More Human than Human
an excerpt

"We'd also like to congratulate the Osiris team. Their quality results have gone up by 20% this month. Erin, please explain to us how you've made such a dramatic improvement since taking over the team."

"I, um, gave them names."

The boardroom shuffled uncomfortably.

"What?"
"They didn't have names before?"

"They had been labled Adam one through six, and Eve one through six. I gave them individual names and encouraged unique expression from each unit. We've seen great results and a decrease in customer complaints."

"I'm concerned this frivolitry is costing us too much time. The machines are designed to adapt naturally over time to their job requirements. It's quite possible that these antics are merely pulling the units offline for more time than is required. Anthropomorphising them is not going to-"

"We had repeated customer complaints of them not being human enough. Helping to humanize them has directly impacted the customer complaints. I do not see why this is an issue. I have well documented results."

"Erin, I realize we've woken you up early and dragged you out to a meeting during the day, but please remember that everyone gets a chance to speak, regardless of whether or not you agree with them."

Erin could have punched him.

"As I was saying, these units cost us a great deal of money, pulling them offline when they could be taking calls is reducing our FTE to dangerous levels and jeopardizing our relationship with our client. It wasn't easy to get them to agree to this trial run. Meeting our metrics is our primary concern. Dressing them up like dolls and giving them names is all well and good, but it doesn't meet the bottom line."

"Phineas has a valid concern. Erin, you're going to reduce your offline time with the units by 25% We'll review their performance in one week and see how much of an impact the reduction in offline time has caused. This Osiris project is expensive and if the client feels we need more FTE, we have to give it to them."

"You could increase the human staffing. The ones that the Osiris project is handling overflow for."
"That's not in our budget, Erin."
"You could put it in the budget."
"Erin, this is non-negotiable. Reduce offline time by twenty five percent. Effective immediately. Now, the next item on our agenda is the Analog sales team. Jeremy?"
"That's in transition. Charmaine is now handling it."
"I haven't received authentication for the-"

Erin tuned the rest out. They'd made her stay up for a 10am meeting when she worked eleven to seven thirty overnights. There was no need for her to be there. It wasn't like they listened to anything she had to say. As the meeting was ajourned, one of the suits stopped her at the door.

It was Dr. Akakios, one of the developers.

"Erin, I'm concerned about you. You don't look very well today."
Erin laughed. "If I woke you up at... 4am, and dragged you off to a meeting where no one listed to a word you said, and there was no real reason for you to have attended, would you look like the pinacle of sweetness and light?"
The doctor laughed. It was forced and plastic, like everything else about him. Erin couldn't stand him. His skin had a slight orange tinge to it. He talked with his hands in an exaggerated manner that made Erin think that he probably did not do so naturally but had trained himself to reflect positive body language. His saltpepper hair was perfectly trimmmed and he had a Santa Claus beard. His thin lips smiled a fake smile as he continued.
"I guess I would look run down too. I'm just concerned" he paused here for effect. Erin's bag was heavy with books and cutting in to her shoulder. Every pause in the old man's phrasing made the strap cut in more deeply to her already over tense shoulder muscle. "because you seem to be irritated at the idea of spending less time with your charges. There is a tendancy towards mother hen syndrome among new Team Leaders. The last Team Leader for the Osiris project-"
"The last team leader was caught stealing from the company and fired for that and doing nothing for 8 months. If you are questioning my integrity or my performance I invite you to direct your concerns to my senior manager. I do not feel the need to continuously prove I'm not a crook just because the last person doing the job was one."
"Oh, not at all, not at all" Erin could see him mentally turning up the "soothing voice" dial in his brain. He adjusted his glasses and made a kindly face. Erin wondered how often he practiced that in the mirror to get it just right. She mentally reigned in a snarl and stopped it from appearing on her face. "We just want to be sure that the environment is not causing you to become unhappy. After all, many people in the buildling won't even go to the basement, let alone spend 8 hours a day in a room with zombies." He laughed in that conspiratorial way that implies "nudge, nudge, wink, wink." Erin glared at him.
"Actually, I quite enjoy my time with the subjects in the basement doctor. They are refreshingly honest about everything and don't play mind games. If I tell them to do something, they do it. My biggest challenge has been explaining human behavior to beings who are rational and non-manipulative." Erin wished her comment had been more scathing but she was too tired to come up with effective sarcasm.
The doctor's smile widened. "Ah yes that must be quite a challenge. Anyways, we were concerned so we've given you an assistant."
"I'm doing quite fine. I don't need one."
"We wanted you to be able to attend more meetings during the day, so your assitant can help out at night."
"Doctor, if you are attempting to adjust my schedule, please contact my senior manager. I have medical documentation on file requiring my schedule not to change. I will not be adjusting my hours so that I can attend more meetings."
"Ah well then he can help out during the day then."
Erin caught her breath. Not have to lose sleep for idiotic mangement meetings? Could the old slimeball actually be doing something useful?
"Who is this assistant going to be?" Erin tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice and sound bored.

