No Free Rides

A Virtual Reality story by Wuckster

Jimmy was awoken by a loud incessant pounding on the door. He opened his eyes drowsily and looked around in confusion. It was still completely dark in the room, other than the dim red light of his alarm clock, which showed it was 4:01 am. 

The pounding on the door continued relentlessly, and Jimmy was just pulling himself out of bed to answer it when the door burst inward off its hinges. Several heavily armed men covered from head to toe in full military battle gear charged into the room and pointed their guns at him. They shined their blindingly bright flashlight directly into his eyes as they pushed him down into a chair and cuffed his hands.

"Are you James Lionel Wilson? Social security number 999-45-0067?" one of the armored men shouted at him.

"Yes, that's me," Jimmy said. "What is the meaning of this?"

"As of yesterday you are no longer employed at General Technology Solutions, is this correct?"

"Well, yeah. They shut down the factory. Everybody got laid off. No one's working there anymore."

"So is it correct that you are now officially unemployed?"

"Uh, yeah. I mean they let me go without any warning at the end of the shift yesterday. I haven't exactly had time yet to find a new job. But at the rate all the factories have been closing around here lately, I don't think there's a lot of jobs to be had."

"Fucking leech on the system." One of the soldiers in the back pushed his way forward and smacked Jimmy across the face.

"Private Grimes! Stand down! That's an order!" the lead soldier said as he turned to his comrade who had broken ranks.

"Sir, yes sir!" the soldier said as he returned to his spot at the back of the pack.

The lead soldier turned back towards Jimmy and leaned forward so their faces were just inches apart. "Since you are now part of the welfare state you are required by Presidential Executive Order J594387 to perform virtual work to earn your welfare check. There are no free rides anymore, son. Lazy fuckers like you who just want to sit around and collect their checks off the backs of hard working Americans are a thing of the past. There may not be any real jobs anymore, but that doesn't mean we can't simulate the work experience. The best part is that even those "disabled" crybabies can put in a hard day's work in the virtual realm now. No free rides for anyone!"

"No free rides for anyone!" the other soldiers cheered.

"I haven't even gotten a welfare check yet," Jimmy protested.

"That's right you haven't," the soldier said. "You haven't put in the work yet. You've got to earn your welfare checks now. You'll be putting in fourteen hours a day Monday through Friday and then you get a little break and only have to do twelve hours a day on Saturday and Sunday. There's a built in monitor on the Virtual Reality goggles. If you take them off at any point before the fourteen hours are up, an extra hour of work time will be added to your day. You got that?"

"But what if I need to use the restroom?" Jimmy asked. "I mean in real life? I can't just virtually pee, right?"

"Oh yes. I almost forgot. Private Mercer! Insert the catheter!"

Another soldier pushed his way forward and roughly yanked down Jimmy's pants. He pulled out a long rubber tube connected to a plastic bag and quickly jammed the tip of the tube into Jimmy's urethra.

"There. All taken care of. If you gotta go, just let her flow. Now you better get these goggles strapped on. You're already late for your shift and the virtual foreman doesn't tolerate excuses."

Jimmy felt a large box-like contraption get shoved over his head. The soldiers in his apartment disappeared from view and he found himself standing in the middle of a vast warehouse.

"You're late, worker drone W57773," a huge man with a flat top haircut appeared in front of him and began yelling in his face.

"My name's Jimmy," he said holding out his hand.

"Your name is worker drone W57773, you little welfare queen. Your lazy ass owes society a debt and you better damn well believe you're going to pay it. Now get to work! First you're going to sweep this entire floor and then you're going to mop it! And then you're going to polish the toilets! They've all been stopped up for days and I want to see them spotless by the end of your shift! Oh, and since you were late..." the foreman punched Jimmy in the stomach. He knew the foreman wasn't "really" there, but the pain was all too real and he felt himself gasping for breath.

"But, I was an engineer before. Can't you at least simulate an engineering job? I could do that for fourteen hours."

"You think this is some sort of game, Boy? You think you can come in here and just do whatever you please? This is hard labor, Boy! If you wanna suck off the State's titty, you gotta earn that milk! No free rides! If you talk back to me again, I'm going to bust your teeth in. You got that? Now get to work!" The foreman flung a broom at Jimmy's head, which he just barely managed to duck. He'd already learned the hard way that virtual reality was fully capable of simulating pain.

As soon as he picked up the broom a counter appeared in his upper right field of vision. It was set at fourteen hours exactly and slowly began to tick down. The floor of the virtual warehouse was absolutely covered in virtual dirt, a lot of which was quite stuck to the ground and required some serious elbow grease to get swept up. The warehouse was so large that it took him over four hours to sweep the whole thing. It was so boring and mind-numbing that it felt more like ten hours already. By that point he had gotten virtual blisters on his fingers and a virtual backache, both of which hurt just as much as the real thing. Now he had to cover the same amount of ground with the mop. It took just as long to finish, but felt like even longer. He was utterly exhausted but he still had almost six hours to go cleaning toilets, which were even more backed up and disgusting than advertised. Apparently they had perfected the simulation of smell in virtual reality now, too.

