Work, Death, & Taxes

1

Work.

It seems like you never leave it.

But that’s a natural feeling, when you live at your job.

I’m a government worker (the only way to get a non-contractual, salaried position in downtown Sacramento nowadays), glancing north out my 4th Street window. As usual for a Monday at 6:35 am, the streets are deserted, except for an occasional armored supply vehicle, scattering the fall leaves.

After the EconoRiots in 2010, the cops and military lost control of certain parts of the country (particularly here in California), and it became clear that they were not going to regain control. (I suppose that the 33% tax cut we all voted ourselves in 2008 is not unrelated to this situation; but with inflation as it was, it seemed like we had no choice.)

My employer, like most others, finally called an all-staff meeting and said, in effect, Look, we can secure this building, and guard you while you’re here; but we can’t protect you when you leave the premises. Reasonable enough.

Being single and childless (not to mention ambitious), I took the option they offered, as did about one-fourth of us, to become literal full-time employees (lifers, they call us), working 15 hours a day, six-and-one-half days a week, and living here in the office.

It has its advantages: Double the salary, no rush-hour traffic, and paid janitorial staff. Not to mention a 24-hour climate control system, plus furniture and equipment that are much better than the junk I had in the apartment I used to rent.

The 8-hour employees (temps, we call them) still commute, trying to maintain their life outside work. Right. Except that the only places you can afford to live on an 8-hour wage are not exactly safe and secure suburban communities.

Sleep is nearly impossible when you’re surrounded by gunshots, Personal Explosive Devices (PEDs), sirens and alarms screaming, and helicopters buzzing overhead—unless you take SLEEPills or are passed-out drunk. And between 2 to 6 days a month the cops and military have to seal your neighborhood (No one comes in, no one gets out!) due to some enforcement situation, so you end up having to stay over at work anyway; or else, you can’t get to work in the morning.

And in the back of your mind, you know that no matter what kind of locks, security doors, shatterproof windows, and surveillance/alarm systems you get (that you can afford on an 8-hour wage, of course), any 3-4 person gang who wanted to could breach it in seconds. What are you going to do, call the cops when there’s a gang in your living room?

In the 19th century, the basic employment choice was, Are you going to make your kids work in the factory, or would you rather all of you starve? In the 20th century, the choice was, Do you want to own a house in a decent neighborhood, or do you want to be able to stay at home and see your kids grow up? But in the 21st century, the only choice for most of us is, Do you want to live in fear, or do you want to live at work?

The people who have it made are the financial classes (the Elite, we call them), and the ultra-cognitives, who make enough money with a 6-or 8-hour job to live in one of the Secured Residential Communities outside the city. Unfortunately (my double salary notwithstanding), I make less than even an admission-level Elite class job; so, since I’m not a political type who gets a housing subsidy, I’m not an Anarch willing to live in the hills by myself, and I refuse to live in one of the rural worker communities (too anti-tech for me), I’m a lifer.

Ramirez called over the partition that connected our workstations, Hey, Rand: You hear Ming Lee got tenure last night? (Tenure being the common euphemism for murdered.) Ming is (was?) a temp; she worked in the Mailroom.

No, I replied. ’Internal,’ or ‘external’?

Haven’t heard, he said. They probably haven’t decided yet; want me to let you know when I find out? Ramirez has contacts in the Employee Management Office (EMO; what they used to call Personnel), so he can find out practically anything.

Definitely; thanks, I’d appreciate that, I replied.

An external death or murder gets investigated by the cops and authorities, whereas an internal is one where the victim’s employer decrees that, Our community’s limited police resources need not be expended in the investigation of this death. Supposedly, the term internal originated because employers sometimes wanted to do a much more extensive investigation, at its own expense, than the cops (with their limited resources) could have done. Or, for certain sensitive cases, there are times when an employer would prefer to handle the investigation and enforcement internally, without getting the criminal justice system involved. (If a business executive did something embarrassing, for example; or if an employer wanted to impose a harsher sentence than the courts would have given.)

As overburdened as the police and authorities are, they are always glad to turn the responsibility over to an employer. But as things have evolved, for all practical purposes, an internal death is never investigated—by anyone. The person is simply written off, as you would some machinery that is being discarded.