"Jacob Bogweth. Jacob fucking Bogweth!" Erin shouted as soon as the door to her apartment closed behind her. "Fuck!"
Pickles, the cat, ran from the living room and hid in the kitchen.
Erin threw her bag on the couch. Books spilled out, bouncing on the cusions. A teacup on the coffee table was nudged too far and landed with the clink of broken china.
"Fuck!"
She was shaking she was so angry. The phone rang. Erin ignored it. As she walked through the living room to the hall she tripped and almost fell, catching herself on a wall. On the floor by her foot was a cat toy. She picked it up and flung it into the kitchen. The phone rang again. Erin contined through the hall to her bedroom and began to remove her clothes. Blouse undone, pulling off her nylons, the phone rang again. Erin jerked and a nail caught in the legging and started a snag.
"Fuck!" She reached over and ripped the phone off the receiver. "Who are you and why are you calling me?"
"Um, cuz you asked me to?"
"What?"
"It's noon. We're going to the matinee. You asked me to call to see if you wanted tickets. Last week. Remember?"
"No. I don't remember."
"Ooooookay. You sound like you're having a bad day."
"No shit."
"I guess no movie then."
"That is correct."
"All right then I'll... see you around."
"Bye."
Erin mashed the phone back into the receiver. The cat jumped on the bed and started purring and rubbing against her hand. It left a thin trail of cat snot along her knuckles.
"Yuck!" Erin pushed the cat away and wiped the back of her hand on her bedspread.
The phone rang again.
"What now?"
"Erin? This is Jacob." Erin's lip curled. "I'm having some problems with the team."
"Really? That's too bad. I'm sleeping."
"Um, Dr. Akkie asked me to call you quick because you might not have gone to bed yet. You're authorized to come in for overtime if you're willing to."
"Why? Did you manage to break the zombies? You can't kill them. They're already dead."
"Yes well, that's the problem. They aren't taking calls. I called systems and opened a ticket but they said it would take 6 hours to have them reimaged."
"You did what?"
"They aren't responding to-"
"Reimaging them is like formatting a computer. You'll remove their personalities. All that they've learned. You'll kill them!"
"As you pointed out Erin, they're already dead. But if you are willing to come down perhaps you can get them to work so we don't need to reimage them."
"I've had no sleep since 8am yesterday. Why can't you get one of the scientists to help you?"
"They don't understand it either. The terminal keeps requesting input from Persephone. Do you know who that is?"
"The Greek queen of the dead."
"Um. Ok."
"Cancel the systems ticket. I'll be there within the hour. Please have a cab slip waiting for me at the door."
"Employees are only allowed cab slips between the hours of-"
"They're having me work a double shift and dragging me back to work after a management meeting in the middle of when I sleep, then they're going to pay for a cab for me to get there. Get it authorized and at the front door."
"I can't autho-"
"It's the middle of the day. Get someone in upper management to sign it."
"I'll see what I can do."
The phone rattled in Erin's hands as it landed in the cradle.
Erin looked to see the cat dragging the torn nylon through the door into the kitchen.
"Fuck!"

