Artificial Happiness

Despite this obvious inequality, Workers generally felt no anger, loathing or envy towards the Naturals; nor did they experience any desires for a better or different life. The CERS ensured that all of them were content with their designated fates and didn't dwell on thoughts of being exploited, no matter how unfair the situation was. Some claimed it was a form of slavery, but there was little objection to the situation due to the fact that all the slaves were happy; in most cases probably more than the average Natural. It was artificial happiness, but to them it made no difference.

Part of the vast wealth generated by the entirety of the CERS-Workforce was redistributed among the population in form of a universal basic income (UBI for shot). Every Natural had a claim to a UBI, covering the fundamental needs, effectively eliminating severe forms of poverty in this era of humanity. The larger part of humanity didn't have any occupation and just lived from the UBI. Few companies still employed Naturals for a job which could be done faster, better and without a salary by a Worker. Only the kind of work which Workers were not good at, not capable of doing or not allowed to do by law was still widely available to Naturals. Most of those jobs were either high management posts, had some artistic nature, required a good understanding of the peculiarities of Naturals, could only be done with certain privileges or involved the administration of Workers.

The latter was the case for David's occupation. He worked as a CERS overseer, which meant that he was responsible for administrative tasks regarding the workforce in his company. This included the duties of procurement, assignment, supervision and training of Workers, configuration, maintenance and updating of their implants, as well as ensuring their health and wellbeing in compliance with the international Worker laws. It was forbidden to delegate these tasks to other Workers, so the corporations required Natural staff. Depending on the number of employed Workers, every company was obligated to have one or more such overseers. In the case of a huge corporation like VRW, which employed thousands of Workers throughout the solar system, there was a whole department of overseers dedicated to this purpose.

David was part of this department and usually worked at its headquarter in Munich. He had been sent to Zukunftsfabrik station temporarily, for the research project assigned to him. The project revolved around space ship maintenance and repairs. Such tasks were done almost exclusively by Workers. They could be trusted to fulfill those crucial necessities with utmost diligence, precision and effort. That was also partly a problem. When Workers were told to ensure that a vehicle was safe and fully functional, they tended to make absolutely sure that all standards were observed to the tiniest detail. That was not always what employers wanted because extensive checks and maintenance work led to long down times and inefficient usage of resources. The job required finding a reasonable middle ground between minimizing risks and keeping expenses at bay. A certain feeling for what was appropriate was needed. Workers were not always well suited for that, especially when they lacked practical experience. Making independent decisions about crucial measures instead of just following instructions often posed a challenge.

For David the goal was to improve the decision making process in such scenarios by developing advanced functionalities of Worker's implants. In this particular application the intention was to make the CERS deliver certain impulses on what was important and what wasn't during ship maintenance tasks. Part of the prioritization would be done by an artificial intelligence based on a continuously growing collection of past data. For the Worker it should manifest like a feeling; as if caused by an inherent instinct rather than a piece of software. If successful, this technology could ultimately be used to implant parts of the proficiency usually only acquired through experience, into Workers without any existing know-how. Many companies conducted such research, trying to further enhance the capabilities of the CERS-Workforce in an effort to make it ever more efficient.

David wasn't particularly fond of his position or this project, but his options were limited. On a job market saturated by artificially created humans who did everything better, faster and for free, it was not easy for Naturals to find and keep an occupation. Rising through the corporate hierarchy to a point of notable salary and influence was even harder. There was just too much competition. The project was a chance for David to distinguish himself, a stepping stone for bigger things; if he managed to succeed. In case of failure it could just as easily be his demise. Without proper results he might be back to depending purely on his UBI; reason enough to get to work.

"Alright, let's start," he proclaimed. "We will continue from where we left off. There are still plenty of bugs and imperfections in the behavior guidance CERS extension. Before the basic software isn't stable it makes no sense to continue with the advanced features, so we will focus on that for now. Go through the results of yesterday's test runs and start with the most critical issues. In the meantime I will train the pattern recognition system with the updated ship diagnostic data and see how it performs."

The Worker got to it immediately. The commitment he displayed was outstanding, even for his kind. Robert was an invaluable asset for this project. His original purpose had been rather simple: As one of the leading quality assurance engineers, he knew exactly what the common flaws, problem areas and pitfalls of the company's products were. Through all the internal tests and the real world data fed back to his department, he knew exactly where to put the focus in inspections. Robert was supposed to act as an advisor, offering his knowledge and experience. By now his participation ran much deeper.

Within the first few days of the project David had realized that he was in over his head. Progress had been painfully slow and some obstacles had seemed impossible to overcome. It had been pure coincidence when Robert had first noticed that his supervisor was struggling with the implementation and offered his help. David had reluctantly accepted the offer, knowing that he was not supposed to. Any involvement in CERS related development was prohibited for Workers. Only Naturals with an overseer license had the right to perform such tasks. Teaching or ordering Workers to do parts of their job was strictly forbidden. The same applied to providing them with the necessary tools for modifying CERS settings or the software for creating extensions. However, the more common and widespread the CERS-Workforce and with it the demand for overseers had become, the less respect these rules received. While the potential repercussions for violations were severe, the supervising authorities lacked the resources to ensure punishment of all offenders. Especially in isolated facilities like space stations, the risk which came with breaking some rules was small. Companies often turned a blind eye on such mischief; monetary interests usually weighed stronger than other concerns.

