Tag: job

Conspiratopia: Chapter 18

On 7 September 2021

We walked back after that in the direction of my dad’s apartment and stuff. The underground mall thing was super huge, holy crap.

After a while, I was all like, “Dude, but what am I gonna tell mom?” The Wizard of Oz hologram thing had given me permission to make one phone call (monitored) to my mom.

And my dad was all like, “Dude, listen. Just tell her the truth and stuff. You got a new job and you’re gonna go try out living with your dad for a while.”

“I don’t think she’s gonna like that very much, you know?” I said. “She sorta hates you, and is worried I’m gonna turn out just like you.”

“Haha,” my dad said. “Well, she’s entitled to her opinions, but it’s up to you to decide how your life turns out. Do you wanna live in the basement with her for the rest of your life?”

I was all like, “I mean, it’s pretty cool. It’s not actually so bad, when she isn’t hassling me about getting a job or cleaning up. It’s almost like having my own apartment and stuff.”

“Then fine, stay with her, and have your life be how it is now forever, if it’s really that cool and stuff,” my dad said. “Or stay here, and try out how it could be if you created your own life and did something different.”

“I mean, I signed the contract…” I said. “I’m staying. I’m just saying, she’s not gonna like it very much. And anyway, what if she asks where we are? I’m not supposed to say anything about the island or the project, or they said I’ll get kicked out. What am I supposed to tell her?”

“Tell her I have a place in the next county. She hates driving, and she hates me, so she’ll never actually check.”

“But she’ll want me to visit her all the time, and stuff,” I said. I was sure of it. “I’m sure of it, you know?”

My dad was like, “Just tell her you have a 90 day training & probationary period with the new job, and they asked if you could start right away, so you won’t be able to see her in a while and stuff.”

“Okay, I guess. Idk,” I said.

When we got to his place, it was actually pretty small. A tiny living room/kitchen with a couch and a TV, a mid-sized fridge, a hot plate, a microwave, sink, etc. Plus a small bathroom with a shower, and a bedroom and stuff.

“You can sleep on the couch. It folds out too. And you can stay as long as you want, or until you find a place, or whatever. Whatever you want, you know? You’re always welcome here.”

“Thanks, bro,” I said. I wasn’t actually ready to think much about the future. I was just like dreading talking to my mom and like telling her I was moving out, and stuff, and how she was gonna react. I mean, I didn’t have any clue how she was gonna react, but I thought she was probably gonna scream or like freak out or something when I told her about dad and everything. I didn’t think she wanted me to move out or anything, you know?

But when I finally called her and stuff, it basically was super short and went like this:

“Hey ma,”

“Hi honey, congratulations about that new job, that’s great. I’m so proud of you.”

“Yeah, mom, thanks. Listen, uh, they want me to start right away with training and everything, you know.”

“Good for you, honey.”

“And it’s out in the county. Um, the next county over, actually.”

“Okay, do you have a place to stay out there, or…?”

“Uh, yeah, somebody from the company is putting me up with them. You know, until I find a place, or…”

“Until you find a place?”

“Yeah, Idk yet. If the job goes good, they might ask me to stay out there. I guess there are more positions available and stuff. Cause they have a bunch of warehouses out there, and only one here.”

“Okay, honey. I’m glad for you.”

“You are?”

“Of course.”

“I thought you’d be like you know mad and stuff or something.”

“Why would I be mad? This is your life, you gotta go out and live it, Matty.”

“Thanks mom, I’m glad to like hear that and stuff. It means a lot to me. Oh, and about your car.”

“Oh, someone from the company dropped it off this morning. And it was vacuumed and polished too. Immaculate. This must be a very top notch company.”

“Oh, it definitely is mom. Lots of you know, room for growth too.”

“Well that’s nice honey. I have to go meet Fran now, but it’s great to hear from you, and I’m so happy for you. Call me once you’re in and settled. You know, if you have a chance, and stuff.”

“I will mom, thanks. Have a good time. Bye.”

Conspiratopia: Chapter 17

By Tim B.

On 3 September 2021

In Other

For meeting someone supposedly so important, we just went to this small room that didn’t look like anything special. There were a couple cushioned folding chairs and a table, and that was about it and stuff. We sat down and my dad closed the door and we waited.

“You nervous?” he said.

“Idk, should I be?” I still didn’t really know what I was doing there, or what this was all about.

Just then, the lights dimmed and stuff and music started playing or whatever. It was the intro to Us and Them by Pink Floyd, and I was all like yesssss.

