by Joachim Heijndermans
Nearly half an hour had passed, and Mike still hadn’t done anything worth a damn on the spreadsheet that sat there opened up on his screen, the cursor blinking patiently for him to finally type. Yet as much as he tried to put his mind to it, he just could not focus on his work. For every brief sentence he typed and few numbers he registered, he would inevitably become distracted and peer around the rest of the office from the corners of his eyes. They were out there. He knew it. They could be in this very office right now. Just like his fellow truth-seekers wrote on the message boards. All he needed to do was actually pinpoint one, and he could blow the whole conspiracy wide open.
“Hey, Mike. I’m gonna go and grab a coffee. Do you need anything? Tea or something?” Kelli (with an i), the lady at the desk to his left, asked.
Could it be Kelli? Quiet, polite, and hardworking Kelli? She’d been working at Masons & Barns for years now. There was no way she could be one on them. But then again, how would he know? From how the other truthers wrote it on the forum, the simulacrums may have been active for decades, seamlessly rooting their way into every part of society. How would he be able to tell them apart from the real thing?
“No thank you,” he said, feigning a smile. He couldn’t risk being too close to her, should she be one of them. Still, he turned her down politely, as he didn’t want her to think he was onto them. He just wasn’t going to risk ingesting something that could be swarming with tracking-nanites or some other sort of surveillance tech made in Seattle. Hell, the coffee cup itself could be a hologram spy. Considering what he’d read in that post about the microwave that scanned its owner’s body, anything was possible. There’s no telling what they’ve replaced with a simulacrum at the office.
Kelli walked on to join Kelly (with a y) from the finance department as they both made their way to the coffee area, chattering about this and that. A real conversation, or coded messages that they could decrypt nonverbally? Mike glanced at them, trying to spot something abnormal about the two. Clues of any kind. Because he was nearly certain that the simulacrums, those hard-light hologram phony’s, were everywhere. They had to be. The trick was to spot inconsistencies, as the big tech elites were bound to have missed some glitches or program errors when putting them together. These holograms would be state-of-the-art, but still made by humans. They’d slip up somewhere in the creation and deployment of their simulacrums. And once he could spot a flaw, he would know for certain that holographic spies were stationed among them.
The chair at the desk to Mike’s right squeaked as it was pulled away. “Hel-o-o-o *bzzt* Mi-Mi-Mi-Michael! Good morning to-dooo-doo-oo you,” said Andy, his co-worker of a year-and-a-half.
“Oh, hey Andy,” Mike said, only half-registering Andy’s arrival as he was too preoccupied with scoping the office for possible Simulacrums. He peered at Rich, who was engrossed in picking something from deep within his nose. Or was he? Was he in actuality calibrating something within his mainframe, with an activation signal hidden where no-one would touch it? Or taking a sample and scanning it? He’d have to keep an eye on Rich, as that type of intense nose-picking was just weird.
“*bzbzt*! Nu-Nu-Nu-Nuk-Nuthing like a cop *error* cap *error* cup of coffee in the morn-morn-morning, am I right Michelle *correction override* Michael?” Andy said, drinking from the upside-down mug while making crunching sounds as he swallowed.
“Yeah, sure thing Andy,” Mike said, whose attention had now fallen on Leonard, who had been staring motionlessly at his screen for a while now. Was he recalibrating? Trying to reconnect to some mainframe they’ve hidden in the walls? But then he began to select a swath of his report, deleted it, and resumed typing at his usual furious pace. Nothing out of the ordinary. Still, Mike made a note to keep an eye on him.
“Say, M-M-Michael—,” Andy began, his elbow phasing through his desk. “Did you x-x-x-x-experience that hefty *error* *recalibrate* Heavy Traffic, nineteen-seventy-three, this mourning *error* morning?”
“Hmm? No, not really, Andy,” Mike said. Then he paused, realizing something he hadn’t noticed up until now. “Wait…Andy?” he said, turning to his co-worker.
“Ye-Si–Hai-Yes?”
Mike pointed to the clock on the wall. “It’s past noon. You just got in now?”