Fully aware of all that, David couldn't resist the temptation of utilizing Robert's abilities. It began modestly, with some assistance on challenging problems and delegation of minor implementation tasks. The collaboration was so successful and Robert's skills and ingenuity so impressive that David had become gradually more daring in his infractions. At some point he simply gave the Worker full access to all the CERS development resources and the instructions on using them, allowing for more independent work. From then on the advancement had been tremendous. Delighting in this assignment, Robert had no problem with being misused, mainly due to the fact that he wasn't aware of it. Everyone was happy with the arrangement.

Affirmed and emboldened by the success and lack of consequences, David had recently crossed an even more serious threshold. In order to remove the last impediment keeping Robert from using his full potential, he had made a small but severe change in the configuration of the Worker's CERS. The system was outfitted with a feature which effectively kept Workers from any attempts of changing their own or another Worker's CERS settings in any way. So even with the means to do so, a Worker would never even think of meddling with the implants; as long as this function was active. In Robert's case this safeguard was a hindrance in his assignment, so David deactivated it. That was a risky move. Someone might notice in case the CERS configuration was checked, or Robert might do something he wasn't supposed to do. The chances of that happening were very low though, especially for the latter case. Workers hardly cared about anything but their job; it was unlikely the idea would ever occur to him. As long as David reset the CERS changes and made the Worker remove all the software from his device once his work was done, nobody would find out.

Robert himself was blissfully unaware of all these illegal activities and their implications. He just did what he was told and enjoyed every moment of it. His ardor for the job was a significant part of what made him so effective. When fully focused on a task he worked with astonishing speed. Within less than an hour he identified and fixed some of the most severe issues in the software, a feat which would have probably taken David the rest of the day.

"Ready for another test run," Robert announced with a satisfied smile.

"Alright, compile and deploy it," David ordered. "You know the drill."

Indeed Robert was familiar with the procedure by now. Once the software was compiled and ready for deployment, he approached Catharina, who was still sitting quietly and patiently on her chair. Walking up behind her he put his UID to the back of her head and triggered a signal to her CERS. A small patch of synthetic skin slid aside and revealed a port built into her skull. A small rectangle, commonly referred to as Plug came sliding out of that port. Robert retrieved it and inserted it into a connector of his UID.

Every Worker was outfitted with such an access port. The Plug was essentially just a data container. On it was a copy of the entire configuration and setup information for the Worker's CERS. The overseers could retrieve it and put configuration changes as well as software updates onto the device. Upon reinserting it, the CERS would recognize the changes and apply them.

As soon as Robert had put the software update onto the Plug, he slid it into the back of Catharina's head again. The woman didn't even seem to notice. She had gone through the procedure a lot lately. Her temporal main function at the moment was as a test subject for the research. There were test environments which emulated CERS functionality for verifying the quality of new software, but to find out if the effects on Workers met the requirements there was no way around trying it out with a real person.

With the update installed they ran a series of routine diagnostics and tests as they had done plenty of times before. The woman sat through it with unwavering patience. Most of her current job consisted merely of waiting and enduring the procedures she was subjected to. It seemed like a dreadfully dull experience, but she never complained and she always looked content. The CERS made sure that even doing nothing was a pleasant occupation as long as it was in line with her instructions.

David gazed at Catharina's face while the implants within that pretty head ran the tests. She noticed his stare and showed him a bright smile. The woman had been assigned as his personal assistant a while ago and had come with him from Munich. They had spent a lot of time together lately and David had grown quite fond of her. He had already suffered from feelings of loneliness and isolation back on earth; since his relocation to Zukunftsfabrik station those had become a lot worse. Her companionship had been a great comfort, despite the obvious differences which set them apart. In fact he had found dealing with Workers to be easier and more pleasant than with Naturals in many cases. At the same time he was aware that his affection for Catharina had reached a rather unhealthy dimension.

"The tests are done," Robert reported, interrupting David's thoughts. "Stability has improved significantly but there were still some inadequate results. I will continue the development."

David approved with a nod. Reminded that he should also be focusing on his work, he directed his attention back to the display in front of him.

Over the next three hours Robert went through two more cycles of implementation, deployment and testing. Meanwhile David made frustratingly slow progress on his own tasks. When the Worker announced that the latest version of the software satisfied the quality criteria for stability, David was more than willing to leave it at that.

"I think it's enough for today," he declared with a yawn. "Only the cleanup left to complete."

