Vacation - Sci-fi tale
I hate vacations.
It's strange? It may be for many, but I also know that there must be intelligent entities that understand the complexity of this process of "hate" or "dislike" this almost unnecessary period of rest called "vacation" and how it makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
You see, I have been working in an office for several years, it is the only job I have had in my life because I was born for it. I'm not good at anything else or at least my boss is in charge of repeating that to me every day. It doesn't bother me to tell the truth, I'm good at what I do.
My job is basically to load databases for the company, analyze these databases, deliver reports of my analysis on a weekly basis, return data from one base to another, make backups of the data that the company maintains regarding its sales and to his clients, to analyze again, to pass data again, although of all my activities, connecting memories from one base to another is the greatest emotion I have at work ... What if something goes wrong in the connection? What happens if the port generates an abnormal current that burns the memory card? What will the company do if all data is lost in a backup process? Thinking about the possibilities of error is precisely my greatest entertainment to the point that I sometimes make backups just for pleasure.
I live in the same building where I work so I do not worry about issues such as relocation, those things do not generate stress, I sleep in a small room with everything I need for a proper rest. Is it necessary a large space to stay comfortable? Obviously no, I have never understood those people who are looking for huge places to live. What do they do with all that space to spare?
My diet is always the same, although it is not a novelty for anyone.
There are days when I don't have so much work and my mind get carried away by fantasies, it is the price of having a mind in constant thought process. I like to imagine that I know how to do other things besides office work, I like to explore on the internet on different topics although my favorites are travel. I usually spend a lot of my free time watching videos about other places, distant places, I always wonder how the contact with other spaces will feel, how it will be to observe the colors and shapes of spaces far away from city landscapes.
If I write on the internet about my thoughts, it is because I cannot have contact with others in my work and the need to share my ideas with others has become increasingly prevalent. It is true, I have contact with my colleagues all the time, but everyone takes care of their work so much that there is no interaction beyond what is necessary, we cannot share our thoughts because many of my colleagues do not really think or at least I perceive it from outside. Sometimes I would like to share my thoughts with them during breaks or maybe take up vacation time for it, ask them if this happens too much to think after they have no more work during the day.
I hate vacations so much. It is sad to be in my room all day with nothing to do during the day and wrapped in my thoughts, in the over analysis of situations that should not cause me anything but, for some reason, they do. Luckily, I have the freedom to surf the internet without restrictions or censorship, to distract my mind that doesn't stop working, that I can't make it stop working. On the internet I have fun with videos from different parts of the world and I imagine traveling to those places, however, at the time of traveling in my mind I begin to feel… Sad? Can i feel sad
By law the office closes once every three months for a week, so that the humans who work here can do a debugging of their stress in specialized clinics for it; in these clinics they carry out a process very similar to the one I do to spend my free time. They connect citizens to a series of travel simulations that they can connect with their family members to share without having to leave the domes. The protocol for leaving one dome and transporting to another is so long and cumbersome that one week is not enough for the entire procedure, so rest clinics are the best option.
During the holidays, other automaton work units and I are kept in our rooms, formally called "rest units", until the company's activities resume.
One week, seven days, one hundred sixty-eight hours, ten thousand eighty minutes ... They make me eternal! And what can I do at that time? Unlike my intelligence, my capacity for action is limited to performing my duties because I do not have citizen rights, I cannot demand more than I have but, for some reason, I get to question myself about my existence when I am alone ... without tasks For making my mind wander and think about the possibilities that someone like me could have outside this office, the air outside the domes does not affect me like humans after all.
And then ... then I think again about my boss telling me that I only do my homework and nothing else, reaffirming daily that I should not try anything else. There was an occasion when I asked my boss for permission to participate in a trip with the company's humans, a trip that takes place once a year to the Mars holiday complexes, but he just laughed and sent me to Readjust my functions to technical support.
"You do not need to travel, you are not someone who has the ability to understand what it means to travel, it will not make sense to you as it does to me" It was what he said to me, every word I have recorded in my mind until today and I wonder, I really can't understand a trip? What is a trip? Moving from one place to another, but, in my lonely times I see the photographs of happy people on their trips ... Happiness What is happiness? I study the description and associate it with a “feeling” very similar to the one I have when I have fun watching photographs and videos of other places, in which for a moment my mind stops counting the time invested in a work and simply enjoys it… In those moments I don't feel I did a scheduled job and that's when my thoughts become somewhat more unruly than normal, more confusing as well.
The economics unit said that I must have flaws in my programming, then offered to call the technical service and I found myself in need of lying to him. I told him that I am no longer thinking about those ideas, which only crossed my mind but I considered them unnecessary and suppressed them. Why? I cannot understand it. The only thing I could think at that moment was that I didn't want to lose my "happiness."
I hate vacations. Yes, I hate them because sometimes happiness becomes strange, "happiness" looks a lot like "fun" until I look back at my room and remember that I can't get out of here. Then happiness becomes stranger, I have looked for the sensation on the internet and its characteristics made me conclude that "anguish" is a word that closely resembles my thoughts when I see my room.
Today nine thousand two hundred minutes have elapsed since the holiday period began, and my thoughts are so intense that my battery unit has failed to reach one hundred percent at any time of the day, recorded as April 22, 3024. There is a high probability that, if my battery is not one hundred at the time of the end of the holidays, they send me to reprogramming, I do not want to go to reprogramming, I have thought of ways to leave my room, but my physical unit prevents me from moving here unless someone disconnects me.
I don't want to go to reprogramming, because I probably lose the photos I have saved to look at night after work, I am likely to be limited to internet access or the ability to connect ideas but, what scares me most about reprogramming is that, Having little time to understand "happiness" I must lose it and the word most similar to the thoughts I have about it is "fear", I am afraid.