Fifty elevators rushed up and down the main artery of BigThink. With each return to the ground floor, the line inched forward as another department shuffled through. John and his fellow organoid growth department peers waited patiently. 

In his hand was a new issue of the Regal Interview. The magazine was excellent that day, containing the interviews and photoshoots of two up-and-coming executive hotshots from the textile industry. The new economic development zone in the northern province created an exciting atmosphere in the pop-culture world as young new entrepreneurs entered the collective consciousness at a near-daily rate. It was difficult to finish the issue, though, as two of his dearly beloved co-workers bickered endlessly over their idols. They mumbled over the problematic statements from the executive of the company that produced the other’s shirt that day, and the lack of galas and balls that equitably represented entrepreneurs from all industries across all provinces. This hum of argumentation was broken up by a crack across the hall. 

All heads turned to the stairwell door right of the 50th elevator, which had just been slammed open by a member of the janitorial staff, who appeared pale and breathless. He rested for a moment before checking behind him and rushing towards the exit. No one attempted to stop him; all were far too tired to become involved. Just then, the thuds of tens of more footsteps echoed from the same stairwell before a flood of purple company officers began in hot pursuit.

It was only then that John began to assume that a serious offense had taken place. The janitor was wearing a far dirtier work suit, covered in grime and dust. As he ran, a white rag tucked in his back pocket waved in the wind, urgently flapping back and forth. He was a good runner, and he appeared tired and disturbed beyond belief. He was probably returning from the 34th or 63rd floor with all its valuables ready for the picking.

The officers, from across the hall, screamed and shouted various frantic demands to allow them to end the tiring pursuit. However, as the janitor reached the end of the grand lobby, it became clear he would not surrender.  

It was loud, so loud. Violent footsteps slammed into the tiled floor, while booming voices echoed and echoed, but the janitor did not speak. He ran silently. 

From a pink jumpsuit of one of the first officers in pursuit emerged a bright yellow dematerialization gun, which was raised towards the man. John prepared for impact and crouched towards the floor. His eyes winced in anticipation of what would come. The crack, then the thud, and finally, if the man was lucky, a scream. The world stopped for a moment. He had never seen a dead man. But the crack never came. For a few moments, he remained in his pathetic fetal position before returning to the world.

It was bright out, brighter than he remembered. The hall was silent. All heads were turned downwards, towards the floor where the man once stood.

There, in the middle of the room, was a pinkish puddle, a janitor’s suit, and a brain which writhed grotesquely in the light of the new day.  The brain was bigger than John had ever seen before, but it did not appear human. The lobes were swollen and smooth. It was unclear how it still remained. Usually, dematerialization distilled all biological matter from the human target. John had only ever grown organoids to a quarter of the size, and they were never as pink, never as beautiful. The officers ended their pursuit and formed a human wall around the strange puddle. In this conclusion, his peers returned to their magazines and chatter, averting their eyes from the stain. John, however, had given up on his magazine and was too transfixed on the large organoid. Through the gaps of their legs, he could see an officer place it into an incubator. It was bigger than the ones in his division.

The janitor’s life had been distilled into a puddle, which had now begun to be mopped up by a janitor. John took a mental note to avoid doing anything that could lead him to that fate, unable to shake the image of the deflated suit.

Soon enough, the group piled into the 23rd elevator and began to shoot up to their division floor. The ground became a small dot. Below, heads in long lines still remained turned towards the puddle. They resembled cattle ready to work.

John attempted to recenter himself on the ride upwards. Beyond the tall glass walls of BigThink Corp. was the electric energy that the Summer Solstice brought to the city. It was warm yet again, flowers bloomed endlessly, and the sun no longer feared beginning the day. It was a time of great and constant regrowth.

The elevator came to a slow and complete halt, and the group exited. John was disappointed in his inability to finish the excellent magazine. 

Ready to begin anew, John filed to his desk where the remnants of last night’s work still remained. Usually, he would leave the goop of the day’s work for the cleaning crew to collect during the night shift. It was completely disturbing to his work ethic to see that this had not been done. Now, he could not begin the tasks of the new day independently of his failures of the last. He had used far too much growth serum yesterday, leading to an off-batch of smooth, pink organoid that was fit only for disposal. The crew had, at the bare minimum, removed the malformed batch. 

