Don’t know more
than we need to
It’s a good thing, too, given the
manuals are written on acid paper that dissolves within a few hours of opening,
quickening the more you handle it. I don’t bother bringing one anymore. By the
time I’m called in, there’s only so much that can be done. The second nurse is
a young woman. Sporting a tight white-and-black spotted dress, dangling
teardrop earrings, jet-black bob haircut, and heels hastily covered in plastic
wrap. She nervously flips through her manual with one hand, covering her face
with a tissue in the other.
That’s
not good.
They
called her during an off-day. And she’s new. Are we short-handed already?
“Put the manual away, miss. You’re
going to burn the thing out early. I’ll walk you through it.”
She eyes me warily and checks with her
partner who nods in confirmation. The nurse returns the manual to a leather clutch
hanging off her shoulder.
“The smell…Jesus, my head
is killing
me. Can I step out for a minute?”
“Rule
Number Three- Don’t, under any
circumstances, leave until the Dreamer is awake,” I say.
“Or terminated. And that’s Rule Two
for us,” says the male nurse. “Here.” He hands her a small pump of liquid
menthol. “Spray it on the tissue.”
I stopped bringing that, too. What she
smells – what we all smell – is the unmistakable miasma of human rot. A
sickly-sweet mixture of pus, sugar, and gangrene. Stew gone bad; left to fester
on the stove in a humid city apartment.
Each
appointment begins with an
inspection. In an eight-hundred square foot apartment, it takes me less than
ten minutes. I check for hidden cameras, wiretaps, cell phones, smart devices,
unsent and unopened letters. Anything related to the outside world. In the
pods, this is made even easier as everything is provided by their – and
my – employer; Automata. His webcam knows
what he’s been eating and his microwave knows when he cooked it. The AI
assistant – playing his favorite songs, setting his alarm, calling Mom – knows
when he’s fallen asleep based on the cadence of his breathing, and for how
long. This is how Automata was alerted.
First,
the employee stops showing up
for day-shifts at the office. Burnout is real, so no-shows are initially
forgiven. Especially if they live in the pod. For them, no job equals no home.
They reappear eventually.
If they don’t, then the analysts
pull
their bio-records from their home. Their breathing indicates an abnormality of
REM-sleep. Too deep for just drug use or alcoholism. And the erratic nature of
the dreaming indicates increased brain activity. The same centers of the brain
that are involved when working. Normally, this would be done in real time. The
employee caught within a few days. My inspection reveals that, unlike the
others, this one is offline. That means they were working on something
sensitive.
The apartment consists of three rooms—a
front living area with a couch, TV, desk, kitchenette, and door to the
bathroom. The third and final room is separated by a large curtain behind the
couch, failing to restrict the smell of death behind it. The room has been
restricted in emergency protocol by Automata. That means only the dim, red
emergency lights are working. Internet access is cut. The air conditioning is
too strong and too cold; for preservation. The apartment stays this way until
an Inspector like myself clears the Dreamer for reintegration. I walk towards
the bedroom, the nurses in tow.
I was hired during the launch of the
Dreamworks program three years ago. Worked in employee monitoring long before
that. If we were allowed to use names, mine would be in the byline of the tech
manuals. I get to act jaded because I’ve seen it all. The hard-nosed corporate
gumshoe. The inscrutable company goon. Cool, calm, collected. At this moment,
thoroughly shocked and disgusted.
An attempted exclamation under my
breath is caught in my throat alongside coffee-flavored bile.
“Yea,” the male nurse says. “It's
bad.”
Suspended above the bed before me is a
human marionette.
A mass of tangled cables hovers above
like a chaotic thought bubble. Streams of different colors connected to body
parts and machinery. Thin, white wires attached to electrodes on the temples
and forehead. Thick, black cables connected to the headset that lays titled
over his eyes, a dark blue glow emanating from underneath. Straps hung
haphazardly through rings in the ceiling that hold up the twig-like forearms,
fingers still frantically typing at an invisible keyboard. The legs are propped
up with pillows to keep the blood from clotting. A catheter runs out below the
sheets, a yellowing stain forming along its course. An IV runs from the
wormlike artery of his left arm, another sits in the shriveled muscle of his
quadriceps. These last two were added by the nurse upon arrival.
