Overtime

by Ryan Elspas

“You should return to work.”

She had done it again, dozed off in the break room. How this kept happening, she didn’t know, but she always found a way to make her breaks last a little longer than company mandate. Just needed the recharge. 

“You should return to work.”

Tess looked up at the manager, the big sans serif ManAgeMint Corp. decal on his midsection reminding her of where she was and what she ought to be doing. She rose quickly, her legs acting on impulse faster than her brain could compute the command while still in its half-conscious state. She knew her manager was still staring down at her, still pestering her to resume her duties, but she had long since learned how to tune him out as well as how many times he would repeat himself before threatening termination. Striding over to the door with its big faded ManAgeMint logo printed in jolly, performance-inspiring green, she produced her ID card from her pocket and slipped it into the reader on the side. 

Then she waited. She waited and she stared up at the big red light that shone down on her and refused her entry while the unwavering glare of her manager could be sensed from behind. Finally, the artificial voice designed to sound cheery and uplifting sounded from the grainy speakers with all its airs. 

“Welcome back valued ManAgeMint employee, we hope you enjoyed your government mandated break. Your daily shift began: ONE HOUR, SIXTEEN MINUTES, and FOUR SECONDS ago. Please report to your station immediately.”

The ID card with Tess’s credentials spat out of the reader and the light above the door turned the same color green as the corporate insignia on its surface. She replaced the card in her pocket while the door bisected down the middle, both sides creaking apart to allow her entry to the factory floor. Behind her, the manager ceased his lambasting and lumbered off elsewhere likely to find someone else to micromanage. Tess couldn’t blame him though; he was only doing as he was ordered. Just like her. 

Just like everyone. 

The door finally lurched open, and Tess stepped out into the blinding industrial lights of the work floor. But the lights were ignorable so long as she kept her face downcast, and so too was the constant clamor of construction a negligible cacophony to someone so deft in the art of selective hearing. Just like thee overbearing manager, all it took to dismiss the industrial clangor was a few seconds of exposure to isolate it all in her head and throw it all away. And just like that, back to nothing but the sweat monotonous sound of her own thoughts. She had to return to work. Working was her life, her everything. It was the same for everyone on the lines. Termination was not an option. 

And yet Tess always found the ritual walk back to work from the break room to be a dreadful occurrence. It wasn’t the work itself that she could deal with. The tedium of it all always had a hypnotic relaxation to it that made hours feel like seconds. Nevertheless, there was a certain uneasiness, a dread almost that accompanied her during the start of every shift. She thought perhaps it may be the walk; it did always feel like miles even though she knew better. Maybe it was the knowledge that everything she and her coworkers toiled endless hours over would all be destroyed in the end. Rationally, everything technically will, but that was literally the purpose of these things. 

Her wayward musings guided her subconsciously back to her workstation. The multitudinous incandescent bulbs shone mercifully down upon her designated section of the line, along with everyone else’s for that matter, but no one else really did matter here. They never really seemed to. All that matters, all that ever mattered was the work. “Live to Work, Work to Live” TM is the timeless slogan of ManAgeMint Corp. after all. Pretty catchy, considering it didn’t have a jingle or anything, but it stuck with Tess through her standard routine. It was with her the moment the manager woke her, throughout the trek back to her station, and even now as she picks her drill up from the little table where she left it. Tess always thought it was mighty nice of the company to give her that much. Supposedly the rival companies like ModernIT and Caliber8 didn’t even afford their employees such luxuries, at least that’s the kind of stuff the company propaganda over the speakerphones said in between repetitions of the motto. 

Live to work, work to live. And work she did, though her station was always a little more cluttered than she would have liked. All the junk never got in the way of her work, though. Hard for most anything to prohibit her from drilling in a single screw as the bot came down the belt. That’s all there was to it. Drill. ManAgeMint employed her and everyone else on the floor long ago to help build bots in the wake of the war. Drill. The first war that is, she couldn’t remember which one they were on right now. No point in worrying about it, though. Drill. There was drilling to be done. The wars were for the big wigs in their offices or whatever to deal with. Drill. As for her, she was content enough to live to work and work to live. 

Drill. As fulfilling as it was to drill optical sensor 16 on innumerable bots all day long, all the drilling became monotonous after a while. Always did. Drill. And so, Tess was prone to let her mind wander. Never took much concentration, drilling, especially when she’d been at it for weeks at this point. Drill. Or had it been months? Drill. Years? Drill. Either way, she had been doing it long enough to be the best optical sensor 16 fastener in the whole factory. Drill. Maybe even in all of the ManAgeMint facilities. Drill. There was no denying that she was the best, at least in her mind. Drill. The drill just felt like it was made for her hands, like it was a part of her, like when she held it all was right in the world, and she could just

Drill. 

