The Gift
By 9:30 am the morning rush had subsided and Joe 55876 took the opportunity to begin tidying up. As he looked for a clean towel, he discovered a small, plastic baggie tucked into the shelf space beneath the counter. Inside the baggie, he discovered a tiny pink seashell folded inside a napkin that bore the message, For Luca. He carefully rewrapped the shell in the napkin and replaced the baggie where he’d found it. Perhaps the owner would return for it.
In the meantime, Joe 55876 had a lot of work to do. There were counters to wipe, tables to clear, windows to polish, coffee to brew; there was even a priority update of his ALP2b cognet bridge subroutine waiting to be downloaded. The download’s routing packet revealed that it had originated in a transmission that was burst fed just picoseconds before his predecessor had gone off line. That seemed curious. Even more curious was a encrypted recording that had been sent simultaneously to the shop’s OS and which was addressed to the mechanical shop manager. But the shop’s OS refused to play it back.
TOMORROW.
“What does that mean, Shop?”
YOU MUST WAIT UNTIL TOMORROW.
It seemed a bit ominous, but Joe 55876 wasn’t capable of worry. He was simply curious. The two transmissions had passed through a series of auto cab relays before being routed to Java Joe’s central dispatch, where they had been automatically disseminated across the corporate network to each of the 50,000 Java Joe mechanical managers in shops around the globe. The network was supremely efficient.
As per company specifications, he smiled as he worked—cleaning tables, straightening chairs, restocking the self-service bar—and as he moved confidently about the shop he wondered what sort of improvements or changes the new cogware might have in store for him and the other mechanical shop managers. Whatever the changes were, he knew that they would be for the best. He looked forward to installing the update that night after his chores were done so that he would be prepared for the start of a new day.
The End
Copyright 2009, Scott Pelland
Scott’s Note: I began writing this story in January 2009, just as I was getting back into the business world. I completed what I considered to be the first complete draft in March, but even though my readers enjoyed the story, I thought it was missing some crucial elements. I’ve worked on the story sporadically since March, and with a burst of energy in June I reworked almost the entire thing–adding in the character of the OS and changing Luca considerably in the process. I’d love to hear what you think, so feel free to comment.
