Chapter 8

Laura read the letter several times. The same form must be sent to all Frontier clients upon securing a contract. It discussed asset designers working with her to make a home even though she’d already waived that part and saved nearly twenty thousand dollars. TransitionLabs designers sure as hell never saw that kind of money per contract, but that wasn’t important anymore.

She had a contract—a private contract. In short time, she would join her sister and four hundred million citizens in the Virtual world, but unlike ninety-nine percent of them, she wasn’t going to be owned to anyone—not the government, not TransitionLabs. No one. She wouldn’t accrue debt simply by existing. And while she’d have an insurance policy to cover against jar hardware failure, and a warehouse maintenance fee, those would be transactions, not payments on a lifelong debt as though she were an indentured servant. The amount she’d owe every month would be a fraction of what Joana paid for her standard-issue situation. And Laura also didn’t have any of the restrictions. She got to decide what to run on her hardware, and what hardware it was!

This contract had damn near bankrupted her. Seven years of scrimping and saving was barely enough. It hadn’t helped that Stilwathe had sold his jar to her, albeit at a tiny fraction of its listed price. His assistant assured her that gifting it would have cost her more come tax season, but it still cost her nearly a year’s pay.

Couple that with the debt Joana still hadn’t paid off, and Laura was going to be counting her pennies for her remaining meals, not that she’d ever tell her sister about that. It would still be two weeks before she got virtualized, so she’d get another paycheck. Once she was in the virtual world, she’d be unemployed until her freelancing took off. As much as her living expenses would be much lower, getting her own clients would be a trial. The kind of customer who could afford content designers usually relied on the agencies they virtualized with.

But her market would be those already inside the virtual world who wanted changes to what they already had.

Laura called her sister.

When Joana answered, she was walking through what looked like a city garden. Laura’s view of her hovered before her and a little to the side, as though a drone were floating beside her.

“Not home yet?” Laura asked.

“Not going anywhere. Just walking. I like to get out of my apartment. There are a lot of nice places around Klein.” Joana grabbed Laura’s point of view and turned it to show the park around her. It wasn’t all that well groomed. One might expect a park in a virtual city to be perfectly in order, but nature wasn’t orderly. Laura’s trained eye sensed careful manicuring behind this seemingly wild flora. Countless man-hours and well-designed procedural generation algorithms went into making this. “It’s my favorite park,” Joana said. “And city walks cost nothing.”

“Free to talk?”

“Sure.”

“Look at this!” Laura pressed her contract confirmation to the screen. Joana plucked it off on her side as though it were a burr. In her world, it manifested on its own transparent paper.

Joana’s eyes lit. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Yes!”

She hopped and squealed. “Yay! It’s happening! When?”

“Two weeks probably. I’m hoping to schedule the operation tomorrow.”

“This is amazing! So you got that jar?”

“Bought and owned.” Laura shrugged. “Well… bought. Stilwathe’s assistant is going to hold onto it for me until my operation. There’s no way in hell I’m keeping it in my DayPay.”

“Are you going to quit your job now?”

“Not yet. I’ll wait until my last paycheck before telling the AssShoal.”

“You think he’d cheat you your last payment?”

“It’s practically tradition with him. Fired designers come back looking for their last paycheck all the time. The police always come.”

“That’s such bullshit, but you’re going to be free!”

“Yesss! You’re going to love the world I’ve made. I can make it so much bigger than I originally planned. And I’m going to have an assistant AI.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Jar I have has an IPU card. For AI, except better. There’s this new thing where you get a neural webbing all throughout your brain, and then the IPU card uses that for critical thinking and emotion. So I get this assistant computer who acts and talks and even thinks like a real person, sort of.”

“It uses your brain? Aren’t uh… you using your brain?”

“I am. It piggybacks. People who have it say that you can tell there’s something else in your mind with you, but you get used to it, and the upside is the IPU anticipates your needs. It’s like having a new part of you that’s dedicated to your own happiness.”

