno-entities that governed their lives—at work, at home, in the world at large.

  In other words, the usual stuff.

  But Josh was gone now, and all traces of Warren’s friend and co-worker had been removed. The space was crisp and pristine, as if it had been cleaned and pressed and folded neatly for the next occupant to wear. “No. No word. Not expecting any, either.”

  “He was a real spark around this monotonous place, wasn’t he?”

  Thinking about him made Warren sadder, not happier. “He sure was.”

  “Wherever he ended up, I hope he’s giving ‘em hell there, too.”

  Warren’s day had gone from okay to weird to confrontational to mournful in a matter of twenty minutes. In addition to all of that, he felt lonely now, too. “So do I.”

  Doris peered over both shoulders, looking for signs of snoops or surveillance. When she saw the coast was clear, she put a sympathetic hand on Warren’s shoulder. “I’m sorry he’s gone. I know how much you must miss him.”

  Warren smiled wanly. “Thanks, Doris.”

  Doris’s bio-cuff chimed happily, and a face appeared on the screen. “Hi there, Doris! This is Serena from HR.”

  “I know who it is,” Doris sighed. “I can see you.”

  “Great! Just a friendly reminder that uninvited human-to-human contact in the workplace could be unwanted or misconstrued as something less than wholesome, and we don’t want to make others feel uncomfortable. It’s a good idea to keep a proper distance from your coworkers, even in moments of consolation.”

  Doris groaned and removed her hand. “Thanks for the reminder, Serena. I really appreciate your help.” She didn’t say it as much as she recited it, as if apologizing to the VP of HR was a frequent occurrence for her. Which it was.

  “No problem!” Serena disappeared from the screen, and Doris’s cuff chimed with a message: 10 social esteem points for being cooperative!

  “I mean, you violated the no-touching policy,” Warren pointed out. “Shouldn’t she take points away instead?”

  “Oh, but this way I’ve been incentivized to keep from patting your shoulder ever again,” Doris said with as much sarcastic cheer as she could possibly muster. “Hooray for positive reinforcement!”

  Doris sent him sympathetic eyes as she turned and walked back to her workstation, leaving Warren gazing into the empty space that Josh used to occupy. It stung every day when Warren showed up and had no one to send virtual high-fives to (the no-touching policy was just that strict, even for innocent exchanges) or to grouse quietly with about the bosses, the executives, and the strangeness of techno-corporate life. But it wasn’t just their distrust that connected them; they’d been quite the creative pair as well. They made an excellent team, and their projects had always been well-received, a reason Warren suspected Josh had been targeted by Adam for the code massage, and why Warren was now masseur number two. To keep their true feelings about their cheerfully sinister environment hidden, they’d created a strange secret language between themselves, something based on a coding method called Cyntax, which split the language down the middle. Josh spoke half, and Warren spoke the other; the overlap in the center made it one complete thing that both understood perfectly. But it only worked when both were speaking it. Warren felt around in his brain for his half of the language now. He found parts and pieces, but none of it made sense on its own.

  Without Josh to complete the cypher, it all ceased to exist.

  Warren was having difficulty letting go of it, along with everything else.

  The desks in the Collaborative Solutions department at NeuTech were arranged in sleek white hubs, with a central station in the center, and five workspaces extending out in wedge-shaped rays, so that every cluster looked like a perfect, sterile flower, and all the workers in their ergonomically-perfect, inward-facing chairs were positioned like petals. There were half-walls between every desk to give the illusion of separation, though being half as high as a regular wall, it was difficult to call them privacy walls. They were more like elbow rests. On the opposite side of Warren’s right elbow rest was Dustin Marsh, a relatively new analyst who’d been moved from the Manufacturing Oversight team to Diligence and Verification—or D&V as it was known around the office—to take up some of the slack left behind in Josh’s absence. He’d been recommended for the position by Brent Doyle, which didn’t endear him to Warren in any way. He was proficient enough, at least. But he was no Josh; that was for sure.

  Luckily, he was also no Brent Doyle, either.

  “Hey Warren?” Dustin said. “I’m getting weird messaging I’ve never seen before...can you take a look please and tell me if I’ve ruined the whole operation with my stupid fat fingers?” He chuckled more than he should have, most of which came from a nervousness that he should have gotten over by now. Dustin’s humor was like that all the time: bland and watery, present but not necessary. It made Warren miss Josh’s sharp, incredibly astute humor even more.

  “Sure. Let’s see what we’ve got.” Warren leaned over the half-wall and gazed into the tilted depths of the glassy monitor like a fortune teller reading a crystal ball. There was a scattering of characters littering the screen, as if someone had chopped up the alphabet into confetti and thrown it all about. “I can honestly say I’ve never seen that before.”

  Dustin frowned. “Shoot. Do you think it’s a virus?”

  “Not likely. The firewalls around here are pretty infallible.”

  “Ah. Then it’s definitely something I’ve mucked up.” There was no nervous humor that time. Just deflated disappointment.