Cleanup meant removing the experimental software from Catharina's implants and undoing the changes to her CERS. For that purpose David had created a copy of the original data on Catharina's Plug before the initial start of the project. Applying this backup after each session was another routine procedure Robert had taken over. Once again he removed the Plug from her head and connected it to his UID. The backup function came with a series of confirmation prompts, each of them listing changes which would be undone when the procedure was completed. Most Naturals would just skip through these as fast as possible. For a dutiful Worker that was unthinkable; so it was not surprising to find Robert meticulously reading through each and every listed change. In the middle of doing that, the Worker's expression changed from a look of concentration to an irritated frown; not a good sign.

"What is a Sexual Inhibitor?" he asked David.

David was startled by the question "Why are you asking?"

"It says here that the Sexual Inhibitor is currently deactivated and that the backup will activate it. I didn't touch that setting. I don't even know what it means."

The color drained from David's face when he realized his mistake: He had forgotten to undo the change last night. It cost him significant mental effort to keep from panicking. As calm as he could possibly act, he walked over to Robert and took the Worker's UID into hands he barely kept from trembling.

"Hmm... that is odd," David mused as if he didn't know exactly what this meant. "Maybe I changed it by accident."

"What does this inhibitor do?" Robert wanted to know.

"That is not important, just forget about it." David removed the Plug from the UID and handed the device back to Robert. Before the Worker could ask any more uncomfortable questions in his boundless curiosity, David said: "That is all for today, I will finish up. You can go."

Robert's expression indicated that he was discontented with the sudden dismissal and lack of information but his CERS would not let him push the topic any further. Seeming rather irritated he walked to the door.

"Don't talk about this to anyone," David added, intending to be commanding, but making it sound more like a plea.

Robert nodded obediently and left the room.

As soon as the door closed, David let out a deep sigh of frustration.

"You seem distressed," Catharina observed with concern, as she rose from her seat and walked over.

"What? No, I'm fine." David claimed quickly, trying to appear certain.

"Are you sure?" she asked coming really close. "Are you worried that Robert might tell somebody about us?"

He shook his head. "No; I told him not to say anything, so he won't. He doesn't even have a choice; his CERS compels him to follow my instructions."

"So what's the problem?" Catharina wanted to know. She was strangely observant and empathic for a Worker.

The problem was that he had maneuvered himself into a situation from which he didn't know how to escape. Controlled by his libido and improper yearnings he had done things he couldn't justify. It had started harmlessly: To cope with boredom and loneliness he had played with Catharina's CERS configuration, trying to give her personality some more color in comparison to the average assistant. It was not uncommon that Overseers tweaked the characters of their direct subordinates so they would be pleasant company and work well together. This practice was sometimes frowned upon, but not forbidden. In David's case however, he found himself increasingly drawn towards his assistant as he continuously idealized her to his preferences.

When indecent fantasies started creeping into his mind he should have known this wouldn't end well. For a while he kept resisting the urges, but they only grew more intense. On multiple occasions he watched her while she was partly or fully naked. Knowing no shame in a lack of clothing Catharina didn't mind. While morally questionable, this wasn't officially prohibited either. He crossed that line when the woman accidentally walked in on him masturbating one day. In an irrational, lust-affected state he instructed her to finish it for him. She was clueless about anything related to sexuality of course, but she was also willing to follow each and every command and eager to please her superior. Her movements were clumsy at first but she was a quick learner. Afterwards David was ashamed of his rash actions and determined to never let it happen again; a resolution which was already broken the next day when Catharina offered to give him another hand job. He could resist neither the tempting offer, nor the opportunity to show her other ways of satisfying him.

Incorporating some sexual services into his assistant's usual occupation was a clear improvement for David, but it still wasn't enough. He wanted something which felt more real. The decision to deactivate her sexual inhibitor in order to let her experience sexual sensations came easier than he would have expected. It felt right at the time. Now that he had properly introduced her into the world of sexuality and they had become something like a couple he regretted ever giving in to the impulse.

This situation was doomed to end badly. Catharina was property of VRW. She wasn't licensed for any sexual activity and even if she were, this kind of relationship between a Worker and Natural was highly inappropriate; even more so for an overseer. If the company found out, they would immediately sack David and report him to have his overseer license revoked. He had grossly misused his authority, which was a serious breach of contract. Catharina would just be assigned to a new purpose. Even though it seemed almost like she was in love with David now, after her configuration was reset, she probably wouldn't care about him in the least anymore. The right thing to do was ending it immediately; but instead of following reason he just plunged himself deeper and deeper into this mess, incapable of stopping.

The way Catharina looked at him didn't make it any easier. There was so much affection and passion in those pretty green eyes. David had craved for someone to look at him like that for so long. He delighted in that gaze, but at the same time it reminded him how wrong it was. To her these emotions might have felt real, but they were still a fake. The CERS had compelled and conditioned her into feeling that way. David didn't deserve that affection, he wasn't worthy of her longing gaze. It tormented him. He needed to tell her that their affair had to stop; that her feelings were not real; that this relationship could never work out.