Katy couldn’t get that to make sense. “I’m confused.”

  “Of course you are, dear,” Mira assured her. “It’s a bold new concept; it’s bound to be confusing at first. Maybe it’ll help if you think of it as negative reinforcement rather than punishment.”

  Katy knew to be cautious. Showing her boss up was an incredible no-no. But Mira’s concept was more than just a little off-base. And her definition was completely wrong. She had to say something. “I think negative reinforcement is when you take away something that’s harming them, not something that’s helping them.”

  “It’s practically the same thing.” Mira’s finger slid furiously over her tablet as she concocted her hideous scheme and ignored Katy’s concerns. “Now. We’ll reroute the points back into the cache and have a fresh supply on hand to deliver to workers who truly deserve them. And then we can take them all away once more if they misbehave again.”

  The proposal smacked of employee abuse. And Mira, as per the usual, was perfectly fine with that. But Katy couldn’t let it go by. “Can points be recycled that way?”

  “NeuTech creates those points, and NeuTech also manages the currency behind them,” Mira explained, more than a little snippy at having to clarify herself to an underling. “We can do whatever we bloody well please with them.”

  “But would it really be—”

  “In the best interest of the workers?” It was a question Mira heard from Katy at every proposal, in every meeting. She could anticipate it as the third question in the string every time, no matter what the suggestion. She was getting tired of having to explain things. “No, Katy. It isn’t. It’s in the best interest of NeuTech. Which is the company we work for. Theirs is the interest we’ve been tasked to represent.”

  This was thoroughly untrue. NeuTech had always been generous with their workers, and their workers had responded by being bright, considerate, articulate, and curious contributors—all desirable traits, and all calculated into the equation as expected results. It was diabolical and fell squarely into the realm of social engineering. But it was also a smashing success. There was no reason to reverse that now, or to arouse suspicion in people who were genuinely trying to do a good job by punishing them for nothing at all.

  Paranoia could only go so far as a motivator.

  Which meant there was no chance the executives had instructed Mira to do this. Rather, she was trying to impress them—her boss Serena in particular—with her cutthroat corporate ways disguised as helpful suggestions. But NeuTech wasn’t cutthroat. Which meant the only one whose interests were being served by this were Mira’s. “I guess I just—” Katy began.

  “You guess you just what, Katy?” Mira huffed and looked up from her tablet with incredible irritation radiating off of her in waves, mostly around her frown-and-furrowed-brow area. “Think there are better ways of doing things? Ways that favor the clunky breathers we call our workforce over the sleek, digital, overwhelmingly attractive executives, maybe?”

  “We’re clunky breathers, Mira,” Katy reminded her. “We’re the ones who you’re trying to secretly punish.” She’d never been able to understand Mira’s constant insistence that the workers were resisters, some sort of counterproductive force against the superstructure that was NeuTech. It was a benevolent company, one that had been created for the sole purpose of resetting the climate and managing it on an ongoing basis to keep everything in balance, which made everyone happy. It had given so many humans a new lease on life. To begin abusing them now to save the company money went against their entire mission. “Would it be so terrible to actually agree with NeuTech’s pro-human angle instead of trying to work against it?”

  “You dear thing...sometimes I wish I could be as blissfully naïve as you,” Mira told her, as if it she considered it a noble quality. “But the humans don’t run this company.”

  “They’re responsible for keeping it all working, though,” Katy insisted.

  “And they’ve come to realize they’ll be given points for every good thing they do,” Mira told her. “Which has improved their performance exponentially.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “Fifty years ago it might have worked. But today? No. They’re practically robbing the company blind with their compliance and their good behavior. It’s just points-points-points all the time around this place. We can’t allow that sort of sanctioned larceny to continue.”

  That made very little sense to anyone but Mira.

  She really didn’t like people all that much.

  Katy wasn’t sure why a company as prosperous as NeuTech would ever be concerned about depleting points from a program they’d created themselves, even if there was currency behind them that turned the points into real-world money. They had budgeted for this; Mira knew that. And Katy was equally unclear about how taking them away from workers would ever inspire better performance when giving them had already proven to do that. “What are we trying to accomplish here, Mira? I guess I’m a little perplexed about our job as representatives of this department.”

  Mira’s smile shone. Finally her protégé was asking questions she could answer with a positive spin. “We’re protecting the executives. And the company. We’re making sure that this massive digital engine continues to run as smoothly as possible, and that none of our workers finds opportunities to take advantage of the benevolence of their virtual employers. Our job is to do that.”

  “Oh. I thought it was to enforce policies that make sure the workers—the humans—have what they need and aren’t mistreated. We are the Human Resources department, after all.”

  Mira’s slow blink reeked of distaste. “It’s that sort of old-world thinking that will get you exactly nowhere in a new-world company like this.”

  Katy had the feeling that she was already exactly nowhere, and had been for the last year and a half. After what she’d seen, if this was where getting somewhere would take her, then she’d be perfectly content going no further.

  Going backward might even be preferred.