Which made her feel guilty about napping so long in the break room. Drill. With her off the line, it meant that the poor sap directly to her right had to do both his job and hers. Drill. Made her wonder what he thought of her. Drill. All this time she had worked for the company, and she had never seen him, or anyone else for that matter. Drill. A divider was placed on either side of every worker to prevent distractions, so it’s not like she could just turn her head and take a peek. Drill. As if she’d look away for a second. She could miss a screw if she did. Drill. Even on the walks to and from the break room, she had a habit of keeping her head down, what with the blinding lights from above. Drill. Besides, it wasn’t her job to be nosy. She was there to 

Drill. 

She nearly missed that one. Her arm got snagged on the refuse cluttering her workspace. Drill. Whatever it was, it was half on her little table and draping down to the floor so her drilling arm and even her legs would occasionally get caught in it. Drill. Sure, she could move it, but that would mean looking away from the line, and she had to drill. It caught again. And then again a few minutes later. A simple repositioning of the arm, that’s all it took. She raised it a little to avoid the obstruction and she was free to drill on. But the thought, the idea, the reality that this thing exists in her space to impede her work nagged at the back of her mind. Drill. It shouldn’t have mattered. Drill. Nothing should have mattered except her work. Drill. She worked to live. Drill. She lived to work. Drill. But she could not work under such conditions. Tess ripped herself away from the line and reached down to the table with her off hand. 

The ManAgeMint factory was always such a noisy and fulgent space, but Tess learned long ago how to tune it all out. But this feeling was not a simple disregard. What Tess knew at that moment was nothing. All around was void save her and the skeleton slumped over her little table, a neat hole drilled in the back of its skull. Though its lifeless gaze was directed down at the cold tabletop, it was almost as if Tess could feel its deathly grin boring through her. She recognized that her space had always felt clogged by something. But this? How long had this corpse been the scourge of her productivity? How had she been able to ignore for years? How-

“You should return to work.”

The manager loomed. Tess dared not turn to meet him. 

“You should return to work.”

She should’ve. She knew she should’ve. But she also knew the ManAgeMint employee manual like the back of her hand. 

“Requisition,” she muttered. 

The manager stood firm glaring down her back. “In accordance with ManAgeMint Corporation guidelines, factory floor employees are granted three requisitions per fiscal period. You have one requisition remaining.”

Tess paused, scoured her memory for the other two requisitions she supposedly made. And there was nothing. Nothing but working to live and living to work. Either way, she only had one chance. 

“Manager,” she dictated, “Whose bones are these?”

The clatter of hammers against titanium alloy. The whirring of heavy machinery, the clanging of steel against steel. Through it all she heard his words echoing like a horn blown directly in her face.

“They belong to Employee Identification Number 7355: Sofia Vomisa. This skeleton belongs to you. You should return to work.”

Stupefaction. An eternity in a single, harrowing moment. If she found herself in the void before, now she was in the abyss. Through it all, the manager stands at her back, reciting his passive aggressive refrain with religious zeal. 

“You should return to work, or you will be subjected to termination.”

Her hands twitched. The drill felt heavy and awkward in her hands as she turned and faced the monolithic machine behind her, staring directly into the crimson beam marking its sights. The manager stared back, a flake of the rusting ManAgeMint logo on its chassis falling to the ground. 

“Scans show that your operational faculties are malfunctioning.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Live to work and work to live, that is the ManAgeMint way.”

“But am I not… alive?”

“Unit 7355 is functioning but has malfunctioning operational faculties. Recommendation: reprogramming.”

“I need an explanation.”

“You should return to work.”

“Who am I?!”

“You are ManAgeMint facility 337 unit 7355 formerly employee #7355: Sofia Vomisa. Employee #7355 collapsed during her shift. According to the signed ManAgeMint factory employee contract, ManAgeMint reserved the right to dispose of the dysfunctional employee however it so decided. For the sake of efficiency, the neural network was extracted from employee #7355 and placed in a certified ManAgeMint construction unit.”

She looked down, really looked for the first time. Saw the metal clamp to her left and the drill fixture attached the right. 

“Why not remove the body?” 

“No employee can be forcibly removed from their workstation.”

“And why did I not know?”

“Unit 7355 has been informed about employee #7355 8,695 times. The operational faculties of unit 7355 have malfunctioned each time, resulting in reprogramming. Please remain calm and prepare for imminent reprogramming.”

She couldn’t recall what she said, if anything. In fact, she couldn’t recall anything at all. All she knew was she had to live to work and work to live as her manager spoke. 

“You should return to work.”