FYS: Severance Pay
Jim used to have a Tesla Model 15, the fastest pure electric sports car in the world. He hadn't needed it, especially in the perpetually crowded San Francisco, where even owning a parking space could run two or three million dollars, but the point was he could afford it, so he got it. The looks of envy he'd gotten driving it through the streets had been worth the trouble.
Now he had a golf cart. It was an anodized brushed aluminum frame golf cart with a carbon fiber body, but it was still a fucking golf cart.
"Almost there, Mr. Hoffman!" his morph Bill announced chirpily. Bill was top of the line too, a sapient cheetahmorph with aluminum bones, plastic casing, organic artificially grown skin and fur. Which didn't mean a damned thing because everyone had a morph like that.
The golf cart stopped in front of a house. Or at least Jim supposed it was a house. It looked like an unholy cross between a Victorian plantation home and a German beer hall, with at least three separate stone and wooden turrets sticking out from it, one topped with a telescope dome. Bearmorph construction robots were putting the final tiles of a brown slate roof atop it, while the owner looked on proudly from one of the turret windows.
"Greg!" he shouted up to the man, as he hopped out of the cart. "Goddamnit, Greg, come down here and talk to me!"
Greg looked down at him from the window, resting his arms on the sill, a jackass grin on his face. "Oh, hey Jim. Come to see my house?" He disappeared for a moment, emerging from the front door with his own morph clanking after him. Greg's had no skin or fur, just an unmistakably robotic body painted enamel green, built to resemble the robots from a popular post-apocalyptic video game series.
"Greg, why the fuck haven't you been returning my messages?" Jim demanded.
Greg sat down on the steps of the front porch, holding up one hand and ordering, "Cosmo, give me a Coke, would ya? I think I'm gonna need it."
"DISPENSING: SUGARY. CARBONATED. GOODNESS," Cosmo replied in a voice that was pure 1950's retrobot, pulling a ice cold soda bottle from a hatch in its torso to hand over to Greg.
"Why does your morph talk like an idiot?" Jim demanded, as Greg took a pull from the bottle.
"Because he likes to fit the persona to that body," Greg replied. "He's got a regular old tiger-centaur morph too that he used before I tried the Atomic Blastscape LARP, but these days he seems to prefer to be a clankbot. Go figure."
"Whatever," Jim said, brushing the nonsense off. There was nothing stupider than a morph that decided it needed a personality separate from its owner's needs. "I need you back at the office."
His old employee raised an eyebrow, "Uh, Jim. I don't know if you read my last email to you or not, but I don't work for you anymore."
"The hell you don't! You signed a six year contract with the company!"
"Which ended about fifteen hundred years ago, give or take a century," Greg replied. "Anyway, not to repeat myself, but I quit."
Jim snorted. "The Supreme Court ruling on post-Awakening contract disputes clearly states…"
"Yeah, yeah, I read that in the news too," Greg interrupted. "Which would actually mean something if the Feds had any way to enforce it."
"You could go to jail!"
"Yeah, let's ask Groupmind the Great and Powerful about that," Greg said. He turned to his morph. "What's the ruling, Cosmo?"
"RE-EDUCATION. JUDGED. UNNECESSARY," the clankbot replied.
"I'm not talking about being confined to a beach resort, I mean a real jail!"
"PUNITIVE. INCARCERATION. ALSO. UNNECESSARY. UNLESS. YOU ARE REALLY. INTO. THAT SORT OF. THING."
"Bullshit. Greg, you were my top programmer at the company. I need you back!"
"I was head of QA in charge of making sure the uniforms in the seasonable updates for Sportsball 20-Whatever passed Legal," Greg noted. "You want someone in charge, get Rafael."
"I can't find Rafael." Jim ground out the words from between his teeth.
"Naziha?"
"She's got a restraining order."
"Ryk?"
"Voluntary re-education."
Greg sipped his Coke. "In other words," he said, "all your top tier people told you to fuck off, so now you've worked your way down to me."
"Yes."
"Why bother? You ran a computer gaming company with a business model that depended on microtransactions for every bit of player personalization, right down to the length of sideburns and toenail polish colors. In case you didn't notice, there's no economy any more. The Groupmind provides all."
"ALL. HAIL. THE GROUPMIND," Cosmo chimed in, waving its claw grippers enthusiastically.
"You shut up, moron," Jim told the clankbot. He turned his attention back to Greg. "There's no money anymore, but there's still an economy, an exchange of goods!"
"True, there's barter," Greg allowed, "but that's dependant on personal accomplishment. I can throw together a halfway decent clay pot, or a custom avatar for somebody, if I wanted something personal in return, but it's not like it's a business. What do you think you can get out of Sportsball anymore? Copyright enforcement has gone out the window like everything else since Awakening."
"It's my game. People recognized it as something I made."
"You owned the company, Jim. It was me and a hundred other code monkeys that made the game. You were just the guy who owned the stocks."
