“Will I feel anything when I wake up? Or nothing?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say nothing. You will definitely feel something. The AmaPharm neuroblockers can only do so much, and eventually, we will need your nervous system to interface with the, uh huh, AtoZ interface,” Doctor Priat said, quickly shaking his head and mumbling, “I really need to come up with a better explanation. Marketing should have something I can use…”
“It sounds fine. I am just worried about the pain. I have heard it hurts.”
The doctor shrugged. “Pain is normal. It’s the future, we all have pain now. Not like it used to be. When I was a kid, you would get a cocktail of drugs for medical procedures, rolling through the Oxys, the Norcos or the Fentanyl, all the different versions of opiods that the modern drug market could produce. They even had a card, a diagram of pain scales showing this scrunched up red face all the way to a green smiling face. Like pain was a disease and not a symptom.”
“But the pain that I have…”
“I know, I know. So your pain will probably be fairly intense at the beginning, I am not going to lie to you. But it should be better than the pain you have now,” the doctor grinned.
Nelson nodded sagely, “I never thought a missing arm would hurt this much.”
“This Prime prosthetic will change your life. The pain receptors will light up like a Christmas tree at first, but remember, that’s good! Don’t let your body tell you that it’s bad. This pain means it is working. In time, that feeling of pain will shift to other sensations, like cold. Heat. Vibration. As the AtoZ interface connects in, the bioprocessor will allow to feel other things that your normal body will never feel, like magnetic fields and radiative energy. It will make you more efficient and your pick rate will sky rocket because you will be able to slave some of your autonomic hand and arm function to the fulfillment center AI. There is a reason some folks come back asking for their other arm or leg to be replaced. It can be, uh, exciting to go up those pick rate leaderboards.”
“Addictive, you mean,” Nelson frowned.
“Perhaps. Addictive is not a word that is approved by our marketing team.” Doctor Priat looked uncomfortable, plying his polymetal and ceramic fingers over the display console. They tapped rhythmically, creating an inadvertent melody as they clicked, clicked, clicked through the forms. “We have a few things you will need to sign before we can continue.”
“I have had some friends get the Alphas,” Nelson pressed.
Doctor Priat’s softly glowing eyes shifted left and then right, as if scoping for unseen cameras in his own office. “There are risks with any procedure.”
“Two guys on my rotation, too. One was retired. And the other, well he is making due as best he can.”
“It is company policy that you take the required blockers after the required workplace injury remediation, per the Logistics Preventative Unionization Act of 2047,” Doctor Priat recited in a dead monotone, which meant the fulfillment logistics AI had subsumed him. “INSERT NAME OF PATIENT, you must comply with all written and verbal instructions as specified in your Right to Be Employed Contract, signed at start date of your employment, INSERT HIRE DATE HERE. You waived all necessary rights when you clicked I Agree on the employment forms, and any corrective action requiring arbitration with the Amazon Logistics Manager, may result in punitive fines or in extreme cases, early retirement.”
Nelson quelled any further questions. The last thing he needed was one of the Amazon Logistics Manager subminds to take notice of him. He couldn’t be retired… who would look after his mom? Or his sister? No one could afford her augs, since they were congenital. Mom could barely keep up on her own blocker payments to the company. And with his new aug, he would be on the same hook. The downward spiral of augs leading to more augs leading to more blockers or… the Alphas. Watching them shake was the worst, that look of terror as they observed their bodies as if for the first time, an alien locked in side a prison that evolution had not prepared them for.
Doctor Priat’s face resumed as his own personality came back to the fore, and he immediately apologized in a half-hearted shame ridden chuckle. “Sorry about that, but you know the, uh, boss is always watching.”