The fingers are broken and askew, the
tips bloody stumps, fingernails disappeared or hanging on by a strand of flesh.
The keyboard, set aside by the nurse (a violation of protocol), is dotted in
flecks of blood and bone. His lips are dried and cracked, glistening from a
recent sheen of balm the nurse applied before shoving a feeding tube down his
throat. The male nurse gently pushes the body side to side, wiping at open bed
sores with antiseptic. Even in such a deep sleep, the body twitches
involuntarily with pain. I know the nurses aren’t allowed to administer any
sort of anesthetic as it could interfere with the Dreamers work. We’re not
permitted to know exactly what that work is.
The electrode wires end in a monitor above the headboard. I
insert my ID card, punch in the code, and watch as an antique strip of receipt
paper prints out below. Six inches. Twelve. Eighteen. The receipt comes to a
halt three feet later.
“What’s
it say ?”
He
knows I can’t answer that. Not that it would make any
sense to him.
The report is in
binary. I scan the report and send it back
to HQ, awaiting instructions. I slump into the couch in the living room and rub
my eyes. The coffee table in front of me is littered with opened bills and a
series of pink and green envelopes, long ignored, surely containing the same. A
much healthier version of the bedridden drone sits in a frame, holding a girl I
imagine is his daughter.
“Her
medical records are here, too.” The nurse points at
the picture frame. “Leukemia. No wonder he picked up overtime. I’m guessing the
bastards overclocked him?”
Overtime.
Overclocked. Derogatory slang for the Dreamworks
program. Words any smart employee would avoid saying behind even closed doors
for fear of firing. Or worse. As much as I hate to admit to the brash ‘Rage
Against the Machine’ attitude of Gen Alpha, each inspection makes it harder to
argue.
Dreamworks is overtime
while you sleep. A computer chip the
size of a dime inserted deep into the temporal lobe, stimulated by electrical
signals at night, returning simple feedback to a localized hard drive in the
form of binary. That code is sent back to Automata HQ, translated, and used for
all sorts of things. Customer purchasing preferences. Search engine
optimization. GPS coordinates. Or, if you listen to the Anti-AI protesters, the
total mapping of the human subconscious to fully automate Artificial
Intelligence programs and create a system of living, breathing computers.
The program has been a huge success. Employees relished the
opportunity to literally make money while they slept. Users reported the
occasional nightmare or vision disturbance during the day, but nothing more.
Until a few started disappearing from the office. Then a few more.
Like any new technology, Dreamworks was launched in Beta.
It needed tweaking. Patches. Defenses against hackers. Began with a solid
ninety-nine percent efficacy. The one-percent lies a few feet behind me.
Desiccated. Riddled with open sores. Fingers typing until they break down into
cases of loose sausage. Unable to wake up. Trapped in their digital cubicle.
The first few cases were easy enough. Disconnect the units,
perform a hard reset, inject some adrenaline and you’re good to go. In rare
cases, electrostimulation via a needle inserted into the chip. Bonus pay for
their troubles. The majority of them didn’t even leave the program. Rumor is
that the ones who did back out, the ones tapped into the cloud, kept on working
anyways. Without ever knowing or being compensated.
“How are his vitals?” I ask.
“BPM at fifty with a slight arrhythmia. BP eighty over
sixty. Blood sugar basically non-existent. Eye movement suggesting stage three
REM. I’d say he’s been like this for seven, maybe eight days.”
“How is that possible?”
The nurse shrugs.
“Given the emergency code on this one, the
size of the
incision on the back of the head, I’d say he’s got something a bit more
advanced in there than the rest.” He taps his head with a gloved finger. “You
taking notes on this?”
