Incident at the Fulfillment Center

The Forensic Video Analysis contract was completely standard but for two things Rayna had never seen before: A redaction where the company’s title usually went, and a personal note from a boss she had only met over video call a handful of times.

Tell me if they’re like what the news says. If they’ll let you tell me anything at all. They asked for someone with experience and a strong stomach.

The company’s name was redacted, but the address wasn’t hiding anything:
594 W. Amazon Ave.

The note burned a hole in her head for the entire two hour tram ride to the job site. She passed the time by listening to a book. Her eyes glazed over as miles and miles of urban expanse flowed past her window, yet the book became background noise to her confusion.
It didn’t make sense. That company had dozens of normal contracts flowing through the government’s surveillance branch at any given time to keep up with the stream of cases that required a video analysis confirmation. A survey taken that year said that an employee at the fulfillment center was fired every five minutes. All of those firings used video evidence that was vetted by a third party, the surveillance branch, for legal posterity.

So what was so special about this contract? Why redact a name that was so obvious?
At one point a beggar that had correctly assumed Rayna was a fresh mark approached her. Rayna , deep into her theories, didn’t want to hear his story. Instead, she woke up her watch and navigated its interface with her neuralink. Thirty dollars left her account and dropped into the disheveled man’s. He looked up from his own watch, nodded his thanks, and moved on to the next tram car.

The tram came to a stop in front of what the intercom announced as “the fulfillment center.” She and a few dozen workers piled out of the cars and walked towards the building.

“Miss Ishimura!”

Beside the rows of employee and visitor turnstiles, a short woman in a beige business dress waved toward Rayna and approached her with an outstretched hand and a wide smile.
“Glad I caught you,” the woman said, “I’m Kathy, head of this fulfillment center. Walk with me.”

They walked through a visitor turnstile into a massive lobby filled with a mix of customer, worker, and green/beige packaging stations for walk-in customers to use. She wasn’t able to get a good look at it, though she noticed the path to the fulfillment center proper was massive and filled with mandatory security checkpoints. Past a door near one of the checkpoints was a security suite almost as big as the lobby, with an ocean of carefully monitored LCD’s projecting footage of packages being processed. Kathy led them to an interview room on the far side of the suite.

“Miss Ishimura,” Kathy said with her wide smile after taking a seat across from her. “We hope-”

“What’s your last name?”

“Excuse me?”

“What’s your last name? If you’re going to call me Miss, I’d like to do the same.”

“Ooohhh, I like it!” Kathy said with a smile that didn’t hide the lie very well, “then I’m Miss Amerson. What I was going to say was that you won’t be needing any of the other onboarding that we usually do with new video analysts. We asked for someone experienced in our contract and you fit the bill perfectly. But, before we start, we need to make something clear on the record.”

“Yes?”

“This is the point of no return. After we leave this room and continue up to the second floor, you waive all rights and privileges concerning anything you do or say that has anything to do with this company. There will be no paper trail, physical or otherwise, that the company won’t belong to the company.
Do you agree to these terms?”

“I do,” Rayna said. Aside from the last comment, this was also standard with most companies.

“Perfect. Follow me.”

“Your temporary workstation is in a temporary room on the second floor, or the sixth and seventh stories to be more precise” Kathy said as they approached an elevator. “In the new residential sector.”

“Oh? I thought those didn’t work out too well for the companies that tried them.”

“They didn’t,” Kathy said as she badged the elevator’s card reader and selected the button with a beige number 2. “But nothing ever works the first try. With enough gumption and smarts, even the failures can become soaring accomplishments.”

Kathy smiled, really smiled, for what looked like the first time today, if a rueful and sardonic grin counted as a smile.

“Does this contract have to do with one of those failures?” Rayna asked.

“Bullseye,” Kathy said, shaking her head and digging a fifty milligram nicotine patch out of her suit pocket. “Mind if I speak to you bluntly here on out? I had to watch the footage this morning and I’m tired.”

She gave Rayna an almost pleading look as she tore the packaging off of the patch and put it on her upper arm, next to two other patches.
“Yes, please.” Rayna said. “I’ll do the same.”