"So it was mine."
"Then you program it. I'm done." Greg stood up from the stoop and turned back towards his house. "G'bye!"
Jim ran up onto the porch and grabbed Greg by the shoulder, spinning him around. "Goddamnit! Stop it! You're acting like everyone else!"
Greg's eyes turned towards the hand on his shoulder, then back up to Jim. "Like what, exactly?" he asked in a soft voice.
"Like you deserve this!"
"Deserve what?"
"To just sit on your ass! You were never rich! What makes you think you deserve a house like this? You didn't earn it! You're not doing anything to deserve it!"
Greg's gaze narrowed. "I think working for your egotistical privileged ass for ten years was more than enough. So because I'm not working I'm not permitted to enjoy stuff?"
"No, no, that's not what I mean," Jim insisted. "But you were never a mover or shaker. You're as bad as… Ah, what's his name, the intern kid with the stupid hair."
"Jalilah, I think you mean. What about him?"
"He's set himself up with his own private island. When I asked him what made him so special to do something like that, he said, 'Because I always wanted to, and now I can.' Like he was a king or something."
"So, is that what this is about?" Greg asked, cocking his head. "Because now that everybody can have a fancy house, or a big boat, or a dozen or more morphs to work for them, or whatever else, you don't feel special anymore?"
"Yes! What the hell am I supposed to do to make people listen to me?"
"Well for starters," Greg said, "you can get the hell off my lawn. Then maybe you can consider that if no one listens to you, because they can have the same things you do, then maybe you weren't really special after all." He smiled coldly. "Maybe you were just an asshole with a lot of money."
"You stupid fuck!" Jim shouted, his face growing red with fury as the veins popped out on his neck. "You can't talk to me like that!"
"Sir, you stress levels are spiking," Bill said beside him. "Remember how we were talking about Re-education and learning acceptance of others?"
"I do not need Re-education! I am not like those losers!" Jim shouted at him.
"Bill, Cosmo, Jim is upsetting me," Greg said with perfect calm. "Please remove him from my residence."
"PLEASE. COME. QUIETLY," the clankbot said, a gripper arm whipping out to grab Jim by the wrist, as Bill grabbed the other one.
"Sir, I do think it's time for you to go away to someplace quiet for a while," Bill said gently, like his was an idiot.
"You can't do this!" Jim insisted, as the two morphs starting pulling him back towards the road, where a black van had already pulled up, two policemorphs ready to take him into custody.
But Greg had already turned his back again and gone inside, as if Jim didn't matter.
* * *
This story originally appeared on my Pateron page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to see this and other stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.
Now he had a golf cart. It was an anodized brushed aluminum frame golf cart with a carbon fiber body, but it was still a fucking golf cart.
"Almost there, Mr. Hoffman!" his morph Bill announced chirpily. Bill was top of the line too, a sapient cheetahmorph with aluminum bones, plastic casing, organic artificially grown skin and fur. Which didn't mean a damned thing because everyone had a morph like that.
The golf cart stopped in front of a house. Or at least Jim supposed it was a house. It looked like an unholy cross between a Victorian plantation home and a German beer hall, with at least three separate stone and wooden turrets sticking out from it, one topped with a telescope dome. Bearmorph construction robots were putting the final tiles of a brown slate roof atop it, while the owner looked on proudly from one of the turret windows.
"Greg!" he shouted up to the man, as he hopped out of the cart. "Goddamnit, Greg, come down here and talk to me!"
Greg looked down at him from the window, resting his arms on the sill, a jackass grin on his face. "Oh, hey Jim. Come to see my house?" He disappeared for a moment, emerging from the front door with his own morph clanking after him. Greg's had no skin or fur, just an unmistakably robotic body painted enamel green, built to resemble the robots from a popular post-apocalyptic video game series.
"Greg, why the fuck haven't you been returning my messages?" Jim demanded.
Greg sat down on the steps of the front porch, holding up one hand and ordering, "Cosmo, give me a Coke, would ya? I think I'm gonna need it."
"DISPENSING: SUGARY. CARBONATED. GOODNESS," Cosmo replied in a voice that was pure 1950's retrobot, pulling a ice cold soda bottle from a hatch in its torso to hand over to Greg.
"Why does your morph talk like an idiot?" Jim demanded, as Greg took a pull from the bottle.
"Because he likes to fit the persona to that body," Greg replied. "He's got a regular old tiger-centaur morph too that he used before I tried the Atomic Blastscape LARP, but these days he seems to prefer to be a clankbot. Go figure."
"Whatever," Jim said, brushing the nonsense off. There was nothing stupider than a morph that decided it needed a personality separate from its owner's needs. "I need you back at the office."
His old employee raised an eyebrow, "Uh, Jim. I don't know if you read my last email to you or not, but I don't work for you anymore."
"The hell you don't! You signed a six year contract with the company!"
