The Company
He threw his hand out and jabbed the ringing alarm clock on his bedside table. The glowing red digits pierced the early morning darkness: six am. A relic of the past, the alarm clock had been his great-grandfatherās, and passed down to him from his father. Nowadays most everyone used the āArtificial Sunrise Wakeupā, an extension package for the āKozyā personal dwelling automation system. He liked the clock though, it reminded him of the past and kept him somewhat grounded in a world where the lines between reality and fabrication were continuously blurring.
As he got ready for the day, the Kozy system read him the morningās latest headlines interspersed with advertisements that promised discounted and expedited water credits in exchange for signing up for some service or subscription. It was unfathomable that his great-grandfather had lived in a time where fresh water was piped directly into oneās dwelling. Now one was allotted a certain number of water credits per month depending on oneās job and status. He had used more than half of his current allotment up, but if he rationed correctly he would make it through until next month. He desperately wanted a cup of coffee, but that used precious water, and he tried to limit coffee days to one or two every quarter, when he wanted to celebrate.
He put on his shoes and name badge, and walked out the door. He proceeded down the street to the shuttle stop, and waited for the transport that would take him to his job. He was wearing his company-issued uniform. It consisted of a fairly utilitarian white long-sleeved t-shirt, with the company logo emblazoned in front, long white pants dotted with little blue squares, and white boots. After a few minutes, the transport shuttle arrived, and he and other company employees hopped aboard. The shuttle purred along on its way to the sprawling company headquarters in the center of the city. As the shuttle passed the heavily-guarded water disbursement center for sector eight, he couldnāt help but feel his dry mouth and cracked lips that he had been trying to ignore.
After about fifteen minutes, the shuttle slowed to a stop outside the central gate of the company and everyone disembarked. They joined the single-file line in front of the gate, where each employee had to go through a security check before entering the premises. Some days, there was more than one line and getting through was relatively hassle-free, but there must have been another incident, as it seemed they were carrying out the enhanced security protocol. There was an āincidentā-company language for an employee disciplinary action-almost every week.
As he reached the front of the line, two heavily armed guards began patting him down while āMarcusā-the automated āsafetyā system-scanned him. A few seconds later, Marcus barked out āKyler Mads Larkson: Memory Authentication Engineer, Grade II, Status: OKā, and the main gate retracted to let him in. The company, Memcon, had been founded shortly after The Coalition had declared themselves the victors of the Great Resource War. Back then, memory technology was a nascent industry, born out of a desire to capture the memories of those that had witnessed a world that no longer existed. Memcon was the first to achieve reliable memory capture, and expanded into memory synthesis, injection, and erasure soon after.
As a Memory Authentication Engineer, or MAE, Kyler was tasked with verifying the authenticity of memories extracted from individuals. This involved determining whether the memory had actually been lived or experienced by the individual, and, if not, where the memory had come from, whether it had been experienced by any real person or if it had been synthesized, and so on. MAEās were highly regarded at Memcon. It was not an easy job. Many of the memories that came in for authentication were not pleasant, many were highly sensitive.
Most MAEās opted for memory erasure at the end of the work day as they didnāt want to carry what they saw with them, either due to the memory contents themselves or because they wanted to eliminate the risk of accidentally divulging a memory. Divulging the contents of any memory that came across an MAEās desk carried a forced erasure penalty. In the case of forced erasure, not only was the memory in question erased from the MAE, but Memcon erased a critical memory from the MAE themselves as punishment. These MAEās were then banned from using injection to regain the erased memory. Kyler had seen colleagues have to re-learn how to walk, talk, write or read.
He arrived at the Memory Authenticity Division and made his way to his workstation. His memory inbox was already piling up and the deliveries would continue for another two hours. It looked like heād be working late tonight.