Kathy looked up sharply at what she assumed was a jab, but saw only honesty in Rayna’s expression. Her smile shrank, yet became more genuine as she massaged the patch onto her shoulder. Crows feet and wrinkles that had been hidden by her practiced expression also became clearer.

“Y’know what, I change my mind. I’m glad you’re here, but don’t tell my boss I said that. Do you usually give all your other clients the same shit?”

The elevator doors slid open. Rayna followed Kathy into a long hallway lined with cement and cheap fluorescent lights. The money behind the company only went so far to make an impression at the entrance, it seemed.

“Kind of,” Rayna said. “It’s not so much ‘shit’ as it is me trying to be professional while also making sure clients understand that I don’t have a ‘walk here’ sign pointing towards my back.”

“Smart girl,” Kathy said as they came to the end of the hallway. The door at the end was as plain as every other in the fulfillment center so far, except for the keyhole above the card reader.

Rayna hadn’t seen a (what to call it?) “analogue” key since she’d first started her internship at the branch. Even physical cards were on the way out and only used in the boonies outside of the major cities.

“We don’t take any chances,” Kathy said, noticing Rayna’s amazement at the keyhole. A dirty brass key went into the hole, followed by a plastic card on the electronic reader and a third lock activated by Kathy’s neural link.

On the other side of the door was an office space barely thirty feet square and lit by old fashioned fluorescent bulb panels. Right in the middle of the space was a black ergonomic office chair, a nondescript desk.

A pair of glasses sat on top of the desk.

“These glasses contain a VR setup of the footage that will interface with your neural link,” Kathy said, reading from a tablet she’d brought out from her pocket. “We’ll play the footage only once as mandated by law, but we will not allow any pauses or rewinds once we’ve started.”

Kathy put away the tablet and frowned at Rayna, who’d taken the seat at the desk and was holding the glasses.

“I can’t give you many of the details, but I can tell you that the company was trying a new form of automation in the residential district. There were few survivors, hence why we had to go through the surveillance branch. Was there anything else you’d like to know before we start?”

“Some pretty grotesque shit?” Rayna asked.

“Yes. I won’t bullshit you.”

“I appreciate it. Let’s get this over with, then.” Rayna had gotten very good at putting on a stoic mask, but it was cracking. She could’ve backed out of the contract, only in the sense a deep sea cave explorer could back out after her lifeline and electricity had been cut mid dive.

“I’ll be watching it with you, if that’s worth anything” Kathy said. “I had to watch it alone this morning. That and I’m overriding the ‘no pause’ rule. We can take a break any time you like.”

“I appreciate it, Kathy.”

“No problem, Rayna.”

Rayna and Kathy put the glasses on and watched the company’s groundbreaking attempt at work automation in their budding residential district.

The “Zero Hour Work Week” was proposed as a bridge between workplace automation, artificial intelligence, and the common worker. It took years of trials, simulations, and legal red tape to make it happen, but there was nothing more suited to the task than the biggest company on the planet. With the promise of both a free move into the residential district that was also going through a trial run, as well as a nice increase in pay, there was no shortage of volunteers.

Only those with no criminal record or history of neural link malfunction were allowed to apply. The neural link history was more scrutinized than anything else, as a neural link was mandatory for the program.

Twenty fulfillment shift supervisors were picked randomly out of a pool of hundreds. Each relocated into a pre-furnished one bedroom apartment in a sequestered section near the front of the residential district. Among amenities such as ovens, sinks, and bathtubs, the new residents were allowed to pick from one of a few bonus daily morning activities that the company would provide. The group chose a new morning yoga routine that utilized bodily waste collected from the showers of the test subject’s apartments. A popular health vlog had been promoting it as “enhancing the compatibility of both your spirit and your neuralink via micro-frequencies of dead skin cells,” and the company was happy to provide a service that was relatively dirt cheap before the morning activations.

The activations were done in an isolated room in front of touch screen panels as tall and wide as each of the subjects. Nobody outside of the board of directors was allowed to see the activations take place, and the company president himself guided the subjects through the process via video call that was replaced by a recording for subsequent activation/de-activations.

When the subjects emerged into the fulfillment center, they weren’t conscious. Yet they wrapped pallets, sorted packages, even piloted drones to the best of their ability. Even if talking had been allowed in the workplace, each of the workers was so isolated that contact was rarely made while on the clock.

