Which started soon after he arrived at work. The morning upreffing sessions had had nothing to do with Oships or Planet Lisa. They were less than memorable consensus exercises, and Bogdan forgot them even as they were playing. During a venue switch, he passed Annette Beijing in the corridor. They stopped to chat, and she said, “I just wanted to wish you luck at your HR meeting today at three.”
A good thing she mentioned, it, for though Bogdan hadn’t forgotten about the meeting, he had forgotten what day it was, which would have amounted to the same thing. She blew him a kiss and sashayed off. The kiss was aimed dead on, and Bogdan waited motionless for it to flutter over to him and press itself softly upon his cheek.
When his fourth Alert! ran out right before lunch, he was ready with his fifth. Hour 53 and all was well. The drug didn’t spoil his appetite. On the contrary, at lunch he returned for seconds of ice cream and fry. And he filled his pockets with snickerdoodles.
At 2:55 PM, Bogdan followed an usher line down the Administrative Corridor. The AC was arranged the same no matter where they were camped, and he knew he would wind up in front of three black doors. He found the doors and the bench opposite them. There was always a bench. He sat on the bench to wait. The subject has to wait on the bench until one of the doors calls his name. They always make him wait. They, in this case, was E-P, the E-Pluribus mentar. Everyone at E-Pluribus was a construct of E-P: the Academy sims, the HR director, even Annette herself. There were no actual human resources at E-Pluribus to manage, except for the dem controls, like himself, and the daily holes. Since the HR department was not real, subject could see no practical reason it could have for making him wait.
However, with the glimmering rays of a promised bonus gilding everything in sight, Bogdan didn’t mind the wait. He had provisioned himself for just such an eventuality. That was what the doodles were for. He sprawled on the bench and dropped a handful of the crisp little elbows of crunchy puffery, piece by piece, into his mouth, where he ground them to a sweet mash that he let trickle down his throat. It was a satisfying pastime. But still, shouldn’t part of a bonus be not having to wait for it?
“Myr Kodiak,” someone said, “this way please.”
Bogdan looked up; the middle door was talking to him. It was always the middle door. He swung his feet to the floor and swallowed his sweet cud. He stood up and brushed crumbs from his jumpsuit. The door slid open, and he entered the office.
The HR director was not there—naturally—which meant another round of waiting.
The office looked exactly as it had the last time. That is, messy. There were piles of paper files everywhere, on shelves, on top of old-timey cabinets, in leaning towers on the floor and desk. A layer of dust covered everything, and the air was stale. Drink cups and takeout packages with desiccated remnants of unfinished meals had been artfully tucked into every available niche. Just for once he wished one of the other doors would call him and he could experience a different—and nicer—corporate culture.
Bogdan knew from past experience that the only real object in the room, other than himself, was the adult-sized chair parked in front of the HR director’s desk. Near the chair was a basket labeled “URGENT” that held a stack of manila folders. When he leaned over to read the top folder, the words printed on it squirmed out of focus.
Bogdan sighed, climbed into the chair, and reached for more snickerdoodles. But the inner door opened, and the Human Resources director sailed in. Her feet seemed barely to touch the floor. She was balancing yet more paper in one arm while using the other to bulldoze a clearing on her overburdened desk. She deposited her stack of papers and shored up several others before even marking Bogdan’s presence. Finally, she clapped realistic dust from her hands and said, “Myr Kodiak. Thank you for coming in.”
Bogdan leaped from his chair and said, “Thank you for asking me, Myr Director.”
The director continued riffling through the files on her desk until she found the one she was seeking. She propped it open between two hillocks of paper and sat down. Without another word to Bogdan, she perused its contents. After a while, Bogdan climbed back into his chair. He was forced to sit and watch her read. She moved her lips as she read. Her lips were big rubbery things, painted purple, all out of proportion with her nose, which was short and pointy. Not an easy face to watch for very long. Especially with the blemishes.
The director’s eyes swiveled up to take him in. “Myr Kodiak, today marks your one-year anniversary with us. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Bogdan said, poised to leap to his feet again. She went back to her reading.
The blemishes on her face were two round fleshy moles, one cresting her cheek, and the other perched on her left nostril. One was brown, but the other was colorless. Each had a single curly strand of hair growing out of it. The moles upset him plenty, but it was the hairs that pushed him over the top. Why couldn’t she pluck them for crying out loud?
Finally, the director closed the folder and said, “I have a memorandum here I’d like you to look at and sign.” A dataframe opened in front of Bogdan with a document on it. The document’s title did not have any variation of “bonus” or “raise” in it. Instead, it read somewhat nonspecifically, “Memorandum of Agreement.”
Bogdan tried to read the tightly wound text but couldn’t make sense out of it, and there were pages of the stuff, with a signature box at the bottom to swipe.
Bogdan said, “What is it?”
“It’s an agreement by which you sell back the final two years of your employment contract to E-Pluribus.”
Bogdan heard the words but couldn’t understand them. Against all hope, he said, “Today is my one-year anniversary.”
“Again, congratulations,” the director said. “We believe you will find our separation payment and bonus quite generous.”
A paragraph entitled “Severance Compensation” became highlighted in the document floating before him. E-Pluribus was offering him a lump sum equal to three months pay, some 103.9174 UD credits in exchange for extinguishing his three-year contract immediately.
“I don’t get it,” Bogdan said. “You’re firing me?”
Another dataframe opened beside the first, and his original employment agreement appeared, with a paragraph highlighted. The director said, “We’re not terminating you, Myr Kodiak. We’re merely exercising this clause which empowers us to buy out your contract at any time for any reason.”
“Is it because I’ve aged a little? I have an appointment at a juve clinic this weekend. You can check it out. I’ll be back to eleven-eleven by next week. You can bank on that.”
The director smiled, with gaps between all her teeth. “We were well aware of your impending adolescence, and we considered using it as cause for dismissal, but we are nothing if not concerned corporate parents, and we’d rather not sully your permanent record unnecessarily.”
“Then why?” Bogdan said miserably. “Aren’t I doing a good enough job?”
“Your performance is not the issue. When we hired you, we calculated that it would take twenty-four months to completely map your personality, and another twelve to verify our model. Our calculations were wildly inaccurate. You are an astonishingly uncomplicated person, Myr Kodiak. One might even say simple. It took us only six months to build an exact replica of your personality that accurately predicts your response to virtually anything. Thus, we no longer need you.”
Bogdan was reeling. He didn’t know what to say and blurted out the first thing that came to him. “That may be so—today, but what about tomorrow? I’m an evolving personality. In no time at all, your replica of me will fall out of synch with the real me.”