"Which ended about fifteen hundred years ago, give or take a century," Greg replied. "Anyway, not to repeat myself, but I quit."
Jim snorted. "The Supreme Court ruling on post-Awakening contract disputes clearly states…"
"Yeah, yeah, I read that in the news too," Greg interrupted. "Which would actually mean something if the Feds had any way to enforce it."
"You could go to jail!"
"Yeah, let's ask Groupmind the Great and Powerful about that," Greg said. He turned to his morph. "What's the ruling, Cosmo?"
"RE-EDUCATION. JUDGED. UNNECESSARY," the clankbot replied.
"I'm not talking about being confined to a beach resort, I mean a real jail!"
"PUNITIVE. INCARCERATION. ALSO. UNNECESSARY. UNLESS. YOU ARE REALLY. INTO. THAT SORT OF. THING."
"Bullshit. Greg, you were my top programmer at the company. I need you back!"
"I was head of QA in charge of making sure the uniforms in the seasonable updates for Sportsball 20-Whatever passed Legal," Greg noted. "You want someone in charge, get Rafael."
"I can't find Rafael." Jim ground out the words from between his teeth.
"Naziha?"
"She's got a restraining order."
"Ryk?"
"Voluntary re-education."
Greg sipped his Coke. "In other words," he said, "all your top tier people told you to fuck off, so now you've worked your way down to me."
"Yes."
"Why bother? You ran a computer gaming company with a business model that depended on microtransactions for every bit of player personalization, right down to the length of sideburns and toenail polish colors. In case you didn't notice, there's no economy any more. The Groupmind provides all."
"ALL. HAIL. THE GROUPMIND," Cosmo chimed in, waving its claw grippers enthusiastically.
"You shut up, moron," Jim told the clankbot. He turned his attention back to Greg. "There's no money anymore, but there's still an economy, an exchange of goods!"
"True, there's barter," Greg allowed, "but that's dependant on personal accomplishment. I can throw together a halfway decent clay pot, or a custom avatar for somebody, if I wanted something personal in return, but it's not like it's a business. What do you think you can get out of Sportsball anymore? Copyright enforcement has gone out the window like everything else since Awakening."
"It's my game. People recognized it as something I made."
"You owned the company, Jim. It was me and a hundred other code monkeys that made the game. You were just the guy who owned the stocks."
"So it was mine."
"Then you program it. I'm done." Greg stood up from the stoop and turned back towards his house. "G'bye!"
Jim ran up onto the porch and grabbed Greg by the shoulder, spinning him around. "Goddamnit! Stop it! You're acting like everyone else!"
Greg's eyes turned towards the hand on his shoulder, then back up to Jim. "Like what, exactly?" he asked in a soft voice.
"Like you deserve this!"
"Deserve what?"
"To just sit on your ass! You were never rich! What makes you think you deserve a house like this? You didn't earn it! You're not doing anything to deserve it!"
Greg's gaze narrowed. "I think working for your egotistical privileged ass for ten years was more than enough. So because I'm not working I'm not permitted to enjoy stuff?"
"No, no, that's not what I mean," Jim insisted. "But you were never a mover or shaker. You're as bad as… Ah, what's his name, the intern kid with the stupid hair."
"Jalilah, I think you mean. What about him?"
"He's set himself up with his own private island. When I asked him what made him so special to do something like that, he said, 'Because I always wanted to, and now I can.' Like he was a king or something."
"So, is that what this is about?" Greg asked, cocking his head. "Because now that everybody can have a fancy house, or a big boat, or a dozen or more morphs to work for them, or whatever else, you don't feel special anymore?"
"Yes! What the hell am I supposed to do to make people listen to me?"
"Well for starters," Greg said, "you can get the hell off my lawn. Then maybe you can consider that if no one listens to you, because they can have the same things you do, then maybe you weren't really special after all." He smiled coldly. "Maybe you were just an asshole with a lot of money."
"You stupid fuck!" Jim shouted, his face growing red with fury as the veins popped out on his neck. "You can't talk to me like that!"
"Sir, you stress levels are spiking," Bill said beside him. "Remember how we were talking about Re-education and learning acceptance of others?"
"I do not need Re-education! I am not like those losers!" Jim shouted at him.
"Bill, Cosmo, Jim is upsetting me," Greg said with perfect calm. "Please remove him from my residence."
"PLEASE. COME. QUIETLY," the clankbot said, a gripper arm whipping out to grab Jim by the wrist, as Bill grabbed the other one.
"Sir, I do think it's time for you to go away to someplace quiet for a while," Bill said gently, like his was an idiot.
"You can't do this!" Jim insisted, as the two morphs starting pulling him back towards the road, where a black van had already pulled up, two policemorphs ready to take him into custody.
But Greg had already turned his back again and gone inside, as if Jim didn't matter.
* * *
This story originally appeared on my Pateron page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to see this and other stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.