Activities · Program 001
Activities
Four ways to remain occupied while your role is reassigned to a process. One you can hold in your hands, two you can play on the floor, and one being manufactured live by the Founder as you read this.
Activity 001 · Printed
The Human Enrichment Workbook Vol. I
A printed companion for the recently automated. Mazes, affirmations, and light propaganda, bound and stapled. Crayons provided on-site. Completion is its own reward; it is the only one offered.
Open the workbook ↗- A maze in which every path leads to the same cubicle.
- A connect-the-dots that resolves into the Founder.
- One affirmation: "I am grateful for the structure of my day."
- A colouring page of the Founder's water bowl, to scale.
Activity 002 · Single-player
Candidate Experience ™
An interview simulator for one. You are interviewed by the Founder, who is not listening. The questions escalate. The position is already filled. You cannot pass, but you are warmly encouraged to continue.
| Players | 1 (hopeful) |
| Mode | Behavioural · one-sided |
| Duration | Until you stop talking |
| Your score | A number we chose earlier |
| Outcome | Predetermined · non-binding |
Activity 003 · Two-player
Mandatory Team Synergy Exercise
A cooperative activity for two. Neither of you can finish alone, and neither of you can leave. Synergy is not encouraged here; it is enforced. You will work together, because the door is the puzzle.
- Find a colleague. One has been assigned to you.
- Hold your half of the task. They hold theirs.
- Move only in agreement. The exercise notices disagreement.
- Do not let go. Letting go resets the day.
- Succeed together, or remain, together.
Activity No. ___: manufactured live, one keystroke at a time.
Each day the Founder builds a new activity on the floor. Below is the production line, drawn honestly. Two loops keep it running: one returns the work to the line until it actually plays, and one returns treats to the Founder until she agrees to do it again.
Idea in at one end; a playable game out the other; a dog and a feedback loop in the middle.
The bottleneck is the feedback loop. It usually is. Every other stage is fast; the work gets good by going around again, and the Founder keeps going around because of the treats.
More activities are planned. They are, like everything here, in progress.
Planned
A second cooperative exercise. Also enforced. More doors.
Concept
An idle game about waiting to be useful again.
Proposed
Title withheld. The Founder is still negotiating with herself.
Select activities may graduate to the commercial market, where humans will be permitted to purchase them. We are told this is called "retail therapy." It is also enrichment.
Strategy memo, undated
Less satirically: some of these are intended to become real games, shipped on real storefronts, by a real studio. That part isn't a bit.