“Sounds a little… invasive. Do they know the longterm effects?”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I don’t want my baby sister getting dementia after we finally reunite just because she wanted to try some experimental new tech. I don’t think grandma would have approved.”

“Grandma never wanted me virtualizing in the first place, so yeah.”

“You are throwing away a perfectly good body. I had cancer.”

“Well it’s my choice. And this time, grandma isn’t around for you to tattle to.”

“I did you a huge favor,” Joana said. “You would have put yourself in the same slavery I’m in now. It was the dumbest thing you’ve ever done in your life, and that’s including MechaDog.”

Laura grinned. “MechaDog was my best friend. He just needed a lot of tender, loving maintenance.”

“Seriously, Laura. You’re only twenty-six. You can join the Virtual world any time in your life. I will still be here.”

“You’re the one who’s so damn excited to live in my awesome world.”

“I know. I still am, but I don’t want to if it means you do something you’ll come to regret. You’ll be throwing your whole real-world life away.”

“What life? I work, and I save. I’m about to get an entirely new, better life, and the only person I’ve bothered to tell is you, because you’re the only person in my life worth telling.”

“That’s because you’ve focused so much on virtualizing that you forgot to live. Go make friends. Date people. Party. Hook up.”

“I’ll do all that in the virtual worlds. It’ll be easier than here.”

“But it’s not. It’s really not. The virtualscape has all its glamor, but it’s also really isolating. I have a door in my home that leads me straight to work. It’s really nice, but I’ve never met my neighbors, ever. Meeting anyone is hard. People live in their own worlds here, literally. I’m worried you think virtualizing is going to solve all your problems, but it won’t. If you’re a recluse in real life, you’ll still be one here. Look at me. I’ve been here ten years, and you are my only friend too.”

“I won’t be owned anymore. By anyone. I can finally freelance, because I won’t be seen as a subcity folk. That all is enough for me. So maybe I’ll still be a recluse, but I’ll be with you finally, and we can be recluses together in a real home. So stop trying to talk me out of this.”

“Okay, okay. Fine, but you can’t say I didn’t try.”

“I already know you’ve tried. You got grandma to drag me out of that walk-in clinic like I was a screaming toddler.”

“My only regret is that I didn’t get to see it,” Joana said wistfully.

“I’m sure you—” Laura stopped when her screen indicated another call. Shoal. He was calling her at her home. He must be angry.

“My boss is calling.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know, but I should take it.”

Laura disconnected with her sister. She paused to breathe, then pressed the accept button.

Shoal was calling from the inner garden of his private manor—the one Laura had long ago designed. His glare was arctic.

“Hello, sir?”

He didn’t respond.

Laura was thinking back on her active clients. She couldn’t think of any who were suffering problems. “Do you need something?”

“I have a question I wanted to ask you,” he said, “I was going to pose it to you tomorrow morning, but I decided it couldn’t wait. I’m sure that’s fine.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to answer as honestly as possible. Keep in mind you have a performance review coming up.”

She was actually overdue, but sure. “Yes?”

“How much—let’s say on a scale from one to ten—how much of a fucking chump do you take me for?”

“Sir?”

“How much? Do you talk to your friends about what an idiot your boss is? Or just your coworkers. And does this disrespect go all the way up the chain? Or do you just disrespect me?”

Laura kept silent. Somehow, she knew what this about, even though he shouldn’t have any way of knowing about her contract.

“I must be a chump after all,” he said, “considering how much of your shit I’ve put up with, only because you’re marginally better than the rest of the Fair Employment trash. I’ve put up with your late deadlines, and your backtalk. I’ve looked the other way when you would contact clients without even so much as notifying your transition coordinator. Do you know how many complaints I’ve ignored about you?”

“No, sir.”

“I showed you loyalty. When I came on, I was advised to let you go because of how much you’re overpaid, and how you refused time and time again to virtualize through the company. That made you one of the only designers we have that can’t even test their own results, but I decided, against my better judgement, to keep you on at your salary. I vouched for you. I didn’t push it whenever you declined to virtualize, but maybe I should have, because it turns out you do want to Virtualize, but with a rival company.”