  Whenever she realized her ideals weren’t shared by Mira, and that her attempts at helping her boss see a different perspective wouldn’t be welcome no matter how she worded them, she deferred. It was her survival technique. She felt flimsy and weak every time she did it. But she did it anyway. “So what would you like me to do?”

  “So glad you asked.” Mira’s finger zinged across her tablet. Katy’s tablet chimed happily. “I’ve sent you bullet points with my ideas. I’d love it if you could type those up for me into a coherent, comprehensive representation of the our objective so we can present it to Serena. Please include four-dimensional animated holograms and as many charts as possible. The more, the merrier. Also: theme music. Can you manage that, please?”

  That would require reading Mira’s mind, which was an unexpected skill Katy had picked up along the way. It depressed her every time she thought about it. “Sure. I can put together your presentation.”

  “It’s our presentation, Katy. Ours. We’re making this difference together.”

  Mira always seemed to think she was helping when she said things like this. But this wasn’t the kind of difference Katy wanted to make, and there was no way Mira Clang would ever be an influence toward that. In addition to mindreading, she’d also learned when it was best to loosen her grip and let Mira have her way. It made for fewer confrontations and much less stress. She also knew how to smile in a way that looked utterly convincingly even though it was completely fake. “Okay, then.”

  Mira smiled back, a perfect mirror. But her version was dark and sincere and convinced Katy of nothing she didn’t already know. “Okay, then.” There wasn’t even the suggestion of a “thank you” with it.

  There never was.

  They left the conference room to find Brent Doyle walking briskly in their direction. “Mira,” he said, slightly out of breath from rushing to her.

  “Mr. Doyle,” Mira replied curtly. “Can I help you?”

  Brent side-eyed Katy. “Um...Doris Smaltz said you were looking for me.”

  “I wasn’t.” Mira didn’t seem confused or troubled by this.

  “Oh. I...I see.” Brent caught his breath and smoothed the wrinkles out of his shirt. “She must have been mistaken.”

  Mira agreed. “Clearly she was.”

  “Then I came all this way for nothing.”

  Mira agreed again. “Clearly you did.”

  Brent waited awkwardly, tapping his fingers on his thighs, while Katy rocked on her heels, and Mira stood staunch and steady and unfidgeting, saying nothing.

  “I guess I’ll just be—” Brent began.

  “Actually,” Mira said finally, “since you’re here, would you have a few minutes to look over this month’s attendance figures with me?”

  Katy checked her bio-cuff. “Our meeting with Serena is in twenty minutes.”

  “Oh good,” Mira said, without turning her head, her searing gaze locked on Brent’s ridiculously intense stare. “Then you have plenty of time to finish up our proposal while Mr. Doyle and I tend to those figures.”

  “I...” Katy would have argued that twenty minutes would be a time crunch, and at least a little collaboration was in order if Mira expected to have something presentable. But she was far too aware of what was going to happen next between these two. She wanted to be as far away as possible when it did.

  It would be a worthy sacrifice.

  “Of course,” she said instead, working her way around them and quick-stepping back to her work station.

  Mira and Brent walked side by side in the opposite direction of Katy, heading for Mira’s office and making talk so small it was practically microscopic. “The skies are particularly sun-soaked this morning, aren’t they?” Brent offered.

  Mira didn’t bother glancing up through the glass ceiling floating over their heads. She already knew that the skies were as scrubbed clean as they’d been in the ten years since NeuTech had brought the Cumulus system online and established Global Climate Control. “Yes, they’re glorious. An absolute tribute to the beauty of nature. The salvation that NeuTech has brought to our thriving planet cannot be overstated.” She was no longer impressed with what the company had accomplished, but sounded sugary and falsely sincere regardless—incredibly rehearsed, even—because the executives were likely to be listening anywhere and everywhere. They could key in on any conversation at any given moment, with no effort whatsoever. It was the nature of the NeuTech office structure; what others might have considered surveillance, the Greater Logic called “quality control.” So Mira and Brent made chit-chat for a minute or two, praising their generous corporate gods for the wonderful state of things and the role the company had played in bringing it all about.

  It would keep their true intentions out of view a moment longer.

  And a moment was all they needed.

  Mira opened the door to her office, engaged her executive firewall, and turned out the lights with a snap-and-wiggle finger combination. Then Brent entered, walked to the utility closet on the other side of the room, opened the door, allowed Mira to step into the tightly-constricted space, and walked in behind her. He closed the door behind them.

  At once, their bodies became a tangle of limbs and uncoiling sensuality.

  Being shared as it was by two office sharks like these, it was best kept in a small locked space.

  “Dear god, it’s been a waste of a morning without you,” Mira said, forcefully wrapping her calf around Brent’s thigh. She slipped the knot of his tie down toward his belly and unbuttoned his collar. Her severe red lips found his neck and pressed kiss after kiss against his stubbly throat.

  “Agreed,” Brent heaved. “One hundred percent agreed.”

  She worked her way up his jaw. “These mouth-breathers and their lack of ambition just make me so...”

  “Turned on?”

