WorkSpace

WorkSpace boasts a “rigorous selection process” in their corporate literature. No fucking shit. I am sure that the nervous troupe of newb managers that tottered through the titanium portals of WorkSpace HQ (RL) thought that after a week long interview process their positions would be secure. Yeah, right. Twelve of us pass through the proscribed materials TerrorHurtz detector tunnel in single file; nine come out of the other end into the vast lobby.

I find out much later during a random trawl through the induction database: two victims to outgas analysis (probably a beer or joint too many the night before), and one to unfavourable posture comparison (backchannel had it that some bright spark at R&D had unearthed an old phrenology text and Frankenstein-wed it to a reinterpretation of the Alexander technique).

It doesn’t stop there, any nascent group dynamic is shattered by the immediate separation of the remaining nine; each us of is whisked off by a herd of identically dressed, bland faced “Orienteererers” of indeterminate age, ethnicity and sexual predilection. I won’t see any of my induction group for a week now, not until the die is cast and they reemerge as nice new pod people. No trenchant comments from Babs, Job’s are quiescent at this stage; the lobby casts an AI suppressor field – thank fuck for small mercies.

My journey is a little different to the others, instead of heading for the vast bank of lifts that line the lobby area we trudge a quarter kilometre towards a row of 4 small doorways set into an east wall foyer. My minder (he introduced himself as Stuart), hovers solicitously a precise 50 centimetres from my right elbow and offers some little bon mots about WorkSpace (Stuart is pretty low level, so will have no idea of my piggyback mission).

“The WorkSpace lobby is the largest in Europe, so high in fact that it supports its own microclimate. This is fully controllable of course; a daily precipitation provides 14% of all the water needs of the entire building.”

In addition, here at WorkSpace we have pioneered Total Employment – an inclusionary, fostering employee leveraging technique that ensures the highest per-capita corporation productivity record on the planet, and yet enables the aspirations of all its participants.”

At this point Stuart titters worryingly, and pats me on the lower back, pressing my sweat sodden shirt onto my skin; his perfect smile falters a little and then reasserts, effortlessly picking up his evangelical monologue.

“Your first week will be residential; I trust you haven’t brought more than the permitted personal effects allocation?”

I pat my Crumpler daypack.

“Please feel free to utilise, at any time, the net coverage in HQ. Please note that surveillance coverage is total. Ablution facilities are provided with modesty merkins if you feel unduly exposed, new partners often do.”

I smile sweetly and suggest that I could make an AI tumescent; Stuart re-blanks his face and we walk on in silence.

We approach the eastern sub foyer with the four doors and, after a brief pause as my escort obviously checks his HUD, Stuart precesses me towards the third door from the left. They are very ordinary stainless steel doors, two meters in height and with a recessed handle in the centre of the top panel. My door is labeled: Fast Track.

“It appears that you have been blessed; only our very best recruits go through here, good luck.”

Stuart bestows me the sickliest smile I’ve seen this side of tertiary disciplinary hearing and glides off, no doubt to evangelize to some other poor schmuck. I grasp and turn the door handle, there’s the briefest pause as my identity is bio-authenticated, and then the door smoothly opens and I step through.

I don’t often get to see 05:30; thanks to Babs, early rises are now, not a normal part, but at least a regular part of what passes for my life these days.

My WorkSpace mandated morning regimen is delightful. A 90-second shower, maximum permitted temperature: 40 Celsius. Oatmeal: tepid. Coffee: decaf. Enjoyment: proscribed. I’m being overly harsh I’m sure; there are upsides: Clean clothes, a fading suit rash, no catheter, fresh-fuckin-air, epic bandwidth. I have a desk now, a terminal, a chair with a cushion, quaint tea breaks; they’re cunning fuckers, management – we’re all animals when it comes down to it, who can really fight the amorphous propaganda of entitlement, peddling its everyday wares of creature comfort. I’m battling it still, but I’m amazed at this best kept non-secret of management voodoo. I spare a thought for my abandoned cohort of Job-riders; as far they’re concerned I got a promotion. Their collective incredulity is fair enough, who would have thought that feckless Operator 1338 would have felt the infinitesimal touch of olympian fortune.