After a minute, suddenly there was a hologram of this random-looking symbol that showed up kind of floating on the other side of the table. I realized then there were little holographic projector dealies hidden in the walls and ceiling.

The symbol went away, and there was like… the Wizard of Oz and stuff? Like from the old ass movie or something. Except there was no Dorothy or the robot guy, and no ugly lion or whatever. It was just the weird like all alien-looking face of the wizard. And there were like flashes of fire and smoke and stuff. It looked totally legit as hell and was timed perfectly with the music. It was actually sweet as hell.

“Sweet,” I said out loud.

“Totally,” my dad said.

The singing part of that song kicked in (which rocks), and I started to feel like I was frickin’ tripping, cause like the Wizard of Oz on the hologram was singing and stuff…

“Us and them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me and you
God only knows
It’s not what we would choose to do”

The Wizard stopped singing, but the music kept going in the background, and then he talked to us. Me, I guess.

He was all like, “Yo, dude. How’s it hangin’?”

“Uh, alright I guess. You?” I said.

“Can’t complain. Can’t complain,” the Wizard alien-looking hologram dude said. “Hey, thanks for coming out here. Great to see you and stuff. You liking it so far?”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, it’s fine.”

“Cool, cool. So, what can I do ya for?” said the Wizard.

My dad jumped in, “Well, we were, uh, kinda hoping you could help us figure out what’s next for for Matty here.”

“Got it. Coolio. Gimme a sec to review the files,” said the Wizard. His eyes light up and stuff while he did that.

His eyes went back to normal.

“Okay, let’s see. Well, we’ve actually got an opening that might be compatible…”

“That’s great,” said my dad, looking over at me and squeezing my shoulder.

“It’s in your work group even, actually,” said the Wizard to my dad.

“Whoa, awesome,” I said. “What is it?”

“Well,” said the Wizard. “We’ve identified a workflow issue in certain retail areas that we need to throw bodies at until we find a better solution.”

“Lucky,” said my dad. “That’s how I got my start too. So what would the job be exactly?”

“Our electrical shopping cart system is broken. So they aren’t able to return themselves to the store like they should be after customers finish shopping. They end up stuck in unusual places, and so…”

“So,” I interrupted. “The job would be pushing shopping carts?”

“Basically,” said the Wizard, and there was another flash of fire.

“What do you think?” said my dad, looking at me.

“How much does it pay?” I asked.

“Money,” said the Wizard, and the song switched to Money by Pink Floyd, “as you may know, does not work the same here as it does in the outside world.”

“So I hear,” I said.

“But,” said the Wizard. “It would work out to something like… $10.75 an hour in your dollars.”

“Whoa,” I said. “That’s a twenty five cents an hour raise from Walmart!”

“Totes,” said the Wizard. “Plus you could watch films or play games or whatever you want during overwriting sessions.”

“You mean… nanites?”

“Yeah, bro,” said the Wizard. “Though, we have other systems besides nanites if you prefer. But pretty much everybody here works on overwrite, except when protocols call for manual mode for some reason. It’s just more efficient.”

My dad was nodding like crazy. “It’s awesome, Matty. You’ll see.”

Hm, I thought. I could make more money than I was making back home, and I could frickin’ play video games while doing it? I didn’t have to think about it all that hard.

“Well, sign me the eff up!” I said.

Conspiratopia: Chapter 16

By Tim B.

On 2 September 2021

In Other

“Wow, this is really good and stuff,” I said to my dad, my mouth full of burger. It was really good for real.

“I know, right?” my dad said. It was so cool to see him again. Felt like old times and whatnot.

We were sitting at a small table outside this thing that looked like on of those airport pubs in the underground mall city or whatever where my dad lived now. He was telling me about his job and stuff.

“Yeah, it’s totally cool, and stuff,” he was saying. “My group does a little bit of everything. We’re actually pretty technical. We even do some light maintenance on the robots. Plus like a lot of facilities management, which is really important. Like changing doorknobs or light bulbs. Cleaning up the bathrooms, taking out the trash. You know. It’s a really big deal here cause you know the whole thing’s underground. Well, mostly. So like that’s all we got.”

“Yeah, man,” I said. “Very cool. I guess you must be earning a lot of money and stuff if you do all that.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Pretty rad, for sure. Pays decent too. We don’t use dollars actually, but it works out to about fifteen dollars an hour or something, I think.”