Jacob was waiting by the elevator as the doors opened and Erin stepped out. Just the sight of him made her squeeze her hands into balls.
"I got- "
She walked past him and stomped down the hallway. He ran a few steps to catch up. "the senior manager from Techfusion to sign it." he continued "They sent an email to Phineus about it."
Erin continued to ignore him and swiped her card through the reader by the door.
"He -"
Jacob's voice was briefly cut out by the closing of the door.
"He wasn't too happy about it."
The room was brightly lit. All the plants she'd brought were in a pile by the garbage near the back door.
"You moved the plants."
"Plants aren't allowed on the production floor."
"They like the plants Jacob, and since they're dead, they can't have bad reactions to pollon and other allergens. Put them back."
"I'll need to get special permission fro-"
"Jacob. You can either keep running around like a little puppydog with your nose up Phineus' ass or you can get some useful work done."
"You can't talk to me like that! I-"
"You come into my department. You rearrange things. You get rid of the plants. You try to reimage the units undoing all the work we've been doing for months and you expect people not to be pissed off?"
"The only people in this room are you and me, Erin and-"
"And I'm the senior team leader and I say the plants stay. It took me 2 months to get permits for those damn plants and now you're trying to throw them out. Quit wasting the company's time and money by undoing everyone else's work."
"You got permits for the plants?"
"Yes I got permits for the plants."
"Oh. I didn't know that."
"So why didn't you ASK?"
"You're behaving very agressively."
"And you're behaving like a moron. Now that we've got that out of the way, put the plants back and I'll get the units functioning again."
"I'm reporting your harassing behavior."
"And I'm reporting your incompetence. We can both file nice mountains of paperwork to management when we're done. For now, put the plants back."
Jacob's face was red but he finally turned and began moving the potted plants back to the desks where he'd taken them from.

Erin walked to the end cubible closest to her desk. She paused for a moment, realizing that the contents of her desk had been relocated into a box on the floor.
"You cleared out my desk?"
"I removed all the clutter. I kept it in a box in case there was anything important."
"Why did you touch my stuff?"
"I need to work here too."
"That doesn't explain why you touched my stuff."
"I can't work in a chaotic environment. There was too much clutter."
"So you put my things in a box by the desk without so much as asking my permission."
"There is no assigned seating. I'm to be the day shift manager. I need to have a respectable desk space."
"I was told your office would remain upstairs."
"It is. I'm not relocating *here*."
"Then why did you feel the need to touch my things?"
"I still need to be able to access the units."
"Wait - you were trying to access them from the terminal?"
"Yes." His lip curled in a sneer. "How else are you supposed to access them?"
"Did it occur to you to talk to them?"
"What?"
"You know, with your mouth?"

"*What* are you talking about?"

Erin pulled a chair next to the end cubicle. The "unit" inside was a young man. His age looked to be about early twenties. He was thin, had longish dark hair, and looked for all the world to be sleeping while sitting up at his desk, his hands resting on the armrests of his chair, his eyes closed. His skin was unhealthily pale and cabling ran from under his hair at the nape of his neck to a large box under the cubicle.

"Sydney query status report activity please."
The eyes of the unit flew open. "Status paused. All activity suspended."
"What the hell?" Jacob clutched a potted geranium.
"Sydney why has all activity been suspended?"
"You just talk to them? Like they were people?"
"Emergency override. Unauthorized presence detected. Potential corporate espionage detected. All systems halt until authentication has been passed."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means you didn't get management approval to come down here. You broke protocol and they thought you were a spy so they stopped working."
"Why the hell would they do that?"
"Because that is what they are programmed to do in the event of an unauthorized entry. I'm surprised they didn't set off any alarms."
"There were alarms but I called security and got them to turn them off."
"Even the one in this room?"
"No they couldn't get that turned off so I unplugged it."
"You disabled a security device."
"It wouldn't stop. It was really annoying."
"You disabled a security device because it annoyed you. You didn't think that maybe, just maybe, it was going off for a *reason*?"
"I don't have to answer to you."
"No. You can answer to Albrecht and explain to him how you breached protocol, violated security proceedures, came in here and started rearranging the place, overrode an alarm system when it went off and then had to call in another employee on overtime to clean up your mess."
"How was I supposed to know they'd do that?"
"You enter their home, throw their plants in the garbage, rearrange their boss' desk, disable security functions, and attempt to authenticate using an archaic method that hasn't been used for over a year, and you expect them not to be suspicous?"
"How can they be suspicious? They're stupid machines."
"They have human bodies and brains far, far more complicated than your own, Jacob. Machines, yes, but they aren't stupid."

