Joe was being pulled from the pod while he was on air. He faked his smile and sent a dozen mental commands to his AIs even as the screen and his vision went black. He wasn’t even offered the bin. They sprayed him down and threw a blanket at him.
“Have a seat,” Dr. Psychofuck waved to the lounge chair across from him in the same little office, or as similar as it could be the same, they’d met in the first time so long ago. Joe didn’t have a choice. The guard escorted him there and handcuffed him to it and then he was right back where he felt like this all started. Was it disconcerting that they’d only ever pulled him when he’d done something too right? Yeah. It was.
“Now what?” Joe glared at Dr. Psychoasshole as the guards left the room.
“I just wanted to check in with you and see how you were doing since the parole hearing,” Dr. Pompouspuss drawled out as if he cared about Joe's welfare. “I was surprised to find that you’d turned down parole and wanted to make sure that maybe we aren’t dealing with an incompetence issue. You do understand what parole would mean, don’t you?”
“I do,” Joe smiled a thin-lipped smile at him.
“My colleagues and I were worried that maybe you didn’t understand where you were or what is going on?” he prodded, tapping that pen on his clipboard in a way that made Joe want to shove it down his throat.
“Are you worried that I’m not sane?” Joe asked. He’d have crossed his arms but one was cuffed to the stupid lounge thing and he had a hard enough time not slip-sliding off the darn thing. With his luck, Dr. Psychodumbass would use it as some excuse to claim Joe had violently attacked him instead of clumsily kissing the floor.
“We like to call it a simple competency checkup,” the doctor sighed at Joe's attitude. “It can sometimes be hard to reintegrate with reality when you’ve spent too much time in VR. I’m simply trying to assess your capacity for understanding.”
“Let me sum it up for you,” Joe clutched the blanket to him, trying not to feel weak because he wasn’t even dressed. “I turned down parole because I’m halfway to my viewer goal and thought it would be quicker to serve out my full sentence.” Joe didn’t mention the doctor’s sabotage as it probably wouldn’t have been considered a sane thing to say, though once someone was convinced that you were insane, it was hard to prove otherwise. “I understand my situation. I’m in prison on a work-program that allows me to serve my debt to society by appearing on a fictional reality show that is currently showing on the NOOB network. The year is 2250, our president is AI Martan Fallback, my name is Joe Denphry, and I am in full possession of my mental faculties to logically choose to try to hit the goals of my condition-free release rather than opt for an extension of my time by opting for the parole options that were offered by your colleague at the parole hearing. How was your lunch with Denny?”
“We had a lovely lunch at a nearby café that serves the best clam chowder in these lovely bread bowls,” Dr. Psychojunky answered easily as if he hadn’t a care in the world. If his casualness was designed to infuriate Joe, he was doing a great job, but if he thought Joe’d lose his temper to prove his incompetence, the doctor would lose that bet.
“I’ll have to try it soon,” Joe let himself say after careful thought.
“I don’t know how soon, considering that your ratings have fallen quite dramatically,” the doctor mentioned, scanning his clipboard with a supercilious smile. “You do remember that the ratings are important for proving that you’ve reformed. Otherwise, we could have inmates doing crazy click-scam stunts to get released.”
The bad doctor was definitely trying to get Joe to say something stupid.
“I’m aware of the rating clause,” Joe fumed behind a forced smile. “It is a disturbing trend, but the Advertising, Marketing and Producer AIs in my program are diligently working on some solutions. I just came from one of those solutions where I’ve been trying to trade what are called shout-outs between program providers.”
Joe too could play this like Dr. Psychward wasn’t sabotaging him on purpose.
“That sounds perfectly reasonable as long as it doesn’t cross the boundary of conspiring against the prison system with fellow prisoners,” the bad doctor warned, his eyes glinting with malice.
“I’m just trying to help promote their programs,” Joe shook his head, trying to emote earnestness. “If you’d like a copy of the script, I’m sure I could have my assistant send it to you. I’ve tried to read all the rules and comply honestly with the spirit of the law as well as the letter of it. Did I do something wrong? Would you like me to stop promoting other programs?”
This was a trick question, but did Dr. Psychoidiot know the limits of his powers enough to know that?
“Promotion is fine, and commendable,” he frown-smiled. It was the type of expression where the eyes press down angrily, but the mouth has ends that tilt up. He couldn’t limit Joe's promotion or that of any other inmate, according to those rules that Mandy, Tempest, and Grace had been dissecting. “This isn’t about you having done anything wrong so much as we, the prison officials here, are concerned for your well-being. You’re becoming quite the overachiever, and we want to take care of you. We thought we’d give you another chance to accept a parole offer. If you didn’t like Ms. Comtolle, we could find you other representation.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“I liked Ms. Comtolle just fine,” Joe assured him. “I still have no interest in parole at this time. Thank you for your concern, but I’m in my right mind and would like the chance to try to bring up my ratings in an honorable and effective way.”
“Our records show that it’s very difficult to bounce back from ratings like this,” he tapped that pen again, but this time it felt like it was out of irritation, and for once, it didn’t bother Joe so much.
“Why is that?” Joe asked innocently.
“Aren’t you in the two’s?” he tossed out the jibe.
