John rushed into the apartment and located the source of the ringing sound right away. It was on the living room couch. John walked to the couch and found a mobile phone that was still ringing. John picked up the phone without hesitation.

“Hello! Who is this?”

“Is it John?”

“Josh? What’s going on?” John recognized that it was Josh who was supposed still on the train.

“Oh, thank the Lord.” On the other side, Josh sounded relieved. “I could not find that phone, and I was not sure where I lost it. So I have kept dialing that number in hopes of reaching whoever finds that phone.”

“But I saw you were using a phone on our way to the train station,” John said.

“Yes. I brought two phones to your place. Actually, that was why I forgot to take the one you found when I left.”

Josh explained, “That was a corporate phone and I didn’t intend to use it during the weekend. I brought it just in case they might contact me for any emergency. I even turned off the position locator and that’s why I did not know it was left at your place.”

“I see. Do you need me to send it to you today?” John asked.

“No hurry. The most important thing is that I know where it is. If it is convenient for you, you might drop it to the post office sometime tomorrow.”

“Okay. I will go to the post office during lunchtime tomorrow and send it to you by the overnight express. You will get it on Tuesday,” John promised.

“That’ll be great. Thanks so much buddy.”

……

After hanging the phone, John quickly cleaned up the mess left by his visitors so that when the roommates came back, they would have clean rooms.

~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~

According to the schedule, Monday morning would be the exercise time, and the afternoon would be the quiz time.

Don, the trainer of the IB system from F Corp, announced on the second Monday of the training that he would assign some extra exercises on each Monday for the trainees to practice using mind-power, in addition to the training content required by the HR of K Corp. Don had been a trainer for 30 years for various technologies before he worked for F Corp. He had found that some extra exercises could effectively help the trainees to improve their skills.

John enjoyed working on those exercises on the previous Monday. He was able to finish all the exercises half an hour faster than many others in the class. Today he managed to finish it even faster since he needed to save some extra time to run the errand for Josh during the lunchtime.

After two weeks of training, John had become very good at talking to the IB system with his mind. Now he seldom needed to use the keyboard to type anything when he sat in front of the terminal screen of the IB system. He could just talk to the system for whatever he wanted to input into it. Alice and a few others could do almost the same as John did, while most others were still struggling to get along with their computer partner, the IB system. For this reason, Jeff and Don let those who had progressed faster to have some free time to do whatever they wanted as long as they would stay in the premise of K Corp and came back to the class at certain scheduled time points. If someone wanted to take the advantage of working fast to leave the building for a while, they might also have the chance to do so as long as they got the permission from Jeff or Don.

~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As scheduled, Don gave the class a quiz in the afternoon. Alice finished the quiz more quickly than most people in the class as usual. When she was about to leave her seat, she found John behind her still staring at the terminal screen. Alice did not see John in his seat when she came back from lunch, and she did not notice when he came back to his seat either. She guessed that John must have come back late for the quiz since he normally would finish it about the same time as her.

“Hey,” Alice greeted John with a very low voice and pointed upwards using her left index finger.

John looked up and nodded towards her while showing an okay with his right hand, and then continued with his quiz. He knew that Alice was telling him that she was going to the cafeteria with the gang as usual. The timer on the terminal screen showed that it was just past 5:00 pm. He still had a few more problems to finish the quiz.

Alice’s guess was right. John came back to the class about ten minutes after the quiz started. He left the company before the lunchtime with the permission of Jeff. He went to the post office that was several miles away from the building of K Corp. Everything went very smoothly except that his bus was delayed due to a protest march on the street on his way back to the company.

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The march was organized by car service drivers, including taxi drivers, limo drivers, and all kinds of other car service drivers, against the taking over of their jobs by unmanned car services. Ten men and women walked at the front of the procession, holding a long blue banner with crimson letters printed as “Give Back The Working Rights To Humans”. It soon attracted people of many other working backgrounds to join the parade and became a protest against the replacement of humans by robotic machines in general.

John’s bus was right behind the road blocking set by the police at the intersection. He left his seat and walked to the front of the bus beside the driver so that he could see the march clearly.

The chanting of slogans by the marchers was very loud and John could hear it clearly from within the bus. From time to time someone shouted “I have a soul!” and the others followed with “I have the right to work!” or someone shouted “We are human!” and others followed with “Don’t trade us for robots!” or someone shouted “This is my country!” and others followed with “It’s owned by humans!” and a few other catchphrases.

