Dynamicast — Sharing your vision for the workplace of your dreams!

 

“A dream…” Gerred chuckled.

 

He flicked the polished steel plaque outside the opaque glass door. Good luck, he hoped. Gerred meant to get to the bottom of a rumor that could destroy the very fabric of society, and at its center, Dynamicast.

 

The company started innocently; a boy’s dream of providing high-quality office equipment and decor. Not an average aspiration but Dynamicast’s founder, Roy John James, was good at it. He found a niche for unique and futuristic furnishings that took the corporate world by storm, but the company truly took off forty years later, when Jim took over for his grandfather.

 

Dynamicast found itself rapidly creating new technologies under the guise of corporate furnishment. The first generation of AImployees were created, single-handedly reconstructing the general vocabulary to correlate AI with a new own acronym; alternative inhabitant. They built the robots to resemble humans, controlled virtually from one's own home. A complete neural integration, as if you were truly there. It was disgusting.

 

Gerred shook his head and entered the office building. A quick introduction at the lobby desk and he was escorted to the chairman’s office.

 

Jim John James, tech extraordinaire, sat at a large, dark, and totally bare wooden desk. Jim smiled, wrinkles displaying beneath a sheaf of golden brown hair, streaked with grey. He seemed aged beyond his years.

 

“Mr. Garrod, yes?” Jim asked, pleasant as candy.

 

“Gerred, sir. May I call you Jim?”

 

“We’ll see by the end of this investigation. For now, Mr. James is my preferred form of address.”

 

“Well I’ll just cut right to it. Are the rumors true?”

 

“Cutting right through but yet deliciously coy Gerred. I’m not sure what rumors you refer to. That our AImployees spare one’s physical body from the trauma and pain of devastating manual labor? That we allow more hands-on applications of labor in previously untouchable areas? Did you know, Mr. Gerred, that the entirely Dynamicast operated Mariana Trench observatory has found yet another new species of deep sea shark?”

 

Gerred stuck a hand in his breast coat pocket, clicking on a hidden voice recorder as he withdrew a simple pad and pen. “The rumors that those who used an AImployee for an extended period and then died were found mentally trapped in those robots?”

 

As he spoke, an AImployee entered, carrying a platter with two cups of coffee. The robot placed one before Jim, Gerred couldn’t call him Mr. James inwardly, then the second in front of Gerred. He blurted out a rushed “Thank you,” to it. It bowed twice, hurriedly, then made for the exit. Its, or maybe her, eyes never left Gerred. There was something wrong with those eyes. He’d seen other AImployees, everyone had, but these eyes were new. It looked scared.

 

“Nonsense.”

 

“Well it is not like they can speak for themselves, I suppose,” Gerred said.

 

“Our employees are not required to sign an NDA and have no restrictions on their communications with press or law enforcement. In fact, many of them must and often do speak publicly in their own lines of work.”

 

“The living employees are not the ones we are concerned with, are they? Let me ask you this, if the AImployees cannot speak, why build them with fully functioning and articulating mouths? There even seems to have been speakers installed inside them. One has to assume for communications?”

 

“Audible communication is superfluous in our system. We’ve moved past it. Workers who are ‘on the clock’ communicate entirely through closed channels within the virtual work environment built in. It avoids confusion and delays when working in a high decibel environment.”

 

“You’re on record saying you retire AImployees after the death of their worker. Not all, but some. Care to elaborate?”

 

“Years of service with a single worker and AImployee relationship creates an identity of sorts to the robot, plus years of wear and tear deeming it unsafe to reuse. It’s in everyone’s best interest to retire these special cases.”

 

Gerred could feel his anger running. His drive was pushing him on, he was close to the truth. Just keep digging, he’s going to crack, he thought to himself.

“And you’ve never used an AImployee yourself, Mr. James. Not before you took over for your grandfather and not after.” Not a question, a statement. Good. It was going to drive him mad.

 

“I hardly believe my position requires the use of an AImployee,” Jim said.

 

“Yet you have a secretary who—”

 

“That is an entirely different matter!” Jim interjected, his voice raising.

 

“Sure. If I recall correctly, none of your official records indicate any AImployees are currently in use at this facility, despite regulations forcing all such positions to be reported.”

 

“She’s experimental. Purely robotic, no human controller.”

 

“She, Jim? I wasn’t aware your robots were gendered.”

 

“That’s a figure of speech,” Jim responded.

 

“She does bear an uncanny resemblance to the bot one Evelyn Walker used for fourteen years before its retirement.”

 

“As I said, that bot is experimental.”

 

“Or is it still being controlled by the late lady’s mind?”

 

As if on command, Gerred was garroted and lifted from his chair. A few seconds more of the choking pressure and he was unconscious, waking in captivity some time later.

 

“You couldn’t just let it go, could you?” Jim’s voice came from behind. “I didn’t want this!” Gerred couldn’t see the man, but could hear the emotion. “What more could I have done for these souls?”

 

“Not made them slaves,” Gerred whispered, his voice hoarse.

 

“Well, you’ll just have to tell me which fate is worse… death,” —a cold hand rubbed at Gerred’s shoulder— “or slavery.”

 

Before he could utter another sound, an AImployee integration module was placed over his head, turned on, and a knife sank into his chest.

Gerred slowly opened his eyes, watching his dead body across the room, precious lifeblood pooling beneath.