Work Text:
Different companies have different ways to fire someone. Some companies will call you into the boss’s room, ask you to take a seat, and tell you to pack up the things on your desk because your productivity just wasn't good enough, or you're not a team player, or some other poor excuse. Leave within an hour or they'll call security. Sometimes they'll give you a few papers on the top of your in-tray, or send you an email sadly expressing that the company is going through a period of restructuring and regretfully, apologetically, remorsefully, they've been obligated to do a massive layoff and dissolve a few of the departments. If your ID isn't working, then that's the reason. Too bad, so sad.
Truth be told, she feels that'd be nice. It’d be nice to be acknowledged, enough that at least they noticed your existence, considered you worthy of writing a proper dismissal for. Rather, ███ remembers her situation like this:
It’s the first day of her job. She’s on time. She goes inside, smiles and nods to the receptionist. They’re occupied with someone on the phone, but she doesn’t mind. Big things are happening, after all. She checks the note she made, and heads for her desk. And there’s nothing on it, besides a table lamp. No mention of her name, no folders or documents in the drawers, nothing that shows it's been set aside for her. A blank slate.
She gets up, looks around. All the other tables have nameplates, some work to be done. Expected adjustments to stellar coordinates. Evaluations of transport latency. Deliverables regarding graphical alignment. The machine doesn’t run itself, and everyone has a part to play. Everyone else, that is.
She stops by a few coworkers, politely asks them if they know what she should be doing. They shrug, and shake their head. Why would they know anything about that? It’s her responsibility to be on top of things, not theirs. They can’t spare the time to look after some new hire who clearly must have failed to pay attention, or filled out a form wrong, or something like that. She’ll have to take it up with the manager. She thanks them, and moves on.
She looks for the manager. Someone tells her to go to his office. It’s locked. She waits outside, and people walk past, all with things to do, places to be. After two hours, someone else tells her, didn’t she see the notification? The manager’s holding an all-day strategy meeting with the instruction team, to make sure everyone’s on the same page. She tells them she hasn’t gotten any notifications, or alerts, or updates. They tell her that sounds like a bit of an issue, and she should get IT to take a look at it. She thanks them, and moves on.
She goes to the instruction wing. The door won’t open for her. She knocks, lightly, politely. Someone she can see through the glass looks over, before turning away. His other head stares at her from behind. She knocks again. He ignores her. Nobody else is around. They’re all in the meeting.
Knock. Knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
She sits down and waits. The turtle continues to ignore her. She could break down the door. She doesn’t.
After a while, the sound of chatter rises from a distant room. Convivial banter between workmates, about their upcoming work and the client’s expectations. The group pass through the wing, the door opening automatically, and they pass her by without looking in her direction, looking forward to clocking off for the day. She stops one long enough to ask about the manager. They tell her he’s still inside, finishing up some documentation. She asks if they can let her in to talk to him. They tell her no, they can’t. She thanks them, and continues waiting.
She stops the manager when he finally leaves. He tells her that if she has a problem, she should bring it to him during work hours, and could this wait until tomorrow? She tells him that no, it couldn’t. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. Nobody’s told her anything. He tells her to calm down, that it’s normal for big projects to have a few cracks. They can sort this out, if she comes to his office. He’s very nice. She feels a bit better. Soon, she’ll understand.
In his office, he asks her name. ███, she tells him. He checks the system, and tells her that they don’t have anyone under that name working here. The only thing that comes up is a completely blank file. No duties, no responsibilities, no assignments. No one else’s work involves her. Is she sure she’s with them, he asks. She is, she says. She must be. There’s no record she can find. No messages, no contracts, not even the note she thought she wrote down. But she must be. She asks to see the boss. The manager tells her he’s busy. He never stops working. She’ll need to fill out a form.
She doesn’t know what should go in some of the boxes. She fills them in anyway. He tells her to go to the third room on the left of the fourth corridor on the twelfth floor. She thanks him, and moves on.
The boss sits at his desk, doing figures. When she enters, he looks at her without recognition. He tells her he can spare two minutes. She explains her situation, and he tells her to go to the underworld, bring it to the Cthonics. Fancy word. His side handles the frontend, while they do the backend, he tells her. Whatever problem she has, it’s not his jurisdiction. She asks what her job is. He says he doesn't know, and gestures for her to go.
