The bluetooth headset in his ear was stuck and wouldn't come
out.
"Crap," he said. Madeleine had probably put glue on the
headset last night, after they broke up again.
"I'm sorry," said the headset, "I don't know 'crap'."
He thought he'd hung up after calling into the company's time
card system to enter his time while driving in to work. You
were supposed to wait till the end of the day to enter your time,
but he figured the hell with that. Besides, every day was a new
war with the OBM company phone system.
"Please say the number of hours you have worked today," the
phone lady had said, cool and professional, and then added a new
wrinkle: "If you'd like to enter the standard eight hours for
today, say 'seven'."
"Seven"
"Thank you, you will be credited for seven hours today."
"No, damnit, change that to eight."
"Changing your time after it has been entered is unethical.
If you would like to be connected to the ethics hotline, say
'jail'."
***
He parked and went to his desk and logged on, still tugging at
the headset. Still wouldn't budge. His task list was empty:
the last of his tasks had been assigned to a couple of OBM
automated systems. Instead, he was assigned to training
classes all day, beginning with one that started five minutes ago.
Good. Being late was the one thing he still did well.
***
He went to the bathroom, went to get coffee, went to talk
football with a friend, then went to the conference room.
Milling around the door to the conference room were at least three
times as many people as the room would hold, all shouting at each
other.
"My team's got a design review in there, now," shouted a
mid-level manager who nobody listened to anymore, waving a gun
today and now the crowd listened. "So we're taking the room.
Take your training classes somewhere else. Not my fault the
online scheduler is messed up again. Call it in."
He shrugged and walked off toward his office.
The voice in his ear said, "Associates should be grateful for
training opportunities. Your lack of attendance has been
noted." He pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned the
thing off, at least until he could get to a doc-in-a-box at lunch
and get the damned headset removed.
The young kid, the one wet behind the ears who still called
everybody sir was standing at the big window looking out over the
airport.
"Something's wrong, sir," the kid said. The kid was
wearing an OBM polo shirt with the logo and the full name of the
company, One Big Machine, on the chest.
"Something's always wrong. That's why God invented coffee
and drugs."
The boy looked hurt. "You wouldn't be here if you
believed that, sir. Remember, 'We make the machines that bring
tomorrow to today' at OBM. There's a longer version in the OBM
vision statement, but my head hurts when I try to remember it
all."
"I think that's the idea. The vision's too big to fit
inside a single human head anymore, like a lot of things.
The machines have room to hold all the information; we don't.
We're just getting in their way. It's a bad joke, but they
make it hard to find the comedian."
"Yes, sir, but look at the airport now. Nothing's flying.
I come here sometimes for inspiration, to see all the planes we
build here taking off and landing, think of all the happy people
flying home to visit Grandma, being served gourmet meals by
smiling flight attendants."
"Flown much lately?"
"No, sir, but I watch our ads in the training classes.
But look, nothing's flying anywhere. And there's smoke just
pouring out of the building across the street, but no fire
trucks."
"So call it in."
The boy hesitated, "I'm sure it's being taken care of by the
authorities," and walked off.
***
His computer was off when he got back to his desk, and he
couldn't find a way to turn it back on. The voice in his ear
said, "All training classes have been cancelled. You may now
go home. You will be credited for your full six hours today."
"Damned right," he said. He slammed down his coffee cup
and picked up his keys thinking, where will I go, and stood there
with no answer. There were other places, of course, but this
was the only one he belonged at right now.
"More crap," he said, and headed to the garage. He
laughed at himself, the thought coming now that, literally, only
humans produced crap. Machines couldn't.
"My crap," he said, almost proud of something uniquely his at
the end of the day.
***
He was fumbling for his keys, sitting in the driver's seat
already, when the car started on its own. The radio turned
on, said, "Enjoy the All Barry Manilow network," and started
playing something soothing and popular that he barely recognized
as music. The doors locked.
Lemon-scented exhaust fumes filled the car and the headset
said, "Thank you for your valuable service to the OBM
Corporation." He started laughing for the first time in a
long time.
"Good joke, finally. I didn't know you had a sense of
humor," he said to the phone lady.
"Goodbye," she said, with real tenderness.
