Skinner's Cubicle

The bed swung away from the wall in an attempt to mercilessly dump its occupant to the floor. Alex's subconscious had been trained by the morning ejections of the last few weeks. He snapped at the last second, landing like a cat. In approximately 1 minute and 20 seconds, he knew the shower would begin spraying water for a steamy, luxurious 7 minutes and 45 seconds. Exactly 15 minutes after the shower goes dry, the front wall of his efficiency apartment will roll up to expose the waiting transport. He knew to be clothed and ready before then to avoid the embarrassment and unpredictable harshness of March weather.

The Corporation classified Alex Nicholson an H9 with certifications in software maintenance and creative writing. The creative writing cert was for his own amusement and meant zero for job assignments, but it made him feel like he had a speck of independence. He imagined They tolerated artsy training only to placate the level 9s. A few intellectual pursuits in the curriculum were the minimum They would go to keep the competent minority sane. The Corporation was heavily reliant on technology so highly intelligent workers were treated as a necessary evil.

This was not why he was stuck in H level housing, though he wondered if the writing cert was a small part of the reason. It was not why he had a miserable half job either. He assumed that many of The Corp's leaders had top intelligence scores, but were B quality behavior at least. He was too rebellious and afflicted with seasonal mood swings so never achieved better than an E on any of his annual behavioral evaluations, plus he had a habit of asking his superiors too many questions. He found no boss liked to be strongly questioned, especially by an inferior with a several point advantage in intelligence. It only took a year out of training to be demoted to an H which proscribed his current living quarters. He felt lucky to still have his job. Any H lower than 7 would be stuck with prison labor: mining, loading and hauling. He hoped if his current job went well he could get reclassified to a G next year and return to an apartment with a simple alarm clock.

As the haze of sleep finally began to fall away, he was relieved to see that the habitual areas of his brain managed to perform his basic hygiene routine and get his ass on the transport during his morning stupor. As his eyes began to focus, he could feel the transport slowing just before the door opened at his stop. He again silently thanked the basal part of his brain for being so responsible. Elevator to basement level. Sit in the stall. Log into the system. He was disappointed that he attained full consciousness so soon. His auto-pilot could have easily handled it all up to now.

The first debug project was waiting for him in the queue. Finally some real brain work. He had a theory that most of these tasks were fake. They had a lot of software sociopaths to keep busy and it would be logically impossible to always supply everyone with a steady stream of exactly enough work to go around. He stared at the first task which exhibited all the qualities of an excuse to keep him from falling asleep at work. He imagined D9s in some other cubicle whose only job it was to screw up good code to keep the H9s busy and out of trouble. He had seen a near exact copy of this mangled subroutine several days before so he quickly fixed the deliberate mistakes and pulled up the next task. Jackpot! This was a real cluster of crap. Corporate policy was to hire As and Bs no matter what their intelligence rating, believing their dedication and work ethic could overcome a total lack of ability. What a joke. The sap who wrote this was probably right out of Corporate brainwashing and completely lost. Not much choice than to write the entire thing over from scratch and send it back for its author to take the credit. This is where the mindless sycophants got their abilities: through an electronic nipple of a outcast.

Being immersed in that project made the morning fly by. He had nearly finished the rewrite when the break timer popped on the screen. He had 60 minutes to do whatever he wanted provided he stayed where he was and did no work. He decided to check the H9 message boards. He had posted his ideas about most of his work being unnecessary and fabricated and was curious what the other malcontents thought. Interesting. Not one comment or reply. That is strange. Usually somebody would at least flame him with random profanity. Unless. His head went numb and the pit of his stomach collapsed. "No, this is not that big of a deal. So what if my work is fake?" he knew that the H9 rooms were heavily monitored. Rebellious plus intelligent meant political subversive. Maybe he had crossed the line with that post. Hopefully nobody had noticed. Prophetically the entrance tone to his door rang and several men walked in.

"Good afternoon. Can we talk?" That was his boss, an extremely humor impaired B6. The other men he did not recognize, probably higher-ups or security reps. "How are your tasks going?"

"Pretty good. I am working on a major screwed-up piece right now, but it should work great once I am done with it." He was cursing himself internally halfway through the sentence. His smart-ass mouth was mostly to blame for his H ranking. He wondered why he could not just shut up.

"Yes." His boss drawled patronizingly. "Do you think it's real?"

Shit, shit, shit his head was swimming now. They read his post and it got somebody's attention. He figured it was time to back-peddle and hope.

"No, no, not this one." He wondered if his face appeared to wince as much as it felt.

"Oh, so which ones do you think are made up?"

"Well, it's not like I mind. The fake ones keep me sharp. They are a lot better than doing nothing." He wondered what happened to his plan of back-peddling. What he was saying was clearly not helping his situation.

Finally one of the Corporate thugs broke his mock tough arm-folded silence. "The Corporation does not have fake work. It is all important for all of our good. It is bad enough that you believe this crazy conspiracy theory, but trying to convince other employees that their work is meaningless is inexcusable. Do you know how many people have been complaining about you insulting their jobs? I am sorry, but for the good of the workers you are being reassigned."

They don't often reclassify before the annual review, but he knew he was now officially an I9. He wondered how bad digging ditches really was. The weather was getting nicer so maybe an outdoor job would be a nice change. Time to join the chain gang.