Dandelion Bouquet

Anyone who landed on that world never came back—or communicated. They were still alive. I mean, the bio readouts were working. So, it was not our fault. No matter how many committees of inquiry they held, we had nothing to do with it!

It's funny how that goes. You go out into space, and you take everything with you: your beliefs, your ideas, your life. Adapting or changing for what is out there? That wasn’t supposed to happen!

You wouldn’t catch me going there. I'm a support specialist. I support you. As in, I’m okay with what you want to do. I’ll help you do it. Just don’t ask me to go. I like my life.

#

“Alright! Let’s have at it!”

Have at it? I sigh and grab my spot in line in our dimly lit “abode of the damned,” as Curtis called it. Curtis is on the next mission. The one that had to be postponed.

This accounts for his attitude. We had so little time to make this mission work, as in being 100% more survivable. Curtis must have thought we’d been holding out on him all this time, and if support would just do its job, the one and only Curtis and his crew could go and come back—come back to tell us about the mystery.

But I’m twiddling with the AI, trying to outsmart it, wondering if or when I’ll be replaced. It would be a relief to be replaced. Well, not really. They pay you to stay home to avoid getting in the way. Or they do what they did with me. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

“Dan, that wake-up was different than the last one.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You are not listening to me.”

“My bio readouts are not your concern. We’ve talked about this already.”

“It’s important. I’ll reach out to the team on this.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” I barked, doing the hand signal to shut down the simulation.

My head was pounding at this point. Kara, a coworker, sneered at me. She gave me that look. Fighting with the AI again, Dan?

 I gave her a loopy grin back. It was hard to see in this dimly lit room, especially when you were just coming out of sim, but Curtis was sure making the rounds, eyeballing everything.

Did he just slap Oliver on the back? Oliver bends over, coughing, trying to make a joke out of it. He then leans back in his chair and pretends to hang on to every word Curtis says, talking in his Texas drawl. Everything is fine, and before y'all know it, it’ll be dinnertime…

#

Severance was on my mind. It was boosted to such an attractive level that everyone over fifty had already left. So many people were leaving the corporation that HR was the one place where people felt useful. Processing outplacements. I wasn’t nearly that old, but it didn’t hurt to have a look.

“Nelly said I should come,” I joked at the counter, speaking to a man with his back turned to me.

“Who is Nelly?” asked that someone when he turned to face me.

“Oh, sorry!” I replied sheepishly. “I thought you worked here.”

“I do work here!”

“Um, so you do.”

Whoever was waiting on me was a new employee. Nelly was our nickname for the AI. We also called it “the nag.” As in, “Nelly is nagging me to do…something. Usually, it was something that made the AI look brilliant. Talk about competition at work!

The new employee didn’t have a name tag, and he wasn’t friendly at all. He asked if he could send the package to me. I insisted on a hard copy in my hot, sweaty hands—paper over digital any day like that game, rock, paper, scissors.

He sighed and mumbled about how many trees we were killing as he made me a hard copy. I got all thirty-six pages, the fine print included, but only the dollar amounts mattered to me. What a surprise! Six figures. I had to stop myself from staring.

 Then I wondered who was winning. You know, rock gets covered by paper; scissors cut paper. Rock breaks scissors. I signed on the dotted line. I must be a rock. Covered in outplacement paper! Who said AI was smart? I should be the last person they would want to keep!

Still at the HR counter, I tried one parting shot before I turned to go. “Do you know how to save Curtis and his crew?”

“Who?” he asked.

“Enjoy your day!” I replied. I took the stairs back to the ready room. Two at a time.

#

I had a theory. Of course, it was simply a matter of surviving. Dandelions can grow between cement sidewalk blocks, can’t they?

AI should be doing absolutely everything soon. And here I was with the best money of my life! I was going to squeeze through this. Say all the right words at the right times…, and then hello, permanent vacation at work?

“Will you look at that!” yelled Oliver from his station.

Usually, it’s so deadly quiet in the ready room. And here I am, sluffing off, not tagged in! No sense trying to snail-speak to Oliver.

I’m up to speed in literally no time. Real-worlders never get this. I understood everything that would take hours to explain out of the sim and so much more. In fact, with the latest upgrades, days go by that seem only like minutes!

I tie in while reserving that spot in my consciousness for myself, the part that Nelly complains about, how my wakeups are always different.

#

So many days go by. I’ve lost track. Maybe I should have read the fine print of my outplacement. But that doesn’t matter. Adapt. Change. Oliver nailed it so long ago. Or at least he thought he did. Curtis was so happy they had a party!

 The dolts! It was never about the trip or the arrival. The space between anyone’s ears or our understanding. It was the process.

It’s dandelions that count. A bouquet of dandelions.