A Day in the Life Of...

Alright A.A., I think I've pretty much found all the details about this that could possibly be relevant. The short of it is, we really lucked out on this. The parts with directly involved parties like myself or the Tyro siblings just have our accounts of what happened, sometimes with research notes I've put in. For the indirectly involved parties, I've tried to provide a complete accounting of their day and the hows and whys of it so that we can check all the angles for more details that might be useful, per your request. The short version is; the wage slave didn't realize he had valuable knowledge until we started asking him about it (his friend might be a resource for more information, but honestly I think we have all we need already), and the ice cream lady is uninvolved other than owning and operating the venue. -R.M.

Part 1: ...a corporate wage-slave.
We're going to start by following Bob. Bob isn't his real name, mind you. Like many people in the story that follows, Bob's real name isn't being used in order to protect him from the repercussions of the rough day he's about to have.
  Bob is, at the time our story starts, what some call a "corporate wage-slave". This is a very harsh term, and it isn't one that's thrown around lightly on M4. Most people who work for most corporations on M4 do so freely and they can quit if they don't like it there. Actually quitting has gotten rarer since the economic downturn hit the system, because jobs have gotten a little scarcer, but most people and most corporations are willing to negotiate over the value of employee labor. EvoVersys isn't one of those corporations, and at the time we look in on Bob, he isn't one of those people.
  Bob's morning doesn't start rough, mind you. He wakes up in his bed, which isn't very large but is very comfortable. His apartment has a bit more space than he needs, but it's got comfortable furniture and it's always just the right temperature for him. Bob checks the time to see what it is, despite the fact that he's been waking up at basically the exact same time for six years, now. He doesn't remember his dreams from the night before, but this is more because his mind had plenty of time to smoothly exit REM sleep before waking up, and not some sort of poetic comment on the state of his life. Although it could be.
  He gets up and goes into his spacious, functional bathroom to wash his face and get the sleep crust out of his eyes, mulling over the show he'd watched last night. "The Throneroom" had been a weird, avant garde political thriller that everyone has been talking about on the M4Web, but he hadn't really understood any of it, even though that'd been the first episode. Was he missing a prologue that would make things clearer? Did it just take a few episodes to get good? Nothing anybody did in it made sense to poor Bob, at least not when he'd watched it. The lady playing the Queen had been pretty hot, but he wasn't sure that was enough of a reason to keep watching on its own, especially since nobody who recommended the show gave 'the Queen is hot' as one of the reasons for it.
  Putting that aside, he gets dressed, and watches some of the local news feed, which is experienced directly in his brain thanks to his Embie. Everything in Bob's district is run by the MegaCorp he works for, EvoVersys, and the news is no different. Nor are the vitamin supplements that Bob takes, but has forgotten two days in a row, now. Bob watches a feed of news carefully cultivated to make him feel like things are okay (but pretty bad for everyone who isn't lucky enough to work for EvoVersys), and eats some cereal he's trying for the first time and is disappointed - he'd had to switch to a no-name brand due to the economic downturn and there's a flavor in there he doesn't like. Or maybe a lack of a flavor. Now that he thinks about it, dinner last night had kind of a weird flavor, too. He was sure it was flavored fish instead of real meat like he'd ordered. He shrugs it off and finishes his cereal, though - he'll at least have a decent lunch, since the company covers that.
  Bob loiters a little bit, surfing the M4web. He isn't, strictly, supposed to surf the M4Web - EvoVersys doesn't like employees accessing internet content that isn't made in house, so to speak. Entertainment is the one area of his life where Bob likes to have some variety, though, and so he's happily paying through the nose to maintain a line to the outside world. The cost of this has gone up a lot in the last three years, which is the main reason he's cutting back in areas like the food he eats at home - he could handily afford better food and even a bigger apartment if he was willing to give up outside internet, but he doesn't care that much about his breakfast cereal or chicken-fried (fish?)steak, and his apartment is already too big for him. Having access to shows his coworkers don't is usually worth it, especially when he gets to share something cool he'd found.
