Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World

“Is that worse than Common Ground?” Blue Nile asked with a sly smile.

Neil didn’t answer the question. The comparison seemed impossible to comprehend. Nothing seemed possible except his job, his apartment, and the daily fact of his survival.

“Come here, Neil,” Blue Nile said. He stood up and went over to the nearest GT table. Neil went along.

The little man was proficient at table use. He hit a couple of virtual keys and joined two screens into one large monitor. He then entered the Unit Controller screen.

“What are you doing?” Neil asked.

“Showing you something.”

“But that’s the UC page. It’s permanent unemployment over that — even just to look at a UC’s screen.”

“I have the protocols.”

“Are you the UC?”

“None of us are. But we have all been given the protocols and clearance to use our UC’s codes.” With that Blue Nile entered a forty-seven-digit code number. The central computer paused for a moment and then presented the image of a handprint. Blue Nile placed his hand inside the print. The computer paused three seconds. Neil felt his heart thrumming.

A red entry screen appeared. Neil had only once seen a red screen. That was when he first worked for Specifix, almost six years earlier. He had somehow frozen the whole GT system; no one at the table could log on. The UC, an unclean man named Nordeen, had entered his codes to fix the problem. He had used a red screen with yellow and orange letters just like the one Blue Nile had raised.

On the search line he entered Neil’s name and his last GT, LAVE-AITCH-27. A file appeared that had Neil’s ranking and picture at the top.

“You see that blue dot?” Blue Nile asked.

Neil saw the large blue spot pulsing at the right side of his photograph. He also noticed that the picture was not the one he had taken when he came to work; it was a recent shot of him leaning over the camera’s lens. He realized that his monitor must have an internal camera so that he could be watched continually.

“What does it mean?” Neil asked.

Blue Nile placed his finger over the dot and tapped the virtual clicker. Immediately a green screen, also with yellow letters, appeared. The words PENALTY SCREEN were at the top of the form. Neil read through the document. Every time he had fainted had been logged, the number of times he had drifted while he was supposed to be working had been recorded and graphed. His verbal complaints, even those he made only to himself, had been recorded. Toward the end of the form there was a diagnosis box that read Labor Nervosa; Acute. The suggested treatment was permanent unemployment at the end of the current work semester.

The date of his discharge was three days before he was to have his first vacation.

Neil’s stomach began to roil. He heard a sound that he thought was coming from the table but then he realized that it was a low moan from his own chest. He thought about sitting down but he was frozen over the screen.

His teeth began to chatter.

Suddenly there was a sharp pain at the side of his head. He fell to the floor. He looked up and realized that Blue Nile had hit him.

“Why?” Neil asked.

“ ’Cause you were losin’ it. A shock sometimes breaks you out of it.”

“No, not that. Why are they firing me? What did I do?”

“You’re just part of the margin, kid,” Blue Nile said. “Workin’ for the corporation is just like goin’ to school, and in this classroom they grade on a curve.”