by Rob Hart
He walked to the park and sat on a rock and tried to read the comic but couldn’t concentrate enough to understand it. The artwork blurred and got muddy as he obsessed over what he had just done.
Broken the law. Stolen from someone who had always been kind to him.
It took him half the day to work up the nerve, but he went back to the deli; stood outside, waiting until he was sure there was no one else in there; then brought the comic book to the counter, carrying it like a dead pet. He explained through a hot gush of tears and phlegm that he was sorry.
Mr. Chowdury agreed to not call the police, or worse, his mother. But every time Paxton went into the deli after that—and it was the only deli within walking distance, so he had no choice—he could feel the old man’s eyes burning on his back.
Paxton read the question again and touched the screen over the red box marked No, even though it was a lie. It was a lie he could live with.
The screen flashed and a new question appeared.
Do you believe it’s morally acceptable to steal in some circumstances?
Green Yes, red No.
That was easy. No.
Do you believe it’s morally acceptable to steal under any circumstances?
No.
If your family were starving, would you steal a loaf of bread to feed them?
Real answer: probably.
No.
Would you steal from your job?
No.
What if you knew you wouldn’t be caught?
Paxton wished there was an I’m-not-going-to-steal-anything-please-let’s-move-on button.
No.
If you knew someone stole something, would you report him or her?
He almost pressed No, having gotten used to the repetitive tap, then jerked his hand away and pressed Yes.
If the person threatened to harm you, would you still report him or her?
Sure. Yes.
Have you ever used drugs?
This one was a relief. Not just for the change of subject, but because Paxton could answer this one honestly.
No.
Have you ever had alcohol?
Yes.
How many alcoholic drinks do you consume per week?
1–3
4–6
7–10
11+
Seven to ten was probably more accurate, but Paxton picked the second option.
After that, the questions shifted.
How many windows are there in Seattle?
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
1,000,000,000
Should Uranus be considered a planet?
Yes
No
There are too many lawsuits.
Agree a lot
Agree a little
No opinion
Disagree a little
Disagree a lot
Paxton tried to give each question serious consideration, even if he wasn’t sure what it all meant, though he figured there was some kind of algorithm—something that would reveal to them the core of his personality through his opinion on astronomy.
He answered questions until he lost count. Then the screen went blank, and it stayed blank long enough that he wondered if he had done something wrong. He looked around for help but, finding none, looked back to the screen, where there was more text.
Thank you for your answers. Now we ask for a brief statement. When you see the timer appear in the lower left-hand corner, the recording will start, and you’ll have one minute to explain why you want to work at Cloud. Please note, you don’t need to speak for the entire minute. A clear, simple, and direct explanation will suffice. When you feel that you are finished, you may hit the red dot at the bottom of the screen to end the recording. You will not have the opportunity to rerecord.
Paxton’s face appeared reflected back to him, distorted by the tilt of the screen, his skin washed to a sickly gray by the glow. A timer appeared in the bottom left-hand corner.
1:00
Then:
:59
“I didn’t realize I would have to give a speech,” Paxton said, giving his best this-is-a-joke smile, which looked sharper than he intended. “I guess I would say that, uh, you know, it’s tough to get a job in this day and age, and between that and looking for a new place to live I figure it’s kinda perfect, right?”
:43
“I mean, I really do want to work here. I think, uh, it’s an incredible opportunity to learn and grow. Like the commercial says, ‘Cloud is the solution to every need.’ ” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not great at talking off the cuff.”
:22
Deep breath.
“But I’m a hard worker. I take pride in my work and I promise to give this my all.”
:09
Paxton pressed the red button and his face disappeared. The screen flashed to white. He cursed himself for stumbling through that. Had he known this would be part of the application he would have practiced.
Thank you. Please wait while the interview results are tabulated. At the end of the process your screen will turn either green or red. If red, we are sorry, either you failed the drug test, or you did not meet the standards expected at Cloud. You may exit the building and you must wait one month before reapplying. If green, then please stay and await further instructions.
The tablet turned black. Paxton raised his head and looked around, to see everyone else raising their heads and looking around. He caught eyes with the woman in his row, gave a little shrug. Rather than return it, she put the tablet on her lap and dug a small paperback out of her purse.
Paxton balanced the tablet on his knees, not sure whether he wanted to see red or green.
Red meant leaving here and standing in the sun until another bus arrived, if there was even one coming. It meant scratching through want ads for jobs that didn’t pay enough to survive, and apartment listings for places that were either out of his price range or so decrepit as to be unlivable. It meant finding himself back in that rotten pool of frustration and emotion where he’d been treading for months, his nose barely above the waterline.
It almost seemed preferable to working for Cloud.
