Found a Job
Charles Whitman lived completely unaware of the historic notoriety surrounding his namesake. When some random kind soul cross-referenced the student database with MurderWiki, the story screamed over his feeds between classes one otherwise uneventful day in high school. His score soared into 600s, his holo emblazoned over historic photographs and digitized footage of staggering and prone Austinites. By fourth period he was entertaining offers from Starbucks for screencaps, holos, and Vnet appearances. He earned a lean but fashionable percentage posing with their logo, and additional dividends (adjusted for quarterly projections) for handling and ingesting their products via livestream. “Blast” Whitman fared better than most for a few years, padding his Universal Basic Income with promotions and custom avatars for a variety of mid-range scored corporate entities.
Democracy being a fickle mistress, the masses tired of symmetrically crew-cut, slim-jawed, uber-Anglo “Blast” Whitman slurp CoCoKills and CarboBombs with gusto. His gradual exile to the margins of life meant that his was a nostalgia brand. Financially, nostalgia was worse than death. His score and income plummeted, and to fill time “Blast” attended random marketing classes and the occasional free giveaway seminar. Both came with the customary free drugs and score perks for being an active participant in Democracy, so what the fuck?
After a tiresome seminar advertised as “Money Motivation: Beat the PornBots at Their Game!” Whitman was hungry, dejected, and trapped in a rapidly fading neurochemical euphoria. He joined in the mandatory audience participation cheers, role-playing, and sexual exercises simply to watch his score climb by a few desperate points. By virtue of being anything anyone wanted at any time, and acting on neurostimulation alone (no fuss, no muss!), PornBots were just better at sex, and any sales pitch to the contrary was truly an exercise in futility. Whitman was just a little kid when the PornBots were released on holofeeds and Vnet, but old enough to realize that they took one of the last jobs still available to the masses. But the First Benefit of living in Democracy was to sell, and the “Money Motivation” guys at least deserved to be heard as good citizens.
Mulling over links to score perks he received at the seminar, Whitman wandered through the broad augmented plaza that ran the length of town. It appeared as a common green, and felt as though he was walking on fresh, spongy sod under an afternoon sun in late spring. A holographic billboard sprang up and remained in his view as he walked. The ad declared, BE NEW — RENEW! Whitman swept it aside repeatedly as he continued down the plaza. Renew, LLC obviously spent a lot of points to keep the billboard up despite his tactile feed dismissals. Despite lucrative advertising, score-counseling services like Renew, Salvation, and Happy Hearts, Inc. were a total scam. Algorithms pasted together by grade-schoolers could sniff out a puffed-up score. Any fiduciary boost received by these services also entailed them, the service providers, first claim to any and all additional score improvements in perpetuity. The history holos referred to such an arrangement as slavery.
Whitman finally rid himself of the ad in time to reach a Starbuck’s dispenser. He summoned his nerve and approached one he rarely frequented on account of his paltry score and the beautiful CSR exec that staffed the boisterous rack of CoCoKills, CarboBombs, CaffSplosions, and ColaLicious. These colorful and aesthetically pleasing dispensers were replete with holos that linked to all your contacts and informed them of the joy you experienced at Starbucks that very moment. Linking came with additional score perks and a random, albeit temporary, boost of up to twenty points.
The perpetual score counter on his feed read 408. It had already slipped by two points since the seminar, as people routinely dropped superficial contacts cluttering their feeds. Whitman shrugged and screwed up his courage to join the short line idling near the Starbuck’s. No one in the queue linked with him, because no one recognized him. When his turn came to be approved, Whitman had already selected a CarboBomb to ward off hunger. The dispensary CSR exec wore the traditional sash and miniskirt bearing the company logo. Her bare pink breasts peeked out between long tresses of sea-foam green that shifted hues at random. As she reviewed his application at the point-of-sale holo that floated just above the counter, Whitman hoped that with approval, his old discount might still be applied. It did not, and as a result of his shrinking score, the price of his CarboBomb had actually increased since his last visit to a Starbuck’s a few days ago. With swirling diamonds in her animated irises, the exec quietly and graciously informed him that his projected score indicated this would be his final visit, unless his fortunes improved. No fashionable company served Nothings, who lived below the 400 threshold.
“You don’t recognize me? I’m “Blast” Whitman!” he pleaded.
The exec smiled politely, with a slight shake of her sea-green hair, and motioned for the next person in line.
Whitman clutched his CarboBomb and sipped idly from the straw, wondering if he could kill a random passer-by or two for a quick score boost. He had no appreciable combat skills, and his current score also prevented him from getting approval to obtain a weapon to carry out such a gambit. On the walk back to the block where his sleeping rack lay, in the honeycomb of old shipping containers stacked to the sky, a terrible squelching noise poured into his skull. Whitman collapsed to his knees, hands clawing at his headgear. His last holo showed a tiny image of the CSR exec next to a red score debit of ten points. Then his feeds completely faded out, ghostlike traces of their pastels lingering in his eyes.
He had finally become Nothing. The ventilation filters choked, and Charles Whitman removed his mask, forced to breathe the same air as the bottom-dwellers of Democracy. The soft green grass and late spring sunshine were replaced with stained concrete, profusely webbed with cracks, and an impenetrable shroud of smoky gray. Feeble sodium lamps had long since replaced failed solar ones, penetrating the gloom of Democracy a mere dozen feet in any direction. Charles Whitman hacked on the stench until he retched. Still on his knees, he leaned back and forced himself to breathe through his mouth, struggled to assure himself this was only temporary. His reflection stubbornly appeared in a defunct LED display coated with decades of grime. A tawny, heavily jowled face with too many freckles stared back at him. Sealed in their identical tactile response bodysuits, masked pedestrians manipulated empty air, unaware of Nothing.