That’s one way of finding out how important you are to your employer—I mean, if your employer doesn’t think your death is worth being investigated, then you must not be very significant. It’s a better indication of your status than your Annual Salary/Career Appraisal. (Although it’s obviously too late to do you much good in career planning.)

The import of Ramirez’ news began to really register with me: Ming Lee was dead. In an agency the size of ours, an employee’s death occurs once or twice a month, so it wasn’t unusual. But usually I don’t know the person. I saw Ming frequently, and I liked her. She was young, too. I wonder how or why she was killed. Oh, well, I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.

Enough Monday morning daydreaming. It’s 6:45; back to work.

* * *

I work for the West Coast Branch of the Unified Communication Linkup; UniCom, the media calls us. (But most of us employees refer to ourselves as the Link.) We represent a new type of governmental agency, transcending the divisions between federal, state, and local; we are particularly unusual in that we work very closely and cooperatively with private firms, as well.

After the Universal Employment Bill of 2009 was passed (the one abolishing Welfare, Unemployment, and temporary disability), it was decreed that everyone had to have an employer; even self-employed, wealthy, or retired people. That is, you had to have some entity that was responsible for you, and to which you were responsible; who would collect your taxes, keep track of where you lived, and monitor and manage your behavior to some extent. (Rich people can just select some company they own stock in to be their employer, for official purposes.) Anyone who doesn’t have an employer is presumed to be an illegal—someone living outside the system, and probably a criminal. (After all, if you’re not a criminal, why don’t you have an employer?)

Employers received subsidies from the government to hire people, so virtually anybody who was willing to work could get a job (and people who aren’t willing to work are dealt with immediately), with the government labor corporations serving as an employer of last resort. But employers, including governmental ones, balked at hiring (and thus being responsible for) masses of people about whom they knew little. So this created an opportunity for what we call The Project at UniCom.

Basically, the goal of the Project is to create a unified national database on all entities (businesses, organizations, etc.) and individuals. We are attempting to link all records, electronic or written, about any individual or entity to the master file, and provide instantaneous communication of this information to authorized users. For example, we incorporate tax records, bank records, employment records, school records, medical records, criminal records, records of purchases from retail firms—virtually anything—into the master file.

Once the Project is operational, authorized users (such as employers, or government agencies) will have a tremendous amount of information available to them. Employers can use this to weed out potential alcoholics and drug users, women whose pregnancy isn’t visible yet, parents with children they did not report on their employment application, and people who (for a variety of reasons, such as religious or political) just wouldn’t fit in at a particular place.

Because of its tremendous size and exponential growth rate, the master database is known as The BEAST. (The nickname was given to it by one of those fanatical religious groups that thought the world was going to end at about the year 2000, and who went underground when it didn’t. I suppose it made them happy when society practically collapsed less than a decade after the year 2000.) The nickname wasn’t meant facetiously—it was supposed to sound sinister and satanic—but the media loved it, and now we’re stuck with it. So naturally, when we do an upload to the master database, we call this Feeding the BEAST. A major feeding is scheduled for this Sunday evening, for example.

The Project is the first serious attempt to create such a database. In fact, until the suspension of a lot of the so-called civil liberties laws after the EconoRiots, we would not have been allowed to do this. But once the laws were changed, some brilliant people saw a window of opportunity—they Cast it, as the saying goes. And thus, UniCom was born (with our deliberately innocuous name). We lifers (and quite a few of the temps, too!) are both amazed and proud to be working for such a visionary employer. Who else would have taken the initiative?

And yes, the Project is still somewhat controversial—especially among the anti-tech types, who go on and on about potential abuses of the system. What they fail to see is that the BEAST will just be a tool, and is itself morally neutral—like a bottle of alcohol, or a gun. As one of our UniCom Directives puts it:

"Our job is to provide information, not ethics. We are here to make this information available to authorized entities, without necessarily endorsing every use to which the information may be put."

In other words, it’s not UniCom’s job to determine or regulate how the database should be used—we’re just here to develop it. It will be up to somebody else to regulate it, once it’s finished. Right now, the only thing we need to worry about is finishing the database. (Our ExecOffice keeps driving us by referring to another Directive that says, "There is nothing ‘conditional’ about our mission: The Project WILL succeed, and it will succeed on or ahead of schedule!")

