Amon waited a few moments, but there was no response. He couldn’t imagine what was holding Rick up. The man was supposed to be getting ready for work and all he had to do was send a quick response. Unless… anxiety gripped his bowels, and he air-typed rapidly.
DIJU FERGAYT? 2DEH IZ EVALUAYSHON DEH. AZ YER FREND & YER BAWSS, AYM BAYGIN U. PLEEZ B AWN TAIM!
After a few breaths and blinks, Amon fired off several more texts and tried facephoning him, but it just kept ringing and ringing. Having run out of options, he opened his favorite decision forum—Career Calibration—for advice on what to do next, and posted a brief query describing his conundrum:
HAI AWL,
MAI BAYST FREND & AI HAV BEEEN WERKING 2GETHER FER SEVIN YEERZ. WWE ALWAYZ GAWT ALAWNG GRAYT, & WERKT WAYL AZ AA TEEM. BUUT NAUW AIV BEEEN PRAMOTED & POOT EEN CHARRGE UV HEEM, & REESENTLY HEEZ BEEEN LAYT FER WERK & WAYSTING TAIM @ THA AWFIS. SINSE AIM HIZ BAWS, HIZ SLAKKING WIIL EEMPACT MAI PERFFORMANS EEVOWLUAYSHON.
2DEH IZ THA DEH WEE GAYT AUWR REZULTS & AI WAWNTED 2 MAYK SHUR HEEZ AWN TAIM, SOE AI TAYXTED HEEM LAAST NAIT & KALLED HEEM DIS MORNIN BAAT HI HAZNT RESPAWNDED. AI CHEKKED HIZ LOKAYSHON AWN THA MAAP & EEF HII DUZNT LEEV NAOW, HIIL DEHFINATELY BII LAYT. FER HIZ SAYK & MINNE, WAT SHOOD AI DOO NAYXT?
Responses began to pour in immediately:
WHY NOT THREATEN TO FIRE HIM! NO FRIEND WOULD JEOPARDIZE HIS FRIEND’S JOB LIKE THAT…
IT SOUNDS LIKE HE’S A CLOSE FRIEND OF YOURS. I THINK HE’LL REALIZE IT HIMSELF. WHY NOT WAIT FOR A SHORT WHILE AND…
Since signing up for Career Calibration several years ago, Amon had been regularly paring down his list of friends. Only those who gave consistently useful advice could comment on his posts. Even still, he had thousands of friends and there were immediately hundreds of responses. With no time to read them all before his stop, he activated SiftAssist. This application outsourced his comments to sift teams who scanned them for redundancy using specialized search engines, summarizing and categorizing each post according to content. In their haste to skim numerous orders in a limited time frame, the poorly paid sifters frequently glossed over nuanced turns of phrase, ignored crucial passages, erroneously grouped unrelated text, and totally missed sarcasm. But when confronted with a garbage heap of noise, they did a halfway-decent job of picking out the scraps of signal. Within seconds, the application had boiled all the comments down to six pieces of advice, which he reposted on the forum to see what his decision friends would recommend. In an instant their votes had been tallied:
1. Manifest in front of him right now and tell him to hurry 38%
2. Ask your boss to transfer him to another section 23%
3. Threaten to assign him menial jobs if he doesn’t fly straight 19%
4. Ask to be transferred to another section 12%
5. Let things take their course and focus on improving your results 7%
6. Other (kill your friend, quit your job, drink it off, etc.) 1%
Despite the popularity of option 1, Amon was reluctant to carry it out, and decided to consider the other alternatives before making his choice. He quickly eliminated option 2. Requesting a transfer would imply to the upper management that Rick was slacking. Amon was upset, but he wasn’t about to go and get his friend fired—not yet anyways. Next he eliminated option 4. Transferring would mean abandoning his new position as Identity Executioner, since there was only one in each squad. Given Rick’s personality, Amon knew option 3 would fire up his rebellious tendencies and rebound him deeper into truancy. The path of least resistance approach, option 5, was too risky and he promptly blocked the users who made suggestions grouped under option 6, which were too radical or absurd.
When he was done eliminating the other options, he reflected on 1 more carefully. At first he didn’t like it. In addition to being expensive, it would require violating Rick’s privacy, and that was something he really didn’t want to do.
Amon knew if he clicked on one of the commuters in his vicinity, the amount of information that popped up would vary. While most Free Citizens were willing to share certain details with marketers, sharing with strangers was a different story. Some people might allow Amon access to their name and city of residence, others added hobbies and a personality description, and the occasional exhibitionist might share their nude photos, fetishes, costume of choice, and similar quirks. But Amon took his right to anonymity seriously, knowing full well how valuable personal information was on the phishing blackmarket, and refused to disclose even the bare minimum. Complete strangers who browsed his public profile would find it empty. He allowed them to access his premium profile for a fee, but it displayed only his name. His acquaintance profile additionally listed his favorite music and most-frequented websites, but also required payment. To avoid alienating potential connections, his professional profile was complimentary, but contained only his job title, qualifications, and a speech about his goals.
Yet Amon had nothing to hide from Rick. He had given him full access to his entire inner profile and Rick had returned the gesture in kind. They could view each other’s LifeStream, blogs, fingerprints, blood type, allergies, retina pattern, DNA—you name it, they shared it. Such deep reciprocal trust was a rare treasure in the Free World, where information was advantage, and Amon didn’t want to abuse it. To carry out option 1, he would have to use the spatial location listed in Rick’s inner profile, disclosed in good faith, and manifest his perspective into his home. But Rick wasn’t responding to messages, which meant he didn’t want to be found. If Amon barged in to scold him for being late at a time like this, Rick might take it as an imposing and presumptuous abuse of their intimacy. Factor in the costs of the ensuing communication, and it was looking downright crazy. But the more Amon thought about it, the more he came to see 1 as the only viable plan; figuring that if his many decision friends hadn’t thought of something better, it probably didn’t exist.
The train slowed down with a jerk as it approached the next stop, sending Amon lurching forward in step with the bodies around him. The weight of the crowd leaning from behind pushed him right onto his toes. In that instant, he imagined himself toppling over, sinking to the floor, and being trampled under thousands of dress shoes, but quickly the momentum swung back and he regained his balance. At times like these, the spots on his body where others pressed against him felt like octopus suckers draining away his funds, and Amon was grateful that train companies subsidized licensing fees for touching to give passengers riding incentive. Although most Tokyo professionals did their jobs online from their apartments, the mall, the golf course, the salon—wherever they happened to be—some still had to commute to work for various reasons, and with the population of the metropolis being as dense as it was, this was enough to ensure the trains were filled way beyond capacity. Amon had been required to go in to the office ever since he started out at GATA seven years earlier, since the comparatively strict security systems only gave network access to those present inside, and when he was squashed in like this, he almost wished he could work from home like the others. But he dismissed this desire by reminding himself about the increasingly competitive worksphere, and the way it was demanding ever more commitment from telework employees. With accounting revisions urgently needed at 3 a.m., sales strategy brainstorms held on the toilet, and hourly quality control seminars interrupting vacations, corporate duties had invaded their lives so thoroughly that the distinction between private and work time hardly existed anymore. Many specialists said that this was a major factor behind the rising prevalence of mental disorders and suicides, and while the disorders were fine because pharmaceutical companies had a range of lucrative cures that would feed the economy, the suicides were considered a serious issue. All told, Amon preferred the crowds and their touching costs to such occupational hazards, and could only do his best to cope.