A woman from Flatbush, angry and desperate, and not willing to be fobbed off by another call center worker. Her father had died when his augmentation failed. She’d written, called, visited often enough that the front desk knew her on sight. Escalated things through every middle manager she could find. And somehow, it ended up on my desk.
I’m not sure why I didn’t pass it right back down again. Maybe I respected that stubborn persistence, maybe I noticed the East Flatbush address. I told myself it’d be the fastest way to handle it.
They put her in one of the smallest meeting rooms. She was young. Worn out, but holding herself together. Determined. She looked like she recognized something in me. Maybe she just hoped she did. Traces of my accent, perhaps. A hint of where I came from.
“Tell me the truth,” she said. “You understand.”
She laid it out, just like I’d already read in the file. Her father’s augment had degraded, the service plan had expired, so no repair or replacement. He’d collapsed in their kitchen.
Truth is, that’s not a mistake. It’s not a bug, it’s part of the business model. The company designs for that failure. Planned degradation, a forced cycle of upgrades. And almost everyone scrapes together enough to make the payments.
I thought about telling her. It could’ve been my dad, just as easily. He worked his hands raw in jobs that barely exist any more. He kept it together just enough. Kept our mortgage alive, some meagre savings. “Get out if you can,” he’d told me. So I did, while he stayed.
And now I sit on the forty-seventh floor, wearing a suit that cost more than he ever made in a month. I work out of a cubicle. My colleagues more likely to have come up through Westchester prep schools.
She wanted the truth. But the truth wouldn’t save her, wouldn’t help her. So I told her it was a terrible, tragic, one-off. A horrible accident, but no one was to blame.
The fight drained from her. I could see it. She wanted to push back, but she was so tired that she wanted an excuse to rest even more. I said I’d help expedite a small condolence payment for her, and she signed. Even thanked me for listening, as we shook hands goodbye.
After she’d left, I sat for a while. She couldn’t have won even if she’d known the truth. Better I’d done her the kindness of trying to put her mind at ease.
A couple of days later, senior leadership called me in. They’d read the transcript, wanted to congratulate me on how I’d handled it. Calm, clean, no exposure for the company. An irritating potential liability safely removed. They offered me a promotion. Equity, access, more power.
Now I go back to an office, not a cubicle. I can look out a window at the city sprawled beneath me. Towers of burning neon, drone contrails curling and twisting between them. I can’t see as far as Brooklyn with all that brightness. I definitely can’t see the cracked sidewalks in Flatbush, or my dad’s tired shoulders at the kitchen table.
I can see myself reflected back, though. Bright, sharp, superimposed over Manhattan. Better me than someone else.