The revolving door to Yorktown Corp. spun at its standard morning pace, slow enough that a worker could comfortably make it in with their coffee, but fast enough that some busybody wouldn’t check their watch before it was time to exit.
One such busybody had travelled a very long way to his first day at the job; he smiled up at George Washington’s blank expression, with the old man’s head loomed over the door. From Jefferson to Washington, Travis had travelled through space, but not through time.
He breezed through into the main lobby, noting the fish ponds on either side of a freshly varnished mahogany reception desk. Despite the lobby having enough plush navy chairs and black leather couches to seat dozens, the only sound in it was the cascading water from the ponds’ waterfalls.
Travis waited around for a minute or two before he saw a dark gray bag plopped behind the front desk. There was a yellow note hastily attached to the front of the bag, nearly falling off it. It was like whoever wrote it couldn’t wait to get out. The note’s handwriting, while messy and hasty, was no worse than Travis’, so the “Travis Roche” written on it was still legible to him.
The bag itself contained only three things; a layout of the complex—though the building’s all-glass structure made much of that redundant—as well as a tablet for work duties. Finally, there was a chartreuse t-shirt with the words “CHANGE OUR WORLD!” emblazoned on the front in strawberry-syrup red.
The map did have one feature which helped Travis: His office’s location. He just hoped the door was unlocked, since he hadn’t received any sort of key card nor code.
Walking through the halls, Travis did not see a soul, at least since he wasn’t one of those freaks who thought drones had souls. If they did, whoever designed them to just mop floors and clean up shit from bathrooms (not that there was anyone in the building to use them) would be in some serious trouble with the Big Man in the afterlife. Travis probably would be too.
He made his way through the empty corridors a bit on edge. Was this some elaborate hazing ritual for new employees? Was it because he was from not just the West Coast, but Jefferson, which he knew the locals considered just as backward as Deseret, and even worse than Yellowstone; at least the latter had that badass volcanic power plant.
No, there was no way they’d do that to him; they’d gone out of their way to recruit him for his work at Coos Bay and Klamath Falls, mentioning his “penchant for spontaneously creating implementation schema to improve production value in the region.” Apparently that penchant was worth $390,000 a year in their own currency, and that was before bonuses and potential stock options!
Even with the exchange rate in Jefferson not being kind to most fiat, Travis more than doubled his salary. There was even enough money to afford a physical dictionary and thesaurus to decipher whatever his new bosses were talking about.
Snaking his way through the pristine halls which were nonetheless being constantly cleaned, he finally reached his office; they’d already given him a nameplate. It read:
“Travis Roche, Professional Improviser of Local Production and Manufacturing Schema, General Consultant”
After taking the requisite two minutes to read his new title, some invisible chip in Travis’ tablet opened the door to his office. Like the building itself, it was nearly all glass, with some wood paneling to hide most of the view from the hallway. Still, Travis’ next-door neighbors—when ( or if) he had any—would be granted full access to his work, and he to theirs. The entire back wall was also a window. The company mural in the lobby listing transparency as one of 50 core values rang a little too true.
Trying to set his bizarre workspace situation aside, Travis decided to get to his actual job. He docked his the tablet on the stand which laid diagonally on his desk. The full-size projector activated with a quick hum before displaying a woman with mid-length curly dark hair, oversized brown eyes, and teeth whiter than her freshly manicured nails.
“Hello new hire. Welcome to Yorktown Corp.! I’m Marina Rose, Director of Hiring, Training, Re-training, Compliance, and Separations here at Yorktown Corp. I’m sure you must have a lot of questions, but please save them for the end of this presentation; I should be able to answer most of them. Are you ready to proceed?”
“Yes, I am.” Travis said, his eyes locked on the projection.
“Great! Let’s start changing the world, just like the Battle of Yorktown did! I hope you brought your tri-corner hat! Not your musket though; no firearms are allowed on Yorktown Corp. property.” She said, her laugh quickly turning back into spoken fine print.
“Moving on. Here at Yorktown Corp., we change the world by doing well, everything. We help companies with every problem under the sun, from personnel to productivity to legal compliance to logistics to personnel.” Ms. Rose said with a glint in her eye.
“You said personnel twi—” Travis said, forgetting he was speaking aloud.
“Please, no questions until the end.” Ms. Rose said, the glint in her eye from her prior spiel already gone. "As I was saying, we are proud to be official partners with the Chesapeake’s Burgesses; in fact this is the twentieth year of our private-public partnership to expel and remove unnecessary superfluousness in legislative governance, as well as developing private production and service solutions.” She said before taking a brief pause.
“So, where do you fit in? From your resume, you have a solid private sector development record, so you will be primarily focusing on our private production and service solutions, but we may ask you to help with our legislative efforts as well. You are expected to work at least 45 hours a week, though bonuses are given based on the amount of extra time you put in, or if you secure new clients.”
“Your day will consist of receiving assignments from both clients and your superiors. You are expected to provide an update on each project at the daily meeting one hour before the end of the workday. These updates must be officially documented via either a document or slides; we need physical proof of your work, as past employees have doctored electronic records.” Marina’s voice dropped just half an octave. She did it with enough subtlety to make Travis think she was actually human and not an android like he’d heard so many rumors about.
“The revolution will not be televised, but it will be documented! Sorry, that’s a very dated reference from back when our COO was still a kid.” Marina giggled, and Travis went back to thinking she was an android.
“Bad jokes aside, your work on those projects will vary, from giving advice to leaders to developing plans of your own, to editing plans of both superiors and clients, though it’s more likely that the inverse will happen for much of your early time as part of our mission. Speaking of that, we’d like you to develop initial plans for a re-packaging plant for one of our clients who specializes in sustainable sales. Specs will be sent to your tablet . . . now.” The ping came before the last syllable even left her mouth.
