Endless Days

Open my eyes. Sit up. Stand up. Get dressed. Walk out the door. Go to the cafeteria.

And so begins another day of my life. Nothing special, just a day like anyone else has. After breakfast, it’s off to the DataCenter again, hauling cables and server parts, assembling them and setting them up so the Programmers can configure them.

It doesn’t matter what they do with all these endless servers. None of us have ever bothered to ask. If they ever answered, we wouldn’t understand anyway, yet sometimes I can’t help but wonder.



I’ve been doing this ever since I was old enough to leave the Nursery. At first it was plugging in cables, later it became loading carts and moving them, then after my back gave in, it was back to plugging in cables. Lately I’ve been assigned to assembling the servers, which was not as difficult as I expected it to be. It’s also far less physically intense, if you don’t mind twisting your arms into knots trying to get all the pieces into the tightly fitting jigsaw of these boxes.


Surprisingly, not all of my colleagues can fit their heads around assembling servers. I tried to talk to them over cards last night, share my experience about how it was less physically taxing, and far less boring, if still not entertaining. Then I mentioned how I learned what each of the parts does. I haven’t seen that many blank looks since I managed to get an exact 21 during a game of BlackJack, winning almost a week’s worth of beer rations from each man.



Of course, I could never drink that much beer by myself and expect to keep my assembly position. Showing up drunk is the best way to be demoted to the Heatsinks, so I just shared that beer right out again, across the entire unit. It earned me a lot of popularity, and that just a week before evaluations.

But yes, it appears I’m the youngest among the assembling crews. All the others seem to have earned their positions by memorizing the exact motions needed to assemble a server. They apparently never learned what assembling a server requires, or how to spot what part goes where.



This difference was illustrated especially strongly when there was a Hardware Update. These happen once every generation at most, updating the design of the servers and several of the server parts. This sometimes changes the dimensions and positioning of each part, and this time it was especially bad, such a disaster that the entire Assembly unit was called into the Supervisor building to practice assembly together.

This was a first, for me. When I asked around in my Unit later, not one remembered the ENTIRE unit being called there. The last time, apparently a whole 50 years ago, there was just a handful.



The Unit’s oldest inhabitant, Grey Simon, later told me that the Lead Supervisor was among that load. The short old greybeard is surprisingly spry for his age, but he never drinks beer anymore, complaining it’s bad for his joints. He’s on cable plugging duty, just like most of the kids fresh out of the nursery, because he’s grown too weak to haul cables, and his joints have grown too stiff for assembling servers.

He also told me that the Lead Supervisor was very young back then, the most youthful person to make it to that position in any memory, living or otherwise. Barely a boy, the old geezer said, then proceeded to tell me how I was younger still. I’m pretty sure I hit my thirties a week before that, but old men are all the same when it comes to calling those who still have all their hair ‘boys’.



“You’ve got talent, my boy.” The old man sighed. “Who knows, you might even become a Lead Supervisor by the time you’re my age. Now, wouldn’t that be something?”

I held my silence, hesitant to point out that at his age I’d hardly be fit to sit up straight in the Cafetaria, let alone do any work. I may be thirty, but I have back problems like I’m his age. It’s better if I don’t have to haul cables or boxes full of heavy server parts, but sitting bent over a box all day is not exactly helping either.



The solution came last week, though perhaps Grey Simon was the only one who expected it.

I woke up that morning, ready to start another day of doing puzzles with processors, when my Comms box played a jingle I had never heard before.

“Congratulations, <#A743-2531>, Designation: <Worker,Assembly>, Nicknamed: <Jonathan>.” The speaker blared.

“You have been selected for promotion after re-evaluation of your abilities. Your new designation is now “<Junior Supervisor, Assembly>. Please report to the nearest Data center office at <9:30 AM>, for your briefing.”

Now, that was a surprise. Becoming any sort of supervisor is little more than a dream for most workers, but I’d achieved it before even hitting the halfway point of my life.

Then my brain clicked, and I realized what I’d heard. 9:30? I had 3 more hours before I had to be there?



Banging, on my door. “Yo, Jona, you allright in there? You’re late!”

That would be Jack, my neighbour. We’re quite friendly, often sit next to each other, and have worked together to win a crate of beer quite often.

Last summer, we took leave to the Beach Arcade together, an arcade in the center of the Block, on the edge of a large cistern of water. There’s actual sand there, and a few beach palms. Of course, it’s only open in the summer, or we’d never leave there.

As such, we now consider each other friends. Apparently that’s a rarity among the lower workers, especially if you’ve got different assignment. He’s still in the Loading squad, loading boxes out of the storage area onto the moving carts, but he’s positive he can make it to Assembly in the next 5 years or so. Yesterday he spotted his first gray hair, and I gave him my beer ration to help him deal with it.

Apparently he’s got quite a strong liver, since he’s rarely up this early.



“Jack, I don’t think I’ll be reporting to Assembly today” I stand up, throwing on my recreational clothes so to not dirty my dressing uniform before my reassignment.



“Why not? You want me to take your place? I’ll do it, you know. I’ll push you out in a jiffy, and finally prove to them that I can assemble as well as any greybeard!”

