OK, this is going to be a kind of creative section. It's going to be half story, half stream of consciousness, and half something else. (Fine, I know, that's three halves, but this is the internet, nothing is exact here, right?) And, it's going to be bad, very bad, and probably full of typos. Ahh well. Here goes.
The morning ritual always began the same way. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Panic. Skyler pulled his still heavy form to the edge of the bed and sat for a moment, silently contemplating calling in sick just so he could go back to bed. He decided against it, but not without some disappointment, and drew himself up. A yawn was cut short by a the painful cough of a much-abused set of lungs. "Ow." He plodded, naked to the kitchen where he poured the remainder of yesterday's coffee into a mug, sealed the lid and set the mug for reheat. Five seconds later the mug beeped and, per usual, he took a moderate pull from the steaming joe and made a series of faces, starting with pain from the burn, followed by disgust at the day old brew, then resignation to his daily routine.

Time to groom. He stepped into the vibra-bathe, and the acumulated grime and funk from the previous day, and a night of sweaty sleep, was vaporized and viciously sucked out of the ventilator shaft. The display on the front wall of the stall promped him for selection of fragrence. He poked the "none" button and stepped out. Next came the small tube of moisturizer/disinfectant/depilatory cream. He lifted a lock of hair on the right side of his head and applied the goo to a small, hairless patch beneath, careful not to get too much into the shunt socket in the center of the baldness. He bit the toothblock, licked his teeth, and was on his way ... to the livingroom.

Skyler fumbled around the mess for about two, ever more urgent, minutes until he found his 'plink BOX. The Uplink Bidirectional Optical eXchange looked like someone had taken a small walkman radio and glued it to a padded headband. He slid the 'plink onto his head, brushed his hair aside and clicked the rivet into his neural shunt. Immediately the optical transmitters and receivers on the rivet commenced communication with their counterparts in his shunt. His livingroom faded, and the selsctions "Opaque Translucent Standby" were transposed over it. His brain thought "opaque." The shunt encoded the signal, relayed it to the 'plink, which relayed the message futher, up to a sattelite in geosynchronous orbit. That sattelite relayed the info through several other sattelites, and down to the office. And he was there, the only delay being the speed of light.

Well, there isn't really an accurate term. There, is within his own mind, and the minds of hundreds of thousands of others. The location Skyler uplinks to really only houses a GMUT, Grey Matter Uplink Terminal. All the computing, calculating and storage happens within his brain and the brains of all his fellow employees. The GMUT interfaces with Skyler's brain and utilizes the 90% of the brain that is unused for all computing purposes. In essence, his office is in the brains of all the employees currently logged in, approximately 150,000 at any given time.

Instantly, Skyler is an expert, he KNOWS his job. He IS his job. He IS the computer, and it feels GOOD! He sits in a palatial office, a plethora of mahogany and gold. He grabs a sheet of paper from ... there. Grabs a pen from nowhere and begins work, hindered only by the speed of thought. He writes, performs a calculation, snatches the result from the space in front of him and splats it firmly onto the paper before him. The paper changes, and shifts to compensate for the results of the computation. All of this, the paper, the desk, the pencil, is unnecessary. The computations and paperwork simply need to be done. But the world they are done in is there to keep the mind in place, to fend off insanity. And The Company monitors this. If your world becomes too surreal, you could be a candidate for psychoanalysis. This is fuel for office gossip. "Did you see Joe325's office? He's livin' in a blender. He's gonna be psychoed soon, just watch." Living in a blender refers to the visual mess of a loose mind's office.

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