“You just bring out in me!”

  Katy preferred Mira’s barbs to her nauseating phony compliments. “Hi Serena.”

  “Hi, Katy!” Serena sang. “I like your outfit! It’s very dress-code compliant.”

  “Thanks,” Katy said. “I try my best.”

  “Well, you excel!” Serena offered them seats, then took a seat herself. “What are we here to discuss today? Something uplifting and reassuring, no doubt.”

  Katy wasn’t about to answer that. She let Mira have the glory.

  “No doubt,” Mira said. “We think you’re really going to be knocked out by this new proposal.” She turned to Katy like a hostess revealing a prize. “Katy, would you mind projecting.”

  Katy laid her tablet on the table and tap-tapped the surface. A 360-degree holographic projection of Mira’s idea sprang to life, orbiting around them. And while soothing music that sounded like robots laughing in the rain played in the background, Mira explained her intention to rob honest workers of their hard-earned esteem points for the sake of giving them back at a later date, in the guise of them being new points. “We would effectively close the open pipe that lets the points just gush right out of the company, while ensuring the flow continues in a bi-directional manner.” She pursed her vivid red lips. “So. What do you think?”

  Serena’s glimmering green eyes went blank. “I’m...stunned.”

  It took everything Katy had not to laugh out loud.

  Mira rested her chin in her hand confidently. “Stunned that we haven’t thought of it before, right?”

  “No,” Serena said kindly, “stunned that you would think it was a good thing to do.”

  Mira was truly mystified. “I don’t understand.”

  “So we would be punishing them for doing a good job...is that what you’re proposing?”

  “We would be nudging them toward more responsible behavior,” Mira corrected her.

  Serena folded her hands and said softly, “I can’t agree with that, Mira.”

  There was a chasm in the conversation as wide as time. Mira slowly allowed for the possibility that Serena wasn’t going for it. “Ah!” she said, with as much artificial cheer as she could muster. “I see.”

  “NeuTech isn’t about tricking their workers into doing the right thing,” Serena explained. “We’re about expecting them to do it, and rewarding them when they expect it of themselves, and when they rise to the occasion. It would be counter to our mission of helping humanity if we were to start a punishment program, and to base that program on secrecy and a lack of merit.” Serena never raised her voice or lost her temper. She remained perfectly even, wholly sympathetic, and wonderful the entire time. “Our humans are our main resource, which is why our department is so critical to our company’s success. NeuTech aims to help humans, because humans help NeuTech.”

  “You’re...absolutely right.” Mira was genuinely surprised, though not by Serena’s reminder about NeuTech’s philosophy regarding its workers. She was surprised because her programs usually went much further than this, which had everything to do with Katy finagling the initial bad idea until it turned into a much more viable thing. But this time, it hadn’t worked. The reality of this was catching up with her.

  Mira tightened, as if there were a key in her back that had been suddenly overwound. Everything about her cinched up. “That’s what I tried to tell Katy when she proposed the idea to me.”

  Katy’s face went slack. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Then Mira turned on her entirely. “It’s okay, Katy. You’re still relatively new at this. I know you insisted that this would be a good idea, but of course we can’t punish the workers by stealing their esteem points. Some of them depend on those to support their families. It would be wrong of us to sneak them back in an attempt at getting them to be more productive. We need to be using positive reinforcement, not negative reinforcement.” She leaned in toward Serena as if they were peers. “I tried to tell her that punishment wouldn’t work, but sometimes you have to let the children try out their wings, you know?”

  Katy was beside herself, but did her best to keep cool. “But Mira, I was the one who—”

  “Suggested the idea—yes, we know.” Mira’s mouth was a hard, cold line. “I just told Serena that a second ago.”

  Katy couldn’t gather herself enough to speak.