For myself, my job as one of the lead programming analysts is practically guaranteed for 2-5 years, which is an almost unheard-of length these days. Plus, my Annual Salary/Career Appraisal is coming up shortly; and besides getting a significant raise, it has been hinted that I can expect my Career Track to be upgraded from Short-Term/Ongoing to Medium-Term/Probationary. So I may have a job here for a decade, or even longer. (If I don’t make some severe career blunder, of course.)

Which is extremely satisfying to me, because I really love my work. I worked at several places after college, but none of them were as exciting or challenging as this. At last, I feel that my intellect and my creativity are being fully utilized, and appreciated. I like the feeling of being on the cutting edge of new technology and ideas. And it’s inspiring to see the level of cooperationwe receive from private industry about the Project; there has never been such a harmonious relationship between business and a governmental entity as UniCom has achieved. I’m just amazed some times that this is all really happening, and that I’m right here in the midst of it. Buzz.

When you’re working on something exciting like the Project, you don’t really notice or mind not having a life outside work. You reach a point where you really need the rush and excitement, and the high level of intellectual stimulation that work gives you. When your half-day off on Sunday evening rolls around, you hardly know what to do with yourself. (Most of us lifers invariably cut the evening short and go back to our desks and catch up on our E-Mail and UniversaNet postings.) I was practically working the hours of a lifer before the societal situation deteriorated anyway, but now I’m getting paid for it, and I get to skip the commute. So for me, Life is Good.

Still in the midst of my morning set up chores, I read the internal office newsline on my computer. The most interesting item is that Mrs. Palmer is retiring (Going on Welfare, we call it) next month. Mrs. Palmer is definitely one of the old timers, as illustrated by her insistence on still using the title of Mrs. (Virtually every other working female uses the title Miss, even if she is married or has children.) The term Ms. used to be popular in the 20th century because it was neutral about family and marital status; or the women who are lifers could just go by their last name, as the men do. But with the extremely tight job situation, upwardly mobile women use Miss to make the point to management that, "I have no ties, and no personal relationships that would interfere with my work—Nothing is more important to me than my job. In short, they have good career focus." (Men, of course, are expected to have good career focus—at least, if they want to get anywhere.)

Mrs. Palmer is also probably the only person left in the ExecOffice who actually knows the names of some of the staff; I’ll be sorry to see her go.

One of the many alarms in my workstation goes off: it’s 7:45, Monday morning. I sighed.

Time for the influx of temps…

2

The 8-hour workers have a variety of ways of getting to work. The vast majority ride mass transit, since the buses and trains can be fairly well guarded by the cops and transit police. Plus, most people feel safer by traveling in large groups, since tens and tens of thousands of people all arrive downtown between 7:30-8:30.

In the mornings, the cops make themselves very visible directing traffic and watching for any signs of trouble, as people quickly exit the buses and shuttles in front of the buildings where they work. Here, they are scanned by UniCom’s Building Security staff (BS staff, we call them; they are very visible because of the dark green jackets they all wear) for anything suspicious they are carrying. (To speed up this process, most people carry nothing more to work than a wallet or small purse; not even a lunch.) Once inside the building, they hurry to their assigned work places, in order to be at work, and ready to go, promptly by 8:00.

After 8:00, the people who still insist on driving private vehicles begin arriving. (For obvious reasons, they time their arrival until after the crowds riding mass transit have left.) Before being admitted to the underground parking garage, they have to pass a close visual inspection and x-ray scan. And at least once a week (on a random basis) they have to submit to a very rigorous physical search of their vehicle, since the chances of breaching security by an outside vehicle are so great. (But the underground garages are so heavily reinforced that you could set off anything short of an atomic weapon down there, and it wouldn’t harm the workers in the building. It "Wouldn’t even make ‘the Link’ blink," as we say.)

These security checks add at least an hour to your commute each day, and are very unpredictable; if one of the vehicles ahead of you gets caught in a security violation, you’re liable to get stuck out on the street for a half-hour or so, waiting for admission to the garage. Needless to say, this really makes you feel like a sitting duck for any illegals, hijackers, or other malcontents—another good reason to become a lifer, it seems to me.

