Downtime
Somewhere around the early-mid 22nd Century we ran out of work. Until then, from 8 to 5 and more people spent their days abuzz at offices filing paperwork. Some of them amassed fortunes (mostly for the purpose of not working anymore) simply by performing glorified clerking duties. Others were called upon for their judgment and discretion, but this went the way of all things as well when comprehensive mandatory sentencing came into the courts. A final commission was appointed by the President in order to determine and quantify every possible interpretation of the constitution and law on the books and as they moved along towards progress each additional section of the judiciary was rendered obsolete, starting with the Supreme Court. Early in the 21st Century it became more than thinkable to encode any possible data on a form into easily scanned encryptions. The inevitable was put off, but eventually immunity to human error was too tempting to pass up.
Forms were filled out exclusively at computers and transmitted all over the world; they were never unencrypted anymore because no one would ever need to understand them but another computer owned by the same company. Manual labor was automated, with the exception of a very few jobs performed using machine exoskeletons. Underground were the interconnected webs of what were essentially complicated conveyor belts, chutes and lifts all delivering miscellany. Delivering to and from restaurants, mailboxes, snack machines, shoe stores, private residences. The buildings now uniform, distinguished by slight color distinctions, outfitted with these mechanisms. The benefit to humanity of such convenience was notable, perhaps debatably, but in truth it was because people are lazy and will buy more things they don’t need if they are right in front of them. When a meal shows up on a dumbwaiter in 15 minutes, freshly cooked and sealed to retain heat (even if the ingredients are reconstituted), why cook? Why learn to cook?
That system was more complicated to install and required several years of construction, which employed a large portion of the manual labor population. The office machinery was all in place and it made what was apparent undeniable: this work was unnecessary anyway. It was work to create work, work because you work for a living, a hand-up not a handout. It was of the past. There were no “consumer advocates” any longer, as the major corporations in part financed the comprehensive law interpretation. Perhaps as a direct result of this John Adams was found to be our new archetypal patriot. His concept of the President as emperor found to be what we should have been progressing towards all along. His “Alien and Sedition” acts were declared to be the crux of the American Spirit and were reintroduced as legislation (new and improved, of course). The only advocates a consumer was likely to see were computer rendered consumers enjoying conspicuously branded products.
It was put off for so long for a very good reason: what would people do all day? Anyone who has ever seen a coffeehouse packed full of people mid-afternoon on a Tuesday knows the oddity of coming into contact with people who don’t work regular hours for a living, but after the implementation there would be nobody working for a living. It would hit America the hardest. In Italy, where old films showed multitudes out of work, lounging around the Spanish Steps or filling cafes it wasn’t so foreign. But America, who handled the early and late 20th Century depressions so miserably, whose motto for so long has been “work at any cost,” was the least prepared. This was inconvenient, because America was the country that had done to most to make apparent the necessity of doing away with such work. Several thousands each year died or were improperly treated because of human error, the employees themselves at work or their clients as a result of mistakes on paperwork. This combined with those already being denied pledged help by their assigned medical companies made a dent that was hard not to see. On top of that, American companies increased the unemployment in their own economy time and time again by sending work that could be done by anyone to other countries for pennies an hour: auto parts were made in Mexico, clothes in Malaysia, and several corporations opened “Data Centers” in Singapore and other locations around the globe to take over the very digital clerking duties that were now to be phased out. In each case the layoffs resulted in despoliation of towns, families and careers. Flint, Michigan and GM, Rochester, NY, and Kodak, the list is endless. Once thriving towns turned into shantytowns of grown men going from door to door looking for odd jobs. When the big bomb dropped, what could they expect except the same on a massive scale? What they needed was a plan.
The principle question was: What will people do for money? The response to this was that if Protestant work ethic was going out the window, it might as well be a high window, so they created a system of allowances. Still allergic to the word “welfare,” they awarded salaries comparable to what would have been earned anyway determined by standardized tests. The working poor became the otherwise occupied poor. They needed people to have money in order for the people to give them their money, and they found the cheapest way to accomplish this was just to give it to them.
By “they,” I’m speaking of course about the people who run the world, the only “they” worth talking about.
The second question was: What are the people going to do? As closing them all at the same time was a sure recipe for chaos, they were tiered so that a percentage of them would close per week. The employees were given severance bonuses and encourage to take a “family week” at local points of interest, or a full-out vacation. When they returned they would be entered into physical fitness classes or advanced study courses, all for a price, and encouraged to watch a lot of television.
It was just as well that dismissal on the first day was as far as they got.
The equivalent of one-fifth of the work force vacationing at once…Gridlock. The freeways were choked with traffic. Nobody moved for three days. Without structure it became permanent rush hour. A state of emergency was declared to clear the roads, which took two more days. They puzzled over what to do. They considered putting everyone in a room for eight hours a day without allowing them to speak to one another; after all they were buying their time, not their labor. In the end they declared the experiment a failure, declared that the efficiency of machines could never replace the intuition and judgment of man, and everyone was brought back to work.