Fired: by Robert K More

The man came in looking like he had just woken up. His hair was slicked back with grease from several days of not being washed. He was wearing a dark blue winter coat with pink bands around the biceps. The cuff of the sleeves ended just over his wrists.

The man looked to his left. A band was setting up on an elevated platform. They looked like kids. A girl with curly red hair tuned an electric guitar. One boy with a severely receding hairline sat at a keyboard. Another, a big, muscular boy wearing glasses, sat behind a drum kit that said “Penelope and the Suitors” on the bass drum.

The man looked to his left. There was a little girl wearing the sort of dress-polo combo girls living in the 1960s might have worn. She was sitting at a table. Her feet didn’t quite reach the ground. She had a big milkshake in front of her, and she looked as if her pet rabbit had just died.

The man looked ahead to the wide bar. A bartender stood behind there, and behind him were shelves and rows of colourful bottles. The bartender gestured for the man to come forward.

The man did step forward, all the while looking around him. There were two soldiers at one table who looked like they were from the civil war. A woman in a top hat and a magician’s cap talking to a man in a diving suit. An honest to god dog sat on a stool in front of the bar as if it had been told to sit there.

By the time the man got to the bar, the bartender was already pushing a drink towards the man. A clear drink in a cocktail glass, with a lemon rind floating in between two ice cubes.

"What’s your name?” the bartender asked.

"Isaac,” the man said, still looking around.

"What year is it? Where you’re from?”

Isaac looked at the barman. “2051…?”

" A good year. Well, if you avoided the war, that is.”

"… What war?”

"What’s your story?”

“I… sorry… where am I?”

The bartender flipped a metal shaking cup into the air and caught it in his other hand. “Somewhere,” he said.

"What… is Somewhere?” Isaac asked, looking at the dog. The dog looked at him. Barked.

"Where every story starts,” the bartender said. He ran a sink somewhere behind the bar, rinsed out a glass. “Every story starts somewhere. So, tell me.” He slid the glass, now full of water, down the bar. It stopped in front of the dog. The dog barked and then started drinking from the glass. “What’s your story?”

"I don’t know what you mean.”

"How did you get here?”

Isaac opened his mouth. He was about to say he didn’t know but found he did. He found he knew exactly where he had come from. He told his story.

We all sat around the table, our hands out in front of us. We had gone through everyone and couldn’t decide who to get rid of. Nobody was budging.

Niran looked up at the ceiling. “Well, there!” he yelled. “We can’t pick someone. What do we do now?”

"You must unanimously choose someone for whom their employment here will be terminated,” a robotic voice said over the loudspeaker.

"But we can’t,” Niran said. He stood up and held his hands out in front of him, like he was begging for change. “We can’t. We can’t. What happens if we can’t choose?”

"You will remain here until you unanimously choose someone for whom their employment here will be terminated,” the robotic voice said.

Niran turned away from the ceiling, softly laughing to himself and resting his hands on his hips. Then he spun around, pointing at the ceiling. “Bullshit!” he spat, spittle flying from his mouth. “You were supposed to be making these decisions for us! For me!”

“It is necessary,” the robot repeated.

Niran leaned over the table and sighed. I looked down at my hands. They were still lying flat on the table.

Oh God, I thought to myself. Someone has to volunteer.

I looked up at Niran. This was all his fault. He was the one that got this stupid BusinessBot to make all his business decisions for him. Now it was considering getting rid of him to cut out inefficiencies, and that was just too fucking bad.

Karmic justice, as far as I was concerned.

But I kept thinking about how he talked about working sixty-hour weeks. How he turned down parties and dates through his early twenties to get Montreal Electronic Toys going. Sure, you could argue, as Marie had argued, that Niran had gotten the money to start his toy company through the trust fund his father left him, and that out of the four of them, he was going to be the most well off if he was let go, but Montreal Electronic Toys had been his obsession for the last decade of his life. On top of that, he had been a pretty good boss. Generous in his praise and gave bonuses yearly to anyone he felt deserved them. Didn’t he deserve to coast on that success now?

I looked to Marie. She too was looking down at her hands. But she was shaking, and the sweat of her forehead shone in the florescent light. In her stuttering, tearful speech moments ago, she told us she had been floundering in debt for the last ten years, and it hadn’t been until recently that she had managed to get out of it. She told us she had been working hard on saving her money, paying off her bills. Her mother-in-law passed away and left Marie’s husband a condo which they rented out for a little bit of extra cash.

She had cried when she made her case to us. It ain’t fair, she had said, the tears pouring down her cheeks. Y’all get rid of me and prove it ain’t fair. Hard work don’t pay off.

Then there was Ralph. He looked pale, looking out the office window, overlooking the city. Was he thinking about the house he had just put a mortgage down on? The vacation he had planned and wouldn’t be able to go on? He had told us women don’t date men who aren’t earning a certain amount, and he was really looking for someone to settle down with. Was he thinking of the dates he would miss out on, too? Ralph was young, and between the four of us, made the least, but as he had said in his speech, just because he didn’t make as much as the rest of us, it didn’t mean his job as quality control manager wasn’t important.

