The Helper

Rex Helper made his way down the antiseptic hallway of building WH-3470, blinking his eyes as they adjusted to the dim, blue light. A loud mechanical hum buzzed along the hall but for workers like Rex, who would spend their whole lives inside such a building, it was as good as silence. He sighed with each step as he continued down the long hallway, passing doorway after doorway lit in the same artificial blue, his mind on his after-shift plans. 

His life passed in shifts, not time. An hour, a week, months, and years - there was no difference to Rex; there was only shifts of Work, Activity, and Sleep. He woke without a morning and slept with no regard to night. Three meals separated into breakfast, lunch, and dinner were useless to Rex as he’d only known the slow drip of the nutrition line down his throat. If generation upon generation of such a life could breed humanity out of a person, then Rex was barely human.

Still, he eyed the watch upon his wrist with some worry, feeling as though his Activity shift plans might be threatened. The watch dictated his life, letting him know which shift he was in - right now was Work, but the watch operated in a pattern and he knew his Activity shift was coming up next.

Moments ago, an emergency had called him to hall A of building WH-3470 and he feared that his Work shift might extend past his Activity shift and he would have to slip right into Sleep. And then, well, it would be another 20 Work shifts until he could have an Activity if he was right about the pattern.

It’s always an emergency with these people, he grumbled to himself as he stopped in front of door A-251. The door was identical to all the doors dotting the halls of building WH-3470 - an imposing 12 feet tall and made of brushed, interlocking steel. It made it’s point, as all the elements of the building did: You’re Tolerated but Never Trusted. 

The door was set back in a small alcove that was lit from above in blue, where a small glass circle was perched inside it’s wall. Rex awkwardly tried to crouch below the circle, but his height left him at a disadvantage. He bent his lanky limbs around until finally his right-eye aligned with the circle so it could be scanned. The door opened with a quiet whoosh.

He stepped into the sanitation galley - the first chamber of the occupant, Charles Thurston’s, Bio Home. As he stripped off his cotton jumpsuit his mind wandered to his Activity plans. It had taken countless shifts and the sacrifice of some of the few comforts he had but Rex had saved enough credits to plug-in to the virtual world. 

The virtual world - how he savored each time he could afford to plug-in. The warmth he felt on his skin, the clean crisp air he breathed as he dreamt - they were always present in this world. The sun and the sky and the grass. The buildings that welcomed instead of warned. Workers - no, people - they jogged down the streets and chewed their food, unencumbered from nutrition lines. Lives without shifts and emergencies.

“Prepare for sanitation shower,” the mechanical voice chirped from above. Rex braced himself as the cold, sticky mist pelted his skin. One day it’ll be yours, he thought to himself through gritted teeth, not too many more credits and it’ll be yours.

It was the goal of all Daintree Virtual Corporation’s workers like Rex to one day purchase their own Bio Home. Yet, while Daintree was merely a home to customers like Charles Thurston, to its workers, it was an employer, landlord, and creditor combined. 

The offer at first was simple enough - come work for Daintree and we’ll credit part of your pay towards a Bio Home. Bio Homes at the time were a fairly new technology and were eyed with suspicion - people wondered: who would want to spend their whole life virtually? But as the physical world waned and all but manual work could be performed in the virtual world’s sphere, they exploded in popularity.

Daintree saw the opportunity and amended the offer - come work for us and live with us. We’ll still credit part of your pay towards a Bio Home but now we’ll give you a discount on living expenses too. You’ll be in your own Bio Home even faster, they advertised. 

Of course, Daintree set the price of living expenses and Bio Homes for its workers, so as living expenses rose, workers turned into debtors. Generation after generation, family debt accumulated and interest increased until a worker like Rex, who had never known the physical world, could barely hope to touch the principal in his lifetime. 

It was a system that eroded human morals and concepts. A system where a worker’s last name was discarded in favor of their position. Yet the worker still paid their unknown family’s debt.

But all Rex Helper knew was the promise of a Bio Home. A promise which allowed unfettered access to the virtual world, a world whose crumbs he’d only tasted. So he put on his slippery technical jumpsuit, performed the awkward crouching stance so he could be scanned in, and stepped inside the main room of Charles Thurston’s Bio Home.  

But as entered, he gasped and took a step back - he was expecting the standard layout of a Bio Home but instead he was met with chaos!

