The Time of Bees

Astra felt the heart-shaped locket pressed between her palm and chest, quickening her pace as she walked from her office to meet with the Chief Corporate Mayoral Officer of her district. Her monthly rent was due for her cramped subterranean apartment, but her wages were short again. If the rent wasn’t paid, she knew she’d risk homelessness wandering the parched aboveground land.

It was her job at the dimly lit office building to collect and interpret the data from the EEG wearables that the wealthy wore to analyze their desires. These desires were collected and translated to product orders, which were then sent to local Residential Warehouses, and delivered by solar powered drone dogs within 2 hours of the EEG data being received.

It was a highly technical job, but she enjoyed it. Astra was grateful she had a comparatively cushy job in the office. Her family members spent their days pulling products, boxing them, and preparing them to be delivered to the drone dogs for delivery to the users. Her twin sister already had chronic pain and had to have two laparoscopic spinal surgeries from the drone dogs. The drone dogs were made of shiny lightweight metal and had surgical instruments stored inside them, their paws changing to hand-like tools to perform surgeries when needed.

She counted her blessings as she approached the Chief Corporate Mayoral Office to meet Chadwick in his office. It was convenient that he also worked in the same building. She knew it would be tense as this was the third consecutive month she couldn’t make her rent. She had only been given this grace because she had developed the tools to analyze the EEG data. Astra was a high level scientist. She was privy to technical details of the wearables to a degree that virtually no one else except a handful of high-level executive officers and the Chief Presidential Officer himself.

With temperatures consistently over 120 degrees, and water allocations tightly controlled by Corporate Resource Officers, she didn’t think she would last long if she was homeless. She was glad she had the small apartment compared to her friends and family members who slept in cots in the Residential Warehouse after their shifts were done.

She remembered her grandmother telling her the locket had been in her family for generations. She felt the shame welling up in her throat while thinking about giving it to Chadwick as collateral while she thought of other options to make up the difference in her rent. She opened the door, trying her best to project an aura of confidence. The air conditioning always caught her off guard. Only Corporate Governmental Officers and very wealthy people had it in their offices. Cold made her feel sick and confused. It felt so unnatural.

Chadwick was a tall man in a formal suit. His face didn’t have the sun lines and creases her face had after spending part of her life living aboveground before graduate school.

“I don’t have the rent. I promise you’ll get your money, Chad. I just need one month. I can give you my necklace to show you I’m serious. If I don’t get you the money in 30 days, it’s yours.”

Chadwick looked at her, shocked. He knew how much the necklace meant to her. He knew he could get several months of rent from the necklace if it came to that. He didn’t want to throw Astra and her daughter on the street. He thought of how fair and pale Astra’s daughter was, having never known aboveground life like her mother.

“Fine, Astra. Just this once. You have 30 days.”

“Thank you so much, Chad. I won’t let you down.”

Astra walked out with her head held high. As soon as she crossed the threshold, she felt the tears well up in her eyes. Her work day was over, and she had to get home to her daughter. She hurriedly crossed the street, knowing she’d have to walk aboveground for two blocks to the subterranean subway. The heat magnified what felt like the weight of judgment of her ancestors for giving away a family treasure. Her tears evaporated nearly instantaneously in the heat, cooling her face slightly.

As soon as she got into the subterranean subway, Astra collapsed into the seat and sobbed. She wasn’t going to tell her daughter. She’d have to think of something. She didn’t know what to do. Her employment contract said all her scientific ideas were the intellectual property of her employer, while she was on or off the clock.

While she sobbed, Astra started hyperventilating. Her ears started ringing, and her vision went dark. She woke up covered in sweat with people staring at her. Her head was throbbing. “Don’t call those damn dogs!” she yelled at the startled passengers. “I’m still paying off my last visit from the dogs. I’ll be fine.”

She laid down that night exhausted and hopeless, her head throbbing. She drifted into the deepest sleep she had ever had. She saw the EEG waveforms oscillating and dancing, shifting between images of waveforms and outlines of people. She woke up still feeling exhausted and the light hurt her eyes. She got dressed and calmed her nerves, grabbing her Imitation Coffee on her way out the door.

As she walked into her office, she walked past Chadwick’s office, and saw him sitting at his desk with his EEG wearable on his head. She saw the blue light in the corner blinking and knew it had picked up on a subconscious desire of his.

