Lenny looked out of his cubicle snap. They were playing "Happy Sea" again. The stock was probably not doing to well, so they wanted the workers to be more active, more productive and so more "happy". So he could see a gaily sea shore with people sun-bathing and children playing in the waves. Of course he knew there was no sea, there was no shore and definitely there were no children playing in the sand of some beach (how dangerous and more importantly how wasteful!) but well the human mind works in interesting ways. It had something to do environmental adaptation. People who saw happy things were generally happier, he remembered that from some old wave somewhere. Anyway it didn't matter now, this was his last cubicle day and soon he would be "free".
He looked over to his screen, the system seemed to be working correctly. All the system detail bars were at correct levels, no alert prediction required his direct intervention as of now. Habitually he ordered a system check, it was unnecessary and probably in some small way wasteful, but Lenny didn't care much, he was going away.
He had seen this system grow with him, he had grown older but more experienced committing less and less mistakes and the system had become better and better, going less and less out of the acceptable range of functioning. Sometimes Lenny felt that he knew the system and he could see the system think as the various control meter values change based on inputs. There were days on which the system was cranky and sluggish even to his inputs and there were days when Lenny didn't have to do a single thing. As Frank, his lunch-buddy, often said the technician and the system started different, became one. Lenny knew that Frank was right. He often browsed other system screens (it was required as social-consciousness measure - but it was just and excuse as the Corporation 3 gave extra credits for any technician who could give improvement suggestions i.e point out mistakes being committed by other systems and their technicians - "Divide and rule") and he could see that if Jane came in cranky today (maybe her pleasure-globe misfired!) that her system would get cranky pretty soon and if the system was cranky, needless to say, its technician wasn't going to have a good day.
But all this was going to be a matter of past. He was going to leave all of this behind - his last vacation. And Lenny was happy and sad. Sad because he was going to miss his system , he was going to miss the familiar patterns of growing and shrinking color bars and how he fantasized that he was actually talking with his system. Often he could swear that the system reacted properly even before he started punching in the commands into the console.
Lenny was happy too, because he was going to have his dream time, finally. All that he worked for and in return, the final return was the vacation time, the repayment of his whole life work. Lenny had no direct family. He had maintained relationships with some women but they had been strictly pleasure exchange agreements. He could never get himself to think that he could actually spend his whole life and raise a family. That was for farmers, he thought. But he had done his bit, he had given his sperm to the Corporation 3 bank. It would be used properly to produce the next generation offspring and he would have repaid (in part) his debt to the society. ad now it was time for his payment, his debt to be paid by the society.
He looked into his personal visi-screen. It showed a beautiful landscape - "The Venusian Beach" it said. The artist had rendered to perfection what the Venusian landscape looked like or actually should have looked like. Lenny had seen that actual visi-scapes of planets. They were no good - most of them as bad as Industrial Disaster Areas on Earth. But that did not stop from the vacation teams from dreaming up scapes of what could have been. And Lenny agreed to that, he wanted to live in dream, he had had enough of the reality.
No more daily hours of System screen (there was a pang of sorrow), no more ritual bar drinks with people he hated until he had drunk enough. No more of all that, only his dream, his undying dream.
He looked over to his screen, the system seemed to be working correctly. All the system detail bars were at correct levels, no alert prediction required his direct intervention as of now. Habitually he ordered a system check, it was unnecessary and probably in some small way wasteful, but Lenny didn't care much, he was going away.
He had seen this system grow with him, he had grown older but more experienced committing less and less mistakes and the system had become better and better, going less and less out of the acceptable range of functioning. Sometimes Lenny felt that he knew the system and he could see the system think as the various control meter values change based on inputs. There were days on which the system was cranky and sluggish even to his inputs and there were days when Lenny didn't have to do a single thing. As Frank, his lunch-buddy, often said the technician and the system started different, became one. Lenny knew that Frank was right. He often browsed other system screens (it was required as social-consciousness measure - but it was just and excuse as the Corporation 3 gave extra credits for any technician who could give improvement suggestions i.e point out mistakes being committed by other systems and their technicians - "Divide and rule") and he could see that if Jane came in cranky today (maybe her pleasure-globe misfired!) that her system would get cranky pretty soon and if the system was cranky, needless to say, its technician wasn't going to have a good day.
But all this was going to be a matter of past. He was going to leave all of this behind - his last vacation. And Lenny was happy and sad. Sad because he was going to miss his system , he was going to miss the familiar patterns of growing and shrinking color bars and how he fantasized that he was actually talking with his system. Often he could swear that the system reacted properly even before he started punching in the commands into the console.
Lenny was happy too, because he was going to have his dream time, finally. All that he worked for and in return, the final return was the vacation time, the repayment of his whole life work. Lenny had no direct family. He had maintained relationships with some women but they had been strictly pleasure exchange agreements. He could never get himself to think that he could actually spend his whole life and raise a family. That was for farmers, he thought. But he had done his bit, he had given his sperm to the Corporation 3 bank. It would be used properly to produce the next generation offspring and he would have repaid (in part) his debt to the society. ad now it was time for his payment, his debt to be paid by the society.
He looked into his personal visi-screen. It showed a beautiful landscape - "The Venusian Beach" it said. The artist had rendered to perfection what the Venusian landscape looked like or actually should have looked like. Lenny had seen that actual visi-scapes of planets. They were no good - most of them as bad as Industrial Disaster Areas on Earth. But that did not stop from the vacation teams from dreaming up scapes of what could have been. And Lenny agreed to that, he wanted to live in dream, he had had enough of the reality.
No more daily hours of System screen (there was a pang of sorrow), no more ritual bar drinks with people he hated until he had drunk enough. No more of all that, only his dream, his undying dream.
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