Where he expected to see the occupant, Charles, suspended in his bio suit, instead he saw the body exercisers twisted amongst the jumbled nutrition lines hanging from the ceiling. The bio suit was empty, violently splayed across the surrounding couch and bed, which were covered in the orange liquid remnants of the lines. Below where the bio suit was meant to be suspended, the moving walkway galloped at a furious, possessed pace. Helpless, the crumpled form of Charles himself lay naked at the foot of it all.

“Help,” Charles croaked out to the stunned Rex, “Get me up will you.” 

“Um, yeah ... yeah right away sir,” Rex replied, his eyes wide as he surveyed the damage and the limp body of Charles.

Cautiously, he approached Charles and placed a hand under his flabby, pale arm.

“Hey! Carefully. I’ve been down here for ages,” Charles spat at Rex, “I’m paying for the Silver Premium plan and I don’t appreciate being kept waiting. I’ll be making a complaint you know. I’ve had trouble with you before and -”

“Sir - excuse me, I’m sorry - but what happened here? I mean I’ve never seen anything like this before…” He let Charles’ arm slip from his grip as he stood up and took in the damage.

It was true - in all his time as a helper, Rex had only assisted with trivial manners. Refilling nutrition lines, cleaning clogged waste from a bio suit, changing linens on the bed. It seemed impossible to him that such a thing could happen and he knew in a situation like this he should escalate the matter...but yet, there was a thought brewing in the back of this mind.

An enraged Charles yelled, “What do you think you’re doing!? Get me up! I can’t be sitting down here in this filth. God only knows how often your type comes in here and cleans.”

“Yes sir, right away.” Snapping out of it, Rex placed his hands under Charles' arms and hoisted him up onto the ruined couch.

“And what’d you mean, ‘How’d it happen?’ It’s Daintree’s shit equipment is what happened,” Charles grumbled away, “I’ll tell you, you’re company isn’t what it used to be. One day, I swear, I’m switching to NeuroSoft’s facilities.”

But the complaints barely registered to Rex, as he was standing over the furious Charles, taking in the pathetic sight.

Charles was still a man, in the sense that his body performed biological functions, but his years suspended in the bio suit had turned him into a melting puddle of nearly-translucent, white flesh. There wasn’t a muscle to be found among his disused limbs - no surprise as he couldn’t even stand himself up - and he appeared as a grotesque, distorted approximation of a man.

Perhaps he’s right about the equipment, Rex thought to himself. The body exercisers, the moving walkway - they were, in theory, meant to keep a man as agile as he would be in the physical world; yet, looking at Charles, doubt crept in Rex’s mind that this was a false promise of Daintree’s advertising.

Seeing Charles like this was another shock to Rex’s system, as he’d never seen a customer outside of their bio suit before. Sure, he’d seen his fellow workers outside of them - and since their trips to the virtual world were rare, their bodies hadn't deteriorated - but it was different with customers. 

The bio suit, with it’s bulky sensors and lines, hid the wearer’s appearance so that when Rex had entered a customer’s Bio Home before, he wasn’t able to tell whether they were man or woman, young or old. It had never occurred to him before that it’s occupant could be wasting away inside, unaware.

Shrugging it off, he interrupted Charles mid-rant,  “Now sir, don’t worry. Just sit tight and I’ll get this fixed up. You’ll be back in your suit in no time.”

“Yeah, whatever you say.” Charles resigned with a sigh.

So Rex went to work amongst the Bio Home’s polished metal walls, untangling the nutrition lines, resetting the moving walkway, hooking up the bio suit. He hadn’t been quite sure where to start, but it was all coming together.

Charles mumbled to himself on the orange splattered couch, his mind unaccustomed to the lack of constant stimulation.

After some time had passed and Rex was nearing the end of the task, Charles relented to his boredom and attempted conversation, “So, you... uh...helpers...what Row is your Bio Home in?”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“You know, your Bio Home? Are you in this building too? I mean, I assume if you’re working here you can’t afford the same plan I can, but you must get some kind of employee discount on the lower plans, right?”

Rex dropped his tool, bewildered, “No...no that’s not how it works. We work here and part of our credits are put towards our own Bio Homes. So one day soon I’ll be in one but I imagine then I’ll be doing some other kind of work in the virtual world. No one would stay a helper if they had their own Bio Home. I’ll have my own helpers, like you”

The melted candle of a human knitted his brows, confused, “Oh, well in the virtual world, amongst my friends, we always assumed the helpers lived as we do. Just at a lower standard of course,” Charles continued, sweat forming on his aged brow, “So, not much longer you say. A year or so? What’s the standard contract?”

