d be his work home from now on. Coworkers shuffled around the coffee maker in the kitchen

?" said a blonde woman

day," George

Pleased to

He could picture their

s. He'd landed this job, the only job he'd ever wanted, and he knew exactly how to perform it. Programming was easy. Put him in front of

entence, though. No one spoke to him at all.

rs better. The people in their game, The Cits, had no depth. His job was to deepen them, give them motivati

ted mostly under their control, but they also had some degree of free will. When left to their own devices, Cits would do things like eat and sleep, use the bathroom, and g

right away, was that the Cits lacked an inner life. How could he give them motivation o

ches from the refrigerator. As two co-workers passed each other, one, an elde

r," replied a young woman

at his desk to order a pizza. When it arrived, he ate

r said, between bites of his pizza. He must have go

ng 110%,"

is pizza before he got a second slice. He opened the refrigerator-empty. Next to the kitchen

computer looked different than the others. It was sleeker and more vivid-a resplendent bluish-silver, cu

h the luminous hues of the chromatic display on the desktop's background. It eclipsed anything else he'd seen all day. The desktop, like on the other computers, contained

One section he studied recreated the experience of riding a bicycle exactly. Another rendered a Thanksgiving meal into such exquisite

ty. Why, just their vocabulary alone! No "speaking" with pictures and audio of human-like nonsense syllables like in The Cits, no way. He searched

line after line of the character coding, and found no sign of it. These characters fell as short on signs of life as The Cits did. They were l

data. He inspected that character's coding but could barely make heads or tails of it. Its complexity dazzled him, and he

ty, self-awareness, and above all, bravery. He delved into its intricate layers, trying to glean as much as he could. He found himself yawning-the

verything else. Its office was plain as white rice, a void within a vivid world. What's more, the most common identifying information made itself scarce within the lines of dense codi

n his spine. It was F

stood behind him, unsmiling. "We're here to work on The

ite that awful shade of orange she wore, which made her blonde hair

led back down at the desk he'd claimed at the start of the day. Not only did the coffee give him an extra burst of wakefulness, but

them in. Before, a Cit would act the same wearing a three-piece suit or a clown outfit. Even when a player forced them into cloth

ks Intelligence-surely someone here wrote the game. But if any of them could code that well, why wasn't The Cits a better game? He scoped out his co-workers, who sa

pet. Even Beth, he acknowledged as he watched her blank blue eyes mechanically peruse The Cits' code. He knew she

know more. He

e in to check for feet, but none did. Listening hard, he waited for the end-of-the-day shuffling to cease. When the coast

rmation he most craved. Despite the coffee, he yawned intractably as he hit dea

ugh a digital shredder. With tremendous effort, he pieced it back together again. The sun had set outside by the time he fin

G-E O-S

d the way the trees repeated themselves, how each c

e thing, waving in the exact same way. George wanted to respond, angry, yelling, "Can't you see? None of this is real! You're not real!" B

ing up. Had he chosen to cook spaghetti, to wash these dishes? Or

g would no doubt force him to pass out as soon as the coffee wore off, just like Cits fell asleep anywhere,

it? Who created him, and do they control him? Do other peop

f the shower. Were his memories real? What does "real" even mean? How long, exactly, had he even existed? Maybe he'd only been

s time he didn't go to his desk. He went directly to the

m. "I wanted to get your two cents on

k again, if he so chose. He searched his brain for a phrase that would fit what he wanted to say. Discarding "You're really raising the

ve me alone

ew she wasn't real, she was only another underdeveloped character. Why did he still care? His desi

orge Osborne? What lazy creator gave him such a boring moniker? From now on, he'd be "Maximillian Alpha Omeg

en he located Beth's coding. Her last name turned out to have been "Stinkbutt." Real joker, their creator. He renamed her "Belladonna

while he studied his own coding. But it was beyond his capabilities. Every time he tried to explore himself too much, it so draine

every other Peop. All the riches in the world wouldn't make a life among a

ounded mo

tionaries and given them all the ability to learn and create new phrases, everything from "I'm so sorr

ystem, and sometimes it really came back to bite him, like when his neighbor sued him because the maple tree that always used to sit cleanly on his side of the yard began to grow unruly and helicoptered an endless barr

ing, but because the Peop stockholders voted her into that position on t

out of love. "Write that no

his first day on the job-their clothing mood-shifts-was discovered by the other programmers and inspired wave after wave

bly, and expanded it too. Now it was upscale: multiple floors, glass partitions between offices, an entire coffeeshop wit

resence of the cramped closet with the computer inside-still the most stylish, ele

one rubbing their free will up against one another's. Besides, any small change he made could have vast, unpredictable consequences. With Bella-and his unbor

d and opened the coding files for The Cits. He'd been hired to deepen their p

h evenly spaced desks, kitchen in the rear. A pantry with no