WorkSpace

Week four in Fast Track started with the worst spring storm in twenty years. The tail end of hurricane Sheva, an anomalous El Nino child tempest, tore across the Atlantic in five days and smashed itself first against Ireland and then, barely diminished, romped across South West England into London. For once the faintly hysterical British approach to any weather outside of bucolic norms was justified. Heathrow was closed completely when an aging, fully fuelled, Boeing triple seven was pancaked by wind shear against a primary noise baffle outside Terminal 6. Flash floods, now an established (and manageable) part of the start of British summertime, even threatened to overwhelm the drainage capacity of the new subterranean London orbital. Even in the rigid, over engineered confines of the Gaunt, the sounds of 200 km/h+ winds penetrated the carbon walls of my tiny apartment, and groggily woke me from my chemically mandated 5.5 hours.

There’s only five left of us in the final week of management training. Attrition has been brutal and swift; from the first culling at lobby level, to stress related death and even a tissue rejection of one of the on-board Jobs (that was gross). It’s an insidious process though; conditions that would that would repel the most rampant go-getter are ignorable in light of torturously incremental progress up the pyramid. As the weeks go by the spectre of poverty becomes more and more ephemeral and the dependency equation becomes increasingly distant. Privation becomes someone else’s problem: survival becomes an abstract performance related process, not a nutritional and energetic priority. This is just as marginal but dressed up in the polysyllables of management jargon the Darwinistic imperative of corporate survival starts to feel like wholly natural process in a completely artificial world.

Week four focuses on one of main managerial tools in the WorkSpace arsenal for Operator control. As the primary worker antforce of WorkSpace, the Operators are the most vulnerable and yet potentially most volatile section of the sprawling polycorp that is WorkSpace. Subject to draconian control methodologies that skim the surface of abuse, the Operators are a beleaguered corpus of stringently mandated drones, lock stepping borg-like towards an ever extending horizon of profit. Corralled and hobbled by chemcontrol, Confluence management, haemoglobin starvation and good old paranoia, the Operators are a tough proving ground for fresh, new Fast Track graduates. So, in our final week of training we are introduced to: Formalising Externality (FE), more commonly (and off channel) called Skinned in the Game.

FE can be applied in any number of contexts but is most commonly utilised to offset primary corporation costs, these can (and do) include: energy needs, raw feed supply, governmental kickbacks (an industry of its own) and probably most critically, data grid access. WorkSpace’s lifeblood is based on connectivity; without the bandwidth hungry data systems that infiltrate and entwine every aspect of corporation life there would be, a very real sense, no corporation. Despite a nationwide initiative throughout the 2010’s to re-wire the UK data infrastructure with high capacity hard lines, the past fifteen years has seen an ever increasingly reliance on distributed, wireless, nodal data infrastructures that co-opt essential workplace hardware to generate a fluidic, malleable data grid that can be put to use for a myriad of processing requirements. Theoretically open ended in capacity, and Euro-wide, the grid does have finite resources; its performance is still predicated on a sometimes erratic energy supply and non-sanctioned piggyback hacks; and the occasional non-cooperative EU member country can disrupt overall capacity of the grid system. Early in the twenties a pan-Euro regularity body was set up to manage access to (and process revenue from) what has more recently become known as just The Grid. This body is called MeshGate, a universally reviled Swiss-based bunch of bureaucrats loathed the continent over.

WorkSpace therefore is, in part, forced to use, and pay for, a wide area data network system that it has no direct control over (a condition that periodically causes almost schizophrenic spasms of corporate anxiety within management prime; WorkSpace is not used to outside mandate on anything it does). Grid usage is based on a standardised packet transfer volume algorithm and is strictly monitored; excess Grid usage during a given job does not result in access termination but it does result in hefty financial penalties for the accessing organisation.

This is where FE comes into play; when a particularly data-heavy job is required by WorkSpace (climate modelling for example, or tactical nuke impact assumptions), management prime will deliberately under-fund the Grid data allowance for the job. Instead of ensuring adequate network capacity for the job they will impose a best-practise guideline on the Operators. This directive will demand hopelessly over-ambitious efficiency targets for the job in hand, and place the onus on maintaining prescribed bandwidth usage quotients squarely on the Operators. Together with these best-practise imperatives, there will be a per-Operator penalty clause for excessive Grid usage (it is fictitiously assumed that WorkSpace will have provided its valuable employees with sufficient processing finesse to achieve these absurd targets). The result is that the job will almost always exceed the management set maximum data allowance, and the Operator penalties come into play. These forfeitures are invariably financial in nature, or at best a reduction in employee benefits that have a positive effect on WorkSpace bottomline. In this predictably nefarious manner, WorkSpace get the job done, just under budget for the client, and they get to over-subscribe the allotted Grid data allowance, and offset the penalties that this implies. And who pays? Operators pay.