John fired up his personal workstation, which gargled to life. It sputtered for a few moments, leaking some power fluid which clearly needed a fix, and finally illuminated the login screen, which prompted for his credentials. He typed each character into the workstation with savvy and entered it into the database recording system. This was always a moment of great pride. He had not always been the leading growth technician at BigThink. No, he had climbed the ladder to success, which he began as an installation technician.

Early in the mornings, usually around 3 A.M., he would be picked up by a transportation van, handed his assignments for the day, and sent off to some small-time shop or corporation to assist them in installing security monitoring systems. The new era of organoids had rendered essentially all pre-era technology useless in comparison, and thus, it was advantageous to pay a small fee to upgrade to the organic models. On the customer’s side, there was essentially no change in the pace of operations. Besides a noticeable difference in the security system’s ability to detect never-before-seen threats and tackle non-programmed tasks, the software and use cases remained largely the same. On the technician’s side, however, came a hurdle of obstacles that only the organic era could usher in.

For instance, throughout the installation, John would have to ensure the well-being of the relatively small organoids by constantly feeding them food juice. Then, once the thing was placed within a harness, he would have to weld the corrective shock wire, the interface cable, and the camera piece into the corresponding organic interfaces on the back, which would always emit a smell of cooking chicken. And finally, he had to interface with the machine organoid, view its signal, and calibrate it through successive corrective shocks. He did not miss the smell, or the labor, nor the early hours the job brought him, and snagged a promotion to the organoid growth department after a few months.

Logging into the system that day, he noticed a strange brain activity log recorded and dated at an impossible time of three o’clock in the morning. No one had access to the system at that time, let alone to this floor. Strange, he thought. Inside the logs, he found a frantic line of incomprehensible brain waves of unseen magnitude, from an unlogged specimen. They dipped and arched in a human manner. As John began to click towards the text output log, the familiar sound of shuffling steps echoed through the division, and all heads turned towards the elevator, which now held ten purple company officers.

They brought with them an aura of undeniable authority. They did not have faces; they were unshakable. What they said was the truth, and they simultaneously struck fear and hope into each company employee. John assumed that their presence was a formality, as a means of calming the building’s general edge following the dematerialization of the thieving janitor.

They stepped forward at once and spread across the facility without a word. While John was ashamed to have them see his workstation in this state, he was a willing and cooperative witness if they so needed. And thus, when an officer stepped forward towards John, he put on a brave smile and asked what he could do for them today, officer. The officer asked if he could join him in the elevator for a moment, to which John replied Absolutely. He did not follow the proper workstation-leave procedure (assuming he would soon return) and neglected to log out and power off the organoid-computer. 

As he followed the officer towards the elevator, he came up with bizarre fantasies that he had somehow committed the crime and was about to be apprehended by the purple company officers. Perhaps, in a bout of sleepwalking late at night, he had wandered through the empty streets, made his way through the lobby, swooshed up to the lab, and run tests on organoids. Yet still, that was not a crime. Nothing explained why they needed to hear from him about the janitor-thief. Furthermore, none of his peers were being helped to the elevator, which led him to keep his eyes towards the ground and his head held low. What had he done that was special? Perhaps he held the key to solving it all; maybe the key was in his workstation. He raised his head a bit.

The elevator door closed, but did not move up or down. They remained in a stagnant purgatory that was uncomfortable and off-putting. It was quiet. 

The officer raised his hand to read from a slip of paper. John Desmond, correct?

Correct, officer. May I ask why I have been chosen out of my peers to be questioned? 

Please wait with me, John. The elevator launched downwards. It was a strange feeling to be launched downwards before official work hours ended. He thought back to his mother taking him out of school early on his birthday, a sweet surprise, to go to the mammalian industrial district to watch the cows and sheep. He smiled.

The elevator swooshed below the ground floor, and suddenly, the light of the summer solstice was erased from the cramped compartment. Barely-used lights flickered on, and a warm glow filled his heart. He was visiting the heart of BigThink’s operation. What a rare opportunity. 

The elevator lurched to an unfamiliar halt, and he was helped out by the officer. The headquarters was largely bare metal. There was no accent of wood or synthetic fabrics to hide the structure’s bones. It was cold. There were many hallways leading to many important places. Important people in lab coats and suits shuffled around, but John was not a disturbance to them. They did not turn their heads as they headed to their meetings and lab experiments.

The officer led him towards another elevator in the center of the below-ground lobby, which protruded from the ground. The energy of the headquarters was sucked out and replaced with a seeping dread that stemmed from the newfound knowledge of a 51st elevator leading to a strange, unfamiliar, and dark place. Just then, the officer placed his hand around his right side in a cold and distant grip.

