Products

“What is the value you have?”

A simple, short question. The start question for every potential employer.

Answering was simple. I didn’t really need to answer but it was expected.

I had a chart that mapped out my exact value, displayed above my online profile. At one end were my tracked skills, analysed and packaged from real-time tasks over the years. At the other end of the scrolling file were my emotional traits, my temper, my agitation and anxiety levels and finally there was the box-out to highlight data of interest, like my caffeine levels, my average heart rate and BMI. To my shock, the latest plug-in could even roughly estimate how many times I was daydreaming each day. Working whilst wearing the brain-monitoring caps was now part of any remote job, you had to wear one or forfeit your income, it was no choice.

“Well,” I began, “I have worked with file management systems for twenty years…”

“Let me interrupt you, there. There is a gap of one year in your work history where you were depressed and unemployed… Explain.”

“To be honest… They were linked…”

The interviewer shook his head, frowned and flicked off his camera. It took two seconds for the rejection line to appear on my message board. I watched an animation of a browsing shopper placing my avatar-on-a-tin back on the shelf marked File Managers. All my product specifications were nose-diving. It was hopeless.

I had been a human product for sale, for three months, and soon I would be pushed into the bargain shelf on the recruitment app. ‘Jobseekers’ they used to call us, now it was always, ‘products’. LinkedUp chat had shifted the label ‘human resources’, to ‘human assets’, to ‘human products’. It was now the buzz-term of social jousting for managers. I had always thought of the word product as an innovation, a manufactured thing but there were exceptions when I came to think of it. The first alternative that came to mind was when you have your hair done – they would say: ‘Want some product in your hair?’ not defining what gloop they had in mind – I guess it was still a ‘thing’ though. I remember when my dad, a farmer, would talk about meat, or livestock and he called it ‘product’, all those shivering lambs and depressed pigs were just units and stock. Somehow it was obvious people would be called ‘products’ next. We are all sold and bought by someone.

Despite my hatred of it, it was easy to see how it had come to this. I suppose we are each our own brand, we all have a specific use. Besides, employers didn’t want to hang about processing thousands of applicants, so the Human Supermarket App became a big hit. We were transformed to avatars on digital food shelves, with a sell-by date, and a shelf life and we were priced according to our scans and skills. Recruiters and MDs simply went shopping for people in an online store. It was fun for them.

I was feeling down again and exhausted mentally and I had to hide it as best I could, or my scan would display red bars in my latest mood report. It reminded me of the red health warnings for salt – perhaps it was similar in some ways – a red bar is naughty, stands for flavour and spice, but no… Who was I kidding?

I sat back in my chair and looked up at the ceiling and then outside at the enormous glistening city, half of which was automated with AI, drones and stalking robots, with more hidden poverty in those hallowed shiny buildings than was imaginable. Banks of minimal wagers and zero contractors, people with skills up to C level, desperate to feed their children and earn a small roof against the rain and cold. Those towering glass and metal ‘erections’ of skyscrapers, did not reflect reality. It was all a lie. A thin margin of fat-cats lorded over the world but there was nothing anyone scavenging in the rut could do. I checked my bank account for the second time today less a direct debit had scraped what was left from the meagre remains, and it was as expected, flat-lined with a warning next to it – Overdraft at the threshold, more income required. I would turn to credit next, the last resort.

I considered de-listing myself, moving to the Benefits Bucket on my citizen console but with that came humiliation and yet another challenge to explain on my profile. In the corner of the box-like day-rent room was my son, playing with the same old toys, mildly bored. I could no longer afford his nursery fees at Childcare Warehouse downtown, so he spent the day in the corner, with a few dirty blankets, devices and those faded old action figures he had played with for two years now.

I was about to rip my mind-map cap off and take a break, to play with Sammy and try not to cry in front of him, but the console beeped into action, so I stayed put, shuffling back into a straight posture.

“Browsing shopper connect request,” said the automated voice assistant.

“Ok, ok… Sure. Hi there,” I said.

Nothing, not a cam-view or message, nothing.

“Hi there, are you interested in my profile? I am a file manager.”

“Oh…” came the voice, a male voice, a kind but commanding voice, “You are so much more than that my dear.”

“Misogyny detected,” blurted the console.

“Waiver alert, continue connection…” I instructed. It was the first interesting thing anyone had said to me in months. If I reported a slight, I might lose my only potential for a hire.

“Hi, could you show yourself?” I asked, as it was hard to address a blank screen.

“Apologies. I like to remain off camera, but you know, and do not be offended, I have studied you. You are more than a file manager. Your brainwave algorithms are artistic, highly creative, suppressed, yes, but still… Quite impressive.”

It surprised me, shocked me even because I did not think my data was showing anything of value in the slightest.

“They say,” I began, my voice actually lifting for once in hope, “Creativity and imagination, is great for good business…”

“They do say that, and they are right,” he laughed. “I should know, you see, I am the creator of Human Supermarket App, the most successful recruitment tool of our time.”