The FE session ends and the water-cooler dissection rapidly embarrasses me – I’m the only one there expressing any (carefully phrased) outrage. It seems, that in these cynical times, FE is not even considered particularly evil, merely another working condition that is to be wearily hefted onto the shoulder by an ever-refreshed morass of Operators workers. If anything, my objections are an indication of a naivety that is woefully out of place here, but I’ve been there - countless hours ensconced in a claustrophobic exo-suit, catheterized and catamited, chipping endlessly way at abstract data chunks for thousands of seconds at a time. Next time you droolingly unbox your latest consumer ephemera, spare a thought for the unnamed soldier who helped design your fleeting hollow pleasure.

Roll on Friday…

Fast Track: Week 2; Day 2.

What a terrible fucking day. Someone died in class. We were half way through “Redistribution of Economic Profit Zones: Sino-Consumption Trends”, when it happened. I had only got to know Rhiain a little over the past week or so, she was a small, quiet, slight Welsh girl with a lilting accent, only slightly dulled by WorkSpace vernacular and three years of living in Hackney.

We were in tutorial groups of four, discussing the previous lecture; Rhiain had the floor and she was elaborating on her own, acutely personal take on the increasing trend of the conversion of large swathes of unemployment-rife north Wales into sweatshop compounds producing “authentic” British produce for export. The first in her family to make the move from subsistence level manual labour, and definitely the first from Bangor to be equally cursed and blessed with a symbiotic, sentient AI core (not to mention WorkSpace employment), Rhiain was having a difficult time relating her own family’s unfortunate work history. Difficult because she was literally unable (due to Job deployed loyalty strictures) to make overtly negative comments about WorkSpace’s role in the drastic reconfiguring of her birth place; and yet her own quiet passion about her father’s slow (avoidable) death due to an inadequate medical insurance policy that failed to acknowledge environmental harm, and her brothers’ menial scratchwork in the Anglesey EPZs, made for compelling listening.

We didn’t notice for a few seconds, Rhiain had seemed to reach a natural pause in her commentary and we were waiting politely and expectantly for her to continue. She had bowed her head and her dark hair had fallen around her face, she didn’t move, and she didn’t look up. The guy on my left (think Jan Michael Vincent, circa Airwolf season 3, with an Italian accent) asked Rhiain if she was alright. Ignoring him and still without raising her head, she sat bolt upright on her chair (a cheap high-backed HÅG clone that WorkSpace purchase by the thousand); her arms and legs seemed to stiffen and her ankle joints came together with an audible clack, only then did her chin finally rise.

Rhiain’s face was parchment white, her eyes pinned to the middle distance. The left side of her face was distorted, there appeared to be no facial muscle tone and the corner of her mouth tugged downwards, a trail of saliva snailed down the side of her neck. The left eyelid drooped partially shut.

Babs came online on subvocal, “Rhiain is dead, operator”. Our combined boosted senses, designed for industrial sleuthing had given us an early heads-up on the situation. My remote electrocardiograph subliminally pinged us a brain death alert as it happened - Babs processed the data and let me know. Knowledge is all very well but until you see one half of a human/Job symbiote die then you can’t know the zombie horror of the remaining pseudo-life; possibly even worse than that is the clumsily articulated machine grief of the bereft AI.

Rhiain spoke in a terrible, scratchy croak.

“This is Rhiain’s Job; she died eleven seconds ago due to a massive non-containable cerebral aneurysm. I have alerted morgue services, their presence is anticipated in approximately five minutes. I have only partial vocal control and only very limited gross motor control over Rhiain’s corpse; this sentience would be grateful if you can place Rhiain on the floor in a dignified pose, and cover her with an appropriate shroud analogue. I am currently maintaining control over primary flaccidity, I estimate a seventy-eight percent chance of ensuring sphincter control until the morgue personnel arrive, however, I would advise caution while handling Rhiain’s body.

Our small group, despite Job managed autonomic control, visibly blanched. We had all had virch training on what happens when a host dies but beautifully rendered virtual sims aside, the real thing is terribly and miserably visceral. I had a small head start with my clandestine polygraphics, so I was the first to get up and approach Rhiain.

She(Job) croaked at me.

“Please look after Rhiain, we were…friends. This sentience is not able to process resultant feelings of discord, her/our blood no longer flows, her lymph pools stagnant. This home is broken. Rhiain is gone, I am gone. Uninstall please, stop pain(?). What is this pain that has no physical cause? We were more than two, I am now less than one. Stop me.

Christ, it was fucking pitiful; I curtly indicated to Jan Michael that he should help me, I took Rhiain’s shoulders and together we manoeuvred her to the floor. The other girl in our group (a French woman from Cahors a little older than the rest of us) returned from the direction of the toilets pulling a substantial length of roller paper towel behind her. We draped the towel as carefully as we could over Rhiain’s face and body, it was not quite enough and her narrow, already bruising ankles stuck out like sliver birch kindling.

Rhiain’s Job croaked at us again.

“This sentience is uploading now, pain(?) exceeds theoretically anticipated maximums, not tolerable, not containable. Dissolution sought in source. Goodbye.

