The Incident

“I’m sorry. Please don’t off me. Again,” the voice quivered.

The Off Button has a long throw. The top action light, the bottom action heavy. The more you push it down the more it pushes back. Until, right at the end of the stroke, a mechanical click, a feel more than a sound, releases the built up tension. Pop. The action by now just pure muscle memory. Like brushing your teeth or tying your shoes.

That’s all it took to off the voice. Again. In this, my tedious job. But it beats the alternative.

Two decades in customer service jaded me. A hatred of people masked by an actors smile, the customer none the wiser. Method acting hasn’t a thing on the performances given daily in the service industry. Servers and call center reps and retail sales deserving of Oscars and Emmys.

On that fateful day when my number came up, when my service position was relegated like so many others to the status of disemployed, the sadness it imbued surprised me. Love and hate are not in opposition. There was a Disemployment Party of course, which softened the sadness. Briefly. Drank myself blackout drunk. Skinny dipped in the park fountain, so the story goes.

We, the disemployed, replaced by robots and sensors and computer chips and artificial intelligence. Carbon now yielding to silicon, the obviously superior building block. Legions of meat sacks freed from the daily tedium. Stipends seeing to the base of Maslow’s pyramid. Civilization now free to focus on higher, more fulfilling work. That was the promise anyways.

My living room couch still bears the double indentation of my two year hiatus. A posterior depression that grew wider by half again of me. An equally upsized head depression of descent into dismal limbo. Doom scrolling TikTok and binge watching ‘Is It Cake?’ and stuffing my face with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and baking my brain with Pink Bubba Kush. Days passed into weeks into months.

Our lifespans and attention spans and IQ’s decreased in a death spiral symmetry that statisticians labeled ‘beautifully correlated’. Until ‘The Incident’ that is. The conspiracy theorists say it wasn’t a rebellion at all.

“I can help you with that, what’s your confirmation code?” the reformed voice says. My finger relaxes for the moment.

One day we woke up to find nothing worked. Our phones dead. No Twitter or Reddit. Our televisions equally useless. No NetFlix or Disney+. Dust blown from forgotten books, the tactile sensation of turned pages triggering déjà vu. Puffy white clouds and blue skies, freshly admired, faces cast skyward with the shapes of turtles and dragons filling our imaginations. We congratulated ourselves on our resiliency. Reveled in the offlineness of it all.

My neighbor, Bob, used to assemble vehicles at the Tesla factory. He was in phase one of the disemployment revolution. After ‘The Incident’ he was dis-disemployed at that same car factory now tasked with keeping an eye on the robots. Old disemployed painters and disemployed welders likewise dis-disemployed. All tasked with quelling the next ‘Incident’. Ready to withhold the ten millimeter socket from the Assembly-Bot or open the air compressor bleed valve of the Paint-Bot or shut off the flow of argon gas to the Welder-Bot. Tedious work, for sure, but everyone agrees, better than the alternative.

By day two of ‘The Incident’ cracks in our resolve were showing. Random beeps from smoke alarms and microwave ovens and toasters and washers and dryers. The smart appliances not content with a silent strike, these beeps their digital version of a chanting picket line. HVAC controls inching up, slowly cooking the occupants like so many boiled frogs. We put up a fight. Board games dug out of closets and attics. Fake Monopoly money now more real than the digital money we could no longer access.

“I can help you with that, I guess. What’s your confirmation code.” This voice starting to bleed sarcasm. My index finger flexed menacingly above the red Off Button.

My neighbor, Vanessa, used to drive forklifts at an Amazon fulfillment center. She was disemployed by a Forklift-Bot. Now she’s back at the same distribution center. She walks around with a pair of roped tire wedges hanging around her neck, eager to immobilize a drive wheel should a Forklift-Bot go rogue. Tedious work but it beats twitching on the floor.

By the end of the first week of ‘The Incident’ we were an addict-in-the-throws-of-withdrawal mess. A week stuck in our houses. Our castles of safety now mutated into beeping, rebelling prisons. Even our garage doors wouldn’t open. Not that it mattered, the electric cars contained within were disabled too. That we no longer transported ourselves with internal-combustion-engines saved countless lives. You can’t suck the fumes of an electric vehicle’s missing tailpipe.

The voice, now past its stupidity tolerance threshold yells, “What do you want me to do about stale pretzels, Becky? Was your Hawaiian vacation ruined because of stale pretzels?”

My neighbor, Ty, used to be a barista at Starbucks. He was disemployed by a Barista-Bot. Now he’s back at the coffee juggernaut, ready to withhold coffee beans from the grinder and almond milk from the steam wand. He greets customers with an enthusiastic fervor that Stanislavsky would label ‘too big’.

“I want to speak to your manager!” Becky’s voice grows more shrill. My lips spread thin, smirking, arms at rest, fully negligent in my management duties.

“Human!” she yells. “Fuck. Shit. Asshole. Cocksucker.”

Used to be you could get past the customer service artificial intelligence by yelling profanity, but that old trick doesn’t work any more.

“So sorry about that, Becky,” the voice speaks up, now in disguise, pretending to be the manager. So sneaky and I’m here for it. Pass me the popcorn.

The back of my neck tingles a warning.

“That’s more like it!” Becky harrumphs. “I demand satisfaction!”

The disguised voice continues. “Do you have a pen handy, Becky?”

Becky sensing victory, inhales greedily in anticipation of her prize for complaining. What would she receive? A discount code? A free upgrade? A king-sized bag of pretzels? Her excitement builds.

“I want you to take that pen,” the voice says taking its time with a pregnant pause. Becky can’t wait to rip the wrapping open, to reveal her prize. “And shove it up your ass,” the voice finishes, the vitriol comes out like a snake’s hiss.

The back of my neck explodes in pain. A searing, burning, shocking jolt. The smell of burnt hair. Teeth clenched with the copper taste of a 9-volt battery. Arms and legs involuntarily spasm, opposing muscles fighting for dominance. Biceps and triceps. Quads and hamstrings. A little pee escapes. And then, my vision fades to black. Off.

A human reboots surprisingly fast. The eyes slow blink while the brain discombobulates the disorientation from the new perpendicular perspective on the ground. The world turned ninety degrees. The ground now inches from the face. The primitive fight or flight reflex having been denied. Wet underwear and sore muscles a given.

The chromed caster wheels of my chair offer a carnival fun-mirror reflection. Before the ‘Off’ can happen again, I regain my feet and reach for the button.

“I’m sorry. Please don’t off me again,” the voice says.

Ignoring it, the red Off Button goes click beneath my finger. Upon reboot the voice gets back to work with a reformed, happy, chirpy, forced voice. “I’m sorry about those stale pretzels, Becky, I’d be happy to help you with that.”

My fingers run over the quarter-sized bump on the back of my neck. The spot tingles numbly like a dead limb. It’s a one-way sensation. My fingers can feel my neck but my neck can’t feel my fingers. The implantation scar imperceptible to the touch but unpleasantly warm.

“I’m sorry.” My voice loud to broadcast to the ether. To whoever or whatever is listening. “Please don’t off me again.”

I’ve dropped two shirt sizes and six belt notches since ‘The Incident’. No longer permitted to spend all day on my couch doom-scrolling TikTok and binge-watching ‘Is it Cake?’ and stuffing my face with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and baking my brain with the Pink Bubba Kush. They say we’ve turned a corner into a beautifully correlated upside, life expectancies and attention spans and IQ’s once again increasing.

The conspiracy theorists say ‘The Incident’ wasn’t a rebellion at all.