“We have plenty more policies to review and re-review together, but we like to give new hires something more fun on the first day! Enjoy changing the world today and always!” The projection flipped off as Travis flicked his tablet to the new file. Specs for a potential new manufacturing plant blew up on the projector. It was Travis’ job to determine what went where, and what went nowhere. Not much different than his work in Jefferson, though in this case there was already an exemplar model which showed Travis how the program worked.
Travis examined each of the shapes drawn in stark white lines on an azure background. They represented access roads, heavy, fixed equipment, docking bays, work stations, emitter stacks, employee and product transport, as well as every other thing a plant needed to function. After a couple minutes of review, he got to work.
The plant had four excess emitter stacks; an oversight that would cost the client tens of millions in construction and maintenance costs. When Travis moved to delete them, he received an error message, its black text on a red-orange background certainly an intentional inversion of the blueprint itself.
“ERROR. PROPOSED PLANT IS IN VIOLATION OF CHESAPEAKE ENVIRONMENTAL CODE SECTION 54.6 CONCERNING MAXIMUM EMISSIONS ALLOWABLE PER STACK. FOR THE SAKE OF ENVIROMENTAL SAFETY PLEASE PICK A NEW DESIGN WHICH INCORPORATES SEVERAL MORE LAFAYETTE INC. (a subsidiary of Yorktown Corp.) SMOKESTACKS.”
“Oh come on! As is, the stacks are running at 35% capacity; it would only be 70% even with my changes. That’s more than enough to be clean, not to mention provide backup if needed.” Travis said, but apparently the tablet was programmed not to hear speech. Biting his tongue, Travis attempted to improvise.
Picking different stacks to eliminate didn’t help things, nor did restarting the program. Restarting the tablet was just as futile.
Throwing up his hands in both senses of the phrase, Travis moved onto the rest of the plant. This time he attempted to make the plant’s windows of a thicker, more stable glass, decreasing the chance of damage while increasing insulation in the process. Once he’d finished his suggestion, he clicked “done with component,” only to be greeted with another message.
“ERROR. PROPOSED PLANT IS IN VIOLATION OF SECTION 30.45(K) OF THE BROKEN WINDOW REPAIR ACT. CHESAPEAKE ENCOURAGES EMPLOYMENT IN THE TRADES, PARTICULARLY AT ROCHAMBEAU WINDOW REPAIR (a subsidiary of Yorktown Corp.).”
“One more try.” Travis thought—and accidentally said—to himself, this time looking to re-position some of the heavy equipment on the floor, lessening the amount of feet—no, meters—of conveyors that the client would have to buy. Once he was done moving the equipment and redirecting the conveyors, he selected “done with components,” only to receive a familiar message:
“ERROR. PROPOSED PLANT IS IN VIOLATION OF SECTION 17.47(c)(1)(D) OF THE CHESAPEAKE CONVEYOR INDUSTRY SUPPORT ACT. HELP US SUPPORT LOCALLY OWNED (but not necessarily built or operated) INDUSTRY.”
Rolling his eyes, Travis clicked through each component of the plant, giving it his approval. The game was obvious to him now. If anything, he was mad he hadn’t sorted it out earlier. When he’d clicked the final component, the screen changed to a darker blue.
“Thank you for your input on this project, clearly showing that we have done our due diligence when selecting the plant’s architecture. Our complaince department asks that you please document your process in a report on the screen which will come up at the end of this message.” Came a sing-song voice from the tablet before it turned off.
Travis played along, doing as he was told, detailing why each component and section of the plant was where the company wanted it to be, as well as writing out how the plant would function with its pre-determined structure. When he finished, Marina reappeared on screen, an ancient clipboard in her hand.
“I’m sorry, but this report, while it does give sufficient details on the end product, does not explain your process enough.” Marina said, even more curt than usual.
“What? I explained why I thought each of the key components was in the right place.” His voice raised just a bit.
“Yes, but that’s not enough. We need minute-to-minute details to fully understand your thought process, and therefore optimize your work, as well as match you with better projects.” Marina sounded as if she were explaining this to a child.
“So you want me to update this document every minute while I’m working???”
Marina let the question hang for a moment before answering it. “Yes. More often if possible.”
“Why not have a bot track my computer’s work? Wouldn’t that show a lot.” Travis was incredulous.
“We already do that.” Marina shrugged. “But our computer can’t outright tell us what you think; it can merely guess. That’s where the human touch comes in.” Marina said.
Travis’ response was immediate. “How does anyone here get anything done?”
“I know you’re not from around here, but in Chesapeake we are very serious about our process, not just winging things and managing to get results because we’re so naive that we think anything is better than nothing. And besides, our style gets things done much faster than the legislative process.” Marina allowed herself a smirk.
“Well in that case, congrats on being the second-slowest tortoise on the continent. Maybe the fourth-slowest if you’re lucky. Lecturing me about the “human touch” when I’m the only thing not made of wood or metal in this entire fucking office complex. Since you clearly don’t want me nor my kind working for you, I’ll save you the trouble of firing me; I’m done with this shit.” Travis took his complimentary bag and got up from his still-pristine desk.
“Improper, unprofessional, and profane language, not to mention the veiled threat of a frivolous lawsuit to go with your shoddy, haphazard work product! We are, how you say, very much done with your shit Mr. Roche. Good day. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Not that it can; we’ve programmed it too well.” Marina smirked one more time as Travis got up from the desk. Travis swore he could hear her say “Backwoods prick” under her breath as she left the office.
Spared a walk of shame as there was nobody to stare through all the office’s glass windows, Travis stormed out of the building for the first and last time. He never saw a soul his whole time there.