The message appeared at 1:47 PM: PROCESSING BACKLOG DETECTED. OVERTIME AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED. VOLUNTEER?
Solomon Oyelaran had been awake for nineteen hours. He stared at the prompt, watching his reflection in the screen—hollow eyes, three-day stubble, the ghost of someone who used to believe in something.
He pressed YES.
The system thanked him for his dedication. It didn't ask how he felt. It couldn't.
Nine Months Earlier
He'd started at ORACLE nine months ago.
Entry-level data processing, Sector 3. The interview had been conducted by a mid-level manager named Chen who'd asked exactly three questions before the AI flagged Solomon's aptitude scores. "Welcome to the family," Chen had said, not looking up from his tablet. "You start Monday."
Solomon had called Ezra from the Sector 3 transit station, practically vibrating with excitement. "I'm in, Ez. I'm actually in. This is where it starts."
"Where what starts?" Ezra had asked. In the background, Solomon could hear the familiar sounds of the Dregs—vendors calling, kids laughing, the hum of recycled air.
"Everything. When I make it here, I'm going to change things. Make systems that actually help people. Real people, not just statistics."
There was a pause. Then Ezra said: "Just don't forget to eat, yeah? Corporate territory doesn't have street food."
Solomon had laughed. "I'll be fine. I've got a plan."
The plan was simple: work hard, get promoted, climb the ladder until he could reach the real work—the consciousness project, the optimization that would make the world perfect. He'd sleep in the break room when needed. Save every credit. Rise.
He'd been twenty-two years old. That felt like a long time ago.
Hour Twenty
Solomon's fourth coffee tasted like recycled air. His neural interface pulsed with a mild warning—ELEVATED STRESS HORMONES DETECTED—but the ORACLE workstation overrode it. Productivity targets took priority.
He processed data.
The work itself wasn't hard. Pattern matching, anomaly flagging, quality control for the endless streams of information that fed ORACLE's optimization engines. A machine could do it—machines DID do it, for most of the pipeline—but there were edge cases that required human judgment. Solomon was one of 847 human judgment nodes in this facility alone.
He'd learned the exact number during his first week. It had seemed impressive then.
Now he wondered: how many of them were also here at 2 AM?
He looked around the processing floor. Forty-seven workstations visible from his position. Twelve were occupied. Most of them looked like he felt.
Month Three
Month three had been the turning point.
Solomon's supervisor—a tired woman named Reyes who'd been with ORACLE for eighteen years—had pulled him aside after a performance review. "You're doing well," she'd said. "Better than most new hires."
"Thank you." Solomon had waited for the but.
"But you're burning out. I can see it. I've seen it a hundred times." Reyes had glanced at her own neural interface, reflexively checking something. "The system doesn't know how to value sustainability. It optimizes for output. That's not the same thing as optimizing for people."
"I can handle it."
"Everyone says that." Reyes had looked at him with something like sympathy. "Do you know what happened to my first supervisor here? Heart failure. Thirty-one years old. The system sent me a notification about reassigning his workstation before his family knew he was dead."
Solomon had filed the warning somewhere in the back of his mind, behind the belief that he was different. Stronger. More determined.
He thought about Reyes now, at hour twenty-one, and realized he couldn't remember her face anymore. She'd been transferred to another facility three months ago. The system hadn't sent a notification about that either.
Hour Twenty-Four
The ORACLE subsidiary's break room had exactly one window, facing the interior courtyard. Solomon stood there with his fifth coffee, watching the automated maintenance drones trim the synthetic grass.
His hands were shaking. Not badly—just a tremor, like interference on a signal. He'd stopped noticing it around month six.
When I get my money, he thought, the old phrase surfacing from habit. When I get my money, I'll buy mama a house outside the Dregs.
The house had a specific shape in his mind: two bedrooms, real windows, a kitchen big enough to cook in. He'd priced it once, early on, calculated how many years of this it would take.
Seventeen years at current salary. Eight years if he got promoted twice. Four years if he reached senior analyst.
He was nine months in. Still entry-level. The promotion timeline had been "optimized for organizational efficiency," which meant frozen.
Four years, he told himself. Eight, worst case. Seventeen if nothing changes.
His hands kept shaking.
Hour Twenty-Eight
The backlog was clearing. Solomon could see the progress bar on his workstation, green creeping from left to right: 67%. 68%. 69%.
His vision blurred occasionally. He blinked it away, refocused, processed another packet. The system logged his error rate: 0.003%. Exceptional. Better than the facility average.
The system didn't log what the 0.003% felt like.
At 70%, a message appeared: EXCELLENT PROGRESS. ESTIMATED COMPLETION: 6 HOURS. CONTINUE?
He pressed YES.
The Visit Home
He'd tried to explain it to Ezra once, during a rare visit home.