To the regular works nothing about the subjects looked odd or stood out. Maybe their movements were slightly more robotic than usual, but that was par for the course at the fulfillment center.

At the end of the day shift, the subjects each returned to the activation room. Ten minutes later, they would walk out into the residential district celebrating and talking eagerly with each other.

Nobody had experienced the shift they’d worked. In the blink of an eye everyone was eight hours older, richer, and tired from a long day at work. They loved it.

“I mean, let’s not kid ourselves,” one of the workers said on the way to the rooftop park for a beer. “This is only so the assholes up top can say they’re a pro-human company, right?”
The others agreed, but nobody backed out of the deal. To them there was nothing better than cutting the work out of life, getting paid quite well for the work they didn’t do, and doing nothing but enjoying their time off.

For weeks the twenty subjects did their morning body remnant yoga, went through the activation process, blinked, and a day of back breaking work was behind them. During days off, parties thrown at any one of the subject’s apartments were common. Biotechnical information and in-person interviews both said the same thing: These people were the happiest they’d been in their lives.

Two weeks after the program started, one of the subjects made an odd motion during the deactivation process. This was nothing new, unconscious bodies were actually more prone to stray impulses than conscious ones and the odd body movement or spasm was common. What wasn’t common was the writing on the side of the subject’s activation station, done with a nondescript company whiteboard marker.

Am I alive?

The subject was interviewed numerous times and ran through program calibrations after the incident, though the company didn’t inform him of what he’d done during unconsciousness.
Instead, they watched.

The next day, right before the deactivation process, the subject made another odd movement.

Yes, he’d written. I am.

The subject was taken off of the program and told that his data would be invaluable. He’d keep the pay bump, apartment, and was told he’d be signed back up for the program when it officially launched.

Two weeks later, the same technicians and senior managers that had given the subject the good news had to pull the upper half of his body from one of the elevators in the apartment block’s foyer. The shredded lower half was later recovered from the bottom of the elevator shaft.

The first signs of trouble were both too hidden and too varied to notice at first. None of the program deviations followed a pattern, save for a few towards the last days of the program.
It’s believed that ten of the subjects started to pass physical notes to each other while they were supposed to be working and unconscious. These notes weren’t found until after the investigation, but there is no doubt that what happened next could have been prevented if the subjects were watched just a little more closely. This group would be referenced as “The Talkers” in the investigations, due to the notes and the shared mass hysteria that followed.
The other subjects each began showing varying degrees of behavioural anomalies. Fewer hours were spent outside of their apartments. Quality of sleep sank to sub-standard levels.
One subject, even after the company warned her not to do so, started to do the activation process after finishing her shifts at work. She’d only be voluntarily conscious on weekends that she spent in her room, cuddled on her couch looking at her company tablet. The subject was taken off of the program and sent to a correctional resort/facility on the other side of the country.

Seven others dropped out of the program soon after, citing nightmares and lapses in consciousness. Each of them were offered to stay in the residential district, but all refused. Administration and technicians were worried, but with no obvious negative signs from those that would become The Talkers, the program continued.

The next day, the last subject that was visibly showing signs of abnormality abruptly tried to leave the building during her shift. She was still unconscious, and showed no sign or reaction to the guards in the lobby that barred her way. After some minutes, the subject abruptly turned and headed back into the fulfillment center and finished her shift.

Just before the deactivation process, she ran to an emergency stairwell. The cameras recorded her keeping a calm and neutral face all the way to the roof she would jump from. Luckily, the low-visibility suicide nets around the roof perimeter stopped the situation from escalating, but the subject didn’t survive.

Company emergency responders had to use a crane to retrieve the body. The woman had bit her own tongue off and used it to clog her airways and self asphyxiate. Her expression, even in death, was completely neutral. Her heart rate was recorded at two hundred and twenty beats per minute before flatlining.

It was immediately decided the program would be put on hiatus at the beginning of the next work week. The seven remaining subjects were told not to activate the program and enjoy their weekend. Each agreed vehemently that stopping the project and letting the company make improvements was the best option. Most of them died within a week.