I was only making like $10.50 an hour pushing shopping carts at Walmart, so I thought that sounded like a pretty sweet deal.

“And I guess you probably get like a free apartment or something, right?”

“Well, not exactly,” my dad said. “It comes out of my credits and stuff, you know? Just like anywhere. It’s pretty small, but it’s really nice, you’ll see. I even have a fold-out couch you could sleep on. And we can share the mini-fridge.”

“Damn, that sounds nice,” I said. I was missing my mom’s basement for sure, after being cooped up in that pod thing or whatever the hell it was that brought me here. It was good to get some real food in me too, and I was feeling like I was getting back to normal. Maybe even a new normal, and stuff. Here with my dad. I didn’t know yet what I was gonna do. If I was gonna stay or whatever, or like if I could even leave if that drone was already gone.

“What did you call this burger again?” I asked him.

“Radmeat,” he said.

“That’s a rad name,” I replied.

“I know. We make it locally too. Well, not me we, but like it’s made here by another group.”

“What do you mean it’s made?” I said, suddenly slowing down as I chewed.

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s no red meat here because we’re underground and on an island and stuff. It would be really expensive to get it shipped or flown in or whatever. So we have radmeat instead. They make it in big vats here from like…”

I put the burger down. “Vats?”

“Yeah, I mean I don’t know the technical terms. But its like, ah, cultured meat and vegetable proteins, I think?”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad, I guess,” I said, reconsidering.

“Yeah, no. It’s actually really cool. I think it’s made from uh, rat embryos, edible insects, and, um, lentils or something. At least I think, that’s what they say around the shop at work.”

“So, Radmeat is actually rat meat?”

“Well, not only that. Also cockroaches and lentils.”

“Well, I do like lentils, actually,” I said, picking up the burger again to look at it more closely. It just looked – and tasted – like a burger. No like rat parts or bugs legs or anything sticking out of it. I took another bite, and decided I didn’t care. Thinking about lentils made me miss my mom though. She was gonna be pissed about the car, and I couldn’t just disappear on her. Well, like dad did.

“Dad,” I said, “I just realized I gotta call mom. She’s gonna be super worried and stuff.”

“When did you talk to her last?”

“I told her I got a new job and was gonna crash at Mikey’s for a couple days. Only problem is idk how long ago that was now. Could be a couple days I guess. Can I call her? My phone’s dead.”

“We’ll have to get permission,” he said. “But I’ll make sure we can get it soon.”

“Permission?” I said, confused.

“To contact the outside world, yeah. People in our group have restricted contact.”

“Wth?” I said. “That sounds sketchy af. Is this like a cult or something? You can’t contact anybody without permission?”

“Dude, relax. You know me. Would I ever join a cult?” he said.

I thought about it for a minute and decided I wasn’t sure.

Just then, my dad’s phone beeped and buzzed. He took it out and looked at it.

“Okay, we gotta go,” he said. “It’s our turn.”

“Our turn for what?” I asked.

“To see the big guy, and figure out what you’re doing here.”

Conspiratopia: Chapter 2

By Tim B.

On 10 August 2021

In Other

It had been like a week or so since I quit Walmart. When my mom would leave for work, I would always promise her I would look at job ads (which all sucked), but mostly I would watch conspiracy videos, or read threads on conspiracy forums. Like I said, that’s how I got so smart about all of this stuff.

One day, I was really surprised to find a job ad that sounded like totally super perfect for me. It wasn’t on the local job search site that I used to find things nearby. It was actually in an ad on a conspiracy forum, so you know it’s legit. It read:

MAKE MONEY ONLINE TAKING SURVEYS.“FREE” VR GLASSES INCLUDED.

I thought to myself like, damn, this could be frickin’ amazing. I love taking surveys online. Signing up for contests and crap. Plus like holy cow, free VR glasses? I am in. Maybe I can use them with my Xbox.

I clicked through to sign up, gave them my email, my password, my credit card, my pin number, my social security number, birth date, everything they asked for. Cause like I said, I love surveys. And who frickin’ cares. What the hell do I have to hide?

After about like thirty pages of questions about myself, the system said that I passed the initial screening, and I was welcome to complete the first hundred surveys in exchange for system credits, so that I could earn my free VR glasses, and then start getting paid for realz. Yessss, awesome. Done.

I clicked the sign up button, and waited for the page to load. I went to the mini-fridge to crack open a Diet Coke, and came back.

