An Allegory Of Work

Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Bu- *tap*
Franklin silences the alarm.
He groans, gets up and walks to the bathroom. Still slightly dark outside.
Lights on, he looks in the mirror.
His brain can’t be arsed to judge his looks, he rubs sleep crust from eyes.
Piss, shower, brush teeth; happens automatically.
Conscious brain not bothered to wake yet.
Franklin continues automatically dressing, some drab getup of crisp shirt and pants.
Heads into the living room.
It’s an efficiency suite so the kitchen is the living room — he grabs some kind of fiber bar from the pantry and heads out the door.
Stuffing the bar in his face Franklin rounds the corner at the end of his street to the autobus stop. Waiting. Still essentially asleep. Franklin seems to enjoy that emptiness of non-thought. But soon the calories from the bar begin to allow his neurons the chatter more and his peace is oscillated.
Did he pay gas this month? He thinks so, but he’ll have to check after work…
Bus arrives, doors open, Franklin’s retina is scanned for his credit details and he takes a seat in the back.
Not too crowded this morning.
Bus drives itself, Franklin stares out the window into the middle distance.
After some time the bus arrives at WorkCorp, Franklin’s job. Generic 30 story concrete slab of a building, holds about 1,500 people.
Franklin exits the bus and heads up to the front door. Retina scanned again. A directed audio beam tells him alone to go to floor 7A today. They need his head this time it seems. Franklin seems glad that he didn’t try to think. He must have suspected they’d need his head today, after all he had been on treadmill duty for weeks.
Franklin gets to floor 7A and a hologram line ushers him to his seat.
He sits, then bends down to retrieve the helmet from under his chair.
He places it on his head and hits the “WORK” button hologram that has appeared in front of him.
The helmet intercepts control of Franklin’s motor system just before he can elicit an agonizing scream. His consciousness is ripped away and Franklin’s whole experience becomes abstract forms and sounds and smells and colors punctuated by spiky mathematical constructs tearing into his mind. All is agony as his brain is ramped up to 100% utilization and merged with the WorkCorp BrainComp. Smells like rotten eggs and feels like a trillion daggers, must be an optimization algorithm Franklin’s solving today. Those tend to be most unpleasant, but they do pay well to solve.
All around Franklin the helmeted employees of WorkCorp floor 7A twitch and try to moan, but remain silent, as their minds are smashed together to solve the algorithm.
A thin strand of drool slides from Franklin’s mouth as his head lists to the left and his brain is cooked in its own skull.
Just another day at the office.