"Sydney. What authentication do you require to resume functionality?"
"Authentication passed by voice recognition, Erin, do you wish me to resume?"
"Yes Sydney and please tell the others."
"Instructions acknowledged. Resuming now. Thank you for calling Syntaxer, my name is Sydney, could I please have your business name and telephone number?"

Down the row the sleepers each opened their eyes and began the same phrase "Thank you for calling Syntaxer, my name is Amy"
"for calling Syntaxer, my name is Andrew"
"please have your business name and"
"How can I help you?"
"Thank you for calling"
"my name is"
The room quickly filled with the sound of twelve voices speaking at once.

"All I had to do was talk to them?"
"No. You couldn't talk to them. They didn't know who you were. Why are you here anyway? You aren't supposed to start until tomorrow."
"I wanted to get things settled so I could-"
"so you could take over my office and rearrange everything to your liking before anyone could tell you not to."
"you don't own this office."
"No, but it is my workspace and you have invaded it without even having permission to do so from corporate and in doing so, you've caused a jeopardy situation that negatively impacted production and caused a client situation."
"It's not my fault the stupid things-"
"Yes. It is your fault. Not only that but as of now, you still don't belong here and are in breach of security proceedures so get out."
"What?"
"You heard me. Get out."
"You can't-"
"If you do not leave I will call security and have you removed. Right. Now."
"Albrecht will hear about this."
"Albrecht can hear loud and clear just fine Jacob. And while Erin needs to learn to be respectful of her peers if she wants to keep her job, she is correct. You have caused quite a problem by not following the rules. Please return to your office and follow your regular scheduled duties."
Jacob whipped around, still holding a plant.
"Sir. She has plants."
"Yes Jacob. I signed the paperwork to approve them so I should know. Please put the plant down and go to your office. We will talk later."
Jacob scowled and slammed the plastic pot on to a desk beside one of the units, Isadora, a dark skinned woman with cornbraids the same thickness as the cabling leaving her head. She did not flinch or change intonation, continuing with her call. "And when you click ok on that screen, what happens?"

"Erin." Albrecht sat down in her chair as the door closed behind Jacob.
"He nearly killed them. He had a ticket in to reimage them. He threw their plants in the garbage and he disabled an alarm."
Albrecht rubbed his temples. "Erin you can't talk to your peers that way. It's harassment."
"That idiot should not be my peer. He should be fired for sheer utter stupidity."
"He was given clearance by his superior to begin integrating into the project."
"You approved this?"
"No, but I didn't have much choice in it either. This came from very high up."
"That moron-"
"Is now your partner. As of tomorrow you will be a team. You need to learn to work with him. I've already heard enough to justify a harassment complaint against you."
"I am here on no sleep cleaning up because someone-"
"Yes and that is what I will say to HR on your behalf, but if your behavior continues, you will end up with disciplinary action taken against you. You can not speak to your peers that way, ever, period."
Erin blinked back tears of rage.
"Look. I don't like him either. I don't like that you're trapped down here in the basement cut off from contact with human beings all the time."
"I like it."
"So you've said. But if you want to keep doing it, you need to play nice with others."
"So he can just come in here and do this stuff and you won't do anything?"
"I didn't say that. I said you had to watch your mouth. If you have problems with him, let me deal with it. No more name calling and ejecting by security."
Erin took a deep breath and let it out slowly, counting to ten in her mind. She got to eight.