  Speaking of shows, Bob goes to see if the reviews he read recommending The Throneroom are still there and if he can get anyone in the comments section to explain what was going on or at least confirm that he needs to give it a few more episodes, but the company firewall won't let him go back to the page it was on. He frowns and shrugs; this happens a lot, really. EvoVersys makes a big deal about the 'psychological hygeine' of its workers, whatever that means. No matter, he has all the episodes downloaded already, so he might as well give it a few more episodes to grab him. But later.
  Bob takes one of the elevators down to the ground floor of his apartment building, from where he lives on the 50th floor out of 150. He's always happy that he managed to get the 50th floor, because every 25 floors is where the major elevator stops are. From there it branches to another elevator that goes to multiples of 5, and from there an elevator that services the floors between those. He's heard horror stories from coworkers in other buildings that have to take four separate elevators to get to the floor they want, but living on the 50th floor meant that isn't a problem for him. At least, not at home; at work was another matter. Bob muses about this exact thing frequently as he does his morning commute, because this elevator situation is the only part of his trip that is unambiguously good, something he can be happy about. He's also interested in it from a more general point of view; the Corporate Enclave Districts are always the most vertically developed, and Bob has more than a passing interest in architecture and civic planning that often brings him to this topic from the elevator ride.
  Corporate Enclave Districts (CEDs) - which is to say, districts run by a Megacorp in fact, if not in theory - always end up with the same problem. The typical MegaCorp likes to have as much control as possible over what happens inside its borders, in theory to keep administrative costs down. Bob chuckles at this, thinking about how his job seems to literally exist to make administration more complicated. Then he frowns and wonders where that thought comes from before going back to thinking about stuff he likes. The MegaCorps like to control things, but most people and organizations don't like being controlled. So the MegaCorps bring more and more of their workers into their district, into their direct jurisdiction, often by offering juicy incentives on housing and emphasizing a shorter commute. Which is true enough; Bob's commute is scarcely 15 minutes, and almost a third of that is just taking elevators to his office.
  The problem, Bob muses as he gets into the subway system, comes from the fact that the surrounding districts almost never let the CED expand its boundaries; this means there's nowhere to go but up. The verticality of the structures the MegaCorps build are an emblem of their unwillingness to share control, Bob thinks, and then wonders where that come from and why he hasn't thought of it before. Something about the Queen's behavior in The Throneroom suddenly clicks into place in his head and he starts puzzling that out as a stocky man with a stubble-covered face bumps into him forcefully. Deliberately.
  Bob stares at the man as he saunters past, shoving his way into other passengers standing on the train in a deliberate manner; none of the other passengers seem to notice. Bob realizes that he's seen this guy before. He comes through here every day and 'accidentally' bumps into everyone with a stupid grin on his face, chuckling about how nobody reacts. Bob had never reacted before. Why did he react now?
  Before Bob can puzzle this out he has to get off the train. He heads in through one of the eight entrances of the EvoVersys Building, a massive octagonal tower that stretches all the way past the Hat up above, with a bridge leading out to the upper surface so that the bigwigs can commute from their houses up top instead of apartment towers below. Bob walks in, past the security guards and their monobot enforcers. He doesn't have to show them anything to verify his identity, because his Embie handles verification for him automatically, uploading to the corporate system not only that he's entering the building (on time, building points towards a reward), but also his time spent in transit (always within 30 seconds of exactly 10 minutes), what he had for breakfast (Farmer's Care Shredded Wheat with Frawsting - Jesus, no wonder it tasted weird if they had to spell it like that) and medical status (dopaminurgic irregularity detected).
  Bob begins navigating the maze of elevators that takes him to his cubicle in a cubicle farm on the 165th floor of the building. He has to go up to the 150th, then from there to the 170th, and then down to the 165th, because somebody decided that makes sense. Bob frowns a little; this is another thing that had always kind-of bothered him but that he hadn't really paid attention to, and he's a little bothered that all of these things are... well, bothering him, today.
