USELESSMAGE

A five-floor building in a strict, minimalist design, barely visible in the darkness of the night.

Only one window is still pouring light.

Maybe someone forgot to turn it off?

Well... Not really...

The right way to call it is going to be: SOMEONE “FORGOT” TO LEAVE HIS WORKSPACE!

A young man was fighting with another one brain teaser in front of the Lab PC.

Keyboard keys moved up and down without visibility of when and how they were pressed. Only clicky sounds filled the room.

Except for computer accessories, the desk also held items like:

A worker’s name badge with the... young man’s name. Can you believe it?

Also, the inscription gives us a clue to the young man’s role. [RESEARCH CENTER ASSISTANT]

Next item is an untouched but opened food box, probably something from a nearby Asian restaurant.

A bunch of paper cups with varying content and varying degrees of fullness.

Coffee, black tea, green tea, some black water that somewhen was highly carbonated.

No-no-no-no! Regular, simple, clean water is not an option at all.

Do you think poor children collected those leaves and grains with their little hands, working from sunrise to sunset, was for nothing?! Hell no! You must show more respect for people’s labor.

Suddenly, the clicky sounds stopped, and the man turned his head to the window.

A couple of glances at the watches on his wrist and at the room space around him were executed.

He was the only human being detected. A loud and long sigh spread throughout the room.

“Holy! NO! This... This is the last time!” He slammed his hand on the table, causing several cups to spill a few drops of their contents onto the table.

“Forced shutdown task must take its legal place at my task scheduler... How that command goes?” He raised his head to the ceiling, remembering something.

The young man stuck out the edge of his tongue and began pressing keys, muttering under his breath: “shutdown... slash s... hmm... slash f... slash t 120 slash c quote SAVE YOUR PROGRESS AND GO HOME quote... ¹ Y-yep! Perfect!”

The young and naive workaholic was very confident that “shutdown /a”² would not be executed every time he saw a pop-up message.

I am not that confident, if you ask.

While packing his things up and clearing the table of life activity traces, the young man couldn’t keep his thoughts silent.

‘Interesting. I am pretty much sure... This day was shorter than it should.’ A long sigh finalized his thought.

“H-h-a-a-a... Friday evening, yeah, just as always... Nice job, Noel Sørensen...”

“And... How could I forget?”

“Thank you, ancestors, for 'saving' me FROM my homeland’s work-life balance right to the capitalism slavery with a perfect work-work balance. Hygge!”³ A perfect mix of mumbling, whispering, and sarcasm kept him company.

Yes, Noel... Workaholism, anger issues, zero friends — it is everybody else’s fault! There is absolutely no need to see a therapist.

Things got done, and an almost-closed door politely lets a hand reach the switch. The last light source in this building was finally turned off.

Walking calmly down the stairs, the young man’s gaze was fixed on the phone.

‘Come o-o-o-on! Someone take my ride!’ The taxi app also got its share.

While Noel approached the turnstile, a ding sound came from his phone — some driver was on his way.

‘FINALLY!’ His eyes were gently raised to the highest point possible.

Noel placed his pass on the turnstile reader and continued his way to the exit, but suddenly, in front of the exit door, he froze.

Ow! Noel, maybe you’ve forgotten something?

With a barely noticeable and nervous smile, he turned his head and threw a glance at the night watchman.

Ahh.. Sure, this senseless habit of people like saying goodbye to their coworkers and having small talks every morning, innit, Noel?

But for the joy of the young worker and not for the joy of place safety, the old man was sleeping.

‘Well... Whatever... I didn’t want to waste time here listening about his "sugar-buns-sweet-daughters" again.’ Noel’s smile became a little bit wider as he passed the exit door.

He threw a glance at the map displayed on his phone. The estimated time of taxi arrival was studied. His phone got a couple of spins in his hand.

“Fifteen minutes, you say...” Noel mumbled, while keeping his way to the sitting place.

Noel dropped his body onto the bench, clapped his pockets with one hand, and eventually took some round can out of it.

I assume the Northern European reader already knows what this is.

“Here you go-o, my darling,” he said with all tenderness available, and a true smile occurred on his face as well.

The young man took off the upper part of the round object, grabbed some small white pouch with his fingers, and a 50-milligram nicotine-containing projectile was charged under his upper lip.

A sigh full of happiness and relief, his shoulders dropped down in relaxation.

Noel’s back and the back of the bench made deep contact.

‘Hh-a-a.. I must admit, looks like I’ve learned everything interesting from this place. Maybe it’s time to change direction again before I take everyone’s work worries onto myself.’

‘Huh. Same shit every time... But what can I do? I can’t watch when they are wasting time on some dumb shit.’

Basically, Noel is repeating his work cycle over and over again.

He looks for interesting knowledge that he wants to acquire.He finds a job related to this knowledge.Noel collects knowledge. Happiness peak!When interesting knowledge is finished, he starts to shift others’ responsibilities onto himself.“Burnout” and back to the start of the work cycle.

This way, he has collected pieces of psychology, sociology, some physics, chemistry, biology, history, computer science, medicine, engineering, philosophy, and linguistics.

Yeah... He is very curious.

But of course, he was not an expert in any of these themes. A few months in each direction won’t make you an expert.