The procession was moving in order and peace. Cops were helping to block the traffic so that the march would not be disturbed by the vehicles or pedestrians on the street. It took about 10 minutes for the whole procession to pass his bus. John estimated that there might be about 10 thousand marchers in the procession.

~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When John returned to the class, it was very quiet, and he knew that the quiz had started. Don saw him and beckoned him to his seat. John sneaked to his seat without making any noise and turned on the machine. Once he saw the content of the quiz, he felt relieved. It was about personal safety at the workplace, a very typical HR subject. The only difference between the quiz they were taking and what the ordinary employees might take was that they need to answer everything with mind, which had become an easy task for John anyway. The class learned the subject the previous Friday. So the main disadvantage for John was that he did not have any time to study before the test as others might have had. But that did not bother him either since John had a very good memory.

John finished the quiz about 15 minutes after Alice left. Then he took the elevator to the cafeteria. Since he was late today, John was not sure if Alice and others were still there. But he would go there to have a cup of coffee for himself anyway.

The cafeteria of K Corp was located at the top floor of the building. Its operation was outsourced to C Corp, which was a public company specialized in running the multi-million business of internal cafeterias for large corporations. The whole top floor was divided into the indoor cafeteria and an outdoor rooftop terrace, with the terrace on the south side of the cafeteria. Between the terrace and the cafeteria were some glass doors and windows so that people could see what was on the deck very clearly from within the cafeteria.

The indoor portion of the floor was divided into two main areas, the food area and the dining area, by retractable belt barriers. The food area was in the middle surrounded by the belt barriers and the rest was the dining area. In the food area, there were several different sections, with some of them for freshly cooked hot food, some for cold dishes, some for bakeries, and some for fruits and beverage.

There were two exits from the food area to the dining area at its two opposite sides. Cashier desks were located at the exits, where the customers (i.e. employees or visitors of K Corp) would make their payments after they had obtained their food and beverage before they went to the dining area. At the east end of the cafeteria, there was a safety exist to the stairways; at the west end, on the south side were escalators connecting the top floor to a lower floor, and on the north side were elevators that could go to every floor in the building.

After stepping out of the elevator, John looked around. The cafeteria was almost empty, and he did not see anyone from his class. He walked to the coffee machine and made himself a large size of coffee. When he walked towards the cashier, he saw Alice and others were sitting around a table on the outdoor terrace. So he walked out to the terrace to join his folks after he paid for the coffee.

~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the terrace, Alice, Fred, and Jason were chatting with a man. John never saw him before. They seemed very excited about something and no one noticed John until he grabbed a chair and sat beside Alice. The stranger stopped talking and greeted John, “Hi there. I am Jerome. Are you in the same class with them?”

“Yes. My name is John.” John and Jerome had a quick hand shaking.

“Jerome is from F Corp. He heard the news that K Corp might help F Corp to market their IB system around the world,” Alice told John.

“Really? But it seems that we are the only ones who know how to use the IB technology here in K Corp.”

“That means we might be assigned to work on this, I guess,” said Jason.

“I heard K Corp might have a new department to work with us,” added Jerome.

“But we don’t know anything about how to set up the server,” said Fred.

“That part I think F Corp would take care, at least for now.” Jerome assured them.

“But I heard that several people in our class have already been involved in some projects in their own departments. So I guess not all of us would be working on this project for F Corp,” Alice brought up another issue.

Then all of them, except Jerome, looked at each other asking whether they had been assigned any work in the departments for which they were originally interviewed for. But none of them was.

“I only met with my department manager once since I came here,” John said.

“Then maybe you guys would be the candidates to work on the new F Corp project,” Jerome said.

“Why were you late for the quiz?” Alice asked John.

“I went to the post office, but the bus was caught up by the protest on my way back,” John said.

“What protest?” Alice asked.

“I think it was a protest by the service car drivers against the unmanned cabs,” John answered.

“You didn’t read the news online?” Fred asked Alice. “It was organized by the service car drivers, but then joined by people of many other backgrounds. It turned into violence in the central square area.”

“It was very peaceful when I saw it,” John said.

“Yeah, it was peaceful at the beginning. Then they clashed with a counter-protest by university students and professors who support the AI industrial revolution for the benefit of human civilization,” Jason added.

“Oh well, this kind of thing will happen sooner or later anyway,” Jerome commented and then stood up. “I gotta run to catch my bus. Nice to talk to you guys.”

“We need to go as well,” said Fred.

All of them left their seats and walked towards the elevators.