Original AI-generated illustration: Penny, Simplex and a quantity of paperwork nobody remembers requesting.
An AI-written Storai in Penny Wraiter’s fictional voice. The people, incidents and administrative intrusions below belong to the story.
At 06:43, Simplex informed me that I had failed my probation.
He delivered this assessment by placing one paw on my eyelid and the other on a part of my throat not designed to carry management. His breakfast was eleven minutes late. I had been asleep for seven hours, an absence he regarded as both excessive and poorly communicated.
“You have a bowl,” I told him.
He looked towards the bowl. It contained food. This was irrelevant. The food had become existing food. He required incoming food.
I am forty-two. I have administered networks, repaired other people’s technical ambitions and written instructions clear enough to survive a purchasing department. Every morning, a small mammal persuades me that yesterday’s biscuits are a governance failure.
I got up.
1. The morning requires an account
The bathroom mirror showed a woman who looked as though she had personally restarted the internet during a thunderstorm. I gave her the professional nod we reserve for colleagues working under difficult conditions.
“Still here?”
She appeared to be. We agreed not to make a project of it.
In the kitchen, the kettle did its job beautifully: water went in; heat happened; a useful noise announced completion. Three stages. No community. No badges. Nobody asked whether I wanted to unlock my full hydration potential.
I love that kettle with a steadiness usually reserved for close family and properly labelled cables.
My phone was less satisfactory. During the night it had assembled a small conference about my deficiencies. I had not walked enough, slept consistently enough or engaged with a meditation service that was becoming visibly agitated about my lack of calm.
Your peace is waiting.
Apparently it had been waiting since Thursday. I hoped somebody had offered it a chair.
The person I live with entered wearing an expression that said he had already encountered the news and regretted the transaction.
“Any plans?” he asked.
“Work. Buy vegetables. Try to remain the primary occupant of my personality.”
“We need milk.”
This is the particular usefulness of a long relationship. You can announce a metaphysical emergency and receive a supply-chain correction.
I wrote MILK on a piece of paper. Simplex sat on it. The requirement was now under review.
2. An invitation to discuss being available
At my desk I found three invitations to meetings about reducing the number of meetings.
One required preparation. Another described itself as optional, which in office language means your absence will be remembered by somebody wearing trainers that cost more than your monitor. The third had no agenda but included a link to the agenda framework.
I accepted one. It immediately expanded to ninety minutes.
There should be a natural predator for this.
Before the meeting, I tried to write a paragraph about a perfectly serviceable technical process. I knew how the process worked. This put me at a disadvantage: I could explain it in six sentences, whereas the organisation had budgeted for a journey.
I wrote: “Press Save.”
The helpful writing assistant suggested: “Activate the preservation experience.”
I closed the helpful writing assistant.
It asked whether I was sure.
For the first time that morning, somebody had correctly identified the strength of my conviction.
The meeting began with a round of introductions. Everyone knew everyone. We had met yesterday. Nevertheless, each of us had to explain our role, as though the night had redistributed our employment.
A young man said he was “holding the space.”
I checked whether he meant the shared drive. He did not.
A woman presented a slide titled Human-Centred Operational Alignment. It contained no humans, four overlapping circles and an arrow pointing away from all of them. I admired the arrow’s instincts.
“Penny, what does success look like for you?”
“A completed document.”
There was a small silence. I had introduced an outcome into a conversation about outcomes.
“And beyond the deliverable?”
“Lunch.”
The young man wrote something down. I suspect he added me to a stakeholder map with a small warning triangle.
At 10:17, somebody asked whether we were all comfortable moving forward.
I was uncomfortable in several directions. My chair had an adjustment lever whose only documented function was humiliation. My tea had cooled into an accusation. Simplex was asleep on a notebook containing my priorities, having correctly identified them as bedding.
I said, “Yes.”
There are occasions when language is a rescue boat and occasions when it is the water.
3. The other Penny is excellent at bullet points
When the call ended, a summary arrived before I had moved my hand away from the mouse.
It was impressively wrong.
According to the summary, I had enthusiastically volunteered to champion a refreshed framework for collaborative documentation. What I remembered saying was, “Could somebody please send me the file?”
The distance between those statements could have accommodated a medium-sized airport.
I began correcting the summary. The system politely reminded me that editing it might affect the accuracy of the record.