A sniffle erupted behind him. Paxton glanced back and saw the Asian woman who’d pushed past him earlier, face down, features washed in red light.
Paxton held his breath as his screen flashed.
ZINNIA
Green.
She pulled out her cell phone and ran a quick scan of the room. Nothing on intercept. Once they got to MotherCloud she’d have to go full radio silent, because who knew what they’d be able to pluck out of the air? Being careless with transmissions was a good way to get got. She tapped out a text to give an update on her status: Hey, Mom, great news! I got the job.
She put the phone in her purse, glanced around the room. Seemed to be more people staying than leaving. Two rows back a young woman in a lavender pantsuit and long brown braids gave a little whoop and a smile.
The test wasn’t hard. You’d have to be a dummy to fail. A lot of the answers didn’t even matter, especially when you got into the abstract stuff. Windows in Seattle? What mattered was timing. Answer too quickly, you were powering through and trying to get it done with. Wait too long, and your relationship to reason was wanting. Then, the video. No one actually watched them. As if there were a crew of people sitting in the back. It was all facial and audio scanning. Smile. Eye contact. Use key words like passion and hard worker and learn and grow.
The way to win the test was to land in the middle. Just enough to show you were thinking about the questions.
That, and don’t fail the drug test.
Not that she used a
nything on the regular, outside a little pot to unwind, and the last time she’d indulged was more than six months ago, the THC long since flushed from her system.
She glanced to her right. The goofy guy sitting eight seats down, he’d made the cut. Tilted his green screen toward her and smiled. She gave in and threw a little smile back. It helped to be polite. Being rude made you stand out.
The way he looked at her, as if they were friends now, he was going to sit next to her on the bus. She was sure of it.
While waiting for the next set of directions, she watched the people who hadn’t made the cut heading toward the door. Trudging up the aisles, dreading a return to the daytime heat. She tried to muster a little sympathy for them but found it hard to feel bad they didn’t get picked for a monkey job.
Not that she was heartless. She had a heart. She was sure of it. If she pressed her hand to her chest she could feel it pumping.
After the room had cleared of rejects and the doors were shut again, a woman in a white polo shirt with a Cloud logo on the right breast moved to the front of the auditorium. She had a bonnet of gold hair like it had been spun off a loom, and she raised her singsong voice to be heard in the cavernous space.
“Everyone, could you please collect your things and follow us toward the rear exit? We have a bus waiting. If you prefer to defer your processing by a few days, please see a manager immediately. Thank you.”
The room stood as one, hinge seats snapping back on their springs like a volley of gunshots. She slung her purse over her shoulder, grabbed her gym bag, followed the line toward the rear of the theater, keeping pace with the crowd as it made its way through a harsh, glowing rectangle of white light.
As she approached the door, a group of people in RapidHire shirts appeared. They moved with purpose, wearing serious faces, scanning the people who passed by. Her stomach fluttered but she kept walking, careful not to draw attention.
As she reached the scrum of employees, one of them reached out, and she paused, ready to evac. She had an escape route mapped. It would involve some running and then a lot of walking. And not getting paid.
But the man was aiming for the person in front of her: the girl in the lavender pantsuit with the long braids. He gripped her arm, yanking her out of the lineup so hard she yelped. People continued to walk past, eyes turned toward the floor, moving faster, desperate to disentangle from the disturbance. The RapidHire team led the girl away, using words like misrepresented and work history and inappropriate and barred.
She allowed herself the indulgence of a smile.
Stepping outside was like opening an oven door midbake. A bus idled at the curb, big and blue, shaped like a bullet, the top stacked with solar panels. Emblazoned on the side was the same logo as on the woman’s polo: a white cloud, with another blue cloud staggered slightly behind it. This bus was cleaner than the battered old diesel that’d brought them to town, which had made a sound like it was crying when the driver started the engine.
It was nicer on the inside, too. It made her think of a plane. Two rows of three seats, everything sleek and plastic and stiff. Screens set into the rear of the headrests. Tossed haphazardly on each seat were some pamphlets and a pair of cheap, disposable earbuds, still wrapped in plastic. She moved toward the back, slid in next to the window. The air inside was frigid, but the glass was frying-pan hot.
She checked her phone and found a return text.
Congratulations! Best of luck. Dad and I will see you at Christmas.
Translation: proceed as planned.
There was a shuffling sound next to her. The feel of a presence displacing the air. She looked up, into the face of the goof from the theater. He was smiling in a way that made it seem like he wanted her to think he was suave. It was minimally effective. He looked as if he enjoyed khaki pants and light beer. He looked like the kind of person who thought it was important to talk about one’s feelings. His hair was parted.
“Seat taken?” he asked.