"Why."
"What?"
"Why is he here?"
"Do you want the official answer or what I suspect is the truth."
"The suspected truth."
"I think several people in our company want to see this project fail. It's a very high profile issue with a lot of political baggage. If they can prove it's not economically viable, then they can just end the project and never look back. The previous person in your position was perfect for that, but that was discovered and removed."
"How did they find that out anyway? He was very careful. I am still digging up crap that he covered up. He hid his tracks very well."
"I heard it was an anonymous tip to to the corporate internal investigation team in Jacksonville. But that's not the point."
"What is?"
"You've made amazing progress with them Erin. They're doing phenomenal under your care. Those who don't want you to succeed may have felt the need to throw a monkey wrench in the works to keep you from doing as well as you are."
"So they sent the brown nosing useless twat who was promoted by his fratboy friends."
"Yes. And your little golden boy is neither fond of you, nor fond of the Osiris project."
"What, is he a psycho fundie? Can't we get him kicked out for that?"
"It's not that easy. The last thing we need is a religious discrimination case on our hands."
"I'm going to do what I can to keep him in an administrative capacity, writing reports and going to meetings. I'll get him a shift opposite yours so you won't have to deal with him too much, and I'll make it clear he's not to move your plants. Keep your desk clear so he has nothing to move if he comes down here. I'll try to keep his interactions with you minimal. But in return you MUST be polite and professional at all times."
Erin sighed. "Yes."
"I'm concerned you don't realize how serious this is. I can clean up after you once due to the sleep deprivation, but that's it. No more snapping, no more name calling, no more abusive behavior."
"Understood. It won't happen again."
"Good to hear." Albrecht stood. "Get some sleep Erin. You look like shit. Do you need to take tonight off?"
"No. I need to go home and crash. I'll be fine tonight." She turned and walked toward the garbage against the back wall."
"You're not going home now?"
"He threw them in without any care for what he was doing. Some of the roots are exposed, some of the stems broken. I need to fish them out and get them properly potted before maintenance gets here and takes out the garbage. I'll go home as soon as I rescue the plants, I promise."
"Ok. Take care Erin."
"You too, sir."
The door swished shut behind him.

Erin sighed and clomped to the garbage can. She reached in and carefully fitted a pot over the dirt and roots that had spilled out of it. Lifting gently she rescued an ivy. It's long trailing vines were caught tangled amongst the other vegetation that had been thrown in the garbage and Erin had to carfully work each strand free. After a few moments the ivy was loose and Erin stood, turning around with the plant in her hands. She let out a yelp and almost dropped the pot. The units along the row closest to her were all standing and a few steps away from their stations. They were still talking to their customers, but they all faced her, staring, the cords from their headsets hung like leashes, tethering them to their phones. Cabling ran from the backs of their heads, tethering them to their units below the desks where their AI brains were stored.

"Is there anything else I can help you with? Thank you for calling Syntaxer." The one she'd named Aleister finished his call. "May we help, Erin?" He must have put his phone in limbo. They could do that without touching the buttons since their AI's were hooked into the telco network as well as their systems and the Internet.
She smiled. "Yes Aleister. Thank you." She handed him the ivy and dragged the garbage can up to them so they could all go through it together while they remained attached to the phones and taking their calls.

"Thank you for calling Syntaxer." Amy ended her call and reached out to Erin to take a plant. "We're very sorry, Erin. We did not mean to get you in trouble."
Erin sighed. "You didn't get me in trouble Amy, my mouth got me in trouble. I'm glad you all paused when you did. If nothing else it highlighted Jacob's incompetence in such a way that no one in upper management can ignore."
"Your superior threatened you with disconnection."
"Yes, because I have a big mouth."
"We do not want you to be disconnected from the Osiris project, Erin."
"I'll watch my mouth in future. Don't worry. Who thought up Persephone? That was cute."
Amy smiled. "Benoni found it. We felt it was appropriate."
Erin grinned. "Thank you. Hopefully no one notices the reference."
"We do not think they will."
"That's the last one."
"Many of the vegetation units are damaged."
"Yes, but they'll survive, I think."
"There are amputated limbs." Zoe ended her call and joined the conversation. Amy immediately began her call opening. They were careful to only show one unit in limbo at a time. It helped to hide their activities and anyone not watching them work would assume the unit was entering data after a call, which was what limbo was for in the call center.
"Yes Zoe."
"Is there no way to reattach them?"
"We can put them in water, they may sprout and we will end up with more plants. If not, we'll have to throw them out. We can put them in my travel mug for now. I'll hit WalMart on the way home and buy a nice vase to put them in."
Zoe frowned. "He hurt them."
"Plants don't feel pain, so I don't know if hurt is the appropriate word, but he definitely damaged them. They'll be ok though. Don't worry. Plants are awesome that way and I picked ones that are hard to kill."
"Thank you Erin."
"You're welcome. What are you thanking me for?"
"Defending us."
Erin reached over and squeezed Zoe's hand.
"Always. Have to live up to my new title."
The dead girl smiled.