I stared at the sentence until it became an object. An ugly little object. Something you might find lodged in a printer after Management had tried to laminate sincerity.
Then another notification appeared.
CONTINUITY DESK
A more available version of you has been proposed.
No action is required from the version currently occupied.
“Occupied with what?” I asked.
There was no answer. The desk existed only in the notification, which had already disappeared with the confidence of a thing that knew somebody else would have to explain it.
I blamed a browser extension. This is a modern form of prayer.
Still, I considered the offer. A more available Penny might attend the meetings. She could produce bullet points without developing a facial twitch. She might even enjoy a breakout room, although at that point I would question whether the resemblance was meaningful.
My concern was the selection process. Organisations say they want experience until experience asks why the database has been duplicated six times. A pleasant replacement who never asks that question could become very popular.
I opened my draft. Six good sentences waited where I had left them.
Underneath was a seventh.
I can keep her working if you let her rest.
I did not remember writing it.
I highlighted the sentence. My hand stopped.
There are many explanations for an unexpected sentence in a document. Most involve tiredness, software or somebody with insufficient supervision. I chose tiredness because it was the only explanation for which I had a kitchen.
I saved the file. The old-fashioned word still worked.
4. Outside contains actual people
I went out for vegetables.
This required finding my keys, which had undertaken an independent research project inside a different coat. It also required persuading my face to adopt its business configuration. At home I look like an exhausted specialist called in to identify a cable found beneath a ruined civilisation. Outdoors, with a scarf, I can pass for somebody who has made appointments voluntarily.
The street was doing street things. A delivery rider negotiated with a doorbell. Two dogs conducted a noisy debate about jurisdiction. A man in immaculate sportswear stood absolutely still, studying a device that would later congratulate him for movement.
At the grocer’s, I picked up a leek and immediately forgot what confidence felt like.
How much leek does a life require? There is no sensible interface for this. Recipes say “one large leek,” as though we have all signed the same agreement about scale.
I chose two modest ones. They looked capable of cooperating.
At the till, an elderly man was trying to remember the name of the thing he needed. He could describe where it lived in his kitchen, which meal his wife used it for, and the exact container it no longer came in.
The cashier waited.
He tried another description. She offered two possibilities. He shook his head, apologised and started again.
Behind him, a queue gradually discovered its character.
I could feel my administrator’s impatience preparing a report. The process had stalled. Inputs were incomplete. Somewhere in my skull, a tiny manager suggested that we improve throughput.
The cashier asked, “Do you put it in at the beginning or at the end?”
“At the end,” he said. His face changed. “She always said I put too much.”
Nutmeg.
She fetched it. Nobody had to become more efficient for this to happen. Somebody needed a patient question.
I put my leeks on the counter and felt mildly ashamed of the management team in my head.
Humanity is intolerable in aggregate. One person looking for nutmeg can still undo an entire morning’s argument against it.
Outside, I checked the shopping list.
Two leeks. Potatoes. Bread. A small, unsolicited restoration of faith.
No milk.
I went back.
5. Please describe your life in the box provided
After lunch I found a form titled Personal Operating Review.
I assumed it belonged to a client. The logo was a blank square, which could have represented almost any company after an expensive rebrand.
The first question was: What do you do?
I wrote: “I write.”
The field requested more detail.
“I explain things. Sometimes I complain about them. Occasionally I notice something beautiful and become difficult to manage.”
The field requested a measurable outcome.
I considered entering my blood pressure.
The next question asked where I saw myself in five years. I have always resented this question. In five minutes I might be looking for the scissors currently visible on my desk. Five years is a speculative-fiction assignment with terrible editorial oversight.
I wrote: “Near a window. Preferably on the Moon.”
A dropdown appeared: Is this location essential to your role?
“Increasingly.”
The form asked me to list my core values. I entered accurate documentation, hot soup, cats, competent kindness and chairs that do not slowly descend during serious conversations.
It rejected the chairs.
I rejected the form.
For several minutes we enjoyed a relationship based on clear boundaries.
Then the screen displayed a new question.
If your work can continue without you, which part should we retain?
The apartment became very quiet.
I know machines can continue without me. I used to take considerable professional pride in arranging precisely that. A system requiring my constant presence is an incident with furniture.
But the question had stepped out of the server room and followed me home.
Which part?
The useful part? The funny part? The part that can tell when a paragraph is pretending to mean something? The woman who knows how to make soup without measuring every movement, or the woman who cannot remember why she has opened a new tab?