Andy looked at Mike, his smile frozen on his face, while the color briefly vanished from his right eye. Then he jerked his body and sat up straight. “So I did. So I did. So I did. Apologies. I’m sorry. Toot-toot-Tut mir leid.”
“Hey, no skin of my back. If Wally asks, I’ll cover for you.”
“Much obliged, William Henry Hayes *bzzt* died in thirty days,” Andy said, his head briefly vanishing just as Mike fixed his attention back on Kelli and Kelly.
“Hi Andy. How’re things?” Kelli asked as she sat back down.
“SYSTEM REBOOT, PLEASE SAVE ALL OPEN DATA FILES AND PREPARE FOR UPDATES!” Andy droned in a deep baritone.
“That’s nice,” Kelli said, her concentration already back on her work.
Mike peered back at Kelli, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Something about her was off. Was it the eyes? Were her eyes too big for her head? Or the hair color? Something that didn’t match with how real people are supposed to look. She was dipping right into the uncanny valley before his eyes. She must be a fake. But how could he prove it?
Pain! That’s it! Mike remembers reading a post by @MrxstPuncherAmiYumiKawaii, that, despite the advanced tech used to make them, the Simulacrums still can’t register pain. Maybe if he gently pricked Kelli’s skin with something pointed, he could prove she wasn’t real. It had to be something harmless though, just in case she was the genuine article.
Mike leaned toward Andy, keeping one eye on Kelli. “Psst, Andy. Got a pencil and a sharpener I can borrow?”
Andy put his hand through his desk, then flung his drawer open and threw it out from its container. He leaned forward, his head angled at a perfect ninety degrees as he held out what Mike had asked for. “Here you *TILT*!” he groaned.
“Thanks,” Mike said, taking the pencil and the sharpener, as he then began to furiously sharpen it. When finished, he carefully began to inch the sharp point towards Kelli’s arm, just slowly enough that she wouldn’t notice. He waited, like a hungry cobra, for just the right moment to strike. The phone rang. She answered. Now!
“Hello, Kelli Carmichael with–,” she began, when Mike nudged the pencil into her arm, piercing her skin. “OW! Son of a bitch!” she shrieked, grasping the small wound on her arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I…ehm,” Mike muttered. She was real all right. He had miscalculated.
“What’s going on?” Wallace, their department manager asked, peering out from his office.
“This psycho just stabbed me with a pencil!” Kelli snapped.
Mike’s eyes darted back and forth, trying to concoct an excuse. “My hand…it slipped. I just–!”
“I just saw you sharpen that! What’s wrong with you?”
“All right, settle down. Everyone, get back to work,” Wallace said, addressing the rest of the floor. “Now, Mike, this isn’t the first complaint regarding your behavior we’ve had recently. If this really was an accident, try to be careful in the future. Because if we get one more complaint, I’ll have to involve HR, you got that?”
“It was an accident,” Mike grumbled, pushing the pencil out of sight.
“Mike?” Wallace said, expectantly.
“Yes, Wally.”
“Kelli, did you want to file a complaint?” Wallace asked.
She glanced at Mike, then shook her head, not wanting to bother to sit down with HR or the headache of some kind of management directed course they’d force on them.
“Good. Now, let’s just calm down and get back to work. No more games, got it, Mike?” Wallace said sternly.
“Yes, Wally. I’m sorry, Kelli,” Mike said. Not that he meant it. This just confirmed how deep this all went. Wallace was in on it too. Of course. What better way for the elite cabal to spy on its drones than by putting a simulacrum in charge of the departments? How many did they place? How advanced were these holograms? And how could he finally pinpoint one of them once he’d be face to face with it? He’d have to do some deep digging on the forums later tonight so he could concoct his strategy.
“Good morning, Mi-Maiaiai-Mike,” Andy said. “Nothing like a cup of koh-koo-coo-coffee in the morning, am I Wright *error* write *error* right, Mike?”
“Yeah, Andy. Sure thing,” Mike muttered, glancing around the office, peering for possible signs of a simulacrum.
END