FEATURE: “Performance Review” by Nathan Pasko
I was an hour early because to be even one minute late was to face automated retirement at the hands of the virtual receptionist. I pushed my rented hand truck into the elevator, leaning against the weight of three stacked boxes. Fearing failure, I examined the panel carefully before choosing which floor I wanted to go to, trying my best to ignore the complaints from the other passengers urging me to hurry up. They were feds, younger than me.
On the fourteenth floor, I checked in with the receptionist and waited until the time for my appointment came. I didn’t read anything or listen to anything in the waiting room for fear I’d miss an announcement or an instruction. I adjusted my mask fitfully. The filters were malfunctioning now and again, and a scratchy feeling from the airborne plastic particles had been building in my lungs all morning.
When my appointment began, I pushed my hand truck full of records through the employment bureau’s inner hallways. The hallways were quiet. Informational posters hung on the walls here and there bearing computer-generated illustrations of people laughing and living their best lives with advice printed underneath. All the people were white and the illustrations imitated the style of the mid-20th century.
When I found my room, I situated my hand truck in front of the divination machine and swung the shovel off my back, over my shoulder. I held the shovel with one hand while I worked the controls of the machine, confirming and activating my reservation. A timer began counting down my ten minutes. The first time I’d seen that timer appear, my nerves had almost given out. Now I knew what to expect when I came here year after year, and I started shoveling without hesitation.
Into the boxes I delved, dipping the broad shovel inside and scooping up as many pay stubs as I could at a time. I deposited them into the divination machine and then shoveled more. Sometimes pay stubs fluttered to the ground; after every few scoops I bent and collected them by hand from the floor. I watched their dates step backward through the calendar year.
The pay stubs were the proof of my dedication and testament to my worth as a value producer. I felt the anxiety begin to grow in the pit of my stomach. By the time I opened the third and final box, the dates on the pay stubs showed March, February, January, my hands trembled, and my stomach flipped over and over in fear. “You’re only 40,” I told myself. “You’re plenty useful. Just finish up and get your work papers. They’ll hold onto you for another year. Another five years. Another ten years.”
—My private pep talk ended there because anything further was just too far-fetched. Grimly, I pushed the final dozen paystubs around the bottom of the final box with my shovel. I set the shovel aside and bent to collect the papers. One by one I fed them in. January fifth, January seventh, January third, January first.
I stepped back up to the control panel of the divination machine and watched the countdown timer turn over from three minutes to two and change. I pressed the button labeled “Done.” An explanation appeared saying that the divination machine would analyze my paystubs and return to me either another year of work papers, or a retirement slip. I confirmed that I was finished shoveling by pressing another button.
When the control panel changed to say “Processing,” I prepared myself for a tense few moments—but the verdict came quickly. An apology appeared onscreen. The printer whirred, and I pulled out a lime green retirement slip with trembling fingers. As the fear welled up like a wall of cotton between my eyes and my brain, I scanned the retirement slip. The same apology from the control panel was repeated. There were reproductions of a few feds’ signatures in one corner. In another corner was the address of the Sysco meat grinding plant where I was to report in seven days time.
As I wheeled my rented hand truck and my empty boxes back through the hallways, I felt numb. I saw the posters of the happy white people again. I’d thought I was young enough to work a little longer—or at least that I looked enough like the people in those posters that the state would play ball with me. Maybe the algorithm had changed recently. I’d thought I’d known what to expect.
On the way home to my apartment, I spent my last twenty five dollars on a can of light beer. I drank it, and it helped a little. It helped me trudge the rest of the way home, anyway. Once I arrived there, I sat on the end of my bed and fired up the last will and testament software on my phone. There wasn’t much to bequeath. Mostly just my hard drive full of Patreon bonus podcast MP3s, which I left to my wife and brother.