  Serena looked at Katy with a slight hitch of disappointment in her digital forehead. “I’m surprised you came up with something as off-brand as this, Katy. You’re very bright and wonderfully sensitive, and you’ve always made uplifting suggestions in the past. You have great potential, and I truly believe that with a little more nurturing, you’ll be able to see that our workers are our most valuable assets, and that they deserve to be commended for all they do for us rather than being punished for not doing even more.”

  “Yes!” Mira chirped. “Exactly. I’ve told her the very same thing time and again, but you say it so much more succinctly and more proficiently. I really must start taking notes when you speak, Serena.”

  Serena’s hologram blushed, which made Katy even angrier. “I think maybe it’s best if we put all of this behind us and work on new initiatives that encourage our workers to keep being productive. There must be a million ideas that accomplish this, and I have every faith that working together, you two can find the best possible outcome!”

  Mira beamed. “Your faith in us won’t be misplaced, Serena. I promise I’ll work with my protégé until she understands the NeuTech philosophy of helping humans, because humans help us.”

  Serena clapped. “I know you’ll come through! Take some chocolates on your way out...they’re imported from our NouTecq office in France!”

  “Oooo...how luxurious!” Mira’s eyes lit up.

  Katy’s eyes did not. They darkened instead. She’d been angry with Mira in the past, but she couldn’t recall ever being livid before. She’d also never been directly blamed for one of her bosses horrible ideas. It was a whole suite of new experiences for her. Anger wasn’t a corporate emotion; expression of it within the NeuTech walls was staunchly forbidden. All she could do was breathe and smile and try not to smash her tablet into Mira’s face as they left.

  Katy strode ahead while Mira stuffed her pockets with foil-wrapped candy. “Don’t you want any chocolates, Katy?”

  “No, I don’t,” Katy said as she rounded the corner to the hall. But I want you to choke on one.

  “Oh, you aren’t angry about what happened back there, are you?” Mira said it so casually, as if she’d ordered Katy the wrong drink.

  “About being sacrificed by you for an idea that wasn’t mine?” Katy said it as sweetly as she could to keep from being perceived as hostile. “Why would I be angry about that?”

  “Well, someone had to take the blame for it.”

  “You came up with the idea and said it was our presentation,” Katy reminded her. “You should have taken responsibility for it. I did nothing but type it up and put the graphics together.”

  Mira bit her lip and heard only what she wanted to. “Maybe if the graphics were better we could have forced it through...”

  And with that, Katy had reached her limit. She could feel all the right words rising in her throat, things she’d been holding back for so long. It was like a tickle that was growing into a growl, and by the time it reached her tongue, it would be a full-on opera. She would sing out her hatred with glee. There might even be a little dancing, something free-form and expressive. Would she lose her job as a result of letting it all fly? Of course she would. But the sensation as she opened fire on such a horrible person with a vitriol that had been building for such a long time would be entirely worth it.

  She cleared her throat to make space for the barrage to pass through.

  “Okay, Mira,” she began. “Let’s—”

  Like a roomful of alarm clocks all going off simultaneously, the bio-cuff of every employee in the office let out a synchronous chime that sounded like bells ringing and bubbles popping and silverware being rattled about in a martini shaker. A message appeared: Great weather outside...but when is that ever not true? Everyone feel free to leave at three p.m. and enjoy the rest of your day! – Adam.

  “Let’s all go home early like Adam just told us to do?” Mira asked.

  Katy suspected that even without being able to sing out her complaint, Mira could detect that it was coming. She was giving her an out, a way to let cooler heads prevail in a moment when the hotter heads desperately wanted their way.

  Katy’s teeth hardly parted as she said, “Yes. Let’s.”

  Mira unwrapped a chocolate and slid it into her smirk as she brushed past and headed for her office again. “Enjoy your afternoon, Katy. See you bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  Katy groaned as quietly as she could and questioned how bright tomorrow would actually be.

  At least she’d have the afternoon to herself.

