Nullform #1 by Dem Mikhailov

Chapter 3

THE CONVERSATION ended up being both interesting and educational.

Deciding not to get bogged down in deep thoughts, I started with the most important question:

"What happens if I can't keep my ORL status?"

"What happens? You start down the chute... It's the first step towards bankruptcy."

"Wait, hold on. What do you mean, 'the chute'? Is that a figure of speech? Like I'll get thrown in the trash if I don't keep my status?"

"No! If you don't stay at ORL, you'll be sent down to GBL. Graded Basic Labor. Didn't they tell you anything? Didn't your waker explain this?"

"Who?"

"Your waker. Your personal alarm clock. The guy who woke you up, got you up, carried you to the hallway, and explained everything."

"It wasn't a guy. It was a girl."

"Whatever. Did he, or she explain the workloads to you?"

"Nope. Just said to read the interface."

"As if there's anything to read there. What is it, five lines of text?"

"Yeah. My waker did a shitty job. So explain the loads to me."

"ORL is your current work load. It pays more. This is your first day, which means that they gave you GBL but pay you like it's ORL..."

I could feel the gears start to turn in my poor thirsty head. My thick blood was desperately trying to deliver glucose to my brain as it started to work.

ORL, GBL...

The guy with three fours on his chest noticed I was paying attention, and started talking faster and more animatedly. A few times, he even risked taking his hands off the bottle clamped between his legs. The more he talked, the more I learned.

This was a simple, cold, and dispassionately cruel place. Everything was extremely rational.

Everyone who came to the Zone, as they called these hallways — and everyone started their path here — started with ORL status. Optimized Regular Labor. Everyone here got an ORL job from the system every day, and the system credited their account with sol if they did the job.

Were ORL jobs easy? For some people. A lot depended on the limbs you ended up with. Some people were lucky enough to get sturdy legs and strong hands. If you didn't... well, life's a bitch.

What was a standard ORL job?

Using gray slime as an example, the ORL version of the job was to collect eighty standard containers. You'd get fifteen sol for that. The system cut me a one-time break: I had a GBL job that paid like an ORL job.

So my current job description looked like this:

Job: Collect gray slime. Easy (O).

Description: Collect and deliver forty standard containers of gray slime to the receiver unit.

Deadline: Evening end-of-work alarm.

Compensation: 15 sol.

But a standard ORL job would look like this:

Job: Collect gray slime.

Description: Collect and deliver eighty standard containers of gray slime to the receiver unit.

Deadline: Evening end-of-work alarm.

Compensation: 15 sol.

If I failed to complete even one ORL job, I would automatically get demoted, no second chances. And the system, as judge, jury, and executioner here, didn't care why I wasn't able to get the job done.