Employee

0502—Notification

employee 262966: device connected

0502—Notification

employee 262966: forfeit of two minutes productivity—pay has been deducted accordingly

The air conditioning is broken. Has been for a week, maybe more. Already beads of sweat form between your skin and the rubbery plastic of your wearable device. The air in the warehouse is thick, even this early in the morning. Outside temperatures are meant to reach 118º by late afternoon. All around, Productivity Managers are dropping off bottles of water for those beginning their shifts.

0541—Notification

employee 262966: device disconnected

You knew how hot it would be before you came to your shift. You planned accordingly by hydrating as much as you could. Too much, it turns out. You’re now regretting downing multiple glasses of water, vaguely yellow from the tap in employee housing. You choked it down, because you knew the benefits of the acrid, sulfuric liquid far outweigh the cost of passing out on the warehouse floor. Passing out, the ensuing medical treatment and observation, it takes time. Too much time. You can’t afford it. But now you’re regretting how much you drank. It’s too early in your shift for a break, but the pressure on your bladder tells you that now is the time to sacrifice your pay. It’s also too early in your shift to work in wet trousers. And also, you’ve seen what the Productivity Managers have done to idle employees.

0547—Notification

employee 262966: device connected

0547—Notification

employee 262966: forfeit of six minutes productivity—pay has been deducted accordingly

Apparently you weren’t the only one who made this mistake. You didn’t anticipate the line being this long this early.

As you reconnect your Productivity Monitor you begin to move swiftly. Your bladder now empty, you find it easier to be productive. With preternatural ease you navigate the labyrinthine corridors of the warehouse, locating items as their numbers appear on your Monitor, packaging them, loading them on the next AutoCart that passes. From there they will move on to Processing and Shipping. From there, they will be delivered to those in the consumer class that placed the order. You are good at your job. You were born for this—no, that isn’t quite right. You were bred for this.

0729—ALERT

Productivity Managers in your area

Your expedient work, normally an automatic response to the stimuli of the your Productivity Monitor—the bright flashes, pinging sounds, vibrations—becomes suddenly conscious, calculated. You work fast, but not so fast that it’s obvious. Heavy bootsteps echo throughout the warehouse corridors. Despite the heat, you don’t dare to even drink your water.

Men, dressed in black, helmets with visors obscuring their faces. They stroll with authority throughout your quadrant of the warehouse, slowly, truncheons tapping rhythmically in the palms of their gloved hands. Watching, enforcing Company policy:

Productivity is Progress. Progress is Prosperity.

0730—Notification

employee 262966: abnormal heart rate detected

0733—Notification

employee 262966: heart rate stabilized

please continue working

1012—Notification

employee 262966: new order: product #1131261514

You maneuver throughout the endless rows of shelves until you find Product #1131261514. A small chain, gold in color—not in material—and at its end a small pendant in the shape of a heart with a clasp at one end. You know this shape instinctively, and instinctively you know that this is not the shape of the human heart. You undo the clasp and open the locket. Inside it is empty. It waits to be filled by something near what the consumer class would call nostalgia. You feel an intuitive revulsion, not unlike nausea, at the thought. You run your thumb over the edge of the open pendant, tracing its outline. The feeling in the pit of your stomach, your natural and cultured aversion to any sort of sentiment has settled into an odd sort of pleasure, maybe in your bowels, maybe lower—you can’t quite be sure. Your Productivity Monitor flashes, vibrates, chimes.

1014—Notification

employee 262966: idle for two minutes

please continue working

You grasp the item tightly in your palm and continue back to your packing station. Something about the piece triggers a memory—no, not a personal one, but something more fundamental, something generational. It reminds you of a time you’ve never known, before your birth, before you and your class were bred for this work, before the Company (no, that can’t be right, because there is no before the Company, because the Company always has been). But there tugs at the back of your brain, at your chest, at your stomach, the memory—or something not unlike a memory—of something different.

1016—Notification

employee 262966: idle for four minutes

please continue working

At your packing station you lay the piece on the table, swipe the notification away from your Productivity Monitor. You will fill the order later. You have plenty more to fill in the meantime. You want to spend some time with the piece, with the feeling it inspires, before you pack it and send it off to Processing and Shipping.

