Island of the Unemployed

PUNISH!

In the caverns of a food processing plant, a gear shot into the darkness. A conveyor belt rippled and overlapped, sending a pink, gooey substance to the murky floor below. An alarm sounded as the conveyor belt jammed to a halt and thick smoke billowed. Surrogates, remote-controlled humanoid robots, rushed onto the scene.

"WHERE'S RIVER? WHERE THE HELL IS HE?" The lead surrogate stopped short of the paste. "This floor is disgusting! Colin, get on that conveyor belt!" A worker clambered up the mess with frightening speed. "Jet, get this food ready to put back into processing!"

"What? Are you kidding? This stuff goes back on the conveyor belt? Look at it!" The surrogate looked down, as the factory oil on the floor sunk in, turning the pink 'food' a maroon color.

"Do you want to be the one to answer questions when they ask us why we're under quota? Do what I tell you! Get a shovel!" the lead surrogate yelled. Colin leaped across the room to the nearest closet.

"Now," the lead continued, placing his metallic hands together. "Where is River? RIVEEERRR!" The sound echoed across the plant. He summoned a hologram map. Three yellow dots, representing him and his workers, were gathered around a red spot indicating the point of failure.

River, River, the lead repeated to himself as he zoomed out. The details of the map compressed until they were barely readable, and only then did a faint dot appear at the very edge. It was River. "You gotta be freakin' kidding me."

"What's that, boss?" Colin cocked his head over the fixed conveyor. He yanked the lever, sending it back into working order.

"River's about half a mile away. What the hell is going on?" the lead surrogate wondered. "He's a screw up, but he's never shirked his duties like this before."

Colin hopped to the ground and laughed. "Oh man, let's go find him. He's really in for it, right?"

The surrogates sprinted across the slippery floor, approaching River in mere seconds. River was face first into a wall with a dry mop, walking in place.

"RIVER!" the lead surrogate screamed. "RIVER, GET BACK TO WORK!" No response. He grabbed River by the neck and threw him against the wall. River collapsed, mop circling in the air.

"What's the matter with him?" Jet asked.

"I don't know...Oh! Wait!" the lead said. "I've seen this before. These floor moppers never last. Only stay for a couple of years, then they crack like this." The lead wondered why it took him so long to diagnose the problem. River jerked his limbs as he tried to mop sideways. "Looks like we can say goodbye to River. He won't be around come next work day." The lead reached down and ripped off River's name tag. Then he stared at it, thinking.

"Well, can't let a soon-to-be former employee get off so easy." The lead surrogate lifted his wrist to his face. "River Walker," he said into a mic. River's assigned avatar displayed in a holograph.

"Oh man, this guy's a train wreck!" Jet exclaimed. River's image displayed with hair unkempt upon a dirty face with sunken, distant eyes.

"PUNISH!" the lead yelled. The command sent a message to a chip embedded in River's brain, a chip that controlled the sensory regions of his cerebral cortex that could trigger a myriad of sensations. In this case, the pain area of his brain lit up like a Christmas tree.

River seized up and flailed, letting out a metallic scream. The others went into fits of laughter.

"Do it again!" Colin said.

"PUNISH!"

River shook and whirred again, prompting more gleeful laughter.

"So, what's going to happen to him?" Jet asked.

"Not my problem," the lead said. "I just know he won't be here after today."

They watched as River sparked and twitched.

"Hey, I've got an idea," Jet said.

"I'm listening."

"I've got tickets to the Coliseum tomorrow. It's gonna be a madhouse. Everyone's gonna be there. Nobody's going to want to miss any of the action. Let's bring him there, stand back, and see what happens. He'll get in everyone's way. People will beat the crap out of him. It'll be hilarious!"

The lead surrogate chuckled. "Okay. Sounds like a plan. I know his work pod number. I'll arrange for him to be ported outside the Coliseum when we arrive."

The real River Walker, the one controlling the surrogate in the food processing plant, laid on the floor of his small living space looking for his lost mop. The mop he dropped when he was flailing about in excruciating agony. The remote-controlled surrogate in the factory followed his every movement. "Where's my mop?" he whimpered.

This was no typical day for River. This was the end of a long road. His mind had been slipping for years. Earlier that morning, the last connecting thread to reality snapped. The reality he now experienced was one generated in his own mind. He found his mop and began to wipe sand in the vast desert at one moment, and ice on a glacier the next. Everything was a blur. Sand, ice, mud, water. It made no difference to him. If I keep mopping, I can keep my job, he thought.