“I’m in my right to do so, sir.”

“Bullshit, you are. You signed an agreement.”

“I’m not doing work for them. I’m a client. It’s not against policy, sir.”

“TransitionLabs has a virtualization policy for its own employees. Are you too good for that?”

“I didn’t agree with the terms and conditions, sir.”

“So get a private contract. With us. You don’t run off to a competitor.”

“I thought it would be easier for everyone.” Especially herself, seeing as how Shoal would have control over that contract.

“Easier for everyone. Sure. You got a private contract from a company three states away because it’s easier. And since you don’t tell me about it, I’m guessing TransitionLabs isn’t going to be a part of your Frontier Future, is it? Were you even going to submit your notice? Or just stop showing up one day?”

“I was going to submi—”

Oh, and where the hell did you get a VC5800x? That must have been really easy to get, especially on your salary.”

“I saved.”

“Really? Because I vaguely recall hearing something about a VC5800x in the last few weeks. It’s rare model, isn’t it? State of the art.”

Laura didn’t say anything. How he even knew what jar she registered was beyond her.

“Stilwathe had that exact same jar, didn’t he?” Shoal continued. “Then he suddenly withdraws his application. You two got pretty close, didn’t you? I’m looking at your records. There are dozens of calls between you and him that you never reported to your coordinator.”

“I was showing him progress that he asked to see. He had a very specific domain in mind, and it needed a lot of back and forth.”

“…Or you were convincing him to back out of his contract. Maybe you were badmouthing your employers to him.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“He left. Then suddenly you get his jar. So you know, your business calls were recorded. I’m going to use them to sue you for every dollar of that six figure contract you cost us.”

“I didn’t talk him out of it! He quit after he heard Sankar’s—”

“I know when he quit. I heard. You were there. Funny. Designers aren’t normally present at signoff meetings.”

“Millie wanted to have him—”

“I don’t want to hear it. You set this up so you could virtualized in your own special little way with your own special little jar. Well, too bad. I’m contacting Stilwathe first thing in the morning to tell him that you cannot purchase his jar from him. It’s a breech of your employment contract.”

“No. It’s not,” Laura said. “I checked the terms and agreements. Buying stuff from a past client doesn’t violate anything.”

“Oh. So you’ve done your research.” He shrugged. “I suppose I could buy it myself then. I’m sure I can pay more than whatever discount he’s giving you.”

“I already bought it, sir. Why are you doing this?”

“Because you don’t fuck with me. You don’t get to walk away from your job with seven open contracts and a thirty avatar work order. You are a subcity nothing. You should be thanking me every single day for your job. You’re paid ten times what ordinary Fair Employment scrap like you are paid.”

“This isn’t personal. I’ve been planning on this for years. Even before you were at Transition. I didn’t tell you about this because I only just confirmed my contract. I was going to call you in the morning.”

“You came up with this plan the moment you saw a chance to sabotage Stilwathe’s contract.”

“Sir, I’ve been planning this for years.”

For once, he didn’t have a snap response. His words were level. “Fine. It’s your plan. Virtualize. Do it with Transition. And then keep doing your job, which you should be grateful for.”

“I already have my contract.”

“Cancel it.”

“No.”

The snap came back. “You’re not going to get another job anywhere else. All of us Hosting company’s talk, and you know what we share? Employment records. And no hosting company—not Frontier, not anyone—will ever hire you when they learn about your lack of respect.”

“That’s fine, sir.”

He glared. The threat didn’t have the impact he’d wanted. It wouldn’t take him long to work out that Laura clearly planned to freelance. She wouldn’t need recommendations.

“Cancel your contract and come back to work. Final chance.”

“No, sir. I’m tendering my resignation in the morning.”

“You aren’t the kind of person who gets to decide what job they have. You’ll take what you can get.”

“I am deciding, sir. I quit.”

He stared at her, long and hard. Just as suddenly as his call had interrupted her life, it ended. She was left staring at her coffin wall.