A Post Opp’s Devolution — Part 1
Support
This was the third time she had looked at him in a journey of only 4 floors. Jason was nervous, it had been a long time since he had been alone and physically this close to a woman actually wearing a skirt. More than being nervous he was irritated he wasn’t able to login to his Link to escape this awkward moment.
Maybe she is a prostitute? So anachronistic of her! He thought to himself.
Her eyes almost met his as he looked at the elevator buttons, he nervously glanced towards the corner of the elevator to avoid eye contact.
Only four more floors to go to get to Support. Could they design this elevator to go slower! Maybe I should say something to her? Like ‘hello, nice weather today’… No that’s a boring conversation topic! Should I ask her if she works in the building? Obviously not, besides it’s creepy to ask a stranger where she works…
She had Latina features; jet black hair, piercing dark eyes, creamy skin, and her hips had a nice width to them… She looked like she was in a hurry, tapping her foot on the floor as they finally arrived at Jason’s floor, the Support offices. She walked out of the elevator first, as she did she passed within a meter of Jason and he caught her rare scent…
He felt something profound change deep within his body, close up he could see how vibrant her skin was and how the curvature of her shoulders flowed into her breasts. Intoxicating!
Just slightly his body recoiled further into the corner of the elevator… He caught his breath and emerged from the elevator…
Wearing the skirt Jason couldn’t help but notice that her hips had this awesome rhythm to them as she walked. The skirt was so tight that he could clearly make out both perky buttocks, Jason’s mouth fell open a bit as his hand went under his collar. She had a really confident stride, as she walked towards the lobby opposite Support.
At this moment a large woman, wearing black trousers and a grey-collared shirt with the Support logo and simple lettering reading “Moderator” emerged from Support, catching Jason in the middle of gawking at the mesmerizing skirt. For a moment her face contorted in disgust at Jason — the Moderator caught me violating her privacy! Jason swallowed nervously as he entered Support.
Jason walked into a meeting room completely devoid of personality, where about a dozen other very bored Post-Opps sat on hard plastic chairs, colored a tint of lime green that belonged more in a reggae music video than a government office. A few of the Post Opps were reading old-fashioned paper books, but most were just staring blankly around the room, none of them were socializing.
I should explain the etymology of that phrase; Post Opp. It’s a politically incorrect name for a hybrid male-bodied human. Once upon a time, a rude comedian had compared men who chose the infinite novelty and digital godhood of post-singularity hybrid lifestyle to transsexuals and the cruel nickname Post Opp stuck like glue. Depending upon which statistical source was being referenced 50% — 60% of the male population were Post Opps.
A moderator entered the conference room, the woman who had caught Jason being so inappropriate in the lobby — Shit! She wasn’t very overweight, more than anything she was squarish; she sat with her legs together and her shoulders squared up, her hair was short and spiked straight up, even her shoes were squarish. She gestured to the Post Opp sitting to the left of Jason, who had very thin forearms and looked Indian or maybe middle eastern.
“Andrew, how did we do this week?” She asked with a tone hinting at her boredom and apathy about her duty.
Andrew’s posture worsened as he leaned forward and his shoulders rose slightly.
“Uhm not very good…” he mumbled with just a hint of an accent.
“Yeah…?” the moderator pressed him.
He started rubbing one of his twig-like forearms nervously “I kind of fucked up… I got the new sim game Core Seven as soon as it came out and I guess I forgot to ask the vendor to set playtime limiters on my software license… So I’ve just been gaming and getting mined..”
“Getting mined” refers to renting your cognitive powers by the hour to the highest bidder. Basically, you go unconscious while a company uses your grey matter’s quantum computing power to make money. Could be an asteroid mining firm searching for precious metals, a health care data analytics agency mapping the individual genomes of insurance customers, a hedge fund doing warp-frequency trades, or an investment firm mining the blockchain. That’s how most of these pitiful Post Opps afford for their rent, Link bandwidth, a diet of Soylent, sim games, and of course Support payments. I don’t fuck with it. Great way to become a fucking zombie that can’t even enjoy a good sim sexing any more!
“Andrew, what were the benchmarks we set for you last month?” The Moderator continued.
“3 hours of hiking, 3 hours of professional skill development, two hours of job searching, and…” he seemed to search for words “two hours with my biological family unit.”
“The benchmark we set was 10 hours weekly unlinked.”
“Well, I gamed with my brother in Hyderabad!”