I was silent for a moment. My mind began to race…

“You’re saying you are, Eron Freeman?”

“Correct… Let me explain why I am connecting. I do not want to offer you a file manager job, I want to offer you something much more interesting. Let’s begin with that…”

“I really don’t understand?”

“You know something, Vincent van Gogh never realised his work would be priceless. He died from a self-inflicted wound in poverty and depression and none the wiser as to how his art would be held as the best in the world. I say this because ideas and art survive our flesh, our sadness, our poverty and our death and become our worth. It’s always worth the effort, expressing your art. Always. You’re a part of the universe and an important part, however small. Your art is more meaningful than a billion desolate worlds, because it is a voice, it has soul and electricity and meaning.

“Something that has not always been appreciated by others around me is that I find it hard to chase money. Money is, after all, a means to doing so much. It buys things and chances and is the measure of worth. It’s what we check all the time, what we plead for, what we demand, what we are told counts. It is not, however, what we are, what we know, what we see and feel.”

I sat back in my chair like it was holding me and bracing me for impacts, my mouth was wide open, I was speechless. This really was the famous entrepreneur, Eron Freeman, it was him! I had heard him talk many times on social media reels. He had a particular way of filling the air with his words. They would froth and spill and pour into the world.

“What could you possibly want?” I blurted and regretted it immediately, turning red, my heart spiking with instant adrenaline and regret.

“Behind you, on the wall….”

I turned around. It was my artwork, the abstract paintings I doodled to keep myself sane in an insane world. I hung them on a wall, wherever we ended up, to keep a continuity, a familiarity for Samson, and for me.

“They are truly inspired. I would say, genius even. I first noticed you as a datapoint of interest in a sea of drudgery and banality. I tracked your code back to your present citizen console and here you are, and there it is, the evidence of a truly artistic mindset.”

“Nobody has ever noticed them before?” I admitted.

“Yes. Well, nobody was looking properly, were they?” I could feel him smile, wherever he was.

I turned again to take a harder look at the art. It was abstract colour and shape, city blocks reduced to smears and shades. I had not manifested a single structured thought when painting those canvases, like they had painted themselves.

“Excuse me, Sir. Do you want to buy them?”

It felt ridiculous.

“No, no, no…. Not them…They are what the product can do, they are not the product. I want to buy, you. Well, not you, but your brain template, your way of interpreting. I want your perceptual algorithm for our brainwave upload programme.”

I was a File Manager. It was the weirdest proposition I had ever had to process.

“How much? What would I need to do?”

“You need to give me permission. That is all…”

I felt nervous. This was a multi-billionaire I was talking to. This was the man who made everyone’s life a misery with his them-and-us technology. I was in awe, I was dazzled but I was also aware of his reputation. He was a great white shark of the business world.

“Permission for what?”

“To download your… Well, you… So we can upload you, or those bits of you that create, into our Vice Presidents, our lacklustre middle managers who couldn’t imagine their way out of a board room without a memo from the top.”

“Why not just… I don’t know… Hire me?”

He laughed but this time it was not endearing. It was awful, dehumanising. He was reacting to a good joke.

“I can offer you, let’s say, a living room for a year, a console free of charge too and to sweeten the deal… I’ll reset your data – it’s not looking too healthy. The rest would be up to you of course…”

“I’d still be looking for a job…”

“Yes. But you would not have to move, you could breathe. Tell you what, I’ll give you three months wage, at the national average for File Manager roles. Please, do not push my patience on this. I can play nice or I can find another way…”

I knew this was not a game, this was no bluff or bluster from him. He could easily make me unemployable, revoke my use of rooms or consoles and take my son from me with a simple email to one of his public sector partners.

“You have… You have my permission…”

I felt the mind-map cap surge to full power. It had rarely done that before. I had become accustomed to small vibrations on the scalp, hot patches when it was working hard but whatever he was doing to me required all its power.

In four seconds, it was over.

“Good. Thank you my dear.”

And he vanished, hanging up the call and leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Later that day, I realised he hadn’t paid any funds into my account. The room rent expired and the eviction countdown began on the counter over the door. I should have known. What was I going to do, in reality? I could not afford legal action, I could not even afford food.

One thing he did do for me that he promised, was reset my data – like it was the least he could bother with, out of a miniscule sense of charity. Before I could let the mind-map cap monitor me again I would need to change my mindset, I would need to feel calm, to smile, to have magnetic charisma – to reset myself completely.

“You’re painting…” said Samson.

“Yes, I am…” I replied.

“I like your paintings.”

“Thank you…” I said and I felt a swelling wave of love for him.

The truth was, that smug bastard had given me another chance, however small. He had given me the gift of restarting. His words stuck with me too. I was worth something. I did have value. I was more than a human product.

The End