I walked over to the door and hesitated. Could I tell him to his face? That I’d not just reached his dream years before he even stood a chance, but had managed to get an actual promotion, something not even most Assembly crew dared dream about.

“Hey, you alive in there? Why are you not reporting to assembly, dude? I’m gonna have to skip breakfast to not be late, now”

I opened the door.

“I’m gonna be reporting to the local Data Office instead. I just heard”.

I’ve always thought the stories old Simon told us about people’s jaws dropping to the floor were embellishment, but Jack’s lower jaw made a very good attempt. Did I say the blank faces when I tried to talk about Assembling were bad? Well, his lack of expression was worse. As soon as he realized his mouth had fallen open, he wiped the surprised of his face, and I was confronted with the reality of what I had thought to be another analogy of Gray Simon’s stories. His face might as well have been a carved mask, that’s how wooden it was.



“oh, very well then. I guess I’ll tell the rest of the guys. “ he started to turn away. Then he turned back. “Jona, you’ve been a good friend. I hope I can make it up there, so I can join you again”

I guess my expression must have been hilarious, since he gave a rueful laugh before turning back.

“good luck with your future, Jona. At least one of us has escaped”.

That was the last time I talked to him.

Endless Nights

So here we are. My days are quite easy, now. All I have to do is make sure everything is done the way it should be. I don’t even need to check up with the Worker class physically, all I need to do is have them deposit a sample into the Tester slot, where the Assembly Testers find anything done wrong and report it to me. I need to compile those reports into an error summary, listing the people I used to work with in order of their performance.

Now it’s my nights that are lonely and tedious. We used to sit together from dinner to 10PM, playing cards and drinking. I don’t even get normal beer anymore. It’s all ale now, and while I do like it, the bar here is anything but enjoyable. Everyone just sits around nursing their drinks, trying not to look at anyone else.



Just today, I learned why. We’re expected to not just watch the Workers, but each other as well.

I reported one of my fellow Supervisors for being drunk on the job. The next morning, his desk was empty.

After that, I didn’t report another guy I saw a few tables over, who seemed to be hungover all day. Neither, apparently, did anyone else, since he hung around for weeks. Then there were 5 empty desks, his and the ones directly adjacent to his.



The message was clear. If we fail to report someone, we’ll be removed next. I understand why nobody wants to get close to anyone else now. It’s no use getting attached, as you’ll either lose them or vanish with them.

I’ve come to miss the evenings we had as workers. Even if our bodies ached with the pain from the physical labor, it was mentally comfortable.

This place isn’t. My belongings were moved from my old quarters within a day after transfer, and I’ve not been able to go back, to my regret. I wish I could’ve said goodbye to Grey Simon, at least. Told him he might’ve been right about me after all. But I had no chance. If it wasn’t for Jack, I might as well have vanished in the eyes of the rest of the Assembly crew.



Perhaps that’s what the vanishings among the Junior Supervisors are, promotions to a different position. I like to think that, each time it happens, they’ve been promoted not just to senior supervisors, but to some exotic position in a different block.

There’s little conversation to be had here. Perhaps that’s why I hallucinate at night now, having conversations with my old pals, explaining to them how the position of supervisor might be less work, but it’s way more stress.



I remember doing something similar back in the nursery. At night, I’d have all sorts of adventures, getting promoted not just to Lead Supervisor, but also to Senior Executive. When I told my Nurse about it, however, I was reprimanded and even punished. I was even moved to a different room. I haven’t had an experience at night like that since, except perhaps once. But that experience was nothing like the others. It felt like I was in a dark room, and something was attached to my back.



That weight is still there at night, keeping me grounded in bed. I cannot move my body at all. Sometimes, I find myself staring at a corner of my room, slightly larger and more luxurious than I was used to. They may be more comfortable, but even after many weeks, they are still completely alien to me. I used to be able to walk through my old room in the dark as easily as if the lights were on.



Nowadays I’m afraid to leave my bed, even if I could. Sometimes I’m grateful to the strange force that keeps me stuck to my bed at night, for it has prevented me from giving in to the urge to walk towards that corner, where each night something dark and barely visible seems to grow slightly larger.



Over half a year has passed. I no longer think of my old life except if I’m caught off-guard by an attack of melancholy. All that there is for me now is the soul-grinding boredom of routine, and the adventures at night that seem to grow ever more lucid.

Recently, instead of my usual hallucinations about activities at my desk going so ridiculously well that I am promoted to Lead Supervisor instantly, I’ve been having dreams of what I can only describe as forests. I recall seeing pictures of them in the Nursery, but nobody I’ve talked to can recall ever having seen something remotely like them in the physical world. All they could tell me was that they used to see them in their sleep at night.



I remember this place now. My memories of my time in the Nursery have grown hazy, but I recall vaguely having incredible adventures with the other kids in my nursery, in a forest very much like this.

It doesn’t take long for me to find a place that I can recall perfectly. The treehouse is still there, though it looks decidedly ramshackle, as if nobody has done anything to fix it in decades.