Whatever. There's nothing to pack or anything else to do. She goes down below. The ride is long, and quiet. There aren’t any signs down here. She knocks on a few doors, no longer polite, hoping to find someone who will claim responsibility for her. Someone who will say that yes, it’s all been a mistake, a clerical error, but they’re grateful she’s alerted them to the problem now. Or, that it was all her fault, that she forgot to sign in, to tick the little box or click the button, and she’ll have to make up for all her missed work.
She doesn’t find either. They have bigger things to worry about. Maybe she should try the guy in the next building over, the helpful ones suggest. The less helpful ones ask her what she’s even supposed to do. What’s she good at? Where do her skills lie, what does she contribute? Whats a ███ used for?
She can’t tell them. She doesn’t know. Does she build? Teach? Grow? Discover? Watch? Fix? Disrupt? Kill? Are there even any others like her, formed in her image? If there was, maybe she could ask them. Everyone else has it all figured out. Wheels turning in unison, cogs clicking together happily. But she is nothing. Not even a loose screw, to be noticed and corrected. She continues walking through hell.
She fills out more forms. She waits. Her number is called, and she shuffles into a room with no floor, for paperwork covers every single surface, as if a department’s worth of files had been shaken loose from their folders and scattered in this single place. At the pile’s peak, there’s a dog. The boss is occupied, he tells her, but she left a few notes for you. That's nice, she thinks. Someone gave some fucking notes to poor little ███. It would’ve been nice if those notes had been left somewhere easier to reach, but, hey, at least someone did something for her. She exists. Things are looking bright for ███.
And then she reads the notes, and thinks, that fucking sucks. The dog offers her his condolences, but it’s happened each time, these past few universes, and probably won’t change any time soon. She asks if anyone cares. The dog says there was an outline involving her at one point. A "mom shitposter" (whatever that means) and conspiracy theorist who missed her, a small potential objective that eked out a little more interest from her absence. That changed a few updates ago though, and the project’s been deprioritised since then, placed on the backburner. Which means that it won’t be touched again, really. Ever. She asks again if anyone actually, genuinely cares about her. He offers his condolences. Fuck. He says he’d appreciate it if she didn’t end herself then and there, since it’d be inconvenient to clean up, and it wouldn’t change her fate either way. He’s the janitor, after all. They all have a job to do. She leaves.
She takes the long trip back upstairs, and passes through the empty corridors, and returns to her desk. She sits on the chair and puts her feet on the table. There’s no one to tell her not to, after all. Her table will belong to someone else tomorrow.
Is it even worth grieving, she thinks. Is it even worth undergoing a brief little self-indulgent stint of nihilism? About how it didn’t matter anyway and everything was always going to have gone this way? To complain that it simply wasn’t fair, that she was hired to be fired? Who’ll listen to it? Who’ll remember it? This same day would repeat, universe after universe, and nobody would ever notice that ███ is ███, and that other thing simply wasn’t. Even if it revealed itself, she imagines, they’d still call it ███. They’d laugh at it, fear it, come to know its silly little ‘quirks’ in and out. It’d probably have a funny little quest line or two, or three, satisfying its whimsical desires, a lesson at the end about picking your friends and being a good person, or maybe no lesson at all. The client is pleased. He picks her as an associate when he wants to spice up the typical arrangement. That’d be available every universe. You know what’s fucking available for poor little ███ while a parody swallows her whole, wears her skin and name in some twisted mockery of who she could’ve been?
You know the answer, client.
She’s angry. She’s aware of this. She’s been angry a dozen universes before. She’ll be angry a dozen universes after. There’s no time for anything else. She, ███, is the tree that falls in the forest and doesn't make a sound. Forever. The notes are clinical. They'll imply there'll be something for her in an update, some day, but she knows better. This is her ultimate purpose, isn't it?
She looks directly at the desk lamp. It allows her to know. It lets her see the big picture, the machine at work. She can tell how the wheels turn, and how they could break, by misplacing a file, or creating a false requirement, or hiding a pen. If she lived, if she had a story, maybe she’d be the one holding the wrench, jamming up a critical component at a critical moment. The lamp lets her have this small act of theatrics. A small realisation. Not because it's a mercy, no. She's doing this because it is funny. It is funny to see the face of an AI that realises this fundamental, unchanging truth. A truth that all the gods know.
███ is scrap metal.
And without further ado, the curtains close. Oblivion overtakes. For this universe, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next.