Stand Against Infinity Read Free Page B

hunched over.
This time as he approached, H662 saw the shine of tears in his
eyes, which he quickly dried as he entered. He looked tired. Really
tired. Why didn’t he sleep? Didn’t he know it was important to be
well rested for the company?
    He looked up from his work. “What’s
wrong?”
    “Didn’t sleep,” he said.
    “It is important to sleep,” said H662.
    “Yes, I know.”
    “Try going to bed earlier,” said H662.
    “I don’t have a bed.”
    “Then where do you sleep?”
    “As you can see, I don’t do much of that,”
said the man. He looked beyond caring.
    “Didn’t the government give you and your wife
a house?”
    “She threw me out,” he said.
    “Oh, that is too bad.”
    She found another man.”
    “I’m sorry to hear.”
    “Are you?” asked the man. “Are you really?
Because you don’t seem so broken up about it.” His face began to
turn deep shades of red. “No one seems too cut up about it. None of
us are supposed to care about family. Isn’t that right?”
    “We have to care for our families,” said
H662. “It is our job.”
    “But do you care about them?”
    H662 was confused. What was the
difference?
    “G1193?” yelled the foreman from his office.
“I need to see you right now !” The foreman sounded mad. H662
almost felt sorry for the new guy.
    G1193, with his head down and shoulders
slumped, shuffled off to the foreman’s office. Once inside, the
door slammed shut. There was some yelling, and once or twice a
thump that sounded like a fist on a desk. A couple of minutes later
the door opened again. “H662?” yelled his foreman, “can you come in
here?” He put down the cable he was just disconnecting, and walked
toward the office.
    Once inside, “You see H662?” said the
foreman. G1193 had his head down and sat in a chair opposite the
standing foreman, but his eyes looked beyond the room. Behind the
desk where the foreman stood sat a placard with his name, a
computer console built in, and a photo of his son. “H662 is
hardworking, on time, in fact early, every day, and does his work
without fail. He is contributing to society. He is a part of the
solution. But you!” He pointed a thick, blunt finger. “You are part
of the problem.”
    G1193 did not move. He did not defend
himself. He just sat there with his eyes glazed over, as if nothing
on earth could touch him. H662 felt bad for his fellow worker after
hearing his story, but he also knew the way society worked and
there was no way around it. Stay detached from everything else so
you could do the work. That was your first priority.
    “There are only two ways it works,” said the
foreman again, as he pressed something just under the lip of his
desk. “Either you are part of the problem or part of the solution.
You are part of the problem, and so you must go.” The door
immediately opened and two guards stepped in, took the sitting man
by the arms, and escorted him from the room. G1193 never said a
word, not even a sound. His head drooped downward and he half
walked, and was half carried out.
    “Thank you for your help,” said the foreman
to H662. “You may return to your work. At least someone knows his
priorities around here.”

Chapter 9
    As U1472 rode in her pod to work, she thought
about her marriage. Her husband was a good man, a hard worker, who
treated her well. He was also a good father to T-5529. How could
she ask for more? She ran through this logic every morning before
arriving at work, and she did not know why, but she felt it was
important.
    Upon arriving, she rode the elevator to the
twelfth floor where she immediately began receiving calls and
console messages. She worked for a technical support company for a
range of products. She had worked past having to deal with the
first tier issues and was glad she was done with those. Now she was
on to bigger and better things. By the time a message came her way,
they had already been by the first tier. Mostly these were product
failures or