Paul Novaniich sat alone in his office on the 18th floor of the HuB central command tower, staring thoughtfully at a holographic image of his avatar. He swiped at the air in front of the projection, causing the doll-sized likeness of himself to spin around a time or two before slowing to a stop with its back to him.
“That doesn’t look very good on us, does it?” he asked the one-foot-tall digital miniature. Without much more deliberation, he reached up to make a pinching gesture with his thumb and forefinger, plucking the bulky black blazer from his thin frame and flicking it into a garbage bin icon near the bottom edge of the hologram. He spun the floating image again, critically examining its unremarkable physique. “I suppose it’ll just be the usual then,” he said, tapping at the air and scanning down a list of file names until his finger found one titled
The office lights faded, and Paul pressed his palm against the exterior of the office door to lock it. He walked through the hallways of the 18th-level office space, staring at the bespeckled black floor tiles along his path as he moved. “No eye contact, Paul,” he coached himself. “Be like virtual water. Weave through the river of responsibility. Let no one stop your flow.” Paul stole a glance at the timekeeper holographic in the center of the room. Ha! 6:44! Looks like I’ll actually be on time for onc—
“Paul! Hey, Paul! Wait up!”
Facepalm.gif… Paul sighed. He booted up the company-issued smile that didn’t reach his eyes and turned to greet Lunch-thief Aaron, the boss’s secretary…
_______
The sound of a ticking clock punctuated every agonizing second of silence between Paul and his district supervisor, Mandy. He stared at her. She stared at him. They just sat across a cold metal table from one another listening to the clock make noise.
Tick
She tapped a heeled foot. His eyes shifted.
Tock.
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
Tick.
Tock.
“Mandy, I—”
“Nope,” she cut him off. “Don’t even start.” She put her fingertips against the bridge of her nose and squeezed.
Tick.
Paul didn’t like confrontation. He looked around the room for a distraction, or maybe an escape? Had he coded this room? It was hard to tell. The walls were white, approximately eight feet tall, and made of solid stone. Not stone blocks. Just pure white eight-by-six slabs of concrete standing perfectly perpendicular to the floor and ceiling with an off-putting exactness. So it could have been anyone in his department, really. The only distinguishing feature in the space was the doggedly committed clock on the south wall. 7:12 already. Damn. He should start mandating the practice of inserting trap doors under all the chairs in meeting rooms for situations like these.
“Paul, listen…” Mandy finally started. The long, deep sigh and pregnant pause that followed spoke volumes about how she felt about Paul’s… Paulness. She looked at the blinking red light on the camera aperture in the corner and sighed again, somehow even more deeply than before. “I really don’t want you to just turn this opportunity down without really thinking about what it could mean for you,” she said at last.
“There’s really not much to think about, boss,” Paul forced out - more quietly than he had intended. “I’m happy with the role I have now. I have a good team. We do a good job, right? And… well, I have some other priorities that I haven’t given enough attention in these past few years. So, I have to decline the offer and, hopefully, that can be ok… maybe?”
Another long sigh almost hissed through the woman’s thin lips. She had a hard face, tightened by months of high-stress and impossible timelines. Yet, her eyes were kind and almost understanding.
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”If you’re sure,” she said mercifully, probably seeing his discomfort like heatwaves in the air. “That’s it, Gus. Kill the feed.”
The blinking light faded, and Mandy stood up. Paul scrambled up to his feet across from her and clumsily extended his hand. The interview was over. 7:16. Late. Damn Damn.
“You’re an idiot, you know that, right?” A reluctant smile curled up the corners of her mouth as she took his hand. “We have at least fifty over-qualified applicants for this boost, each with inch-thick portfolios. But I wanted you. It was no small fight with corporate to make this offer happen.”
“Mandy, thank you,” he said, with a smile of his own. “I know you have your reasons for picking me for this, but I really think you’re overestimating my worth. I’m a code monkey, not an executive.”
“Tell that to Gus. His wife just had her baby, by the way.”
“You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“Of course I did! I’m your supervisor, not your therapist. If you want confidentiality, you’ll need to fill out NDA forms. Anyway, if someone gave up two months of salary to cover my medical bills, I would want to know about it.”