Feeling himself very close to the end of his work cycle, Noel decided to scroll through the jobs market a little bit. And just as simple as that, the first promoted vacancy made him feel interested.

‘Hardware and game tester at the same time.. They even specified the salary right away... It’s acceptable, pretty much.. Maybe even too good to be true.. Why? Argh! Doesn’t matter!’

‘So... should I learn Game Theory now?’ He moved his compressed lips from side to side.

‘Absolutely.’

This man is making decisions very fast, I should say...

Noel finished creating an application letter, checking all of his social network accounts and emails, talked a little bit with himself, and even with the hosted at his homelab AI LLM.

Finally, the long-awaited car arrived.

Car doors closed from the inside, and a second later, a forced greeting came out of Noel’s mouth: “Good evening.” It sounded not that grateful.

Was’sup, fella?! Too much nicotine was absorbed, innit?

The driver was a young guy with curly ginger hair and zero empathy, so... he turned his head to Noel with a wide, sincere smile. He laughed a little bit.

“Pf-f-ha-hha... For sure, man, good evening... It’s almost 2 PM. I thought researchers are boring. Huh!” The driver started to create a cozy, friendly vibe.

But loud and heavy silence was his answer, so the young driver turned his head back to the front and kept a watchful gaze on his passenger through the rear-view mirror, continuing without a smile, but with a slightly scared face.

“<cough> Oh, I am sorry.. You must be tired, le-e-t’s ride then already. Huh-huh...” Nervous chuckles sounded, and finally, the steering wheel started spinning, and the vehicle moved.

“...” Silence and a slight nod were an answer for the young driver.

Noel took out his nicotine source from his upper lip and shoved it into the smallest compartment of the round can.

People like this always made a “cup of confusion” for Noel.

Although right now Noel looked very unfriendly, he could have “played this game.” Most of the time he did it. But not right now. Noel was tired and almost knocked down with a punch that came from a mistakenly harmless little white pouch.

‘Da-amn... Boy, how do you do this thing? How are you this open and positive? And somehow I feel that you are not faking it. Shit. Looks like I’ve skipped some giveaway ceremony where kindness was given to people. Argh! Whatever... Like I can do something with it...’ Self-digging thoughts occurred in his mind.

The view of the night city flashed through the window, but Noel could not watch it.

Why?

Well... try it yourself then, smartass! It’s not that easy to watch something when you’re taking a nap. Huh!

However... The endpoint has been reached, and the driver gently pounded Noel’s shoulder.

Noel woke up a little bit confused and fixed his stare on the young driver.

“Ginger wonder,” with a wide smile, made a slight nod to the window.

“We’ve arrived. City is beautiful at night, huh? Oh... Excuse me once again. Please rate a ride with five stars. I’ve started to drive a taxi recently, and this is very important for me.” The young boy clapped his hands and left them sticking together in a prayerful gesture.

By this point, Noel’s condition had improved, and he was able to answer like a normal person.

“Sure, no problem. Have a good night.” The sweet and soft passenger’s tone made the driver blink rapidly in confusion while Noel was leaving the car.

Two minutes later, Noel entered his apartment. He took off his clothes and threw them onto the chair.

An exhausted body landed in the bed.

As he was trying to take a perfect pose for sleep, the phone made a simple piano note sound...

‘FUCK!’ A deep thought pierced his brain.

“WHO?!” In addition, a genius question sounded.

Within a second, Noel jumped out of the bed, took the phone out of his pants pocket, and collapsed into the bed once again.

A fateful email was received, and the notification preview was studied.

[FROM: V.R SOFT✅ <[email protected]>]

[THEME: Noel Sorensen | Alpha Testing Application]

“Ho-o-o? Les’ read it... So-so... Blah-blah-blah... we are very happy... blah-blah-blah... OWH! We would like to schedule an... introductory... session... with you on Saturday morning... at 9:00 AM. Please confirm your availability for this... blah-blah-blah...”

“Okay, got it. Gosh... Where do you take all of these extra words? Thank God, I have a bunch of tools for generating stupidly fucking long and hollow replies. HEY! LAMA!” As Noel finished his long speech, silence began to be filled with a loud fan noise.

A few seconds later, a peep-peep sound occurred.

“Give the order, master,” a robotic voice asked.

“Hha-hha-ha! Always funny... However, your task is to create a reply to the last email in the same style. Leave your reply in my drafts folder.” Peep sound confirmed Noel’s task.

Three seconds later... <peep> “Done.”

“Thanks, offload yourself from VRAM.” Fan noise became barely noticeable.

Noel checked the draft and burst out laughing.

“Yep! Des’ perfect, one hundred and sixteen words instead of ‘OK’. P-huh! SEND!”

After sending the email, the phone was softly placed onto the bedside table.

‘Hmm... Didn’t expect it, actually...’

‘No, I mean... Of course, I expected it, but didn’t count on it.’

‘But why Saturday morning? And who is sending emails this late? Hh-a-a-a.. Fine, will think about this tomorrow...’

‘Argh! Not tomorrow, technically after I sleep... Argh! Who am I talking to?’ Last thoughts flashed through his mind before he fell asleep.