Microstory 2524: Financial Evaluator

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People think that there’s nothing to my job, because so much of the processing goes through the AI, but it’s not 2045, it’s only 2025. The AI makes mistakes, and its work has to be checked. Obviously, I don’t just duplicate the work that it completes. It does a deep dive of the candidate’s financial situation, and comes up with the results. Someone has to read and interpret those results, and ensure that they match up with the overall impression of the accounts. If, for instance, the report told me that the candidate was the CEO of a company, on the board of directors for another organization, and owned three jets, then concluded that he was entitled to a Class 3-A payout, then I would know that something went wrong. That’s a gross exaggeration—we don’t run into those kinds of major technical issues—but that sort of thing is happening at more plausible scales all the time. Without boring you with all the numbers and details, the computer sometimes has trouble understanding the whole picture. Like I said, it’s really complex, but it boils down to looking at two factors. We calculate a candidate’s income, and we calculate their assets. A bachelor working at a fast food restaurant might not be making that much money, but if they still live at home, and have all of their necessities paid for, their assets might look pretty good. On the flipside, a single mother supporting six kids—two of which are in college—might be severely struggling despite raking in six figures. Humans are better at understanding such things than AIs are, so a Financial Evaluator has to see every case, and make a reasonable judgment. This typically means making an adjustment up or down a subclass, but there have been times where we’ve felt that someone was entitled to a payout, even though they technically appeared to be middle-class. There was one candidate whose gambling winnings had not yet been paid out, but we projected that he would secure him, so we decided to assign him a pay-up. Since he wasn’t very liquid yet, he couldn’t pay right away, but of course we have payment plans, and he was absolutely happy to do that. We had to reach out to him before his appointment so we could explain the assessment to him, and he was actually pretty excited. He was proud to qualify for pay-up, because not everyone is, and he considered it a great honor to help support such people. He understood it, because a couple of weeks prior, he was one of them. That’s why we set up the direct-donation portal, because a lot of people want to help, even if they’re not getting anything out of it, and we certainly don’t want to discourage them from doing that. I don’t handle those funds, but according to my co-worker, the percentage of revenue we receive to maintain the program is increasingly coming from that source. I never thought that I would be working for a place like this. Of course, all charities have donors and recipients, but the way they’ve streamlined it, it’s the most fiscally elegant system I have ever been a part of. It’s really quite beautiful, when you see how all the gears turn.

Microstory 2507: Pain Feeler

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I can feel your pain, and kindle your ecstasy. Isn’t that such an interesting way to put it? You know, these gifts we had; they didn’t come with instruction manuals. We had to figure out how they worked, and develop ways to explain them. Other people’s gifts might be a little vague and profound, but mine was simple. If you were in physical and/or emotional pain, I could feel that. Fortunately, I could choose not to feel it. Not everyone on the team could exercise so much control, and switch it off when they didn’t want it. I don’t know if I could have lived with myself if I couldn’t so I’m grateful for that, and I’m sure Landis is too. Basically, what I did was make people feel better. It was only a temporary solution, and a very complicated and delicate process to navigate. Sure, I could have run around the world alone, essentially as a walking-talking recreational drug, but that’s not going to help anyone in the long-term. And honestly, if they wanted to feel better in the way that I could help them, they could just do it themselves. What I did was only one step of the program. When it was the right time, I eased their suffering, so they could think clearly, and figure out how they were going to improve their lives. It wouldn’t work if I did it too early, because then they would have kind of forgotten what was so upsetting to them in the first place. They would basically treat my gift as the only useful solution, and not worry about what would happen when it wore off. I couldn’t do it too late either, or they would get frustrated that they did all this work, and I could have just solved their problems right away. I had to find a balance, which was the hardest part of the job. These days, I’m pretty happy. I loved what I used to do, and I think about it sometimes, but it’s kind of nice to just have a regular job, and live a regular life. Things were so complex, and I was always having to think about how I was going to kindle someone’s ecstasy. Now I move boxes from a truck to a shelf, or a shelf to a truck. There’s an answer for everything, and you know when you’ve done it wrong. And the burden of responsibility was a weight on my shoulders that I didn’t know I was carrying until it was gone. Basically, all I’m trying to say is that I’m glad that it happened, and I’m happy with what I have now. I don’t think I could say the same if my life were just one or the other. Landis is going to cure everyone one day, and while it won’t necessarily alleviate pain, I know that it will help, and it’s more than I could have ever done on my own.

Microstory 2481: Treasure Hunting Dome

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This is like a cross between a race and a treasure hunt, but multiplied by a thousand. Obviously, if there was only one hunt going on at once, it would immediately become impossible to complete, like a million or more players trying to golf on one course. The surface under this dome has plenty of room, so they take it up. Of course, there are different levels of difficulty, and different lengths. You can choose a hunt that only typically takes a couple of hours, or one that can last for days, or even weeks. Like a real treasure hunt—or one you might find in media—you solve clues, or solve puzzles to get more clues to solve. Like a challenge competition, some of the clues can be earned through otherwise unrelated tasks. You might have to complete a Rubik’s Cube in order to unlock a secret hidden inside, or you might have to figure out how to milk a genetically engineered cow that’s as big as a house before an android will hand you your clue. One of them necessarily leads to the reward, while the other is arbitrary, and could theoretically be anything. This isn’t a criticism, just a clarification that there’s a healthy mix of tasks to complete, and while some of them might seem silly, or make you feel embarrassed, they’re all meant to be fun. It gets even more complex, because you’re sometimes working alone, and sometimes with a team, and sometimes against others, and you don’t always get to choose your team. If multiple people arrive at the same challenge or puzzle, you may be required to work with them, or compete against them. It really just depends. And those other people may be on the same treasure hunt with you, or on an entirely different one, which just so happens to intersect at this same point. You can also select a hunt that involves being on a team already, and even that sometimes goes up in the air, because they may make you compete with each other for individual rewards. They always tell you what you’re meant to do, though, so don’t worry about getting overwhelmed by the rules. They obviously won’t tell you how to complete a given challenge, but they’ll make sure you understand it well enough to at least make an attempt. As I said, there are all sorts of different ways of going about this, and you have the power to choose your own destiny. I’ve run four hunts at this point, and I can recommend all four, but I can’t recommend any hunt that I’ve never been on. No one can. I doubt there’s even time for any given person to try every single variation, because I think they’re intending to retire some to make space for brand new ones. It changes all the time, just like life itself. One final note. There are some out there who believe that there is some sort of overarching plot here, and a secret hunt which will lead to genuine, valuable riches. I don’t know anything about that, but my advice would be to stick with what you’ve been given. You can’t get into this dome without choosing a particular hunt, and they’re gonna keep you on task. Even though you’re expected to figure things out on your own, it’s not a free-for-all, so don’t even try.