  Side note: I actually thought this one was weird too, enough to look further into. Bob worked on a high-security floor and didn't know it. Between the 170th floor and the 165th are four floors of scanners, death traps and armed security personnel that will isolate and murder anyone who desn't ace the security clearance queries to their mandatory Embies - of which there are fifteen per second(!). In related matters, I've found out what happened to the infiltrators sent to investigate this place.
  Bob goes in and says hello to Taro, a coworker and casual friend of his (again, Taro is not his real name). He asks after Steve - another coworker he's friends with - and Taro says he's in the hospital. The night before, Steve had been mauled by a mutant troll rat that came out of the sewers near his favorite bar. While his injuries have been completely repaired in the eight hours since, the infection was bad enough that the hospital wants to keep him around for a day or two to monitor his condition (I looked into this too, boss - it's not related to the rest of this series of events directly. There's an indirect relation, but that's just 'oh look, more illegal experimentation charges to file'). Bob and Taro get morning coffee and talk with each other about how this sort of thing seems to be happening more, recently. Bob floats the possibility that EvoVersys should hire adventurers to look after it, and Taro dismissively says that Corporate Security has started an investigation and they say they'll handle it. Bob wants to say something to that but holds himself back.
  Bob has a seat at the desk in his cubicle and gets to work. M4 law requires corporations to keep non-perishable documentation of everything they do, and this process is what Bob's deparment handles. 'Non-perishable' in this case mostly means that it can't be wiped out by a computer virus or a low-altitude EMP blast or what-have-you. Bob agrees that this is sensible, but as he sits and works he has to marvel at how overdone EvoVersys' take on the process is. The job of everyone in Bob's cubicle farm is to add additional stages and forms of documentation to everything. There's reams and reams of CP records that often reference each other in only the most cryptic ways. Bob wonders how anyone could be expected to figure any of this out if there was a disaster and people actually needed to access the corporate records for something.
  Bob works until the mid-morning coffee break and then goes and has him some of the best damn coffee on the planet (Seriously boss, you should look into acquiring the people who make this stuff). He chats a little with Taro about a show Taro is watching, a historical drama set during the Psurlon War. Bob agrees he needs to give it a try, and as he returns to this desk he thinks that even alien worm-monsters that telepathically brainwash you into another genre would probably bother him less than The Throneroom did.
  Bob returns to his cubicle and starts in on more work. He starts to notice things about what is being documented that he hasn't really paid any mind to before. Things he doesn't really want to notice, honestly, like the number of people who tend to get hired on at the company only to have a freak accident and then retire, or the fact that all of these people live in the same on-site housing. He starts having to really focus on just completing the forms, and it's getting harder.
  Bob is relieved when the time for the daily lunch break gets close and he gets the prompt on his Embie asking what he'd like to order off today's menu. Bob is a little sad that his favorite menu item, shrimp alfredo, is off the menu rotation today, but they've got spaghetti and meatballs today and that suits him fine, really. He orders the spaghetti with extra meatballs and gets a desert (bannana pudding) as well. Bob tends to make his lunch the biggest meal of his day, because the food is good and he doesn't have to pay for it.
  While he eats lunch in the break room, Bob talks with Taro, and the topic comes to fictional villains. Bob incorrectly guesses something about Mangrea, the villainous namesake of the gas giant their world orbits. Bob supposed that the villain Mangrea must have been quite large, for such a massive planet to be named after him; Taro corrects him, saying that Mangrea would've been shorter than Swordmaster Hiro if not for the platform soles on his thigh-high boots, and that the planet bears his name due to its atmosphere having the same dual coloration as the villain's hair. Bob is incredulous; the planet's named after a guy who wore thigh-high boots with platform heels? Taro goes on at length about how the villain made such a huge impression on the readership because of his garish, outlandish style, how he'd been inspired by a musician named David Bowie, and some other manga called 'Joe's Weird Journey' or something like that -- Bob has tuned him out by this point. Instead, Bob thinks to himself that it must be nice to have something you care about this much, before realizing that he has nothing he cares about, at all, that the best thing about his life is the elevator ride in his apartment, and that's when the existential crisis he's been holding off all day finally starts rolling.