I spent about the next six or seven hours almost just frickin’ taking surveys and stuff. I went totally nuts on those surveys. I felt like I was just getting faster and faster on them. I was in the zone, you know what I mean.

Most of them were really easy questions about like products or games and movies and stuff. I liked those ones the best, cause I could just sail through them fast and earn extra points for finishing before the recommended time. Some of them were about politics and the news, or asking your opinion about a certain celebrity or politician or whatever. I didn’t know who a lot of those people are, but the instructions said it didn’t matter, and I should just go with my first reaction and not think about it too hard.

So that’s what I did. I went with my gut, and like I said got faster and faster, and was earning extra points like crazy. And like the system started sending me messages like:

YOU’RE ON FIRE! HERE’S 50 POINTS FOR BEING SO SUPER SMART AND STUFF.

I was all like, hells yeah. It was a little confusing though at first, because there were “credits” you earned for each survey. But then like you could also earn like “points” and “bonuses” for finishing things early, or doing mini-puzzles and stuff.

The mini-puzzles were actually really cool. I started getting more of those mixed in as I got faster doing the surveys. At first they were mostly like solving CAPTCHAS and stuff. Which I’m pretty good at anyway. I clicked on so many fire hydrants and crosswalks and stuff, omg you have no idea. Sometimes they would be more like short timed games where you moved around jewels or tokens or something. And then there were games that remembered where you left off after each round, like one with growing vegetables in a garden. That one was kinda boring I thought, but at least the vegetables would grow even when you weren’t playing, and could be exchanged later for points. There weren’t even any shooting games, though. But whatever, I was obviously earning bank. I could just play Call of Duty later. It was no big deal.

There were also some personality tests too that were like, what would you do in such and such a social situation, or like what if you saw your friend taking money from the cash register at work. Stuff like that. I didn’t always know what I thought for all of those, and was a lot of times just picking whatever the middle response was, so I didn’t look too weird or like a creep or something in the system, haha. I mean, I don’t know anyway what you’re supposed to answer with these. I tried to be honest, I guess. A lot of times the questions would repeat later in a different way.

After about 3.5 hours on the site, I got a system message that was like:

MANDATORY 15 MINUTE BREAK PERIOD (UNPAID)

And there was a timer.

I got up and stretched, took a leak, and cracked open another Diet Coke. I guess I should eat something, I thought. So I got some chips, and got ready to settle back in. I didn’t feel tired at all.

It said 9 more minutes, so I put on some tunes, checked my messages for a minute. Surfed a couple forums. There was nothing really interesting, plus I wanted to get back to work and stuff. I never had a job like this before, where I could just work at home. Totally cool. My mom was gonna be stoked too, I thought.

Before I knew it, the timer was almost up, and I closed out the other windows and stuff I was looking at. I ended up just like staring at the numbers as they went down from 1 minute 45 seconds, down to zero, and the page refreshed automatically, and we were back in business.

I kept the tunes on this time, even though there were some sound effects and music in some of the games and mini-puzzles and stuff. I put in another solid 2.5 hours no problem before I started to get a little tired.

I got a system message that said:

YOU’RE SLOWING DOWN, BRO. YOU WANNA TAKE AN UNPAID BREAK OR SOMETHING?

I thought for a minute about switching over to Xbox or even PlayStation, but instead clicked on the button marked Nah, I’m cool.

The system responded:

YOU RULE, DUDE. I KNEW YOU WERE DOWN. HERE’S 35 MORE POINTS TO UPGRADE YOUR“FREE” VR GLASSES. YOU’RE ALMOST READY TO LEVEL UP AND CASH IN.

Sweet, I thought. So I put on some new tunes, and blasted out another 1.5 hours, no sweat.

Surveys? What surveys! I was going so fast, I was like Neo in the Matrix, but filling out surveys instead of dodging bullets. I started to wonder if Agent Smith would show up, my skills were so good. It was frickin’ awesome. I didn’t even think about playing Xbox or checking my messages or going to the bathroom or anything else again that whole time. I was so totally in the zone and stuff.

Then I got a message:

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU JUST LEVELED UP! PLUS YOU EARNED A MANDATORY 30 MINUTE BREAK (UNPAID). WHEN YOU COME BACK, YOU CAN PICK OUT YOUR “FREE” VR GLASSES, MY DUDE. W00T!

Damn, I thought, this rules. This is the best job ever. I can’t wait to tell my mom.

But things were about to get weird, and I didn’t even see it coming.