WorkSpace

Re: ASE Providence tower report (Blackheath)
“Surveillance Tower 4, East” ase_prov4E@ministryofjustice.org
Date: 2028-07-05, 16:39:27
To: WorkSpace Operator Monitoring (UK) Alejandro_fernandez@workspace.world

Surveillance summary report

Author: Tower 4, AI agent child (sentience rated: 0.63, non-intuitive)
Subject: WorkSpace employee (London Operators, teams 4-11) team building sessions
Location: Blackheath neo-gambrel leisure biome (SE3)
Date stamp: 2028-07-04
Report focus: Atypical employee behaviour (Filter: Known downtime anti-social conduct variants)

A.M. Session (start time: 07:30, end time: 11:45):
Operator 1338 (hereafter referred to as: N) demonstrated 4 distinct, separate incidents of aberrant, atypical behavioural modifications outside of his known comportment norms. As follows: 

07:32
N greeted Xiu Chen Wong (VP Job Maintenance) with what appeared to be a gift (N.B.: Standard remote TraceGuard bomb sniffing protocol was actioned prior to object handover). Camera resolution was insufficient to precisely determine the nature of the gift; however, this agent considered an organic, fruit ovoid measuring 10.4 centimetres a low risk to aforementioned management personnel. 

08:13
N volunteered to assist with setting up the first team building fun task. Laser microphone pickups indicate N directing above-normal volume encouragements to his team; facial expression recognition algorithms indicated resultant distaste emanating from 4 other team members (IDs appended).

10:01
During the refreshment break N avoided the sugar-rich brunch confections and authorised caffeine beverages. This agent noted that N consumed/imbibed homemade nourishment; audio pickups inferred from self-directed comments by N that it was partially soy based. This agent is unable to extrapolate the relevance of the following comment by N:
“You try fucking eating this swill, Babs - please let me have a donut” 

11:13
N was involved in the resolution of a group infraction. During the third team building exercise of the a.m. period (cross-cultural Sino-Anglo business protocols: Correct repast techniques) an altercation between Operator 1278 and Operator 9812 broke out. This agent is not equipped with baseline human peer-bonding analysis routines and is therefore not able to comment on the following recorded audio:
“You pink feather slag; I saw the conjugal tank log”
And:
“Well, anyone that can’t last longer than 2 minutes even in virch deserves all they get”
N was recorded admonishing these 2 operators, requesting that the discord participants discontinue their team harmony destruction. This agent witnessed an unprecedented level of authority cooperation by N, deferring appropriately to Xiu Chen Wong after he had defused the altercation (Advisory: Refer Xiu Chen Wong for additional leadership and fealty enablement training).
_________

(Plain text summary concludes. Please see appended LISP files for raw AI agent output/analysis.)

Further inquiries about this report should be directed to the Coffle-class AI overview committee at the MoJ (bootstrap@ministryofjustice.org).

Report concludes. Have a nice day.

There are five of them, all faceless, arrayed behind a bland blonde wood table. They must have applied some sort of management witchcraft review hack to my ocular feed; the rest of the office remains crystal, rendered, clear; but whenever I try to focus on their faces I get macula fuzz-out and a stab of pain in both eyes. Nice touch, even face to face, management interactions are a one-way info transaction. The fetch minder avatar fades out and I’m alone with the inquisition.

I’ve been perched on a high, 3 legged, backless stool; this has the combined effect of maximum exposure and discomfort, and also denies any sort of posture that could imply composure. The central reviewer avie speaks (I tag it as Inquisitor 1).

“Operator 1338, this is a mandatory, extra-ordinary employment review; it will not appear in the public performance review Space, it will not be accessible by your line Operator, it will not, at present, contribute to annual exchange collateral enhancement decisions.

In addition, any breach of confidentiality pertaining to this meeting to any sentient entity will result in immediate employment termination and Job expulsion; with attendant deletion of any personally accrued monetary (or otherwise) resources. Please acknowledge with a band-5 WorkSpace fealty ping.”

Fuck.

“I acknowledge.” What choice have I got, I toggle the ping and I note an immediate upgrade to my basic level 3 security clearance – WTF – this is getting weirder.

“Do you confirm that on Saturday night, 24-June-2028, you were engaged in multiple social intercourses, intoxicant enhanced, with your habitual extra-curricular peer group?”

Gulp.

“Yes, confirmed”.

“This board notes that during the course of this Saturday evening you became dangerously incapacitated due to the consumption of a random narcotics mix (see appended WorkSpace Security toxanalysis). As a result of this willful intoxication you put yourself in a position of vulnerability, and incurred a degree of peripheral, non-life threatening organic damage. However, more seriously, your actions, or lack of them, resulted in the loss of WorkSpace property, to wit: One iRex PetaBook. Physical device loss aside, what is of much more importance here is the loss of, and open access to, the data on that device.

Operator, the loss of this device has severe implications. As you are aware, all Operators are issued with PetaBooks after the completion of their 6-month probation period. Ostensibly a company benefit, the PetaBooks provide a useful personal node for data capture, bio-authentication ackles, employee tracking, downtime leisure usage and other standard WorkSpace activities.