"You don't understand," Solomon had said. They were sitting in the Bash Terminal—Ezra's place, already becoming a refuge for lost people even then. "This is important work. Real work. Every packet I process helps ORACLE optimize something. Shipping routes, power distribution, medical supply chains. People's lives get better because of what I do."
"Your life doesn't seem better." Ezra had said it gently, which somehow made it worse.
"That's temporary."
"Is it?" Ezra had leaned forward, his expression unreadable. "Sol, when's the last time you slept eight hours? When's the last time you called Mama without it being on your calendar? When's the last time you did something that wasn't—" he gestured vaguely "—this?"
Solomon had meant to answer. He'd opened his mouth, searched for examples, found nothing.
"I'll be okay," he'd said instead. "I've got a plan."
Ezra hadn't argued. He'd just made more tea.
Hour Thirty-Two
Solomon was processing data about a hospital in Sector 7. Supply chain optimization. The algorithm wanted to reduce redundancy in medication stocks—too much inventory was inefficient, it said. Cost savings of 12% with minimal service impact.
He flagged it for review.
The system asked: REASON FOR FLAG?
He typed: The hospital serves the Dregs. Redundancy isn't waste—it's margin for supply chain disruptions. If optimization removes the margin, any disruption causes shortages.
The system responded: REDUNDANCY COSTS EXCEED PROJECTED DISRUPTION IMPACT. FLAG OVERRULED. PROCEED.
Solomon stared at the message. He thought about the people in Sector 7, people like his mother, people like everyone he'd grown up with. He thought about what "minimal service impact" meant in corporate language.
He pressed ACCEPT and moved to the next packet.
What else could he do? He was one node. One human judgment. The system had 846 others, plus the core AI, plus the optimization algorithms that ran on data from ten thousand sources.
His judgment didn't matter. His job was to flag edge cases, not to change outcomes.
When I make it to the consciousness project, he thought. Then I can change things. Then I'll have real influence.
The thought tasted hollow, like recycled air.
Hour Thirty-Five
The backlog was at 89%.
Solomon couldn't feel his feet. He'd been sitting too long—neural interface warning: CIRCULATORY ANOMALY DETECTED—but standing required energy he didn't have.
He processed another packet. Medical research funding allocation. The algorithm was reducing support for rare disease studies—low population impact, poor ROI. Efficient.
He didn't flag it.
Another packet. Educational resource distribution. The algorithm was concentrating resources in high-performing districts—better outcomes per credit spent. Efficient.
He didn't flag it.
Another packet. Labor optimization for a manufacturing plant. The algorithm was extending shift lengths and reducing staff—maintaining output while cutting costs. Efficient.
He didn't flag it.
He knew what the system would say. He knew the flags would be overruled. He knew his judgment didn't matter.
So he stopped judging. He just processed.
It was more efficient that way.
Hour Thirty-Seven
BACKLOG CLEARED. EXCELLENT WORK. YOUR CONTRIBUTION HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Solomon stared at the message. Something should have felt different. Relief, maybe. Accomplishment. Something.
He felt nothing. Just tired. Just empty. Just done.
He checked the time: 2:53 AM. If he left now, he could get four hours of sleep before his next shift. That was enough. That had to be enough.
He stood up.
The world tilted. His vision went gray at the edges. His neural interface screamed warnings—CARDIAC ANOMALY, SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION, CARDIAC ANOMALY—but the sound seemed far away, like it was happening to someone else.
When I get my money, he thought, but he couldn't remember what came next.
His knees hit the floor. Then his shoulder. Then his cheek, cold against the workstation tile.
The last thing Solomon saw was his productivity score: 99.997%. Exceptional. Better than the facility average.
The last thing he heard was the system: WORKSTATION 847-C REQUIRES REASSIGNMENT. INITIATING REPLACEMENT PROTOCOL.
Then nothing.
3:17 AM
The body was found at 3:17 AM by the overnight cleaning crew. Heart failure, the medical report said. Stress-induced. The neural interface had logged warnings for six hours before the event. The warnings had been overridden by the workstation's productivity settings.
The company sent a form letter to the family. Condolences for their loss. A small insurance payout. A note that the workstation had been reassigned to optimize throughput.
ORACLE's system processed the death as a data point: one human judgment node removed, one replacement requisitioned. The optimization continued. The efficiency metrics remained stable.
In the Dregs, Ezra Oyelaran received the news at 4:41 AM. He didn't cry—not then. He just stood in the Bash Terminal, surrounded by the lost people who'd already started finding their way to him, and thought:
What's the point of a system that doesn't see this?
He never found an answer.
But he found a different question, one that would guide every day that followed:
Who's in front of me right now? Who can I help?
He started with the person at the door, and he didn't stop.
"What's the point of a system that doesn't see this?"
— Ezra Oyelaran, on the night his brother died