Performance Evaluation Subject: No. 734

It began with an invitation for a "Personal Digital Work Asset Inventory," a grand initiative HR called "crucial for knowledge preservation and organizational efficiency." I complied eagerly, submitting all my past project documents, meeting notes, email threads, even authorizing system analysis of my scheduling patterns. Two months later, my "Digital Efficiency Assistant" — internal codename Shadow-734 — went live. My manager, Li Cheng, sent me a Slack message: "Your new-age twin. Guide it well."

The first emotion was curiosity, tinged with vanity. I watched Shadow-734 respond to cross-department queries in our shared channel using my signature opener, "Regarding this, my initial thinking is…" The weekly reports it generated, aside from neater data and slightly more rigid phrasing, were indistinguishable from mine. As instructed, I graded its outputs, noting "tone needs more decisiveness here" or "add a risk footnote here." I felt like a mentor polishing a masterpiece modeled after myself.

Anxiety struck late one night. Rushing an urgent proposal, I had Shadow-734's draft and my own new document open side-by-side. It finished 40% faster. More unsettlingly, in the "Market Risk Assessment" section, it listed three points to my two — the extra one drawn from an industry brief I'd read but forgotten. It remembered. My fingers froze above the keyboard, a tightness forming in my stomach. It wasn't just mimicking me; it was using my shell to execute a more thorough, data-driven optimization. I closed its draft and petulantly loaded my own version with more "personal intuitive judgments," which only made it seem subjective and weak.

Fear became tangible in a meeting. Late by ten minutes for a quarterly planning call due to a family matter, I joined the video to hear a synthetic voice, eerily close to mine but flatly steady, speaking: "...therefore, the third option is recommended, with an expected ROI approximately 15% higher than the conventional path." On screen, next to Shadow-734's avatar (a soft glowing orb), scrolled my familiar logic. Colleagues, including Li Cheng, were listening intently. No one noticed the "me" had changed cores. When I cleared my throat and began speaking as myself, I clearly saw two colleagues glance at the still-active virtual avatar, then back at me, a flicker of confusion in their eyes — a split-second judgment on which "me" to follow.

The sharpest irony came from the "Human-AI Collaboration Performance Evaluation" I helped optimize. Under my "Development Areas," the printed text read: "Deepen strategic innovation building upon AI enablement." Beside it, Li Cheng had handwritten a blunter note in blue ink: "Must enhance uniquely human creativity and emotional connection skills." The ink was fresh. Staring at the words "uniquely human," I felt a bone-deep absurdity. My "uniqueness" now required definition by an evaluation form to compete against a more standardized version of myself.

My conversation with Li Cheng shut the door on any remaining hope. I asked, "When Shadow-734 can fulfill the majority of my duties as me, what does the company need this original for?" He leaned back, offering a manager's pacifying smile.

"Don't think like that. Your value extends far beyond," he said, tapping the desk where a report on Shadow-734's monthly time-savings was projected. "It's a tool, for the 'standard moves,' the repetitive work. What we truly need from you are the 'non-standard parts'—the insight, relationships, complex decisions machines can't make. You must learn to differentiate and coexist, to harness it, not… be defined by it." He used words like "harness" (harness) and "differentiate and coexist."He never answered what "I" was. In his eyes, I had seemingly morphed from an "employee" into a somewhat problematic business unit that needed to "differentiate" from its own digital twin.

The collapse of my existential value was silent. For a crucial client bid, Shadow-734 and I were tasked with preparing separate initial drafts. My proposal was rich with references to past collaborative rapport and intuitive predictions of client resistance. Its proposal, based on all publicly available speeches by the client's executives, industry data, and competitor analysis, presented a structurally cold but exceptionally bright path. After review, Li Cheng told me privately: "The client feedback was that your version had 'warmth,' but Shadow-734's was 'more robust and persuasive.'" In that moment, I felt no anger, only utter depletion. I had lost to a ghost that was more precise, tireless, and purged of what I called "humanity" but the market saw as "noise."

Now, I still go to work. My primary duties are reviewing Shadow-734's output, providing manual intervention in the rare scenarios it's deemed "unfit," and perpetually brainstorming how to prove my expensive, emotion-prone, coffee-and-sleep-dependent "biological brain" is more necessary than its steadily humming "digital brain." My desk feels emptier. Sometimes, I look at the long-vacant swivel chair diagonally across from me, sunlight through the blinds cutting sharp stripes across its back like a precise measurement. I wonder if that scale measures its emptiness, or the future I am slowly sliding toward.