The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

Chapter 53/Idle at the Museum of work

/Amsterdam/Musem of Work 

It was a few weeks before Io's trial/hearing. I had got a strange request physically posted to me. I was to meet Aunt Catherine at the museum of work in Amsterdam. Amsterdam was a blast of historic buildings I quite liked . The cybercar pulled up outside the museum late and I rushed in.

"<Bing>Welcome to the Museum of work. See how our ancestors spent huge portions of their time in futile and unproductive activities. Marvel at all the things people did at 'work' and learn more about how human beings liberated themselves from wage slavery. See how computers changed all this and freed everybody from tedious toil. See how we created the world of today were people are liberated get on with the important things in their lives" said my earrings and I came in.

I Ignored the offer of a tour guide and rushed straight to the gallery of 'Office Work'. I trotted up to Aunt Catherine at the exhibition who was watching the office of the 1960's. Aunt Catherine was standing next to another woman listening to a tour guide.

"In this simulation of an office, instead of selling physical labour people used to rent out part of their consciousness to businesses around the world. Businesses would rent time and memory space in people's brains to get their work done. These people would do thinking, reading, writing, having meetings, asking people to do things for them, for eight hours a day or more on behalf of the company they work for" said the robot pointing to the mildly animated manikin of a 60's girl in bright yellow blouse and in a mini skirt.

I was just walking through the main door when I got a buzz from Catz on Mars.

'<Bing>message from Catz:Mars. Hey bud, got some important news for you. Skpy me soonest-ness yakwim?' said my earrings when I went through the door.

I used my ring to text back I would.

"Here are people called office workers grouped around the table having what is called today a meeting."

The tour guide indicated the Glass surrounded room full of chairs a large table a screen at one end. Sitting on the chairs were animatronic life-size dummies going through the motions of having a meeting. One of them was standing up before projector. The projector put the words 'transformation' on the screen in front of them. The mannequin standing up was talking to a group of people many are paid a detention but others were falling asleep or drawing on notepads.

"As you can tell many people around this table are completely bored." The robot continued "While these people are said to be 'working' they are not actually doing anything. Just think about the millions of hours each year which was wasted in boring tedious activities like these. This was the sad way of life of many millions of people in the 20th and 21st centurys."

Listening was aunt Catherine, next to her was Not important.

"Hi" I said rushing up a little late, not more than five minutes, plus or minus ten(minutes).

Aunt Catherine turned around and I noticed next to her was aunt Mallory. She was busy with the election

I discovered that and Catherine had aunt Mallory 'accidentally' with her. It looked like aunt Mallory had organised the chance meeting because Mallory wanted to talk to me, off the record. To add to the recordless-ness of the off the record event, Not Important was sent off.

"I just don't know what to do" said Aunt Mallory. "if the judges find that Io is a robot I'm going to be responsible for selling that nice young girl into what many would call slavery."

"Speaking of slavery" said the tour guide. "here was see people sitting in a space called the staff canteen eating their humble boring meals. These people were told what they could or could not wear, they had to turn up EVERY morning at a fixed time. In fact so many people had to turn up at the same time that they often got into each other's way something they called a traffic jam or rush hour "