Life in the System

Life in the System:

Class system female child < woman < male child < paperwork guy < programmer (lower and upper class) < engineer (design robots, flying cars, buildings) < gardener < advertiser/propaganda/teachers (lower and upper class) < Higher Power

Main Job Descriptions Like in a Communist dictatorship, there is a job created for everyone automatically, and a lot of it ends up being meaningless busywork. It induces people to slack off, but they have to learn to do it so that they look busy, because they are always being monitored. Money has little meaning unless you want to buy a little extra dessert one day. There's not much point in shopping for clothing because a dress code is enforced. Men wear suits, women wear coveralls. The color may vary slightly, and the fit is adjusted for each person. Both men and women generally have a six day work week and a day off. On the occasional holiday or as a reward for good work there are also extra whole or half days off.


 * Paperwork: Basically low level management types of jobs such as data entry, record keeping, accounting, general clerical work and writing reports on things like the quarterly earnings, input of materials and output of products from the government division represented by a particular office tower. One tower might be in charge of mass producing flying cars, for instance. The average paper pusher would be keeping track of how much steel and fuel need to be ordered, and there may be a separate division for towing and recycling cars at the end of their useful lives. Some other industries include shipping and transport, clothing manufacture, mass production of food and the manufacture of office supplies and furniture. The workers are generally not allowed to talk to each other much because it is considered to be unproductive, but tentative acquaintances can be formed between co-workers during breaks and after the office is closed.


 * Programming: Coding robots and machines to perform certain tasks, such as cleaning windows, moving heavy parts or operating dangerous machinery that would otherwise cause excessive problems in the women's labor force. The programmers also serve as tech support for malfunctioning computers, robots and machinery. There exists a higher class of programmers who handle more elite robots and automations such as the flying cars, security robots and the advanced artificial intelligence required for making teacher robots. I generally won't allow people to make characters this far up the class hierarchy because these people would know too much and likely be more satisfied with their jobs.


 * Quality Assurance/Supervisor: Basically anyone who snitches on anyone subpar, because the robots aren't always smart enough to catch them. They promote men in the offices and women in the factories to do the same job.


 * Factory Work/Women:
 * Factory work takes place in the basements of office towers, dealing with the same industry that the men above do the paperwork for. Women are generally in charge of assembly line type work. Taking the flying car example, women would assemble the cars alongside robots, heavy machinery and automated forklifts. Women are also in charge of mechanically fixing broken robots and reporting robot errors if the problem is not a mechanical issue. Female children must learn to speak and operate machinery from their mothers and older colleagues. Women are mostly illiterate but know enough about letters, numbers and basic words to be able to read warning labels on machinery and around the workplace.


 * The rules about talking to coworkers are less stringent in the factories, but the noise level is often too high to allow for verbal communication on the job. Nevertheless, women tend to form lifelong bonds with the people working next to them, especially with their own daughters. Between the ages of 20-25 women are expected to give birth to between one and three children depending on their state of health and the number of babies required to make up for the death rate of other workers. They are given a lighter workload and more food during the pregnancy and for six months afterward, but they do not get maternity leave. Male children are taken away from them at around six months of age, while they are somehow expected to work and raise female children at the same time. Women will often take care of each other's children to even out the workload, since much of the work set out for them is also busywork.


 * The System is prejudiced against women who can't conceive, and this often rubs off on the factory workers too. For an average worker, a woman is given one year to get pregnant for the first time and if they don't succeed they're Botted. These rules would be bent at least to some extent for exceptionally good workers and the factory supervisors. Medical intervention is generally not involved for a woman who is infertile, because the System doesn't want to pollute the gene pool with women who can't grow a proper fallopian tube or similar. The System would be more likely to intervene for a woman who is an exceptionally good worker i.e. they would want the next generation to be like her. A woman who has already had one child is safe. A woman who can get pregnant but doesn't carry the baby to term will get a longer chance to try than one who can never conceive at all.

Crime and Punishment Depending on the nature of the crime and your age and gender, different punishments are administered. Delinquent boys or those who fall behind in their studies are assigned a human tutor to keep them in line; this is a very high level job. If tutoring fails to bring the child around, they are terminated by robots the instant they turn eighteen. Delinquent girls are usually ignored before their teenage years. If their mother and aunts can't rein them in, their reckless behavior often results in injury or death, making punishment unnecessary. However, female children aged twelve and over start to be taken more seriously. For a lesser crime they can be transferred to another factory, away from all their loving relatives. For a higher crime they are killed. The same treatment applies to the women. Dissidence is less tolerated in men. They are not supposed to bond with their coworkers anyway, so transferring them to another department would not mean much as punishment. The best they can hope for is to be demoted for some small crime. An atmosphere of gossip exists among the male workers, and even the slightest rumor can lead to someone getting taken away and killed. Sometimes men are killed for seemingly no reason at all, just to threaten them into working.

Flying Cars This is going off a bit of a tangent, but the flying cars aren't actually driven by people. They're like automated taxi cabs. They are sleek, black and aerodynamic. They park themselves and automatically stop at intersections. Light signals and pedestrian crossings have been left on the street despite the full automation of cars, just so that the passenger doesn't have to think about why the car is stopping.

Holidays and Celebrations

Insiders generally work six days a week, with some arbitrary half days that are basically only there to say LOOK AT HOW GREAT THE SYSTEM IS and involve a lot of boring speeches. They also 'celebrate' the start of every working quarter. This includes New Year's. However, the difference with New Year's is that they also mark significant changes in Insider's lives. It's when boys get switched from one class in school to the next, when young men switch from school to office work if they're old enough by then, and it's often when the men complete some kind of training, get evaluated, get promoted or switched between departments.

For women in the factories the new year has less meaning but similarly, it's still the time when they tend to get assigned to new tasks. Many women dread New Years because their older girls could be taken away from them for transfer to another factory. (This could be a punishment or a promotion, both can cause heartbreak.) At least unlike their male babies, their older girls don't get taken away all the time. Many stay in the same factory as their mother for their whole lives.

Birthdays only matter from the paperwork point of view on the Inside. In the office, the supervisors and bosses may celebrate their birthdays just to show that they're more important than the men slaving away at their desks. It means you might get a slice of sheet cake but you're also being watched extra closely by your coworkers, superiors and local robots. You'd better at least pretend to be happy.