At that moment, I see a flicker of movement in the corner of my left eye. It’s only there for a split second, and the moment I turn around to look for the source, everything is still once more. Perhaps it was just my imagination running wild, caused by my sudden trip down memory lane and the slight breeze that seems to be blowing through the trees.



A realization hits me…. I have never before seen WIND in these experiences at night. Nor have I ever done more than just SEE. I grow very still, listening to the sound the rustling leaves are making, feeling the breeze tickle lightly across the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck, breathing slowly and deeply to absorb a scent so full of life that tears come to my eyes.

The salty taste in water is a surprise. I have not cried since I left the first stage of the nursery. Showing any superfluent emotion in public is discouraged to violent extent, at a very early age.



Absorbed as I am in my surroundings, I believe I might as well be one with the forest around me, able to hear, see and feel everything that happens around me.

*CLAP*

Therefore it’s all the more a shock when a hand suddenly lands on my shoulder, clasping it with frightening strength.

I find myself wrenched around, face to face with a man that seems slightly familiar, though I have not the vaguest idea why.

“Well now, kiddo. Seems like you finally made it into the Dream, eh?”



I sit up in my bed, covered in sweat. The presence pulling my back to the bed is gone completely. I can “see” my room, even in the dark, the way I could in my old room. And the strange dark presence that was growing in one corner seems to have vanished entirely.

Only one thing remains in my mind.

“Was everything from my promotion until now nothing more than a bad Dream?”

My calendar clock seems to have broken down. It’ll take months to get a new one from Central Supplies, and the Office only has clocks for time, not date.

I guess I won’t know until I finally get a new calendar clock.

Endless Dreams

It’s been weeks since I first had that dream. I’ve gotten used to being tired all the time, exhausted in a way that no amount of physical exertion has ever made me. Work as junior supervisor has become so easy for me I would not be surprised if I could do it while sleeping at my desk, yet it’s as if I do not actually sleep when I visit the Dream.



Last night, I met the strange guy again. He introduced himself as Sentar, and explained a little about this “Dream” I now seem to enter every night. It’s supposed to be a world around our world, the water that a bubble floats in, or something fancy like that. I cannot get my head around the meaning, but I do know that I’m seeing glimpses of children everywhere now. Each of them seems to flicker between wearing a Nursery uniform and some cobbled-together costume from one of the many picture books we had stuffed down our throats in our own time there.



“Well now, Jonathan, is it? I thought I had that right. Now, here’s the thing. I tried to explain to you how this world works, but there’s a few vital things I didn’t touch upon yet.” He said softly, sitting on a fallen log opposite my stump-based chair.

“You see, this world has always been mostly the same. Unlike our home world, it’s never grown or been developed in any way. That treehouse I found you looking at back then has been there as long as anyone can remember. There is no record of anyone remembering it being built.”



He leans forward, running both hands through his dark brown hair.

“Now, here’s the thing. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring this place. Far more than any of my predecessors, who refused to believe that something like this could be real, so they treated it like an ordinary dream”
I grow confused, both at his use of the word “predecessor”, implying there’s something more to him than a random person I met in a dream, and at the implication that this “Dream” is something special.

Before I can open my mouth, however, he sits up and holds up a finger.



“Hold on, Jona, I’m not done yet. There’s one more vital thing I have to tell you for tonight.”

I look him straight in the eyes this time, worried. The look I get in return pierces right down to the back of my skull.

“You see, at some point, I found an old library, full of all sorts of old manuscripts”
I look confused again.

“Old writings, documents, Jona. What people used to store data before the DataCenter became a thing. Now, here’s the thing, you see? One of these documents, it was talking about this Dream. It took me a while to understand what they meant, since at that point I didn’t know what I know now.”

He takes a slow, deep breath.

“This dream is supposed to be like a mirror of our world. Everything we see here is supposed to be a mirror image, a reflection of our world, reflecting exactly what our world contains, and what changes are made. Yet you know as well as I do that there is NO resemblance between the two worlds, none at all. The only resemblances we can see are with those picture books they give the kids back in the nursery.”



“So now I’m gonna ask you, and I want you to think about it long and deep. Where did the blasted REFLECTION go?”

He looks incredibly old and weary. His hair is now fully gray, he’s got a weak beard, and suddenly, I know why he seemed familiar that first night.

I awake once more, sweating so profusely I might as well have taken a bath, albeit a very nasty one.

The speakers are blaring an announcement.

“Attention all employees of Data Corp. Lead Supervisor Tersan has passed away in his sleep. We will be arranging a funeral ceremony for him this week. All employees are required to attend. After a suitable month-long period of mourning, a new Lead Supervisor will be selected”.



This is it. I understand now. Sentar was his alias, to keep me from freaking out upon meeting him.
I have a suspicion of what he was after now. It will be up to me to find it, and up to me to succeed him as Lead Supervisor so I will have the time to do what is needed.



I must find the reflection of our world.






Footnote 1: I have not yet had time to search this story for any profanity that might be against the rules, so please bear with me.
Footnote 2: This is not nearly as big as I wanted the story to be, but I ran out of time for the contest that it's a submission for. I might pad it out later.