Frankly, I feel shit about it most of the time, consider: I haven’t been promoted, I’m really in deep shit, my co-workers despise me, and worst of all I’ve got to dig into their frail privacy to find some notional WorkSpace mole who may not even exist. A truly nefarious double edged sword; definitely a human touch, an AI, whilst wily enough, would never be so willfully cruel.

Relations with Babs have, unsurprisingly, been rather cool of late. Never the best conversationalist, and now the recipient of its own WorkSpace sentience upgrade, my Job (now nestled disconcertingly, if undetectably, in my chest cavity and bonded to my major long bones) is an oppressively claustrophobic presence, a characteristic that was never evident in our pre-ascendant state. Post-surgical debrief did suggest that I would experience a new degree of Job zealotry (a Takamian phenomenology I am told, characterized by a strict interpretation of WorkSpace ethics), but this would diminish over time as our collective symbiote stabilizes. Yeah, fucking right – Babs has been a prick ever since the general wore off. Witness: my diet – I’d prefer a Chaplin boot. My sleep pattern – gulagtastic.

However, my pet martinet aside, I am forced to acknowledge the sheer hallucinogen (and paradoxically coherent) glory of the access I now have. Like a still-sticky emergent imago I revel in the freedom – the RL/dunk transition is now practically instantaneous. I flit between realities like a guilty ghost, impressions peeling off like a migrainous flicker book: WorkSpace Prime (virch) first thing in the morning (imagine a teeming tropical reef through a Third Reich filter), my neatly made bed, a palimpsest of newsfeeds (false colour embedded impressions from yet another Pulitzer driven war journo), my half-shaved face in the bathroom mirror (a slack jawed gaze of befuddlement), an internal snapshot of our collective bio-status, the faintest confusing hint of Babs newly emergent self-schema (stick drawing of a man facing the open sea), my rapidly cooling oatmeal on the kitchen table. Enough. I offline so I can finish my breakfast; my trembling hand clatters the spoon against my cereal bowl.

The first week in my ersatz management role has been humbling, and not in the good Gandhi way. As part as what the briefing construct amusingly (and anachronistically) called my “cover”, I would be obliged to attend standard junior management orientation at WorkSpace HQ (RL). It is explained to me (in some excruciatingly detail) that I am required to undergo this ignominious faux-training so that when I am passed back to my Operator cohort in shiny new management guise, I will be sufficiently convincing as their new Team Leader; and thus able to root out the traitor without fear of being rumbled. Frankly, I’m already skeptical about, a: the presence of this apparent hacker elite in my very own Operator clique, and, b: the truth about the existence of this so called traitor at all. Nonetheless, some stubborn part of my hind brain insists that it would actually like to keep eating for the indefinite future; so I get ready for work.

Looming inelegantly over the Gherkin, dominating completely the City skyline, WorkSpace HQ was one of the last great hopeful works of pre-nanotech architecture; clad improbably in a billion euros worth of carbon fibre it’s a monolith of pretension to dead construction techniques. 450 meters of awkward, staccato angles, it has become known, in Operator parlance, as The Gaunt.

So I found myself, Monday morning, 07:30, hovering nervously at the gaping maw of The Gaunt ground level entrance, clutching a brand new PetaBook and shifting uncomfortably in the unfamiliar rasp of street clothes. I spotted a nervous gaggle of what I assumed were the other members of my fledgling management colleagues and wandered over, filled with a curious and conflicting mix of reflexive, inverse management snobbery and the very human pack-empathy of the nervous new.

We mumbled our hi’s, cigarettes were stamped out, ties adjusted, skirts aligned; we headed up the steps.

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.