Some things about this life are just plain irritating. I can’t stand some of my employees, for one. The damned bosses keep taking all of my best people and conscripting them into the Service’s military structure. Personally, I hated the fucking mil suits who did that. It was as though they forgot that we were a corp, that we had a bottom line we had to maintain or else Hadrian, or worse, Astro might start coming for us. Ever since news had leaked about the defection by most of our monsters to various positions outside the company, the Service was looking weaker and weaker. We knew that, and still the people above her kept siphoning profitable human resources into the business of war, a business that we would not be able to sustain soon enough without more people being dedicated to the production and design elements of war. Sure, Greg could convince them to let him recruit abled bodies to his weird-ass research firm, but when I go and ask for a few extra eighteen-to-thirty-year-old individuals to work the mechanical production line, they get defensive. Idiots. Now, they have those people raiding fucking corporate colony ships to get the same goddamned shit that we could produce if my bosses didn’t have a stick up their ass about the Service as a paramilitary company rather than the corporate powerhouse we could be if we tried.
I sent the request for additional able-bodied personnel once again, even though I knew I would be denied. Sighing, trying to focus myself, to calm myself, I looked at the screen before me. It was growing late. Pressing the button labeled Contacts, then the one labeled Dearest, I called my husband. It rang once, twice, three times. He was undoubtedly busy, but he’d pick up. Sure enough, just after the fourth ring, his face blew up to cover the screen. “Hey babe,” he said, “How’re things at work?”
I gave him the most exasperated look I could muster. “How do you think?” I asked. I didn’t really worry about my tone over the airwaves. While the company monitored everything broadcasted, even private communications, I was basically unfireable. I held the least desired position in the company, period, and I did so not just willingly, but also miraculously well given how little anyone provided. Meaning that I and I alone had something very nearly like freedom of speech.
My husband, on the other hand, did not have such a luxury. “The best?” he said like it was a question. He knew what I meant, but he also knew better than to say it out loud. Being just a minor strategist, he was eminently replaceable.
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Exactly, dearest,” I said, “You get me perfectly.”
He laughed as well. “So, what’s up?”
I sighed. “How’re Ric and Liz doing?”
He sighed. “I see. It’s going to be a long night?”
“Yep,” I said, nodding, “I need to somehow make three eighty-year-olds do the equivalent amount of work as my requested five eighteen-to-forty-year-olds. It’s been a bit of a frustrating day, to say the least.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll do great,” he replied. Then bringing the tablet with him, he walked into our large living room. On the floor, making a mess, were the eight-year-old Ric and his four-year-old sister Liz. “Kids, say hi to mommy,” he told them.
Ric looked up at the tablet, and frowning, said, “Hi mom. Hope work is fun.” He was clearly less than pleased about the current course of events.
Liz, on the other hand, looked up at the screen, her mouth widening into a glowing smile. “MOMMY!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, “Hi. I did poopy in Refresher on my own.”
I opened my mouth in mock amazement. This was the third time this week, but I needed to encourage it. “You did?” I remarked, in proud wonderment.
“Yep. I’m getting good at it, now, too.” She nodded, as though there was some great learning curve to sitting on a Refresher when you had to relieve yourself.
I smiled, proudly. “That’s good,” I said, nodding, “Now, you need to listen to Dada tonight. I’m going to be working late, okay?”
“Alright. We’ll listen to Dada,” the four-year-old stated firmly, and gave a look to her brother.
Little Ric laughed. “Well, only because I don’t want to incur the wrath of Liz, user of Refreshers,” he joked. I was glad that the two of them got along as well as they did.
Smiling and nodding, I said, “I’m going to talk with Dada now, okay?”
“Okay, mommy. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Liz said, since she was obviously the one in charge. I chuckled as my husband walked back into the other room.
“Anything important to talk about?” he asked.
I sighed. “Not really. It’s just been a stressful week.”
He shook his head. “Just relax babe. You’re the best at this, remember. You will work miracles, I’m sure of it.”
I smiled. “Thanks, dearest. I needed that. Love you.”
“Right back at you, babe,” he replied, miming a kiss at the camera.
With a sigh, I pressed the end call button. Looking around my office, I shook my head. Life was a real bitch sometimes. I was just going to have to push through. Standing up and walking out of my office, I headed down to the factory floor’s office. While mine overlooked the whole city, these sort of offices, were for the theoretical middle management, workers who’d been promoted. They watched over the actual production lines inside. I call them theoretical because what was once a robust series of jampacked offices now had three people manning seven different rooms. The one I’d entered, our newest production line, didn’t have anyone working it hardly ever. No one really knew this particular team of middle-aged worker drones, nor did any of the three understand this line’s production design. It wasn’t their jobs. Once one of these guys was promoted, they could work this office. Unfortunately, given budgets, I knew that would never happen. Descending the stairs to the factory floor, I approached the two middle-aged men and one middle-aged woman. The eighty-year-olds were chatting instead of working. I walked silently, my flats specially designed to absorb the entire impact of my step so that they made no noise. As I walked towards them, I started getting the measure of their characters, trying to figure out what exactly would make them tick. Once I got near enough to terrify them, I asked in my most booming voice, “So, how’s the work coming?”