Your work consisting mostly of reflexes, of automated, programmed responses, your mind is free to wander. You think back to when you were younger, before your employment, when you were still in training. You spent ten years there, from ages five to fifteen. Your bunkmate in trainee housing had a video receiver, one he wasn’t supposed to have, probably swiped from the warehouse. At night you could see the glow from the screen, dull, but still visible, from beneath his blanket. One night you crawled of your bed and into his, seduced by the glow of the receiver. The pictures on the screen told a story, a funny one, about a foolhardy woman and her longsuffering husband, and about the messes in which they found themselves, often ones they caused themselves. But in the end, everything was fine.

And at the beginning of each story, the name of the program was written across the screen in a pleasing script imposed over a bright red heart. Now, years later, you’ve forgotten the name. But the heart you remember, and the nights spent under the blanket with him, the trainee whose number you never learned, but whose stifled laughter still infects you, and whose shoulders you can still feel pressed up against yours as you lay on your stomachs with your hands propped beneath your chin, blanket pulled over your heads, and always keeping watch for the Junior Productivity Managers, in case you had to make a last-second dash for your bunk. These things you remember. And more than these, you remember the feeling in your chest at the sight of that bright red heart. The same feeling that this pendant instills within you now. The feeling you cannot extricate from your memories of him.

1038—Notification

employee 262966: abnormal heart rate detected

You continue working all while keeping a subtle yet vigilant eye out for the Productivity Managers. With the deftness of a magician you slide the pendant and chain into the pocket of your trousers and you continue to work.

1200—Notification

employee 262966: sustenance break begins now

please continue working in

14:59

14:58

14:57

14:56

The room is relatively empty. You sit at a table alone and eat the food provided. You drink. It’s more water than you probably need, but given the heat, you can’t stop yourself. Before you, on the wall, is a portrait of the Founder. He smiles, benevolent, in a brightly-colored suit and tie. Below the portrait, engraved on a gold—or what is meant to appear gold—plaque, are the words

Productivity

Progress

Prosperity

1330—ALERT

product #1131261514 awaiting receipt

1400—ALERT

product #1131261514 awaiting receipt

By now your trousers are wet through. Wet trousers are better than the pay that would be otherwise deducted, and a trip to the restroom without disconnecting your Monitor is a sure visit with the Productivity Managers, which would be even worse than having your pay docked. You work on.

1430—ALERT

product #1131261514 awaiting receipt

You finger the pendant in your trouser pocket—only briefly, so as not to lose any seconds of productivity. It’s still dry. If you were to place a photograph inside it, you know whose it would be.

1500—ALERT

product #1131261514 awaiting receipt

You know that you have only one hour before the Productivity Managers will come to check on the status of product #1131261514. But perhaps it was lost. With so many workers processing and packaging so many items, sometimes things are bound to get lost.

It’s hot enough by now that you can’t tell which wet spots are from sweat, and which are from urine. Not that it matters. Your designated laundry day isn’t for three more days. Tonight you will soak your trousers in the acrid, yellow water from the employee housing sink. You will hang them in the window of your tenement to dry. You will put them on again tomorrow. You will do the same thing tomorrow. Except tomorrow you will do it with a small gold heart in your pocket, a heart just like the one on the opening titles of the program you watched with him so many years ago. Tomorrow will be different.

1501—ALERT

Productivity Managers in your area

You hear the bootsteps, faintly at first. They echo through the corridors of the warehouse. You aren’t sure whether you’re sweating from the heat or from your own nervousness. Maybe both. Probably both.

You remember the morning, so many years ago, that you woke up to find him gone. You still can’t remember his trainee number. But you do remember that morning, the bunkhouse air stuffy like that of the warehouse now, raising your head from your pillow and looking over to his bunk and finding it empty. Bed perfectly made, pillow fluffed. As if no one had been there at all. And you knew. You knew it was because of the video receiver. You knew it was because of the late nights watching that program, man and wife running around frenetically, grayscale and absurd, for twenty minutes at a time. It was for the deep red heart that opened each episode. It’s happened before. It’s bound to happen again.

And now that heart is in your pocket. Or at least one similar. And they are coming, the same ones as then. Perhaps they will put you in a similar place. Perhaps you will end up the same. Perhaps you will get to see him again.

1502—ALERT

employee number #262966

Productivity Managers are on their way

please comply

You wish they would fix the air conditioning.

1502—Notification

employee 262966: abnormal heart rate detected