The elevator door closed, and they began a far slower descent. He gagged on the thick scent of burning chicken. John, the officer said, you will answer a few questions for us, and we will proceed from there. It was dark. 

Have I done something wrong? I will tell you anything you like. He thought about the janitor’s dematerialization. 

That is great to hear, John!

The elevator landed on the actual bottom of the facility. It was much colder. The elevator doors opened, revealing a small, small room that was similarly bare metal. There were two chairs and a metal table. In the center was a recorder-organ. He joined the officer in the cramped, bare metal room and sat in the cold chair that faced the opposite metal wall.

John, last night you left a batch of malformed brain organoid on your work table. To our understanding, they were improperly dosed with growth serum. You correctly identified that they were fit for disposal, and we thank you for that.

John’s chest relaxed, and while he was ashamed to hear this simple mistake taint the perception of his work ethic, he was glad to hear the company sympathize with him.

However, (John’s chest tightened) your batch continued to seep in growth serum overnight. 

He had made a simple mistake. Then, the officer continued. 

We know that you viewed the logs.

You came in before I could thoroughly check the logs. Obviously, it is innate to human curiosity to check on an unusual log!

It is company policy to report logs to superiors, not to investigate them on your own accord. 

A lump formed in John’s throat. 

Your oversight created a security vulnerability. That vulnerability was exploited. Everything was reclaimed by officers, but far too much was put at risk. He paused for a moment. Unfortunately, we believe that your personal identity matrix no longer aligns with our company values.

He did not bother to speak back. Why him? Why, of all loyal employees, was he the one persecuted for a simple mistake? A mistake, nonetheless. A door flush to the wall suddenly opened, and a black masked officer handed the purple officer a piece of paper, which he slid across the table alongside a metal pen.

Please sign this. It waives your rights of life to the company, which is the very best we can provide to you at this moment. You are lucky, John. 

He did not hesitate to take the cold metal pen and scratch his name across the thin black line at the bottom of the paper. He did not bother to read it. He was not in a position of negotiation. 

Very good, John. Please, follow me. 

The flush door opened yet again, and he followed the officer down the hallway that it led to. There appeared to be no end; darkness spanned further and consumed all color. Each of his footsteps clashed against the metal floor, which echoed and reverberated throughout the hall. He was ashamed to make such violent noise.

Then, another flush door opened suddenly to the right of him, and his dread was replaced by the imminent moment that was unknown. John so sorely missed the infinite tunnel and wished now to walk it for eternity. He stepped through the door and was then met with a thousand images which his human mind could never dare to conjure, even in the deepest depths of his imagination.

Before him was a towering and monstrous brain organoid which pulsated and writhed. It was disgusting and crude, intubated with wires and feeding mechanisms. There were interfaces that barbarically attempted to bridge the absurd organic creation with digital readouts and gauges. He wondered how much power it took to shock it.

Just then, he felt a sharp swipe on the right of his neck, and then, strangely, he bore witness to his body, which, most noticeably, lacked a head. Behind him was the purple officer with a grand axe, which had completed its arc across his neck. He felt the last of the blood pump through his neck, which was warm and thick. There was no uncomfortable shiver of cold that permeated through goosebumps up his legs and arms. He did not feel anxiety, dread, adrenaline, or fear. There were no chemicals to guide him anywhere but his own thoughts. He was free, and as he flew through the air, he smiled one last time as his vision blackened, and he thought of his mother and father, which made him sad, but he was sad on his own accord.

His head thumped and clanged on the metal floor, and he was glad to finally have some finality in his life. For a long time, that was his last thought. Yet, just a few hours later, he was surprised to regain consciousness. It was dark, but he could hear and think. 

John, an unfamiliar voice said, we are glad to inform you that you have been selected to join our think tank. You meet our cognitive aptitude requirement, and we hope that you can help us bring BigThink into the future. Congratulations! 

Just then, he exploded with the screams of one thousand thoughts and feelings. There was no happiness; there were so many ideas and memories. He had one thousand mothers and fathers, one thousand childhoods and hugs, and one thousand deaths. They all wanted to leave, to scream, or be heard, but nothing came in. Through the indescribable red of madness, John heard one mind speak to him.

John, John, are you there? Why did you do this to me, John? Why would you create me?