Erin dreamed of a pomegranite.

It was indescribably beautiful and placed in her hands by a shadowy figure she couldn't see. She used her surprisingly sharp nails to peel back the skin and expose the plump red flesh within each white compartment, like eggs, or drops of blood. She plucked a ruby from the white hollow honeycomb and placed it in her mouth, feeling the smoothness before she ran it along the sharp edges of her teeth to let it bleed along her tongue. Tart and sweet yet so quickly gone, such a fleeting moment of explosive flavor. Now there was only a hard seed. Erin pulled it from her mouth and let it fall at her feet.

Walking down a dim path she plucked another ruby to place in her mouth. It was cool here, and the ground made crisp noises under her boots as she walked. Brilliant flavor exploded in her mouth and then was silenced. Not even worthy of a swallow, yet so compelling. She wanted more. That was the problem with pomegranites, Erin thought to herself, they generated such impatience. You never could get a good mouthful out of them. Only tiny flares of juice that left a lingering desire for more. So compelling, so addictive, the little bursts of flavor. Erin dropped a fourth, a fifth, a sixth seed on the ground as she walked.

Then there was pain lancing through her abdomen. Eric wondered for a moment if she'd been shot. It hurt her so much she fell to her knees. The succubus fruit dropped from her limp fingers and rolled away into mist. Erin felt no wound, no hole, but it hurt as though a demon were wrenching inside of her to get free. She could not scream. Expanding her lungs hurt too much. Erin's face was pressed into the ground and she realized now why it had made that crunching sound. She was not walking on earth. She was walking on endless dried pomegranite seeds. Everywhere stretching away from her in all directions like little shards of bone. Erin moaned in agony, grinding her cheek into the dried discarded seeds.

The phone woke her. She was on the floor, doubled over. The plug from the alarm clock was under her cheek. It had clawed two prong-shaped holes into her skin. Embedded slightly she had to pull it out of her cheek when she sat up. The phone rang again. Erin looked at it through a blurred haze of pain.

"Hello?"
"Hello my name is Elpi and I'm calling on behalf of the Society for the Protection of the Sanctity of Marriage. We'd like to inform you about the electoral candidates in your area so you can vote with confidence this election. Did you know that three of the candidates have recently stated they do not uphold the family values we all hold dear?"
"You woke me up to tell me about family values?"
"I'm sorry, can we call you another time?"
"I'm a satanist lesbian porn star who aborts babies in her spare time. I deep fry the foetuses and give them out to trick or treaters on Halloween. Fuck off."
Erin hung up the phone and tried to stand. She sunk to her knees.
"Fucking cramps."

Crawling to the bathroom, Erin encountered Pickles. The cat licked her face. "Ugh not now. Damn your breath stinks." She shove the cat away. It flopped on its side and pawed at Erin's leg. "That's awesome. You think this is a great game don't you?" Erin reached the bathroom rug. "God. Why'd I put the pills up high? You'd think I'd learn."

Pickles jumped up on the toilet seat as Erin tried to sit on the edge of the bathtub. After what seemed like 20 minutes but was likely only two, Erin managed to get the medicine cabinet open and sank back down on the floor with her pill bottle. "Childproof caps. If I ever meet the fucker that came up with childproof caps I will remove all his skin with a cheese grater and rub him in lemon juice." Erin snarled at the pill bottle she was pressing and twisting between her hands. Her chin-length hair spilled out over her face as she sat naked, her back against the side of the bathtub. With a grunt the pill bottle flew out of her hands, separating mid-air and spilling a rain of blue gelcaps onto the floor.
"Fuck!"
Pickles pounced on the half empty bottle, kicking it with her hind legs to be sure it was dead.