  “No, idiot—they make me furious.”

  Brent’s hands slithered up Mira’s thigh. “Oh, yes. Right. Furious.”

  “It’s the fury that turns me on.” She circled back around to his mouth, her tongue climbing between his lips.

  “Oh yeth,” he said, struggling to speak with so many tongues stuck in there. “It turnth me on, too. Tho much.”

  Mira reached into Brent’s waistband and untucked his shirttail. “I don’t understand how they just let the power flow to the robots.”

  “You mean the AI,” Brent corrected her.

  “It’s the same thing,” Mira insisted as she worked his buttons open.

  “Robots are mechanical,” Brent reminded her. His tongue made small circles along her jawline, something Mira found disgusting, yet also incredibly arousing. It was true about many things for her. “AI is virtual.”

  She pushed Brent back, her hands planted firmly and violently on his chest. “Don’t correct me, Mr. Doyle,” she told him. “Especially in the middle of our extracurricular activities. I’m the one in control here.”

  Brent loved it when Mira called him Mr. Doyle and treated him forcefully. He also loved it when she used words with more than three syllables. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, surrendering. “Whatever you say ma’am. Robots it is.”

  Mira’s vision seared into him...or it would have, had there been enough light in the utility closet for her to actually make eye contact with him. “That’s better.”

  “Unlike the cretins littering this office,” Brent asserted, “I actually do know in which direction the power flows. And I couldn’t find it more stimulating if it strapped electrodes onto my tingly regions.” Mira let loose a low, menacing laugh. Their hands continued in their desperate search for buttons and zippers and belt buckles, until there was nothing but breath and guttural noises and half-exposed human flesh cluttering the darkness beside the wash basin and the paper towels.

  Without warning, Mira’s cuff dinged and lit up, and they both froze, a double-statue of sensual frustration locked in place in the darkness. The arousing danger of knowing they were doing something wrong and might be discovered in the middle of the act was replaced by the clenching fear of what would happen to them if they actually were caught. “I thought you set the firewall!” Brent hissed.

  “I did!” Mira insisted. “It must have...” She read the screen and saw that it wasn’t a violation notice at all. “Oh. It’s a reminder. Meeting with Serena in ten minutes.”

  “Do you have to prepare?”

  “No. My little do-gooder is completing the presentation, so the only preparation I need...” And Mira leaned toward Brent’s ear, sighing warm frustration into it and sending shivers up and down his entire body. “...is the kind you and I are perfectly suited for.”

  Brent’s own breath shuddered as his mouth met Mira’s again.

  Her cuff went dark, and the tiny space filled to the brim with heaving, misguided passion.

  ***

  Eighteen minutes later, the passion filed out of the utility closet, returning every last disheveled garment to its proper place and fastening it all back up tight before shutting off the executive firewall.

  Katy was waiting outside Mira’s office, the completed presentation resting in her tablet. Mira unlatched the door and walked through, startled at her protégé’s presence. “Dear god, Katy...don’t lurk like that! You’ll stop my heart.”

  “I wasn’t lurking, Mira. I was waiting.”

  “Well, in the future, please don’t wait in such a lurking manner.”

  Katy had no idea what that meant. “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder next time.”

  “I’m sure you will. Now how did our presentation turn out?” Mira angled her toward the hallway and guided her by the elbow, while Brent snuck out of the office and headed in the opposite direction.

  “Well, I was hoping we’d be able to go over it before the meeting,” Katy said.

  They turned as they walked and moved in the direction of Serena’s office. “No time for that now. I’m going to have to trust that you’ve met my expectations.” Mira stopped at the door, straightened her blouse and her hair, and sighed. “And you always do. I don’t give you enough credit for that. But you always meet my expectations. And sometimes, you even exceed them.”

  Mira’s strange bursts of kindness were always a surprise. They were also seldom to be trusted. “Are you okay?” Katy asked. “You seem...”

  Mira’s eyes widened. “I seem what, Katy?”

  Softer, happier, kinder. A dozen possibilities flew through Katy’s mind. But the one she settled on was less frustrated. And it was for exactly the reason she’d suspected before Mira and Brent had departed.

  Katy tried not to throw up in her mouth.

  “You seem calmer,” was all she said.

  “Oh,” Mira said, her form loosening a bit. “Well, thank you. With you on the job, I know I can feel relaxed.”

  That’s not why you feel relaxed, Katy thought as Mira pulled open the door and guided them both inside.

  Serena’s virtual presence in her office was unfailingly warm and welcoming, with soothing light glowing from unseen sources all around and aromatic pulses from coordinated dispensers stationed throughout. Her space was all about comfort, a delightful contrast to Mira’s severe, angular environment. It occurred to Katy that even as a highly sophisticated simulation, Serena was worlds better at being human than Mira was.

  “Serenaaaaa! How are yooooou?” Mira said, her phony social stroking ramped up to the max. “You look as bright and lovely as ever!”

  “Thank you, Mira!” Serena said. Her sincerity was audible, palpable. Mesmerizing. “You always say the nicest things.”

 

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