  Warren was unexpectedly pleased when Adam’s message came through. He’d kept his word. It made sense that he would; the consistency protocol dictated that he had to do as he said. It was practically impossible for him to deviate. But Warren also knew that the exchange included those questionable things he’d done at Adam’s request, things that should have been beyond any protocol, but weren’t. No matter how perfectly the system was believed to run, Warren always held a thread of doubt that told him anything was possible with his AI leaders.

  He’d worry about that tomorrow.

  For now, he was free.

  He shut down his connections, gathered his messenger bag, and headed for the elevators, following the crowd as they chattered happily about the possible cause of Adam’s kindness and their early release. Was it because company stock had risen, or were profits higher than expected this quarter? Did Adam have a patch installed that made him even more generous and charming than he already was? They theorized as they walked like babbling toys that all had their strings pulled at the same time.

  Warren wouldn’t allow himself to feel good about it, because he knew the true cause: their midweek holiday was the result of leverage. He’d performed the act, and they’d reaped the reward. And he’d left Adam’s office without retrieving the information he’d gone in there to get.

  The best he could do was make his way to the grocery store to gather his dinner fixings and head for home.

  Brent Doyle was head-down over his own tasks and inattentive to the notification when the noise level rose to what he considered unacceptable levels. “Keep your happy chatter down to a dull roar, please,” he said firmly as Warren passed. “Some of us are trying to work.”

  “You’re violating the ‘Cheer Only in the Office’ policy, Brent,” Warren told him. “Your girlfriend would be so disappointed.”

  Brent stood abruptly. “Hey. She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “How did you know who I was talking about, lover man?”

  “I swear, you little pisher, I’m going to—” His voice was several decibels louder than the rest of the noise, and his tone was less than cheerful. His bio-cuff whoop-whooped, and he read the screen to find he’d been docked 10 points for his sullen tone. “Dammit,” he said. His cuff whooped once more, and he lost another five for cursing on the work floor.

  All of that did make Warren smile.

  Katy Harmon passed from the hall perpendicular to Warren and joined the flow of traffic next to him. She herself seemed sixty percent less happy than the rest of the crowd. “You look like you’ve had enough office protocol for one day,” Warren commented.

  “Yeah, well,” Katy replied. “Mira just forced me to create a presentation for another one of her horrible ideas, then blamed me when she presented it to Serena and it blew up in her face.”

  “Yikes.”

  “So yes. I’m done with office protocol for the day. And if I can’t keep my frustration in check, maybe forever?”

  She looked dejected. It broke Warren’s heart. “I really wonder about our so-called leaders around here.” He said it quietly enough for the crowd noise to hide it from the walls and their electronic ears.

  “Have you ever seen the executives when the managers fawn over them?” Katy asked pointedly. “AI actually fall for flattery.”

  “They engage in it, too,” Warren replied.

  Katy shivered. “It’s the weirdest. What part of their fabricated brains does that come from?”

  “They were created to mimic human behavior. Flattery is part of the package, I guess.”

  They stepped into the elevator, quieting their troubling conversation now that they were among the other office folk. Quiet seconds passed staring at the lighted buttons and the floors counting down. 6...5...4...

  “Any word from Josh?” Katy asked softly. She and Josh had been something of an item when he was there. Their romance was still building when he was let go. Once he was gone, he dropped out of contact with literally everyone who’d had any connection to him, including her. Katy and Warren commiserated about it on a semi-regular basis.

  Warren hadn’t quite recovered from Doris asking earlier. He was sad all over again hearing Katy’s question. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  Katy shook her head. “No word here.”

  Warren shrugged. “None here, either.”

  “This might sound silly,” she said softly, “but there’s a Josh-shaped hole in my heart now.”

  Warren couldn’t even muster a sympathetic smile for that. “It doesn’t sound silly at all. I know exactly how you feel.”

  They rode the rest of the way to the ground floor in a sorrowful silence with the rest of the workers still yammering on about what they were going to do with their two whole hours.

  Bright sun and unreal blue skies met them when the stepped out onto the streets. “Share a shuttle?” Katy asked.

