This One Might Be a Bit Autobiographical

It wasn't the long hours that bothered Steve so much. That just came with the territory. Sixteen hours on, eight off had been the expected schedule since Steve started in this field. And that's a good day. It didn't count the emergencies, the nightmares, the cram sessions, and, honestly, pretty much his workstation's entire college experience. Steve didn't even want to think about what happened when his workstation had its own kids. Assuming he ever did.

Nor was it the lack of appreciation. So humans didn't get it. What else was new? At least they still admitted their ignorance. The heart, the lungs, most of the spleen: they got all that figured out. But when it came to the brain, they still had no clue. Imagine how awkward it would be when they finally did figure it out, only to notice the tiny workstations where they figured their logic centers would be.

No, what really bothered Steve was how DUMB most workstations could be, including his own. Day in and day out, he'd make the perfect decisions, set up all the plans needed for his workstation to succeed. And what did the human do? Nothing! Just let instincts and biological impulses wreck everything again.

At least for day 11,529 of the job, Steve could punch out. His workstation had finally gone to bed, so after the usual nightly maintenance, (running the Dream-defragmenter, making sure bladder levels were low enough that he wouldn't have to rush back into the office for an emergency payload release, that sort of thing,) Steve punched out. He needed a freaking drink.

“Look, Steve, it could be worse,” Steve's friend Anna (short for Annathesiopolarious; workstation operators had weird names,) assured him back at the Beagle Tincture, the finest drinking establish you could find inside of dog. “Your human's hormonal levels are pretty decent, your sanity-bug reports are clean, and you're well within acceptable neurosis levels for a human in this setting. And you're well past puberty. You should be able to ride this person well until the warranty wears out.”

“That's not the point,” Steve (short for Oscilistevosipede, but anyway,) argued. “I don't just want to ride it out. My human's achievement to potentiality ratio is barely pushing acceptable. I know he wants to do more with his life, but he doesn't do it. And when he looks bad, I look bad.”

Anna nodded. “I had that problem before,” she said. “My human had the same barrista job for like, seven years. Every day, I beamed 'get that Master's already' to her for hours on end, and every night, she watched other people sing badly on television and then went to bed. I finally gave up and just ordered a copy of Personal Epiphany, Office Edition. Worked like a charm.”

Steve downed a shot of beagle fluids (don't ask,) and groaned. “I looked into that. It's not in the budget. I'm still in debt for Inner Peacemaster version 5.0 that I got him years ago. Turns out it worked too well. Contentment levels went through the roof, so he wouldn't do anything. Just wander around, thinking how awesome everything was. But humans can't eat awesome thoughts. God knows we tried that.

Sighing, Steve pulled out a brochure. “The best we can afford right now is a Willpro update. Hopefully it will at least give him the motivation to keep a sleep schedule, maybe avoid the random napping habit.”

“Is that really the best you can expect?” Anna asked. “I mean, there has to be some step in the right direction.”

Steve looked at the list of plans he had for his human and went all the way to the top of the list. “Well, let's see if I can at least get him to make a blog post or something. We can go from there.”