  Bob stumbles through the rest of the conversation, and fortunately Taro is too passionate about recounting the greatness of manga from the 2070s (he attributes it to nerds not yet having enough access to space flight to satisfy their passions with anything but fiction) to notice that his friend is distraught. Bob goes back to his desk and starts trying to remember the last time he was excited about anything, and he can't. He fails to get anything done for the next few hours, which has zero impact on the rest of the office. Bob tries to understand why he does the work he does, who actually needs it, what is it FOR? Bob then makes a mistake; he asks his manager about it.
  Bob's manager, Roger, is very understanding but doesn't have any satisfying answers for Bob, who is by now too desperately searching for meaning to be satisfied with the verbal pablum he's offered. Roger then tells Bob he should take the rest of the week off and think about things, and maybe they can find him a career path in another department, one more to Bob's liking. Bob agrees that that's probably good and accepts a digital brochure on his Embie so that he can read it on the go.
  After Bob's left the office, Roger goes through his protocol book with a sigh and then makes a call to his supervisor, telling him of the conversation he just had with Bob. He'd been about to call Bob in to talk about things regardless after the door scanner had flagged his medical status as something that should be looked into due to his working in this department; Roger had hoped he could head off something like this, but it's clearly too late. Roger is sure that Bob is on the road to figuring out what they're actually doing, that the entire department Roger manages is tasked with data laundering so that M4Gov doesn't get wind of the company's dark projects. Roger is sad as he conveys this to his super; Bob had been a good worker for nearly a decade, docily plodding along without ever considering what he was up to. He never asked inconvenient questions about things like where did test subjects disappear to, or why 90% of his job seemed to be making paper trails more obscure, more difficult to sort out. You can't just TELL someone like this what they're doing, you have to maintain plausible deniability, and frankly, even Roger wouldn't want to work in a department full of people who knew what was going on and were okay with it; he was happy being the only one clued in.
  But the 'plausible deniability' part was the important thing. Bob needed to be someone who, if an inspector asked him about what he did for a living, would shrug listlessly and say "nothing important, really." For nine years that's what he HAD been; no fewer than three investigators had tried to pick his brain about the projects at the company, and not one of them had gotten anything useful out of him. Roger knew because he'd reviewed audio/visual logs of the conversations from Bob's own Embie, which was allowed under Bob's terms of employment. But poor Bob. All of a sudden he'd woken up, and worse, he'd become curious, and that meant, at the very least, if an investigator asked him again Bob would say that he couldn't figure out what was going on and that it was weird. That alone could get the project targetted.
  Roger and his supervisor agree; Bob will have to go. The supervisor isn't as bothered about this, but he doesn't know Bob, so that's hardly surprising. After that call ends, the super starts another call, this one to the janitorial department's special division.
  Bob pensively fast-walks out of the corporate headquarters after descending down to street level, making a beeline for the subway. He'd used to have a car that he commuted in, but the subway took a third of the time because traffic around the corp HQ was always a nightmare. He misses driving, though. One of his favorite things had been to drive to a little out of the way, boutique ice cream shop, where he would eat something profoundly unhealthy while reading a book or watching a show on his Embie. Half the time the owner was working the counter, and she was quite cute. On an impulse, Bob has his Embie check to see if the store is still there (it is) and then plot the route there with the least amount of walking, which is still a little over a block's worth. That's fine, really; maybe the walk would clear his head.
  Fifteen minutes later, the walk has distinctly failed to clear his head. What does help him a little is seeing the owner again; Veronica, he remembers before seeing her nametag, and he's weirdly happy that he managed that. He talks to her for a bit, flounderingly, but she doesn't mind or is nice enough to pretend she doesn't. He orders a triple scoop of rocky road, topped with walnuts, m&ms and oreo crumbles, and goes to fill his veins with sugar, hoping it will help his attitude some.
  Part 2 and 3
  Part 4