Rule
Five. Nothing on paper. I mimic him with a tap to my
own head.
My portable scanner
pings. Code words drift across the
two-inch LCD display, too long to be read at once, just in case anyone looks
over my shoulder.
Omega. Twelve.
Seven. Adam. Juice. Extend. Extend. Extend.
I squint at the screen and wait for
the words to pass by again to confirm.
Extend.
Extend. Extend.
A
word I’ve only seen once before, and never in triplicate. For the first time
since my rookie months, I wish I had my manual.
“What’re our orders, captain?”
I sigh as I push off my knees to
stand.
“You talk too much.” The nurses follow
me back to the bed.
“You,” I point to the
girl, “set up a
cascade of three more IV bags. Double-check the stability of the feeding tube
and the volume of the nutrition formula. Replace the catheter. I’ll need you
back here twice a week for maintenance. You’ll get your orders the day of.”
“Understood.” She speaks confidently,
relieved to finally be involved.
“You,” pointing to the
man, “raise the
patient, thoroughly clean the sores and pack them with gauze. Replace the
sheets. Shake out the legs and arms. Your priority is the fingers. Check the
damage and add splints. I need you to make sure those fingers are fixed up
properly. I cannot stress this enough.”
“And the electrodes?”
“Don’t touch it. Or the headset. I’ll
handle those.”
We set to our tasks. The girl is eager
and efficient. Works in silence. She’s getting a solid report from me.
The man. The man is keeping an eye on
me, and me on him. A rookie would say he’s methodical. I say he’s stalling.
I remove the headset, clean the
padding, and tighten it up with a snug fit. Plug in a flash drive containing a
much-needed update. I type in a code to the monitor for a hard reset. Then I
slip into the living room to perform some old-school maintenance. Grabbing a
pair of scissors from the Dreamers desk, I cut the cords of every electronic
device in the house. Lamps included. By now Automata would have reset the lock
code for the door.
“Progress report?”
“All good on my end,” says the girl.
Indeed she is. Each of her tasks in fine order.
“Almost.” The male nurse is gently
massaging the feet of the Dreamer. I inspect his work. Primarily, the fingers.
The splints are well-done. Stiff and secure. Automata uses specific splints for
the Dreamers; rubber tips on the end, and elastic shock absorbers surround the
joints. I recheck the monitor and headset and remove the flash drive.
“We’re all set in here. Wait for me in
the living room.”
The girl marches off. The male nurse
lingers, staring at the face of the dreamer, casting a mournful glance over his
shoulder as he leaves. I begin my last task.
In spite of his aggressive typing the
keyboard remains in working order. I reattach the wrist-straps and place it a
half-inch underneath his fingers, which continue in their lonely wriggle,
searching for their keys like worms to soil. With the keyboard back in position
I give the Dreamer a shot of adrenaline, and the fingers come to life in an
excited march across their field of dreams.
“What are you doing?” the male nurse
asks, horrified.
“Miss, please head down to the
parking
lot. A car is waiting for you. Be sure to take the fire exit stairs. You will
hear from us soon.”
She glances at the male nurse and
back
to me before heading out. The male nurse is shivering. I step close to him and
pull out a slim digital camera.
“This you?”
I show him the screen. An image of
him, picket sign in hand, mouth stretched wide mid-shout, eyes wrinkled in
anger. The sign reads:
Dreamworks=Slavery
I
have no doubt that, if he could, he would tackle me right now, and beat my face
in. He might have the size to do it, too. But my left hand, below the belt,
holds a syringe of tranquilizer stuck deep into his thigh. The needle
imperceptibly thin. He crumples onto the floor, eyes wide in fear and shock.
Mute, helpless, and fully cognizant. I check my watch.
“You’ll be collected in seven minutes.
I can’t tell you what happens after that. My advice? If you get the chance, if
they let you alone, kill yourself. It will be a mercy.” Tears well up in his
eyes.
“And,”
I continue, startled to find
myself choking up, “I’m sorry about your brother.”