  “I’m sure we can figure out how to fix it,” Warren assured him. He slid over and took control of Dustin’s system, typing commands into the translucent surface and sweeping his hands across the screen in a foiled attempt to remove the strange characters. They stood fast. “So. That isn’t going to work. Let me try something else.” He pressed his pinched-down fingers against the screen and twisted, as if he were turning the cap off of a toothpaste tube. The display responded with a dizzying spin of colored lights that opened a portal to another layer of code. “This is a little something I learned when I worked in Design and Confluence.”

  Dustin looked troubled when he heard that. “Is it within policy?”

  “Oh sure. And it solves a lot of problems. Usually.” Warren’s fingers tickled the screen, and then the control pad. To his sheer disappointment, nothing changed. “But not this time.”

  “I’ve ruined the system,” Dustin said softly. “Two weeks into the new position and I’ve broken the whole thing.”

  “No, no. I’m sure I can fix it. And even if I can’t, I’m sure it was nothing you did.” Warren couldn’t fool himself into thinking either of those statements were true. But far be it from him to make the new guy feel bad. “Let me try one more little trick...” He pressed his left palm down on the control panel and dragged lightning bold zigzags across the screen as fast as he could with his right index finger. “If we can’t fix the system, maybe we can confuse it into submission.”

  “I’m positive that isn’t policy,” Dustin said with great trouble in his voice.

  Warren wasn’t as worried. “But if it works, it’s a solution, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  New workers were always so skittish, so submissive. Nobody wanted to disappoint the bosses or the executives, certainly not in their first weeks on a new task.

  And especially not over a stupid and avoidable mistake.

  Despite Warren’s valiant efforts, the weird characters remained on the screen. He heard his bio-cuff emit two shrill whoops, and a message appeared: Overly-vigorous use of workstation...10 social esteem points deducted.

  Warren blushed. “Whoops.”

  The other heads in his hub popped up at the sound.

  “It’s okay, folks,” he assured them. “Just trying to get Dustin’s screen cleared.”

  Slowly, their heads swiveled downward again to standard screen-worker position.

  Dustin looked distraught. “I’m sorry you lost points over this.”

  “My fault entirely,” Warren demurred. “I shouldn’t have tried the Lightning Storm Maneuver.”

  “Has it cost you in the past?”

  “Yep. Every time.”

  “Wow.” Dustin sounded even more dejected. “And you used it to help me, even knowing that.”

  “Not a big deal,” Warren told him. “We kind of look out for each other around here. And since that maneuver works more often than not, it’s always worth a try. Even if I lose points. No such luck this time, though.” His frustrated eyes circled the display, soaking up the strange glyphs scattered on the screen. There may have been more trouble here than he’d let on. With a flick of his finger, he took a screen shot and slid it into his NeuTech account. “Let’s document this for future reference. And to cover us both in case Support and Upkeep gets wind of it.”

  “That sounds pretty bad.”

  “Nah. Just better to err on the side of caution.”

  “So what do I do now?” Dustin asked.

  In the infinite wisdom that governed the most sophisticated of technology—even in a world managed by artificial intelligence—Warren shrugged, reached behind the monitor, and pressed the only button there. “When all else fails,” he said with a weak yet confident smile, “shut it down and reboot.”

  Mira Clang always made sure to keep her diction crisp and precise when she explained how to be terrible to people. And it happened quite often. “So,” she began, her S hissing sharp and loud, “what I’m wondering is this: what sorts of programs can we institute that remove esteem points from undeserving workers without requiring that they be notified of the subtraction? Sort of a covert removal based on a new set of criteria that isn’t made public, so they don’t even notice the points have gone missing. And even if they do, they’ll have no idea why. It would have to be surgical. Stealthy. Not exactly what could be considered theft...more like a subtraction-for-the-better-good thing. What do you think?”

  Katy Harmon had never heard such a distasteful proposal. Actually, that wasn’t true; she’d heard much worse in her one year and five months in her position as Assistant to the Director of Human Resources. Although she was a member of upper management, Mira wasn’t virtual or AI; she was flesh and blood, one of a handful of human supervisors employed at NeuTech, though whether or not she possessed a heart among all that flesh was something most people who crossed her path wondered about. Still, rather than employ only virtual leaders, the Greater Logic reasoned that if the department was called “Human Resources,” it should probably have a human somewhere in the management mix. Mira was as close as they could find. And proposals that undercut the other humans in the company like this were her standard.

  Katy could hardly stand it.

  “I thought the idea was to reward our workers, not to punish them,” she pointed out.

  Mira pursed her lips thoughtfully. “If they don’t know they’re being punished, then it’s not really punishment, is it? They check their account, there are fewer points...maybe they think they’ve spent them, but don’t remember on what. Or maybe they know they’ve been removed, and they’re not sure what happened, but they know it must have been bad, because points don’t just disappear. They’ll recognize their own guilt and shame. They’ll start wondering what they might have done, and they’ll come up with an answer. And they’ll realize it was this disallowed behavior that must have been noticed by the bosses or the executives. Then, without having to be called on the carpet like we all hate to see happen, they’re suddenly behaving better. Straightening up and flying right. And we didn’t have to take any active disciplinary measures to make it happen.”

 

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