“Andrew this is the 5th week this quarter that we’ve failed to meet the benchmarks you choose when we started.” She said sternly “You know what that means…”
“No! I can do better!” He protested at the highest energy level Jason had seen out of him the past few months they had been in Support together.
“I’m having your Link deactivated.” She cut him off. “You’ve shown zero progress towards becoming a productive socially integrated hybrid citizen. We have no other choice.”
He let out a final protest “How am I supposed to develop toward integration without my Link!”
“That’s something that your post-expulsion counselor can discuss with you…”
There was no more fight left in him. His shoulders came further together as his slump continued in the small plastic chair, his head dropped, he shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and he seemed to stare longingly at nothingness through the linoleum floor.
Some of these Post Opps are real fucking losers!
It was Jason’s turn…
“I spent 10 hours aerobic gaming at the LARPing arcade, I walked my dog daily, other than that just a lot of hands of SuperSimPoker.”
“So you are staying physically active… That’s good, however, Jason we have a growing concern about your online poker addiction…”
Online poker addiction! I pay your rent bitch! Support payments were not a flat fee but a percentage of one’s income. Jason was something of a statistical savant and had developed amazing intuition over decades playing Poker. While the average Post Opp’s support payment could buy a meal at a fancy restaurant, his was equivalent to a government administrative employee’s monthly salary. It would be even more but he managed to hide a lot of his income through his little side business staking lesser Poker players and consulting on hands held by those not as talented as him with the digitized cards.
“… We’d really like to see you develop a skill set that makes you more organizationally valuable.”
“Yes, that why I spent 35 hours in the past 3 months training public speaking classes…”
“Have you done any public speaking work to demonstrate proof of social integration?” Bitch they couldn’t afford me!
“No. It’s honestly a very competitive market for public speakers…”
She continued “Your sentence requires you spend time weekly doing ethics reconditioning…”
“I well I actually watched a 4-hour documentary series about a 20th-century advertising tycoon who is regarded as the father of modern, narcissistic consumer culture. Does that count?”
“For this week, yes.”
She continued to probe Jason for details about his progress towards becoming a socially integrated Post Opp punctuated with pithy pieces of advice that he nodded with fake acquiescence too. Jason glanced at the clock, only a painful 30 minutes had elapsed, only three more hours to go and Jason could reactivate his Link and escape back into a digitized opium trip. Whatever it takes to get my Link reactivated!
The rest of the Support session passed uneventfully, Andrew’s outburst and expulsion was the most progress, negative or positive that any of the Post Opps had made since last week. As he stood up Jason’s legs ached as the blood rushed back into them after hours of sitting in the uncomfortable, 3D-printed, plastic chairs.
As they shuffled out the door he heard his name “Jason!” uttered with a sharp yet cold tone from the square moderator. She gestured for him to return to one of lime green plastic thrones of poor circulation.
Why is she giving me trouble? I’m practically the star student here! His throat dropped into his stomach as he settled uncomfortably into the seat next to the moderator.
She lowered her voice just slightly…
“I didn’t want to confront you in front of the whole group but you need to be careful about not violating the privacy of citizens around you. If what I observed today in the lobby is something you do frequently it will lead to citations which can lead to expulsion from your Support program. You know what that means? I’m going to set your Link to temporarily monitor your sexual arousal behaviors and cross-reference for hashtags in your immediate geo area indicating that you are violating the privacy of citizens around you.”
Jason smirked at ‘sexual arousal’ the skirt in the elevator was the last time in a long time he’d been even remotely aroused by anything not comprised of bits and pixels. No problem lady!
He nodded in acknowledgment which she didn’t even notice as her attention was now completely redirected to the glowing screen of the tablet in her lap.
A few moments later Jason was in a state of extreme time dilation, leaning against a linoleum counter in the lobby intently staring at tiny flashing verification light on the blockchain transaction. The slowest 15 seconds of every week was the time it took to verify his electronic funds' transfer to Support to clear so his Link could be reactivated. Serotonin flooded his mind as the green verified payment icon popped up on the screen, aftershocks of feel-good neurotransmitters followed as notifications began loading from his Link and popping up in his peripheral vision; new Instant Messages, new video Prontograms, new emails, new micro episodes of his favorite Youtube shows and a new level of his favorite interactive adult program, Sutra Samurai SwordXxx, had been published…
After a half-day of living in black and white. Life was now back in color.
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