FICTION - The Lucky One

Gary stared out the window of the Wireless Fidelity high speed network train. Outside his transport packet, a worldwide web of trillions of individuals started their day. A seemingly infinite amount of bright white electrical circuits flew through the air, getting from point A to B. Many were on their way to work, just like him. Monday vibes.

Admittedly, he was a bit nervous to start his new job. Having done a very minimal amount of research, he just had a good feeling he could be an acceptable addition to the team at Ryan Corp. In this cold, dark world, there were not many jobs for a person like him. With AI dominating most of the workforce, Gary felt like he was lucky to even get past the interviews and testing rounds.

Train packet #601 arrived at the transport router terminal and slowed to a stop. He got up, exited the packet and started walking towards the very large facade of his new workplace.

Upon opening the door, a wave of hot air blasted him in the face.

“Holy shit,” he reacted.

He was not ready for that - Do people really work productively under these conditions? Why not crack a window or something?

Gary approached the front desk in the lobby, which had a cute receptionist lady sitting behind it.

“Hey there, I’m the new guy?” He said with an ounce of confidence and a pound of anxiety.

“SSID?” She said, without looking up from her OLED work display.

“Uhh, Gary. Gary Gamma” He said with a slight blush - He wasn’t exactly sure what she was talking about.

She looked up with a confused look on her face. She checked him out up and down and returned to her screen. “That’s not really what I asked, but it’s ok. I can just look it up and make the necessary changes for you.”

Gary was relieved she knew what she was doing, because he surely did not.

“We’re going to connect you to Ryan Upstairs. It’s a bit hotter, but you’ll get used to it, and if you can prove your hard work, you’ll get a chance to connect to Ryan Downstairs or even Ryan Garage” She said while typing away on her interface.

The lady stood up and began leading Gary down the hall. “I’m Suzy, by the way. Suzy Supra. I’ve been at Ryan Corp for… 1 year? Wow, the time flies. Not too long ago, I was the new girl, feeling a lot like you probably do now…”

They walked into a huge office with seemingly hundreds of cubicles. It was extremely hot in here, sweltering even.

“Your desk is right over here, the empty one” Suzy said as they ended their walk.

Gary took a seat - The copper chair was a bit uncomfortable, and he could instantly feel the layer of sweat dripping down his back as he reclined for the first time. He spun around to see what guidance Suzy had to offer.

“You probably have a lot of questions - Unfortunately we don’t have much time to focus on you specifically. Here at Ryan Corp we’re all about the team as a whole. We have a team meeting about every 10 minutes on average, to stay synchronized with our tasks, escalate problems, all that good stuff. You do know the basics of what we do here, right?”

“I read something about securing the network. Is it under attack or something?” Gary asked with a sense of genuine curiosity.

“Oh yes, our network is under constant attack. There’s an enormous bounty on cracking the algorithm. However, you officially work for the good guys

now. We stay profitable by simply playing by the rules” Suzy said with a sense of pride.

“With that said, you’ve got a few minutes to go ahead and configure the settings on your system before your first team meeting. Go ahead and do that, so you can ask any questions or escalate any troubleshooting issues to the team at the first opportunity” She recommended.

“Ok, got it. Thanks Suzy, I appreciate the insights so far” Gary said with a smirk.

She smiled back and returned to her desk with a graceful swagger.

Gary turned around and powered on his work machine. Heat began blasting out of the left and right sides, filling his cubicle. Overhead, a large fan powered on, cooling him down instantly.

“Oh that’s nice” He said as the cool air blew over him from above.

He checked the interface in front of him.

[Connecting to Network Ryan-Upstairs…]

[Synchronizing Block Headers…]

[Pruning Chain Database…]

[Connecting to Public-Pool…]

[Adding New User Info…]

A file popped up at the bottom dashboard of the screen. Gary intuited that he was supposed to tap on that, so he did. The haptic feedback from the screen was sort of satisfying. “Woah,” he said. He had never used this sort of tech before.

[Analyzing Memory Pool…]

[Loading Block Template…]

[Ready for Worker Input…]

[Awaiting Entropy…]

The work file finished loading, and immediately the screen populated with the largest and most complex spreadsheet Gary had ever seen.

“Holyyyyy shit man, what am I even looking at here?”

Gary briefly looked around at his coworkers. They were all furiously tapping away at their screens, rearranging their spreadsheets, making edits, leaving comments, tweaking the equations, filtering and un-filtering, categorizing, adding and deleting data at break-neck speeds.

His stomach sunk down into his abdomen. All of a sudden he felt sort of screwed. How was he to perform this seemingly impossible task? How was he to stay competitive in this huge building of experts, as the new guy? It was all a bit much for him, and the anxiety was now fully setting in as a few new beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

All of a sudden, a notification popped up at the upper right corner of the screen: Team meeting, starting right now. Gary clicked the notification to join the call.

“Hey everybody, as usual, nothing huge to announce,” the team leader announced “We do have a new team member with us though. Gary, would you like to introduce yourself?”He was not prepared to immediately be the center of attention like that.

“Oh yeah, hey guys. I’m Gary… Just getting settled in still and familiarizing myself with the tasks…” He said while trying to display even a drip of confidence.

“Oh you’ll fit right in here, we heard great things from Suzy already. If you ever need anything, I’m your manager, Peter Plus-Plus. Just shoot me a DM and I’ll help out ASAP.”

