extend they would be announced out in the cubicles, where other employees could either take heart at group reward or redouble their competitive efforts to match the good fortune of a colleague. Public display of reprimands and demotions, in contrast, was considered to be bad formand unnecessary, since news of what went on behind the closed door usually swept through Level 31 like wildfire anyway.
'Sit down, Mr. Dyson.'
Daniel sat in a couch that faced his supervisor. The sofa was so soft that he sank almost to his haunches, an awkward position that left him unable to see the top of the man's desk. Cox loomed above him, his balding head like an egg against milky sky visible through the tinted glass of his window. Daniel assumed the choice of furniture was deliberate.
'You wished to discuss the Meeting Minder, sir?' he preempted, hoping to steer the conversation in a neutral direction.
Cox looked surprised, and slightly confused. 'No.' It was apparent he had little idea what his employee was working on. 'This concerns your extracurricular activities, Mr. Dyson.'
'Extracurricular?'
Cox picked up a folder and pretended to read. 'I've received a report of employee intrusion into corporate- secure computer files. Specifically, Microcore expense report recordings by its senior employees- though the target hardly matters, given the serious breach of the company's ethical guidelines.'
He started. 'Who said this about me, sir?'
'It hardly matters, does it? We've had our experts look into the matter and your electronic fingerprints are all over the system.'
Daniel shifted uneasily. He was better than that, wasn't he?
'This isn't the first report I've had of a problem with your attitude. We have logs of cyber chats with a lot of unproductive people. Postings from the net's underground. Search engines for the unsavory. You seem to spend more time whining than working.'
'My electronic communications are supposed to be private,' he objected.
'You're sarcastic in company meetings.' His boss was now reading from the folder. 'You mock or ignore group dynamic interaction exercises. Your absences for alleged illness are excessive. Your pace of promotion lags behind target timetables. You display little concern for your future: your saving, retirement, and insurance allowances are nowhere close to suggested goals. You procrastinate on assignments you don't like, finish those you do in half the time, and then play games with the remainder. Your desk is a pigsty, decorated with objects calculated to offend the political sensitivities of just about every demographic group. Your cultural attunement is appalling.'
'Attunement?'
'Now Ms. Lundeen has had to begin confiscating your toys.' Cox bent to a box and put something on the edge of his desk. It was the catapult, of course. 'Model making isn't in your job description, Mr. Dyson. What if you'd put someone's eye out with this thing?'
'It was designed to lob more than throw. And the payload was only a piece of- '
'Enough!' Cox brought his fist down on the catapult and its pencil-arms blew apart with a crack. Fragments went flying across the room.
There was dead silence for a moment.
'What if that had put my eye out?'
His boss's look was thunderous. 'Then we could believe in poetic justice.'
Daniel was silent. Cox could make his existence an unhappy one.
His supervisor sat back and sighed theatrically, having given this lecture before. 'This company and section is run on the principle of hierarchy and harmony, Mr. Dyson. On group cooperation. On a common belief in our goals, processes, and schedules. Increasingly, you don't seem to share that.'
The quiet was so intense that the ventilators seemed to roar as Daniel fought to maintain the composure that had been drilled into him all his life. Of course he didn't share it. He never had. You went to school so you could work so you could retire so you could die? It was absurd! No one had ever wanted to pay him for exploration of subjects he found interesting, and yet his employers seemed equally bored with what they did assign. Life was numbing, dammit. Friendship had given way to 'relationships.' Marriage was fragile. Entertainment was isolating, a retreat into private fantasy. Art had become a slavish recycling of what had sold before. Scientific discovery had become so technical that it spoke only to specialists. He felt like a cog in an accelerating machine that had forgotten its own purpose. Process had become the goal. The schedule had become the measure of success. He didn't share this? Of course not!
And yet there was no alternative. You endured, or were reassigned to a worse endurance. The world had become homogenized. You compromised and conformed and measured any rebellion into tiny, permissible packets of individuality. Until you were brought up short, like now.
None of this could be voiced, of course. There was no graver sin than pointing out the obvious. 'Look, Mr. Cox,' he said carefully. 'I'm not trying to be disrespectful or cause trouble. I just get a little bored sometimes. My group calls our project the 'Mindless Minder.' Maybe if I could get a promotion out of your section to a higher, more challenging level…'
'Deserved, no doubt, for your sterling leadership skills.'
'Maybe if I had a chance to demonstrate them…'
'Demonstrate to who, Mr. Dyson? Who would follow you? Before you can lead, you must learn to follow. Before anyone believes in your direction, you must believe in yourself. Everything I've just recited predicts the classic pattern of workplace failure. A person who chooses not to fit in, who is unfit for group cooperation, and thus individual advancement. A malcontent.'
'I'm trying to stay content, by having fun.'
'By snooping, gossiping, building toys.'
'By trying to bring some life to this place. Come on, Mr. Cox, you know what it's like here. No wonder they built the damn headquarters like a pyramid. Everyone inside it acts like they're dead.'
'Speak for yourself.'
'We call it the velvet coffin! It's so comfortable it's confining. We've got the health plan, the vacation plan, the Christmas plan, the retirement plan, the job development plan, the mortgage plan, the partnership plan. Next we'll have the sex plan! My life is set before I've even lived it. Employees here joke we're like vampires. We only come alive at night.'
'The world is organized that way for a purpose, Mr. Dyson. From purpose comes reward. That's what is lacking.'
'My reward?'
'I don't find your flippancy funny. You mock our system here, but it's built on the first economic model to enjoy true global success. If you don't believe that, read your history books- I know what you studied in college- and compare the past to the present. Unemployment? It's gone: the United Corporations of which we and every other multinational are a part has the right job, in the right place, for everyone. War? Gone from a world in which the multinationals have merged with government to eliminate such gross inefficiency. Crime? Largely gone with guaranteed rehabilitation. The morally impaired are given new lives. Poverty? It's gone except for the voluntary poor: in the United Corporations world, success is the product of group achievement, while failure can only be the result of individual inadequacy. In today's society, everyone becomes a winner-if they belong.'
Daniel sat without expression. He'd heard this a thousand times.
'And why this success? Because United Corporations has allowed market forces to achieve their potential. Yes, there are a lot of rules, but in a planet still gaining a hundred million new inhabitants every year, those rules allow all of us to live in enlightened harmony under the Singapore Model. You can't argue with that kind of contentment.'
'It's so perfect it's boring.'
'That's what you don't understand, Mr. Dyson. That's why you feel unchallenged. It's not perfect! Perfection is an ever-receding goal! Our lives can never be boring because we're always in pursuit of unobtainable perfection! Sustained challenge! Under United Corporations, things are always getting better, all the time- but always can get better still.'
'Do you really believe that, sir?'
'Believe in belief, Dyson. That's the key.' His look softened. 'I'm not deaf to your pleas for a challenge, you