Which is why a few of the temps (who can somehow afford one) drive DoomBugs to work. These are remarkably compact, one-person vehicles built for defense, not comfort. They have incredibly strong yet lightweight armor encasing them, and self-contained oxygen systems; they can survive bullets, bombs, PEDs, small-to-medium artillery, fire, poison gas, collisions, falling off a cliff, and virtually anything you might encounter out on the streets. Even if your engine were disabled and a gang of illegals surrounded you, all you would need to do is lower the shields over the windows, radio for help, and wait; you would be perfectly safe until your oxygen ran out in about 24 hours.

They got the nickname DoomBugs because of their self-destruct feature, an explosive device that wipes out anything within a 50-foot radius. (Including yourself.) But it’s popular as a feature because many people feel that, if you’ve got to go, you may as well Take them with you. And DoomBugs have developed a very bad reputation because of their occasional use by people with violent and suicidal tendencies.

But Building Security hates DoomBugs, and requires them to be parked in a special underground bunker across the street. But EMO can’t exactly prohibit them, particularly for people who are commuting from the outlying areas. (Plus, some of the Execs like to drive luxury versions of them!)

Fortunately, everything went smoothly this morning. So at 8:25, the Building’s Internal Address System announced, The building issecured. And we all breathed a sigh of relief, and resumed working.

* * *

I decided to get my DailyDoc over with, so I can concentrate on my regular work. The Daily Documentation is required by federal law of all cognitive and technical workers. Basically, the DailyDoc requires you for one hour a day, five days a week (six days for most lifers), to read someone else’s program, or watch it run, and write system documentation for it. (The federal law mandating the DailyDoc was passed shortly after the year 2000, when it became painfully obvious that there were hundreds of thousands of programs out there that were almost impossible to update or modify, because the programmers neglected to write down anywhere how the program worked.) Obviously, it’s difficult or impossible to write system documentation after the fact, and most of us feel that this was a typical bureaucratic response to the Year 2000 problem, and ends up punishing us for the faults of programmers in the past.

The federal government assigns the programs to you on a random basis each day, and they are downloaded to your computer temporarily while you work on them. They do a good job at giving you a variety, so you don’t get too bored—and sometimes you even get good ideas from seeing the programs other people wrote. Most often, though, it’s simply drudgery. (It probably would have been more productive if we programmers were required to spend an hour a day documenting our own programs—but the government would never have thought of that, of course.)

The program I had to review today turned out to be a simple password protection program. A system administrator type must have set this up—the user just typed in a supposedly secret password, and was given access. (Probably the only intruders this ever stopped were people who had forgotten their secret password.) Obviously, though, simply typing in a password doesn’t prove who you are—it just means that you know, or have guessed, the password. At any rate, if people need security for systems these days, we have the basic thumbprint ID, VoicePrint, and retina scan systems, so this system was probably obsolete. I was apparently the only person who had yet reviewed this program and reached this conclusion, however, so it would go back into the cycle and be reviewed by someone else at a later time. By now my hour had passed, so I returned to my usual work.

As morning break arrived, people stopped working, and were able to briefly chat, ask about each other’s weekends, talk about the news, and so on. I needed a break, so I got up and stretched. I glanced over the partition at Ramirez, but he seemed extremely intent on what he was doing, so I didn’t interrupt. I picked up my coffee cup and headed over to the coffee station, where several co-workers were standing.

Good morning, Rand; what’s new and different?

I’m working too hard to notice, Yamamoto. Morning, Miss Feldman. Morning Jefferson; what’s the case?

Strictly hypothetical, Rand-my-man. Say, did you hear about Ming Lee?

Just barely; got anything factual?

Nothing posted. Jefferson’s watch alarm went off, signaling the end of break.

Subsequently, people.

Subsequently. And we all returned to work.

I decided to check Ming’s record on the internal office newsline, and found the following posting:

DEATHS:

November 3 (PM) LEE, MING (female) SERVICE: 4.587years ASSIGNMENT: Mailroom STATUS: Undetermined

So no news yet; a Death Status of Undetermined is the default value, so this meant that EMO hadn’t assigned a status of external to her yet. (I presumed that her death would be considered worth investigating, of course.) I sent a request for a News Search on her, which I would probably look at during lunch.

Back to work.

* * *

About my job: I am one of the lead programming analysts on the Systems Development SubTeam. What I do all day is plan and design programs, most of which are assigned to less-experienced programmers, to actually code the programs. (No one actually writes computer code/instructions any more, of course, since the advent of the