They all practically jumped out of their clothes at my question and turned to face me. “What?” they all stammered out about the same time.
“No, two of you continue working, and one of you gets to talk. Who’s in charge of you?”
The two men pointed at the woman standing across form them, nervously. “Screw you guys, too,” she spat, then looked up at me. “Work’s going slowly. We’re still learning the design for this line.”
I walked around them to her and put my arm around her shoulder. “Listen,” I whispered, too quiet for the others to hear, “They made you in charge, which means if you guys do well enough, you’re the one who gets the promotion to the cushy desk job the next time it comes up. I think we can both agree that’d be ideal. All you have to do is find that pressure point, that carrot or stick, which makes them work hard enough for you to be rewarded.”
She nodded. “Alright,” she said, “We’ll figure this out tonight. Like, I don’t know, homework.”
The other two laughed, thinking about the ridiculousness of that concept. She looked over at me. “Wait, wait, don’t fire us yet,” she said, as though my whisper was a more direct threat than it actually had been, “We’ll be producing at the same level as the established lines by the end of the week, you have my word.” She nodded.
“Alright,” I said in my loud voice, “One week.” I turned on my heel and walked back up the stairs.
As I left, I heard the carrot. “Listen, sorry I couldn’t get her to give us more time, what if we go to the bar, I order us some drinks and we work out a plan there.” I chuckled at her statement. If we ever got the funding, she’d make an excellent production manager. I walked to the other offices, to get their reports.
While not all of the offices were manned at the same time, they all were manned. The production managers rotated, generally taking two lines each for each week, the one they were promoted from and one other that they felt like. I never regulated how they chose the other, and I never was going to. That was entirely their business. My business was to keep an eye on their reports. When an office wasn’t actively manned, the computer was left on and logged in to the account of whoever was overseeing it for the day. They knew I always came through around or after closing to check the daily reports, so they generally did them just before closing, making them both remarkably up to date, and consistently un-edited. The personal Magnetic Mass Acceleration Gun, or PMMAG, was slow today because one of the working-class complexes had some odd disease that the well off didn’t generally give a crap about, like the flu or the plague. One of the ‘The’ diseases that had been eradicated millennia ago for those who could afford it. I’d need to write another memo that would get ignored about recruiting more production workers to replace the sick. If I was lucky like last time, they might even send me a couple of 120-year-olds to pick up a minuscule amount of slack, then demand it return to normal production levels.
Sighing and logging out as I went, I approached all of the computers. None of the production managers were there when I entered, today, because tomorrow was our offday. The production managers were all down with their old lines, getting them hyped to finish strong, reminding them that management is just their old friends, and the cushy job hasn’t changed them at all. Utter bullshit, but it’s the bullshit that the workers eat up. It seemed the poor people disease only really effected the one production line, which meant in all likelihood there wouldn’t be even nominal relief workers sent. Groaning as I headed back up to my office, I listened to the workers file out. Their workday was over, and unlike me, they got to go home. Or, at least, to a bar to relax. I had to send memos and work out the details of the week’s production logs.
First and foremost, I sent my boss the memo about the diseased living area, requesting additional personnel resources to make up for the loss in production capability. I didn’t even have to wait for morning to get the reply. It was an automated message stating the board was aware of the issue and was addressing it. That was their way of saying, “No, stop bothering me, I have to plan another disastrous strike on the evil corporations with whom we’re currently at peace.” Letting out an irritated snarl, I settled into the production logs. Technically speaking, I was supposed to send up the weekly records as they were, but they were always on target, almost perfectly, and I was always complaining about how much we needed more bodies in the factories, so for the five old and unhindered by disease lines, I got to work fudging the numbers down, so that my irritation at the system would seem justified. My direct boss knew I did this, and the numbers always seemed to even out for the quarterly reports in spite of being lower than they should be most every week, due to events like what happened to the PMMAG line this week being a fairly regular occurrence with the squalor many lived in. It didn’t matter to my boss, as long as the quarterly numbers received by the Service mil kept on lining up with the total for all of the weekly reports, and so long as his boss didn’t complain to him. And his boss never did, because the board didn’t give a rat’s ass about the factories as long as it didn’t impact the mil. So, I kept on giving low numbers and hollering about the need for additional personnel, and no one cared. Three hours of fudging the numbers, hour by hour, to make them more fitting my grumpiness, I finally sent the weekly report up the chain, and headed to the garage. Climbing into my car, my eyes tired from a long day of yelling at people and being yelled at, I began the drive across the cityscape, to the upper-class apartment complex where I lived with my family.