The Red Button Problem

He was under strict instructions: when the green light goes on, push the red button. It couldn’t be less complicated. There was no ambiguity. There was one light that would eventually go on and it would be green. There was one red button to push. Simple.

But he worried. The light, which was not yet on—since if it were he would have already pushed the red button—gave no color indication. It looked neutral when it was off. No color at all. What if, when it came on, it wasn’t green? What if it were yellow or, god forbid, red? What then?

He also wondered why he was tasked with this at all. Couldn’t the electric current that turned the green light on be re-routed to start the process that the red button was connected to? Why did there need to be a human in the loop? A trained monkey could do it. Hell, a trained pigeon could do it.

That was another problem. What did the red button do? He hadn’t been told. He’d asked, of course, but he only got evasive answers that were less than satisfying. It was the bureaucratic runaround instead. The information about what the red button did was on a “need to know” basis and he didn’t need to know in order to push the button.

But for 7 years now he’d spent 8 hours a day, sitting in a room with no decorations and nothing to relieve the stark gray brutalism of the concrete walls except the chair in which he sat and the small desk upon which was placed the metal box that held the green light and red button, connected by a cable to a socket in the wall. A fluorescent fixture embedded in the ceiling provided light.

He arrived each day in the morning at exactly 8 a.m. and relieved the person who had the graveyard shift. They would nod to one another but neither spoke a word. He didn’t even know the other man’s name. In the evening he would be relieved by a different man who was new, having only worked there for just over a year, being a replacement for the previous man who had apparently died but not, he was assured, here in the room. He didn’t know the new man’s name either.

He was allowed two 10-minute breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon as well as a half hour lunch, which he took in the cafeteria. Another man would sit in the room while he was on his break or eating. When he entered the room he was not permitted to bring anything in. No books, newspapers, smart phones or other distractions.

It was just him, the green light, and the red button.

Staying alert was difficult while he waited for the green light to come on. There was no music allowed, so he sat in silence and stared at the box. When he felt himself drifting off to sleep he would stand up and pace back and forth in the small room, which only allowed two or three steps in any direction.

He occasionally thought of quitting his job, but it paid really well and had excellent benefits. Plus, he wasn’t sure he was qualified to do anything else after so many years at this job. He realized that he didn’t know what the company he worked for actually did. Perhaps it manufactured something, a high tech widget of some kind. Or maybe it provided a service. But there was no one to ask. He rarely saw anyone else besides the other men who also had the green light job. He assumed this was a local office, far away from the central headquarters which would certainly be bustling with activity. Out here in the small city where he lived they presumably provided ancillary services of some kind that didn’t require a lot of manpower.

He’d looked the company up on Google, of course, but that was no more enlightening than any other source of information he’d been able to find. The website was full of platitudes about how they believed in the promise of human empowerment while at the same time being woefully short on specifics. It was difficult to imagine how they were able to conduct an actual business in such a fashion and yet his checks continued to be deposited into his bank account twice a month without fail and he received regular increases in his salary that stayed ahead of inflation.

In may ways it was a good job. Aside from the soul crushing boredom of staying in a small concrete room for a third of his life, of course. He dated occasionally, nothing serious yet but he hoped he would eventually meet “the one” and settle down to raise a family. He worked out regularly at a health club he belonged to near his apartment and he went out for beers with a couple of friends from college once a week. When new acquaintances asked him what he did he would wave his hands vaguely and say “I’m in tech, can’t talk about it. NDAs, you know,” and then change the subject. His life was simple and in a kind of stasis. He was almost 30 and still had no idea what he was going to do with himself.

One day, about 20 minutes after returning from lunch, just as mid-afternoon drowsiness was kicking in, the green light went on.

He stared at it for a moment. Was he imagining it? He closed his eyes and opened them again. Still on. Still green. He pushed the red button. The light went out. Nothing else happened. He opened the door to the room and looked out into the corridor. There was no one there. He called out but no one replied. He walked down the hall, trying doors as he went but they were all locked. He tried pounding on some of them but no one responded.

As far as he could tell he was alone in the building. He took the elevator to the ground floor and walked through the empty lobby, out the revolving doors and onto the sidewalk. Hanging back by the side of the building, he blinked in the glare of the afternoon sun and looked around at the hustle and bustle of humanity, people walking with purpose, working to fulfill their destinies. They probably didn’t have green light—red button jobs, he reflected.

He stepped away from the building and out into the flow of humanity.