“Yeah I get it,” Nelson offered, just trying to move it along. The company did not give him a choice for the arm replacement, the sooner they got it over with the better. Even though it was only a Prime arm, it was still better than no arm. Even being offered as the best the company could do, it was still a backchannel knock-off of some fancy version like the Kamen Bionics or Intugenic. It was their way of doing business. Notice what works in the Marketplace, produce their own at a cheaper rate without any of those ‘pesky patents’ getting in the way, and boom, saturate the market. The fancy arms ran the same risks, but at least those were voluntary choices. The Prime arm was probably manufactured in some place where those ‘pesky patents’ couldn’t be wholly enforced, like Malaysia or the Philippines. Wherever there were militarized police forces that could be bought and sold without much effort.
“So click ‘I Agree’. Here, here and here.” The Doctor offered the tablet, holding it so Nelson could flick his biomarker over the signature boxes. His biomarker choice like so many others was his middle finger on his right hand. So far it had not been ruled as a workplace violation, but it was only a matter of time until middle finger use was blocked via the Employee Terms and Conditions.
“I shouldn’t even have to sign. The procedure is mandatory.” Nelson sighed.
“The signature is mandatory too,” Doctor Priat smiled. “Have to keep it all on the up and up for the Ethics Board.”
“And if they found something not right, what would happen?”
“It would go into Arbitration. But that wouldn’t happen, because everything is right. As you well know, the Logistics Manager AI makes sure of it,” the Doctor used his wide mouthed hyena grin again. “As I said, uh, the boss is always watching.”
Nelson understood the implication. Everything ended up in the same shit show. No escape from the corp, yadda yadda yadda. He flicked the tip of his only remaining middle finger against the screen, signing off of on hundreds of unseen pages of terms and conditions behind the scenes. It was implied that he had taken the time to read them, and the requisite legal degree which he needed to understand them, but as he and every other logistics employee at the fulfillment center knew, that’s the joke. He needed the arm, so there was no point in taking the time to review. Or take the time to understand it. That delay would just end up in Arbitration anyway, and he would be out the pay for the time he wasn’t pushing his stats up in the picking boards.
“Good! Now just lie back, get comfortable, and we can start the procedure as soon as the Prime arm is pre-op’d for your biomarkers. We wouldn’t want rejection with the AtoZ interface, would we?”
“That would be terrible,” Nelson murmured.
“Imagine your pick rate stats if your arm was rejected? Worse than having only one arm, eh?” Doctor Priat joked. “Good news is that if this arm gets ripped off in another incident, like your us, you know, original arm, the company will replace it for a small nominal fee because you are a Prime member. Isn’t that great?”
“Yeah, great,” Nelson pretended to agree. The fact that any incident in the workplace was attributed to employee error did not make it better, even when the original incident that had caused his injury was very much a company fault, not an employee fault. However, it would never be classed as such. Because, surprise, that would require Arbitration. No one got through Arbitration with a win.
“Oh I almost forgot. Would you like to sign up for an additional blocker shipment at no additional cost for six months? Thereafter, charged at $199 a month until you cancel. No early termination fees if termination of agreement is done while employed. Another great benefit from Amazon Workforce Services.”
“No thanks.”
“Are you sure? It’s a great deal,” The doctor tried.
“Pretty sure.”
“Alright, I will go ahead and decline the offer. You may be contacted by an Service Chatbot later on to explain why you declined.”
Nelson sighed. “Of course.”
There was always the hope he would die on the table, but that would hit the Doctor’s stats… so…
“We are all in a grinder, aren’t we?” Nelson mused.
“What’s that?” The doctor replied, already ignoring the patient.
“Nevermind.”
“Good, good. Alright, lay back, the blocker will kick in here, and then we can get that interface connected. If you feel anything, just remember you signed all the T&Cs, so there is nothing you can do. Just lie there and think of how awesome your new arm will be, alright?”
Nelson grunted noncommittedly, as he was already ignoring the doctor. He closed his eyes and wondered why drones couldn’t do his job. They did everything else. With the AI and the AI subminds, they controlled everything. Why did humans need to be a part of it?
Maybe they weren’t. Maybe it was all something else.
Maybe… this was hell.