“Sir, a ‘year’?” A ding echoed across the room and Rex paused as he looked down at his watch - his Activity shift was cancelled. “Uh...sorry... no, no ‘years’. I think I must have another 1000 shifts or so. But Daintree tells me I’m close. Not much longer. And I’ve made some great progress on my family’s debt. You see, sir, that’s the contract. I took on my family’s debt and then --”

Rex was getting breathless, distracted. He’d never thought much about the terms of his agreement with Daintree. They always told him the same thing, that he was close, not much longer.  But he’d been close for as long as he could remember and now the thought that’d been nagging at the back of his mind was bubbling to the forefront.

“Now wait a minute!” Charles thundered, “You’re saying, you - you helpers here - you’re in some kind of indentured servitude with Daintree? But what are the terms? And how exactly, are you paying your family’s debt? I’ve never heard of such a thing.” 

The men both stared agape at the other, not quite understanding what was being said between them.. Charles was stunned, practically into contrition. Fixing his eyes firmly on Rex’s, he lowered his voice, “Now tell me son, has anyone in your family or any other helpers you know ever moved into their own Bio Home?”

The central system that controlled the Bio-Home suddenly roared back on and the mechanical buzz hummed against the walls again. The dim blue glow cast shadows onto the metal walls and Rex jumped back, startled.

“Sir, um...no, “ Rex was struggling to make sense of what Charles had said and stammered, “Uhh, sometimes the other helpers - my family too, from what they told me - they go away and we don’t hear from them again. Daintree tells us, though, they left for NeuroSoft and now they have to start all over again with a contract there, and really, it’s better for us to stay here. Soon enough, I’ll be in my own Bio Home. As much time as I want in the virtual world and I’ll have my own helpers...” 

Rex stumbled over his words and tried to make sense of it all, while Charles dropped his face down into his fleshy chest.

Time stopped as the gravity of the words lingered in the air and took hold of the men. They stared at each other in silence, save the hum of the machinery.

Some time had passed when Charles started, his voice gruff, “I’d never thought about it. I thought in the virtual world we were all taken care of. Even the underclass like yourself could live a more comfortable life than you’d ever know in the physical world. No hunger, no disease. Oh but there is no other way! There still must be men who dig the ditches, men who run the machines, men who take care of us. I’ve been naïve to think otherwise. Man can never be fully separated from the physical world. There always has to be...helpers, like yourself,” Charles was struck by his revelation. His breathing was increasing and he sputtered,  “I guess I’ve always known, though, that you’re here. Of course, you’re here! But the conditions in which you exist. It’s immoral.”

“I didn’t know,” Rex replied flatly. The thought in the back of his mind was now raging through him as he walked towards the bio suit, “I’d never thought about it either.”

“You poor thing. Promises of a Bio Home you’ll never have. I promise, once I’m hooked back in my suit, I’ll help you young man.”

Rex ran his finger along the humming central system in front of the bio suit, his back towards Charles now. He eyed the functions of the system and noticed the biometric scanner placed along the top. The same glass circle he crouched down for shift after shift.

“You’re right, though,” Rex said as he turned back towards Charles. His features were sharpened; a man with a purpose.  “I’ll never earn my own Bio Home if what you say is true.”

“By God, son, it is, it is.”

“But you’re also wrong, sir. I’m standing in a perfectly good Bio Home right now. Whose occupant couldn’t get into that suit if he wanted to.”

Panic took hold of Charles and his pale body shook beneath it’s enormous weight. Red splotches burst across his skin as he stammered, “But...but...c’mon now...you wouldn’t. You’d get caught!”

Rex advanced towards Charles and picked up the tool he’d dropped earlier, as Charles pleaded, “I promise! I swear it! I’ll transfer the credits to your account as soon as I’m hooked back up. Think about it, young man…”

But all Rex had ever known was the promise of a Bio Home, a life finally free from shifts. He saw now that the promise was broken but an opportunity was there for his taking. Why not, he thought? Even if he was caught right away it was better than laboring the rest of his life for a false promise.

Rex inched forward and held the tool up to the squirming Charles’ face. “Now excuse me, sir, but I’ll need that eye.”