Suddenly, she saw the image in her dream of the dancing waveforms. What if, she wondered, she could use the wearables to transmit signals that affect brain activity? Astra remembered the tech guys made her include high powered nanomagnets in the wearable design. The corporate state dreamed of utilizing the nanomagnets to perform transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to alter brain activity to influence and create desires. Virtually no one was aware the devices had this capacity except at a very high level. They didn’t tell the consumers the EEG wearables had the capacity to perform TMS with nanomagnets.

Though she felt uncomfortable with altering people’s brains, this ethical concern was tempered with her resentment of the people who could afford the wearables. She did not understand how they could be so callous to the suffering of everyone else. “It’s not like it matters”, she rationalized. “They just click ‘accept’ on the end user agreement without reading it anyways.”

With her head throbbing, Astra wondered if she could develop a prototype of the software that would utilize the nanomagnets to perform TMS. She felt guilty, but she didn’t want to end up on the streets of the aboveground. Astra knew she’d have to start somewhere easy. The visual cortex operated in a straightforward way. Maybe she could start by using the nanomagnets to present Chadwick with a visual image. She remembered the picture of a bee her grandmother gave her, which she kept in her wallet. Bees had been extinct since her grandmother’s time.

It would be an easy test. No one had seen bees in 100 years. If Chadwick just started talking about bees or mentioning bees, she would know it worked. She accessed the firmware documents on the nanomagnets and read up on the transcranial magnetic stimulation protocols. Astra took the picture of a bee she kept in her wallet out, looked at it, and drew a rough sketch. She wrote a simple program to present Chadwick with the image of the bee, and updated his device specifically.

“Hey Astra”, Chadwick shouted, “Did you ever like bees when we learned about them in school? I just remembered a picture of one I must have seen.”

Fortunately, Chadwick couldn’t see her face. Astra’s eyes opened wide and her jaw went slack.

“Why yes, Chadwick, I always admired the so-called hive structure, their sophisticated communication, and their communal orientation.”

“Haha, you would say that, Astra,” Chadwick chuckled and went back to work.

Astra’s pulse quickened. Was this wrong? What would happen if she accidentally hurt him? What about informed consent? It was this or the aboveground streets. She would not be violating her contract. Indeed, she would be using her ideas to enrich the functionality of the wearable.

She bought a cup of watered down Imitation Coffee with added caffeine. She saw the pulsating waveforms in her mind. She decided she’d create a slow pulse sequence that would lay the foundation of creating empathy for her in Chadwick’s mind. Astra knew it would take time to change the synapses, but she thought if she had a month she could make it happen. She felt trapped. She worked on her protocol nonstop, refining it every day.

On the 29th day after she made her agreement with Chadwick, Astrid went to her scheduled meeting with Chadwick in his office. She felt the goosebumps on her skin, which she wasn’t sure if was due to the air conditioning or her fear of being homeless.

“Astra,” Chadwick began. “You know, I just can’t imagine putting you and your daughter on the street. I can’t imagine what a hard place you’d have to be in to put it up like that. I talked to the Chief Presidential Officer, and he said we can work something out. Maybe we could have you work longer hours on some new EEG algorithms that are more efficient.” He unclasped the heart-shaped locket from his neck, and tenderly placed it in her hand.

Tears welled up in Astra’s eyes. “Thank you so much, Chadwick. I deeply appreciate this change of heart you’ve had. You have no idea what it means to me and my daughter. I would be happy to help develop more efficient algorithms for the Chief Presidential Officer.”

After he left, Astra felt guilty for what she had done. She altered Chadwick’s brain chemistry without his knowledge or consent. She knew she had to hide her work. Astra shuddered to imagine the implications for the corporate state trying to manufacture neurobiological desires, as well as the more nefarious implications.

Astra promised herself she’d only use the technology for good, and she would get the users’ consent. She created an updated end user agreement and snuck in some language about “utilizing existing hardware to improve the neurological experience”. She stayed up all night tweaking the software, and released the update for all wearable users without telling any of her colleagues.

Soon, her family members at the Residential Warehouse told her that they started getting bathroom breaks. The pace of the grueling warehouse slowed down just enough to be noticeable. Her friends who worked as domestic staff to wealthy people noticed their bosses were listening more to what they were saying. Their bosses were being kinder. They had no idea what was happening.

Astra stared down at the picture of the bee in her wallet, and started planning her next software update.