  “Thanks,” Warren answered as his cuff chimed. “Just received a few additions to the shopping list, so I’m not going straight to the complex.”

  Katy nodded. “Okay.”

  Warren waved and began making his way to the store.

  “We should get together soon and reminisce,” Katy called out. “Just to remember him.”

  Warren’s shoulders fell. He gave her a weak smile. “That would be great. Let’s do that.”

  Then he turned and walked away slowly, while Katy listened to the door of her autonomous shuttle hiss as it slid open. Needlessly joyful electronic music spilled out. She chanced one more glimpse of Warren as he rounded the corner, noticing that the saddened shape of him looked exactly the way she felt.

  ***

  Warren’s journey to the store was a stroll down a street that was kept clean with hourly passes made by sleek, automated street sweepers. They rolled through the paveways, then climbed onto the sidewalks, turned on a dime, and made their way back in the other direction. They were quiet and unobtrusive, buzzing softly as they moved, controlled entirely by external sensors that conducted them via GPS. There was a similar team of machines that slid up and down the outer surface of the skyscrapers, sudsing and squeegeeing their glassy skins clean. Their motors murmured a soft hum-squeak-chug song that was comforting to some, unnecessary to others, but offensive to no one. The expansive buildings that lined the cityscape were made of renewably-sourced materials that gleamed in the afternoon light as they received their baths from sleek, unthreatening robots. The passers-by on their beeping foot scooters and gurgling pedal movers arranged their paths accordingly, the sensors on their vehicles automatically adjusting for obstacles and changes in pavement. And the cars that whooshed past in the center of it all were driven not by the humans who rode in them, but by a vehicle network that conducted all traffic in the safest patterns possible. Their virtual drivers were charming and peppy, and their topics of conversation and levels of interaction could be requested ahead of time or adjusted manually during the ride if a passenger changed their mind. The greenspaces that enveloped the city were lush, the storefronts tidy and modern and warm.

  The city was a post-modern marvel.

  And Warren was oblivious to all of it.

  He entered the market and circulated the aisles absently, his cuff emitting quick whistles whenever he was in the vicinity of the items on his list. The shelf section would glow to let him know where to make his choices, and his cart calculated his bill as he added items, then deducted the total from his bank account when he returned it to the repository. His cuff chimed happily when the transfer was made. A smiling AI projection was waiting for him at the door, hovering between the lenses that gave it substance. “Thank you for shopping Fast and Fresh...have a pleasant afternoon!” Everything was clean and ran smoothly here. In fact, there was very little in the modern world that didn’t work exactly the way it was supposed to. And all of it was due to the company he worked for.

  The company that saved the world.

  “How did we get here?” he thought as he passed the hologram without responding.

  How indeed.

  NeuTech had begun ten years prior as a consortium of scientists, funded by billionaires and every developed government on the planet, with a single mission in mind: stabilize a climate that had fallen wildly out of control. Storms had grown savage, drought ravaging already vulnerable regions, and rising sea levels had created massive flooding and eroded shorelines everywhere. The debate about what had caused the imbalance could have raged on forever, until the suggestion was made by an astrophysicist-climatologist named Colin Hague that it really didn’t matter anymore. “It’s here,” he argued. “And it’s real. And it isn’t going away unless we do something about it.” He was absolutely right; regardless of the cause, a solution was necessary, something comprehensive that addressed all potential sources natural and manmade, and operated in a feedback loop that could be maintained indefinitely. So he was given funding to create a superteam of the most cutting-edge scientists, engineers, programmers, chemists, and physicists from around the world. They worked tirelessly for three years on an algorithm that would allow humans to reestablish the natural balance. And all it took to implement this miraculous mathematical salvation was a global network system sixty times more powerful than the internet, a collection of ionic disruptors constructed and stationed at strategic points on every continent, and a phalanx of satellites circulating Earth forevermore.

 

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