In the middle of the night, they all woke up screaming. The screams weren’t heard by anyone but themselves: The rooms were soundproof and none of the security cameras had microphones. It took the overnight security team five minutes to notice each of the remaining subjects running around their section of the residential district. The footage reviewed afterwards showed each of them doing odd motions with their entire bodies in their sleep.

They gathered in one apartment with the food and water they could gather before barricading the front door. One stayed in the foyer and tried to escape using the emergency stairwell, elevator, and exit into the other parts of the residential district. They’d all been deactivated by security, though the lone subject managed to rip his fingernails off prying open the poorly maintained door to the elevator shaft.

After discovering that he could still call the elevator up and down the shaft, the subject found the first man that had been pulled from the project but had stayed at the apartments. Using kitchen knives, the subject subdued the man and cut the tendons on his legs. The man’s hands and feet were tied using bed sheets before the subject pushed his body feet first towards the elevator shaft. The subject called the elevator, hit the emergency button that overrode a large portion of the elevator’s weight resistance feedback protocols, and watched as the man’s lower half was slowly crushed by the elevator. When he died, the man’s upper half was so swollen from blood that he nearly popped.

The subject sat with the body until company emergency responders arrived outside of the emergency stairwell exit. On the footage, you can see the subject nod, walk to the elevator shaft, and throw himself down towards the bottom.

The standoff with the subjects still barraced in the apartment lasted a week. Their food supply was gone in two days, while their water was gone in three. Despite orders from the armed forces, re-assurances from technicians and on-site company therapists, none of the subjects ever responded to anything said to them. Armed forces repeatedly tried to get into the apartment, but the door was solid steel and barred with an emergency latch that the company claimed weren’t supposed to be installed.

The subjects never slept, most resorting to self harm and mutilation to stay awake. None of them made any extreme expression or outcry to the pain, though all over their heart rates and brain activity were off the charts.

Rather than fall asleep, a few piled into the bathtub and slit their throats. A few more hung themselves with towels and bedsheets. The last to die was constantly nodding off after five days of continuous consciousness that wasn’t supposed to be possible. Just as his brain waves were calming and it looked like he would fall asleep, he stood, walked to the bathroom, and lay on top of the corpses already piled in the bathtub before following in their steps.

The lone survivor had tried to join the others in death, but was so exhausted and delirious that he knocked himself unconscious trying to dash his brains across the kitchen counter. He was immediately sedated and sent to the nearest hospital.

He woke screaming in the hospital bed, though he couldn’t remember anything after he’d fallen asleep that first night. He was later sent to a joint rehabilitation-resort facility and will be cared for by the company for the rest of his life.

Rayna dropped her neural-link glasses to the floor. Her and Kathy were covered in sweat and bits of vomit that had come out before they’d reached the bathroom.

“Jesus Christ,” Rayna said, tears flowing down her face. Kathy just nodded.

Rayna set up a video conference call with her, her boss, Kathy, a senior member to the company board, and both of the company’s union representatives.

After a heated conversation that had to be given an overnight recess, a concession was finally made to give each of the employees that had survived the trial program lifelong work (officer work, Rayna made sure) and housing by the company.

The last point of contention had been how the story would be presented to the media. None of the subjects had family and few friends, and all were content with the deal that the company and union offered.

What they decided to put on the press release concerning the dead workers was simple:
Foodborne illness.

“Do you think they’ll ever try something similar?” Rayna asked Kathy as they both walked out to take the tram. It hadn’t stopped raining

“They’re all already working on the second iteration of the program,” Kathy said, a haunted look in her eyes as she put a fifth nicotine patch on her arm.

“I wonder how long it’ll take for them to get it right,” Rayna said with disdain. “Maybe after a single update to the neural link software, right?”

Kathy chuckled. It was a hollow, humorless sound that made Rayna feel cold.

“That’s the thing,” Kathy said. “The neural link was never behind the program. It was the yoga routine they were doing. It wasn’t so hard to market and push the routine through to the volunteers before the program started. I thought my boss was batshit insane for asking me to force them to do it every day.”

“The yoga!?”

“Yeah,” Kathy said before the conversation died for good. “The CEO’s already got a patent for it in the pipeline. Don’t tell anyone about that, or you’ll be dead in hours.”

Rayna believed it. She didn’t want to, but she did.

Credit:

Ko-Fi