Author : Liz Lafferty

Wake up.

Make coffee.

Go to work.

Eat.

Sleep.

Wake up.

Make coffee.

Go to work.

Eat.

Sleep.

#

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s the worker program jamming up again.” I frowned at the array of code for that particular program. The pattern had changed over time. The wild fluctuations so common to new programs was normal, but since they layered in the worker program, the blips had steadied out into a monotonous up, down, up, down rhythm that had gotten slower and slower.

I scanned through hundreds of worker programs seeing the same results.

The automatons with this program seemed to be in one repetitive loop after another.

“Did you reboot?”

“First thing. It went right in to loop again. I’ve been seeing more and more problems with this schematic. What do you want me to do?”

“Did you try loading the motherly instinct program? Maybe it would do better in a home environment.”

We’d stopped identifying them by name years ago. To us they were drones.

“Let me check the records.” My fingers flittered over the keyboard as I punched in the series of codes, revealing the events for this female automaton’s life cycle. “No, we can’t. That model was programmed not to have children. It was supposed to find joy in the labor force.”

“The entrepreneur program has always been successful. What about an overlay?”

“Might work.”

“Well, it’s better than suiciding the model.”

“I hate that term. I’ll shut it down for a few days of rest. See what happens.”

“You’re call, but we’ll probably end up shutting her down anyway. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I went home.

Time to sleep.

#

I woke up. Made coffee. Went to work.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s the worker program jamming up again.”

“Did you reboot?”

“First thing. It went right in to loop again. I’ve been seeing more and more problems. What do you want me to do?”