However, the PetaBooks also provide a critical , distributed WBAN function for WorkSpace All, facilitating continent-wide wireless net access. The loss of your device has had a two-fold implication: One, there was, for 1.7 seconds, a net coverage loss in the EC1 cell – the result: a financial data loss in Krasnoyarsk natural gas transactions amounting to 3.2 billion Euros. And, two, a phage incursion from agents unknown into the WorkSpace net.

It is due primarily to this latter issue that we find ourselves convened today.”

OMFG. My Job flags me an adrenaline overstretch alert, I quash it reflexively – of course I’m fucking stressed!

Inquisitor 1 continues.

“Track-back analyses indicate that despite access to the proprietary data on your PetaBook, the net incursion would not have been possible without a degree of internal WorkSpace complicity. Your incompetence aside, the review board does not consider you a suspect in this infraction, ergo, another Operator is responsible. Your task now, non-optional and in immediate effect, is to assist with the identification and apprehension of this rogue WorkSpace element. To assist you with this task you will be fitted with a mobile Job prosthetic, I imagine you are familiar with the concept - your Job is going with you from now on.”

We had all read the specs; mobile Jobs are a skeletally bonded variant of the more cumbersome exo-unit we use daily, correctly integrated they apprently can assist with biofeedback analysis (a polygraph with shoes, essentially), provide enhanced net access and, if necessary, a degree of organic boost. We had all also noted a number of less conspicuous spec footnotes; this type of Job modification will also, where relevant (whatever that means), make WorkSpace mandated override decisons on the Operator, for example: diet enforcement, and the euphemistically named: loyalty action recommendations.

“Please note that this assignment does not in any way reduce your normal responsibilities to WorkSpace, nor does it, in any way, imply an enhancement to your current WorkSpace employment status.”

I was wondering about that, the replacement of the standard Job immersion apparatus with an internally integrated Job kink is usually the preserve of Prime management members. This is the good bit – I’m going RL mobile with Babs in tow. Everything else is a fucking disaster; I’ve been turned, trussed and stuffed - a stool pigeon equally cursed and blessed.

And FFS, I’m still going to have to go on the team building sessions.

“A final note, Operator, the attendant fiscal loss incurred as a result of your carelessness has not been forgotten. The full amount will be salary index linked and payback amortized over your remaining lifetime, with an in perpetua ancestor clause active until debt completion.

Now, please report to WorkSpace Surgical.”

I’ve never been to WorkSpace Prime (Tier 2) before, and frankly, it’s fucking weird. And not weird in a weird way; it’s just too normal.

We all do it, winding ourselves up daily with pocket fantasies about how Management are revelling in the glut of resource and matérial that their privilege brings; in our mind’s eye we see them rorting and cavorting in shift-less freedom like a Vegas winner cliché on a bed of paper money.

The reality, as always, is stranger and more banal then we could ever imagine. The gate to Tier 2 irises open and I follow the sublime avie into the most unexpectedly prosaic scene imaginable. We’re in the bustling ground floor lobby of a large corporate headquarters; at the back wall is a long reception desk manned by three NPC zombies, faux-Doric columnar decorates the perimeter. At the entrance to the lobby, to our left (we obviously entered via an internal port), stand two metal detector arches (these must be visual analogues for basic guest entry authentication). A myriad of avatars flit across the huge space, occupying all three dimensions - a cloud of corporate seraphim; some tagged with visitor passes, others proudly demonstrating their place in the WorkSpace hierarchy with a mixture of livery, heraldry and synthetic pheromone tags. The floor is an elaborately rendered metahologram of the florid WorkSpace logo.

Involuntarily I follow my minder across the lobby floor, we ascend in a gentle arc towards the notional rear wall of the lobby space; obviously our ackles shit on lobby-level peons because we don’t even bother with basic Space etiquette and avoid other avatars on intersecting trajectories, we just cut through them – I am dimly aware of indignant pings failing to penetrate our shared firewall and then the view cut-fades to a very ordinary, much smaller lift lobby. A sign on the wall indicates we are on the 23^rd floor, poverty spec carpet analogue coats the floor. And then, bizarrely, we’re walking! Actually, really, perambulating. Absolutely no-one bothers with base human analogue movements in virch anymore; it’s a crazy waste of bandwidth and the time cost (time-theft as us operators know it) is so at odds with core WorkSpace ethics that I am agog.

I look around as we pass down a very RL-typical central office corridor, fabric cubicle dividers fanning off to each side. The degree and quality of the virch reproduction is staggering: coffee cup rings on desks, burbling water coolers, splayed staplers awaiting refill, furrowed brows peering at monitors(!?), a fucking photocopier – what is this place?

I ping the avie with a general broadcast interrogative (a WTF basically), it ignores me; just a repeat of the same text horiscroll rolls across my HUD “…Mandatory review…” I try to ignore it.

The walking continues and it starts to dawn on me, and I’m fucking outraged: these goons have been given the keys to the kingdom, they’ve clawed their Darwinistic way up the slippery shit stick of corporate achievement and this is what they spend their limitless data allowance and bandwidth allocation on: a repro of a shoddy second millenium office. Eschewing the sublime advances of near-perfect 3D virch representation, the paradoxically beautiful sight of corporate databases hewn in pure light, this is what they work in – an exquisitely rendered sty.

Fury whites out the ever present review anxiety, we reach a double boardroom door, veneered in cheap walnut. The avie inclines its head: I reach for the door handle. Fuck ‘em.