Paul cursed silently and looked at the camera himself for the first time since stepping into the plain white room. “He’ll probably want to chat about it, then,” he said despondently.
“Try to hide the exhaustion in your voice a little. A little human kindness won’t hurt you. If you’re going to give it, you better be ready to take it, too.”
Mandy’s smile had filled out now, making her expression almost motherly.
“Thanks for the advice… and for all of this.” Paul gestured to the room with both arms. “I’m going to try to sneak out now.”
“NOT A CHANCE!” a tinny, disembodied voice boomed over the room’s intercom.
Paul winced. He was now certain that he would be in for a long, emotional conversation full of awkward gratitude. Or… well… probably totally normal, socially aware gratitude that would only be awkward to Paul’s weird brain. For whatever reason made him the way that he was, Paul hated open displays of affection, but he had learned to tone down his “Paulness” since meeting people who seemed to genuinely care about him, like his boss, Mandy, or the woman he was now late (again) to meet, Beatrice.
“Get to it, then,” Mandy said.
“Yeah.” He forced a chuckle and walked through the door.
As expected, Gus met him at the conference room door with a bombardment of thanks and offers for repayment, which he would not let Paul refuse despite profuse objections. As soon as Paul relented, agreeing to accept incremental payments (which he knew he could just reroute through HR to some kind of pediatric benefit package), Gus pinned him to the spot with pictures of his wife and newborn baby; a little girl, wrinkly and kind of plum-colored, but cute as far as babies go. Paul looked at the pictures with a plastic smile, nodding along with Gus as he exalted in his fatherhood. The pictures were taken IRL, so in them was Gus’s real body, which was sallow and gaunt compared to the healthy-looking avatar standing next to Paul here in Overworld. The smile was the same, however.
Paul was happy for the man. It was hard not to be. He radiated joy like friendly plutonium. But everything about his completely normal elation just made Paul feel more alien. I’m so different from this man, he thought. I’m so different from everyone... Nothing new, though.
Paul mimicked Gus's smile with practiced care and eventually found a natural lull in the conversation to kindly take his leave. He dared not peek at the clock… 7:48. Damn it all.
He checked his watch for messages. Yeah there were a few:
7:16 - B: *crying with laughter emoji* Guess who owes me a milkshake
7:17 - B: I think I’ll have chocolate today.
7:17 - B: Or maybe French vanilla. You coded that one right?
7:32 - B: Chan just showed up. Don’t stress out, ok? I know you’re going to stress, but seriously DON’T! We still want you to come! take your time Mr. big-shot supervisor. *heart emoji*
7:42 - B: Meet us by the fountain, K?
At least she wasn’t mad. Then again, Bianca never got mad at him for his chronic tardiness. She respected his work and how much he enjoyed it. It was honestly one of his favorite things about her. The way she accepted him for who he was and didn’t ask him to change. “Time to tell her, Paul. No chickening out this time.”
Paul walked out of the hallway and into the server room (which wasn’t actually a room of servers, because servers inside a simulated space would be completely nonsensical. But Paul hadn’t been the one to come up with the name, nor had he been asked when Lunch-Thief Aaron put the stupid plaque on the stupid door, so, even though this is where Paul worked most of the time, it was clearly someone else’s job to name the room something stupid… If Paul had been asked, he probably/definitely would have named it the script-weave room due to the seven-foot-tall glass containers filled with thousands of lines of raw data rendered like chaotic weaves of orange code. Not that he had hard feelings or anything.)
Paul absent-mindedly walked up to one of the “servers” and watched the infinitely branching lines of glowing orange text render from nothing and quickly tangle themselves around one another. They were generated by an extremely powerful and intuitive AI. The reason the virtual HuB space was even possible at all. Watching the code wriggle like living amoeba was entrancing and fascinating, as always, and Paul’s trained eye couldn’t help but to pick out a few useful lines that could potentially help with haptic feedback, maybe, but… NO! “Paul, this is why you don’t get the girl.” He coached himself again.”Nerd out tomorrow! Tonight, get out of the office! Out, out, out!” The room was filled with the strangely comforting hum of virtual machinery. Paul dutifully ignored it as he all but sprinted out of the room.