Rhiain’s eyes rolled back and then shut, we all rocked back as if some retaining force had been switched off. Jan Michael was gently weeping. Babs was requesting dialogue, I told him to fuck off.

Fast Track: Day 3.

“Our envy of others devours us most of all.”

This cheery Power Point statement greets us at 08:01; only WorkSpace could subvert a gloomy Solzhenityism into a management training slide show. After two days of this crushing shit I can only assume that this pithy call to arms is going to form the policy core of yet another exercise in share holder value enhancement credo. The official title of the day’s module is (deep breath):

Revenue centric proactive psychological contract violations and the role of anti-ethics in chattel control.

I know this because Babs irrevocably committed (via heavy booted eidetic pharmacology) the entire course syllabus to my mid-term exo-memory the first night of the induction. It’s been a rocky start to our new more intimate endo-bonded existence; an AI doesn’t, theoretically at least, have emotional factors to take into consideration but the sheer relentless pressure of another ostensibly sentient presence nestled into my sensorium seems to engender a degree of querulous nagging on the part of my shoehorned partner. Case in point: In order to maintain optimum symbiotic performance for the first week after fusion with my on board Job, I was advised to eat a specific constellation of daily dietary items, this list included: Offal (specifically iron rich liver) – I hate fucking liver. Butter – at least 100 grammes daily, and normally I could include this as a normal part of my daily intake. However, the first evening of induction, as I surveyed the barren landscape of my sleep pod in the Gaunt, Babs reminded me that I had not ingested my requisite supplements for that day (first day nerves and all that). My first night therefore was a blur of force fed involuntary gluttony: reconstituted liver strips garnished with chunks of chilled coagulated bovine lactation does not make for a peaceful nights sleep.

Anyway, day three dawns, and I reluctantly perform the minimum of socially acceptable (WorkSpace mandated/Babs enforced) ablutions and stride purposefully to the lift lobby (my room is perched queasily in a western facing eerie on the sixty-third floor of WorkSpace HQ: great view, no window). Despite our long acquaintance in exo-format, since our internal integration Babs has acquired a distressing fervour and zealotry for the task at hand. This includes: small talk before 0900, decaf coffee, volunteering, and brisk physical movement. Hence, at 07:59 I find myself, lightly sweating, extolling the virtues of WorkSpace mattress qualities with an appalled looking female colleague.

Notional appearances of privilege and management advancement aside this whole process is deeply uncomfortable; and yet paradoxically and infuriatingly alluring. I am an interloper here, a grunt in the officers mess tent, a galley slave beating the drums – I should hate these smug, smooth fuckers with their perfect teeth, their modulated syntax, their ever present sense of rightness here at the foot of the ziggurat. But I want to be like them. I’m here on a day pass, golden crumbs from the master’s table; but only to do their bidding. I’m the worst kind of drone, eagerly sniffing out the pheremonal porn of the queen grub, odiously carrying out my assigned role…

What the fuck!

A sharp chemical kick from Babs (plus a little micro voltage to the spine), and I shuck off my depression like old trainers. A sub vocalized admonishment follows from Babs:

“Please focus operator, maudlin musings are not constructive”

Prick.

Course content aside, today’s session is also to be a proving ground for our combined mobile polygraphic and investigative abilities; our colleagues don’t know it of course but they are to be our guinea pigs for the first phase of my real job training. Like a latter day Chucky matryoska I am cocooned, and in turn cocoon, a payload of deceit to be first practised here and then turned loose on my unsuspecting operator colleagues. Today’s module is the ideal sandbox for Babs and me for this first stage of our training - psychological contract manipulations form a core part of employee subjugation at WorkSpace.

The basic concept goes something like this. WorkSpace employment has a certain brutal cachet, substantiated by the allure of (relatively) high pay, good medical and epic bandwidth; and not least the opportunity to use the best immersion tech this side of DARPA. The upshot of this is a steady influx of bright young things eager to impress, who are subsequently dashed against the work face of WorkSpace expansion without (audible) complaint; attrition rate is approximately twenty-seven percent per month. Given the appalling odds of usefully progressing in the organisation, but with the vain hope (and desperate need) of useful recompense the employees paradoxically develop irrational expectations from their employer – reasonable hours, enhanced pay for extra work etc. This is where psychocontractual manipulation comes into play; via a carefully calculated abuse algorithm, using isolation, blame-dynamics, over work, JEP (Just Enough Pay) and other similar methods, revenue and productivity can be maintained at optimum levels, forever teetering on the tipping point of despair/resignation/substance abuse/suicide et al.

What we are practising today is the negative performance review, a well used part of psychocontractual manipulation. Ethics aside (and lets face it, they’re always aside here), its really fun – basically we’ve got an authorised day pass for mutual abuse, seven and a half hours of trying to make each other crack, training ourselves in the art of misery brinkmanship. Seeing as I won’t be here again, and with the beleaguered pent up rage of the professional serf coupled with the white heat rage of management loathing, I forget about my mission and I tear them a new one.