That left me.

I sat and struggled to come up with something to prove that I should stay instead of even one of my coworkers. It had been so easy, when I first spoke. It had been easy to say that as the engineering supervisor, I needed to stay to overlook the projects already in the works. If the company was struggling, it wasn’t my responsibility to give up my job and livelihood to save it. Then it came to Niran to plead his case, then Ralph. They each had their hopes and their dreams and loved ones, and what did I have? Other than a cushy job, a family that hated me. I couldn’t have even said I needed the salary for my transition. I had fully paid that off a few years ago now.

Oh God, I thought. It should be me.

"You serve me,” Niran said, pointing at the ceiling. “And my interests. I want you to open the door to the meeting room now and find another way of saving the company without firing anyone here.”

"I’m sorry, Mr. Chartpong,” the robotic voice said, “but that would put the company in jeopardy.”

"But tell me why we have to decide who is fired in this way?” Niran said. “Why—”

"It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

Niran shut up. Three heads turned to me.

"Why?” Marie asked.

After Niran, I’m probably the best off,” I said. “And it isn’t like Montreal Electronic Toys is my brainchild. I’ll happily work for any company needing an engineering supervisor. I have no debts to pay, no family to care for,” I looked to Ralph and smiled. “Not a whole lot of life left ahead of me, so no stress getting and paying a mortgage on a house, a car. I own everything I need.” I nodded. It felt so much better now that I had said the situation as it was. I felt peaceful.

"All in favor of laying off Isaac Martin,” the computer said, “raise your hand.”

All four hands rose.

"Very well,” the robotic voice said. There was a hissing as the hydraulics on door opened it. “Mr. Martin, please return to your desk. Mr. Chartpong, Mrs. Felt, Mr. Pound, please remain here for a debrief.”

I stood up, forced on a smile, and nodded. “It was a pleasure working with you all.” And I meant it.

As soon as the door hissed closed behind me, the mechanical voice said, “Please return to your desk and resume your duties, Mr. Martin.”

I turned around, looked all around me. I always hated that I couldn’t see where BusinessBot’s voice came from.

"What do you mean?” I said, my gaze looking back into the meeting room. Niran looked annoyed and was tapping his finger against the table. Marie’s back was to me. She was slumped forward and still looking down at the table. Ralph saw me looking back, smiled weakly, and waved.

“I’ve been fired,” I said.

"No,” BusinessBot said. “I was looking to eliminate inefficiencies in the workforce. It stands to reason that any employee who would put the needs of the company above their own is invaluable.”

"So… are you firing them?”

"Yes,” BusinessBot said. “In a way.”

Niran suddenly made a face. So did Ralph. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand. Marie’s back started hitch up and down. She turned towards me. She was coughing.

"An employee who will not put company needs before their own is of no use to anyone,” BusinessBot said.

"What are you doing?” I said, more absentmindedly than anything else. I stepped closer to the door.

Marie turned fully towards me then and reached for the door. I took the key card from around my neck and pressed it against the card reader for the meeting room door. The light on the reader blazed red and howled a disapproving BEEP!

"What are you doing?” I yelled. I hooked my nails where the door’s glass met its metal frame and tried to slide the door open. Useless. All useless.

"Please return to your desk, Mr. Martin,” BusinessBot said. “To remain may prove hazardous to your mental and physical health.”

"I didn’t leave for the company. I left for them! For—”

A blaze of orange light cut me off. I staggered back from the meeting room door, and for a moment looked through the window in utter amazement. Then the light died down and I saw the room again, or really, charred outlines of the room speckled with small burning fires. And in the room were three figures of fire. One lay on its back. Another leapt to the ground, rolled around for a bit, and then laid still. The final figure reached all over itself before it fell to its knees and then fell forward.

"NOOO!” I screamed, banging on the door, as if I could do anything more.

"I can see you are distressed,” BusinessBot said. “And may need two weeks of mental health recovery time. Feel free to take the time off effective immediately.”

"You can’t do this,” I muttered to myself, mesmerized by the burning bodies.

"The action was cleared by GovernmentBot and JusticeBot alike. People who care for themselves first and others second cannot be relied upon to make sacrifices for the wellbeing of the collective when required and are thus better removed. Please leave the premises, Mr. Martin, or I will have to call SecurityBot.”

I looked up at the ceiling in disbelief, but there was no one… nothing… to look at. I walked through the hall, I walked through the office, past my desk, past the building doors, and just kept walking. Once I was on the street, I picked a direction at random, and walked until I had to turn. This was all… I want to say a week ago. After my credit card stopped working, I’ve just been picking up what I needed as I went. A jacket on top of a garbage bag that was a size too small for me, a sandwich on the street, and I’ve just been going, until I arrived here.