“I’d gotten it back up to 3.4 when I was pulled out during our shout-out segment,” Joe replied, his smile bright and sincere. It’s just like smiling when the boss says they have to demote you or fire you to get you to take a pay cut because their last executive retreat was a little too expensive for the company. You smiled, took the pay cut and tried to figure out how to cover the rent. Joe could do this all day. He’d had so much practice.
“Were you in the middle of promotions?” the doctor smiled for real this time. “I’m so sorry to have interrupted that.”
“That’s okay,” Joe cocked his head to the side and tried to wipe all thought from his eyes. “We were done.” It took precisely fourteen minutes to cycle out of a VR unit. Their shout-out session was timed for exactly that long. “It would have been terrible to be ejected in the middle of it. All those prisoners would have lost out on our promotions.”
It had been a gray area whether he could pull Joe during the segment. Sure, he could claim that it wasn’t intended, but then again, the bad doctor was technically supposed to give a 24-hour warning before pulling Joe out. According to Joe's records, he’d pulled Joe out twice without notice and he was out of emergency pulls until next month. Joe didn’t know what would happen if he tried to violate that rule, but the AIs watched the prison officials as much as they watched Joe. The parole hearing had been a quick warning, but since the email had been sent a day before and addressed within the six-hour window they had been allowed, they could eject Joe then without using up Dr. Psychodisease’s emergency ejections. Joe was refusing to open or delete any emails due to that. That meant they had to give two ejection warnings 24 hours apart before they ejected him next. If Joe opened or deleted one, they could pull within 6 hours of the action.
“I’ll try to make sure your next ejection doesn’t interfere with your legal right to self-promotion,” Dr. Psychodungbeetle told Joe in a sweet voice full of shit. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I had no idea what you were doing as I don’t really have enough free time to watch all the prisoner shows.”
According to one very small spider, that was a bit of a lie. Joe thought about taking that bait and discarded the idea as too risky. Joe wanted to get back in his pod as soon as possible and see what their shout-outs had done. Until then he would just have to sit here and placate the asshole. This ejection actually worked to his benefit since the doctor would be hard pressed to find another chance to cut anything Joe tried to do short. Mandy could scan and summarize emails without triggering the email actions at all, so Joe’d have all the warning he’d need for future ejections and even the ejections had limits. Dr. Psychopimp had four more notification-level ejections that he could use this month and then he was done. He could always visit Joe on set, but he couldn’t disrupt Joe's normal feeds now that Joe’d gotten enough viewers to notice, or he could get some nasty feedback on the prison system interference.
“I can understand how busy you are,” Joe nodded. “Are you feeling better about my competence, or did you have more questions for me before they plunge me back in?”
“Are you in any particular hurry?” Dr. Psychoblunderhead asked, reaching behind him to take a small, wrapped candy out of a dish on the table beside him. “It can sometimes be helpful to reorient oneself to the real world so that the fantasy doesn’t overwhelm us.”
“No hurry,” Joe kept the vapid smile on his face and didn’t even mind the doctor’s taunting about candy or clam chowder in bread bowls. He must not know that Joe ate so much better. Then again, if this ploy worked for other prisoners, maybe they didn’t know the trick of having a costar that was a chef. That could be a bartering tool. “I could use a nap.”
“You have my expertise at your disposal, and you want to take a nap?” Dr. Pyschonumbnuts admonished, but there was no heat in it. He was just trying to goad Joe.
“Was there more you wanted to talk about?” Joe opened his eyes to stare at him. “I just figured that if you were satisfied with my competence and with how busy you are, that I’d used up too much of your time already. You are reassured, correct?”
“I find you very competent,” his lips thinned. Yes, he was monitored as all of these meetings had to be monitored by an anti-sexual-harassment AI. It was a condition of his psychologist’s license. Joe didn’t know where he knew it from, but he did know it. Maybe all those mandatory sexual-harassment seminars weren’t a waste of time at every new job Joe'd gotten in his life.
“That’s good to know,” Joe smiled again and closed his eyes.
“Well,” and the bad doctor clapped his hands loudly on a crunch of the candy in his mouth. “You are right. I am very busy and could use the time to deal with other prisoners.”
“Nice talk, doc,” Joe called out to him as he strode angrily from the office.
Had Joe just gotten the better of Dr. Psychobabble?
“One more thing,” the doctor turned back to Joe with a sick smile. “We’ve noted that your show seems to be lacking in sponsorship and have decided to help you with that. We’ve lined up some sponsors and you’ll need to meet with them over the next week. Your income stream seemed to be severely lacking, so we’ve initiated a program designed to help you earn a living wage for when you are released. Enjoy.”
Sponsors. That would be interesting. It was obvious that he felt good about circumventing Joe's desire to not send any money the prison’s way. That was okay, because as soon as Joe perused said contracts, he’d find a way to make them not work until he was out from under the tyranny.
The bastard left Joe there for an hour of reality time. Joe took a nap. What? Like he had anything better to do without all the AIs bustling about in his head? No. Sleep without all that noise back there was nice. Joe’d have gone longer, but the guards woke him and tossed him back into the dunk tank. Joe might have even been getting used to the initiation process because it didn’t feel quite as much like drowning as it had in the beginning. Joe was getting better about it all. That was good since he wasn’t planning on stopping any time soon.