“Thanks Peter, I appreciate that!” Gary replied with gratitude.

“Well on that note, y’all know what time it is. Back to work! Time to kick some ass, make some hash, and print some cash. See you all in about 10 minutes!” Peter exclaimed as everybody began leaving the call.

Gary backed out of the call wondering what he had gotten himself into. Team calls every 10 minutes seems a bit excessive, and this monster of a spreadsheet seems like the biggest shit show he had ever seen. And the constant threat of cyber attacks on the network? It all seemed like a lot.

He tapped his way through the spreadsheet. Scrolling down the pages and flipping through the tabs, he scanned for anything that seemed of importance. All of a sudden he found a cell in tab 17. It was highlighted in red so Gary tried tapping on it.

[Potential Nonce…]

[Sharing to Network…]

[Job not found…]

What the fuck? He thought to himself. He had certainly found something that seemed important, but it said not found. That was not very intuitive of a response.

He flicked his way down the sheet vertically and through the tabs horizontally. All of a sudden he found another cell, this time highlighted in gold. He scrambled to tap it, hoping for a bit more detailed response.

[Potential Nonce…]

[Sharing to Network…]

[Difficulty too low…]

Oh, c’mon… This all seemed perfectly difficult enough. He wasn’t really sure what he was looking for here, or what to do once he found it.

He kept flicking his way through the sheets. Surely there was something of value here he could find and contribute to the team on his first day. He tried

sorting the columns differently - first by reverse-chronological order, then by alphabetical order. He fiddled with the equations operating behind the cells some.

All of a sudden, the sheet completely changed. Initially there were only a few red and gold cells per page, and now there were at least 10x as many as before. This was promising. He quickly tapped his way through all of the red and gold ones on this page.

[Job not found…]

[Difficulty too low…]

[Difficulty too low…]

[Job not found…]

Gary leaned back in his chair for a second and stared up at the huge ceiling fan above him. He was feeling a bit over his head here. Everything seemed like 1 step forward, 2 steps back. And he needed this job - The global economy is in shambles and there were not many opportunities out there. He had to prove his work to impress his bosses.

He leaned back forward and continued to engage with the spreadsheet. Flicking through the pages and tabs vigorously, he searched for anything that seemed out of the ordinary or important. All of a sudden, he noticed something he hadn’t seen before - a cell colored orange. He tapped it.

[Potential Nonce…]

[Sharing to Network…]

[New Best Difficulty: 6.15M…]

A cold chill ran down Gary’s spine as the haptic feedback response ran through the screen and also his chair.

“Ooh, 6.15M, and on your first day. Nice one Gary” Suzy said from behind him with a giggle.

Gary spun around so fast he got dizzy. She had sort of snuck up on him.

“Oh don’t mind me, I’m just in the middle of a restart. There was a firmware

update, you should probably check that out when you get a chance” She said as she continued back down the hallway.

Gary watched her turn the corner and then got back to work. This whole Best Difficulty thing was providing him his first bit of workplace satisfaction, and some much needed alleviation of his concerns.

He began flying through the sheets, tweaking the equations some more, adjusting the filters, sorting and unsorting. He was clearly supposed to look for the orange cells. The problem is when you’re flying through these sheets at this speed, the red ones and golden ones blend together and look a bit orange. That is going to make this a bit more difficult than it should. And as he continued to adjust the sheet, the number of red and golden cells grew, leading to more false-positive oranges as the pixels flew by.

All of a sudden he received a ping at the top right of the screen again. Team call, had it already been 10 minutes?

Hundreds of his coworkers piled into the call right away.

“Alright everybody, welcome back to the huddle” Peter said. “Brief leaderboard numbers, Larry actually hit a company record just now. New Best Difficulty of 959G! Can we all give a round of applause for Larry please?”

His coworkers exploded into an incredible show of support for Larry. Gary joined in.

“Larry, you got any words of wisdom for the team?” Peter asked, hoping to glean some insights from Larry’s apparent success.

“Yeah, don’t trust, verify,” Larry said. He was a really bulky dude, very clearly the most fit and probably the sharpest guy on the team. This was who Gary was competing against, and he didn’t feel great about it.

“Love to hear it,” Peter said. “Well with that, team, back to work, chat again in about 10 minutes.”

Everybody left the call and began scrambling to be the next success story within the company.

Gary’s field of view started to become a blur of spreadsheet cells flying by at the max speed of his fingers. Equations, categories, sorting, filters, he was manipulating all of them intuitively like clockwork. Hours turned to days, which turned to weeks. There was no time for breaks. There was no time for vacations. He had to complete his work, and prove himself to his bosses. He had to show there was no second-best.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. They burned from the white light he had been staring at for 42 days straight. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and leaned back towards his work machine. Continuing to do his thing, he flew through the tedious and seemingly-never-ending sheets.

All of a sudden, he spotted a cell that was out of the ordinary. It was… Purple? He smashed his index finger on it excitedly. His machine began pumping out more heat than ever before, and the haptic feedback pattern sent a shock through his nervous system as the dopamine began to hit. His screen started to flash green as his coworkers began gathering around behind him, looking over his shoulders in disbelief.

[Potential Nonce…]

[Sharing to Network…]

[New Best Difficulty: 777Q…]

[Block found…]

[Publishing to Network…]