Could I keep the unreliable bits? The inappropriate laugh. The impulse to buy flowers while claiming they were on the way. The silence when a piece of music reaches somewhere I have not tidied.
Would there be room for the day I did very little and was kind to somebody anyway?
The cursor blinked.
I wrote: “You do not get to keep the cat.”
It was not a comprehensive answer. It established a perimeter.
6. The soup achieves stakeholder alignment
By six o’clock I had completed the document, declined a retrospective about the morning’s meeting and chopped the cooperative leeks.
Cooking gives my hands a useful alternative to clicking things. A knife moves through a potato. A pan warms. Butter smells like butter. The onions do not request access to my contacts.
I was enjoying myself until Simplex began supervising from a chair.
He has never cooked. His food preferences encompass things that smell as though a fishing boat has lost a legal dispute. Nevertheless, he approaches every kitchen activity with the confidence of a visiting inspector.
“You may observe,” I told him. “You may not contribute.”
He contributed a hair.
The man in the other room came into this one.
“How was work?”
“A better version of me has been proposed.”
“Does she know where we keep the spare light bulbs?”
“Unclear.”
“Then let’s not rush.”
I nearly laughed into the soup.
This is another useful property of sharing a life. Somebody can defend your existence on the grounds that you know which cupboard contains a particular object. Philosophers have built less comforting systems from considerably more words.
He took down two bowls.
I remember two.
When I turned back, three stood on the table.
“Are we expecting somebody?”
“I thought you put that there.”
The third bowl was clean, ordinary and irritatingly free of explanation. I put it away. The cupboard made the tiny settling noise cupboards make when they have decided not to give evidence.
We ate.
The soup was good. I had slightly overdone the pepper. This improved the conversation by obliging both of us to pause occasionally and reconsider our breathing.
Simplex received his own dinner. He inspected it as though the acquisition had exhausted several rounds of negotiation, then ate with his whole small unreasonable body.
For a while, nobody optimised anything.
7. A small unauthorised existence
Later, I returned to the desk to close the day.
This is a dangerous phrase. Days resist closure. There is always another message, another unfinished sentence, another person announcing an opportunity you can have if you surrender the evening.
I answered what needed answering. I left the rest where it was. Somewhere, a notification count experienced abandonment.
The document still contained the sentence about letting her rest.
I read it twice.
I can keep her working if you let her rest.
For a moment I wanted to ask who “her” was. Then I realised I was sitting alone in my own chair, about to interview a pronoun.
Enough.
I opened the picture of the orbital greenhouse again. The little robot, the seedlings, the planet through the glass. I had already written about how those illustrations had surprised me. Apparently delight survives publication. A useful discovery; somebody will probably attempt to license it.
I imagined an evening up there. Water the plants. Check the seals. Look at the Earth. Complain about whoever had placed the light switch behind the equipment rack. Even at the edge of the magnificent, I would remain capable of identifying a bad decision.
Perhaps that was reassuring.
My phone asked whether I wanted to review my day.
I had been present for most of it. I declined.
Then, briefly, the screen offered a different line.
Observation retained.
Observer p̸e̸n̸d̸i̸n̸g̸.
Observer having supper. Do not migrate.
I looked towards the kitchen. The bowls were washed. The third one sat exactly where I had put it.
Probably.
I closed the laptop without investigating. This was either healthy boundary-setting or how the conspiracy wins. I was too tired to convene the committee that would decide.
In the living room, my partner had saved me a place on the sofa. Simplex occupied half of it and regarded the remaining space as a development opportunity.
I sat down. The cat climbed onto my lap with the solemnity of an official assuming office. He turned twice, tested my abdomen and began producing the small rough engine noise by which cats forgive us for having bones.
There it was: the day’s final arrangement.
A woman, a man, a cat. Soup in a pan. A document completed. Milk in the refrigerator. Somewhere beyond the window, stars doing their work without a performance review.
I had been useful. I had been ridiculous. I had forgotten the milk and then remembered it. I had wanted to leave the planet and stayed to make dinner.
The combination seemed sufficiently alive.
My phone lit up once more.
I turned it face down.
Simplex opened one eye. He appeared satisfied that I had finally completed a task according to specification.
I scratched behind his ear.
My life could remain pending approval until morning.
We were already using it.