The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century

We’ve talked about the risk that in committing ourselves to this decision we might not be re-uploaded, and this we accept. These words are the last you’ll hear from us

How can we live with the knowledge that none of these days will be remembered by anyone, not even ourselves?

in other words humanoid rather than human as the crew had been informed (the decision that the committee should appear to be human was taken on the basis of research showing that human and humanoid employees alike have a tendency to react more positively to the organisation’s human representatives) –

I believe in the future. I think you need to imagine a future and then live in it. I believe in unfathomable quantities of nourishment. All of us here on board are but fleeting carrier craft of the programme.

I think I feel sorrow at the prospect of never seeing them again. It’s hard for me to understand that some of us can go on, while others can’t.

I’ve observed that a lot of my humanoid co-workers have started uploading every hour, their faces glisten with sweat, and I realise they’re nervous. Compared to us, they’ve got nothing to lose, and yet they’re still scared of losing what little they’ve got to remember. I

You allow them to continue working, you punish them only nominally, and everyone on the ship then knows them by their criminal designation. You weren’t responsible for that designation? It came from Homebase? Then please inform Homebase that while some workers feel shamed by the designation, others, although initially angered by it, later come to take pride in their deviant status

In their design they look like humans inside and out, apart from the reproductive organs, which we found ethically unjustifiable to duplicate

We injected them with the good hormones while talking to them, and in the minutes prior to their hatching we gave them high-dosage shots of oxytocin so that the sight of us would fill them with feelings of security, love and general well-being.

The work wasn’t enough for me. I’ve lost myself. Every day, my hands yearn to dig deep into soil so that I might lower myself into its certainty, and the earth receive my death and make me its own.