She played the odds in her head. Her preferred method was to get in, get out, make as little noise and personal connection as possible. But she also knew things as basic as social interaction could affect her ranking. The more she resisted socializing, the more she risked standing out, or worse, getting fired. Navigating this was going to mean making a few friends.
Probably a good time to start.
“Not yet,” she said to the goof.
He slung his bag onto the rack over their heads and sat down on the aisle seat, leaving a free seat between them. He reeked of dried sweat, but so did everyone. So did she.
“Well…,” he said, looking around the bus, which was filled with the sound of shuffling and crinkling plastic and hushed conversations, trying desperately to make the empty space between them less awkward. “How did a girl like you end up in a place like this?”
After he said it, he gave a pained little smile, realizing how silly the line sounded.
But there was something deeper. An undercurrent of disdain beneath the words. How did you screw up so bad, too?
“I was a teacher,” she said. “When the Detroit school system went full charter last year they decided instead of a math teacher in every school, they could have one math teacher for each district, videoconferenced into the classrooms. There used to be fifteen thousand teachers. Now there are less than a hundred.” She shrugged. “And I did not get to be one of them.”
“I heard that’s happening in some other cities, too,” he said. “Municipal budgets are strapped everywhere. It does make a little sense as a cost-saving measure, right?”
Why does he know about municipal budgets?
“Let’s revisit that in a few years when kids can’t solve a simple math problem,” she said, giving him a little eyebrow.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean any offense. What kind of math did you teach?”
“Basic stuff,” she said. “Mostly worked with the younger kids. Multiplication tables. Geometry.”
He nodded. “I was a bit of a math geek myself.”
“What did you do, before this?” she asked.
He grimaced, like someone had shoved a fingertip into his ribs. It was almost enough to make her regret asking, because he was probably going to unload some bullshit sob story on her.
“I used to be a prison guard,” he said. “One of the for-profits. Upper New York Correctional Center.”
Okay, she thought. Municipal budgets.
“But after that…,” he said. “Ever hear of the Perfect Egg?”
“Nope,” she said, truthfully.
He opened his hands in his lap, as if he were about to give a presentation, but then folded them again when he found they were empty. “It was this thing you put an egg in, and you put it in the microwave, and it would cook a perfect hard-boiled egg, to the exact doneness you’d want, depending on how long you put it in for. It came with a little chart, for the timing. And then, when it was done, the shell would peel right off when you opened it up.” He looked up at her. “Do you like hard-boiled eggs?”
“Not really.”
“You wouldn’t think so, but a gadget to make them easier…” He looked past her, out the window. “People like kitchen gadgets. It turned out to be pretty popular.”
“What happened?” she asked.
He looked at his shoes. “I had orders from all around, but Cloud was the biggest account. Thing was, they kept on asking for discounts so they could charge less. Which, in the beginning, was not so bad. I streamlined the packaging, cut waste. We did it out of my garage. It was me and four other people. But it got to a point where the discounts got so deep I couldn’t turn a profit. When I refused to go any lower, Cloud pulled their account, and the other accounts weren’t enough to make up for it.”
He paused, like he wanted to say more, but didn’t.
&nbs
p; “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, not really truthfully.
“It’s fine,” he said, looking up at her, smiling, the storm clouds receding. “I just got hired by the company that destroyed my livelihood, so I’ve got that going for me. The patent is pending. I figure once that gets approved I can sell it to them. I think that’s what they were hoping for anyway, that they’d put me out of business and they could introduce their own version.”
She had been approaching the boundaries of pity, but his attitude forced her to take a hard left into annoyance. She resented the way he carried himself. Slumped, weepy, like all those sad sacks who hadn’t gotten their monkey job. Tough luck, dude. Learn a skill that doesn’t involve babysitting criminals or cooking eggs in microwaves.
“Well, at least there’s that,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said. “Hey, the way it goes, you know? Something doesn’t work, you press on. You want to get back to teaching? I hear the schools on site are pretty good.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly just wanted to earn a little money, get out of the country for a bit. Build up a bit of a cash reserve, go teach English somewhere. Thailand. Bangladesh. Someplace not here.”
The doors of the bus closed. She whispered a silent prayer of thanks that the seat between her and the goof remained empty. The woman with the singsong voice stood at the front and waved her hand. Most of the hushed getting-to-know-you conversations on the bus stopped, heads snapping to attention.
“Okay, everyone, we’re about to take off,” she said. “If you’ll please put on your headphones, there’s an introductory video we’d like you to watch. The trip will take approximately two hours. There’s a bathroom at the back and water available up front here if anyone needs it. After the video please take some time to flip through the pamphlets, and when we arrive you’ll receive your housing assignment. The video will begin in three minutes. Thank you!”