It took the remainder of his shift, but he got each and every toilet spotlessly clean. He took a quick look at the warehouse floor. It was absolutely sparkling. It had been a long, excruciating day, but at least he could look around and see a sense of accomplishment. At last the counter hit zero and he could feel the cuffs release him from his chair back in the real world.

He pulled the goggles off and set them to the side. The soldiers were gone, but he could see their dirty boot prints all over his apartment floor. He was way too tired of cleaning to do anything about that at the moment. He pulled the catheter out of himself and stood up slowly. His joints had grown stiff from sitting in one position for fourteen hours. A rumbling in his tummy reminded him he hadn't eaten all day. He found a frozen chicken and mashed potatoes dinner in the freezer and stuck it in the microwave. He turned on the television and watched a bit of a sitcom while he devoured his dinner. He found it hard to pay attention to what was going on because he was so tired. He had given half a thought to going to a bar and getting a drink, but he didn't think he could muster up the energy to leave his apartment. Instead he stumbled into bed and was asleep before his head even hit it pillow.

He almost thought the previous day had been just a bad dream but then at 3:55 am a shrill sound like an air raid siren shattered his sleep. He woke up to see the virtual reality goggles flashing a bright red color. Then a robotic voice blared out of a speaker on the side. "Attention. You have five minutes to report to work. Repeat. Five minutes if you wish to earn your welfare check. No free rides, you lazy bum. Attention. You have four minutes and forty-five seconds to report to work."

Jimmy stumbled over to the chair and groggily attempted to insert the catheter into himself. He wasn't sure if he'd done it correctly, but it was certainly uncomfortable. The hand cuff on the chair automatically closed around his left wrist as he put the goggles on his head with his right hand. He hoped he would get to work somewhere else today. With the infinite possibilities of virtual reality he figured he could work anywhere. Maybe on a cruise ship. Or even another planet.

Instead he found himself back in the exact same warehouse as yesterday.

"You're cutting it close, worker drone W57773. Is your lazy ass trying to sleep in?" the foreman shouted as he materialized in front of his face.

"I still have almost three minutes to report to work," Jimmy said.

"Boy! In my book if you're not fifteen minutes early, you're late! From now on, I expect to see you here at 3:45 am on the dot or you're going to get a beatdown."

"Okay, does that mean my shift finishes fifteen minutes earlier?"

The foreman backhanded Jimmy across the face, knocking a virtual tooth out in the process. "You lazy welfare bums are always trying to wiggle out of work, aren't you? The clock starts counting down at 4:00 am, but you will be here at 3:45. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," Jimmy said as he rubbed his face.

"Now I thought I told you yesterday to clean the floors and the toilets!"

"I did, sir," Jimmy said. "They were spotless when I clocked out last night."

"Then how come they're even filthier today? All you welfare bums are the same. Just want to slack off and let other people do all the hard work. Since you didn't complete your assigned duty yesterday, I'm going to have to deduct 14 hours of pay from your welfare check. Now I suggest you stop running your mouth and start sweeping!"

And so Jimmy's life fell into a routine of sweeping, mopping, and cleaning toilets, all so he could receive a meagre welfare check from the government once a month that was barely enough to buy the cheapest, least nutritional food possible. He couldn't afford to continue living in his apartment and eventually had to move into public communal housing. He shared sleeping quarters with forty other people who all had virtual jobs like him to earn their welfare checks. He slept on a bottom bunk underneath a morbidly obese man named Chet who snored loudly, smelled like old sauerkraut, and passed copious amounts of rotten egg farts in his sleep. On the plus side, Chet had a hookup to the virtual underground and they would spend what little free time they had shooting up virtual heroin and smoking virtual crack.

One day Chet took him to a virtual weapons store and Jimmy was able to acquire a virtual shotgun. Chet showed him how to hack the program and Jimmy was able to smuggle the virtual shotgun into work. As soon as the foreman materialized to yell at him, Jimmy blew him away. He attempted to turn the virtual shotgun on himself, but soldiers in the real world had already burst into the room and ripped the virtual reality goggles off of him before beating him to a bloody pulp.

He went to a real life courthouse where he was sentenced to life in prison. Since all of the real life prisons were already full, he was sentenced to virtual prison. The soldiers took him back to his communal housing unit, strapped him to his bed and put the goggles on his head, only this time they were fitted with an immense padlock so he couldn't take them off. A feeding tube was placed in his stomach and he was force-fed gruel while he spent all his time in virtual lockdown.

He found himself in a virtual prison cell with a virtual cellmate who was twice his size and covered in tattoos. He was almost instantaneously virtually beaten up and raped by his cellmate. Even though it wasn't "really" happening, it was an almost perfect simulation of the experience. After a little bit, the head prison guard came to his cell. He looked disturbingly similar to the foreman at his old virtual job, right down to the flat top haircut.

"Inmate W57773, it's time to report for prison work duty. You're going to sweep and mop all the floors and then you're going to clean all the toilets! And I expect them to be spotless! You got that?"

"What?" Jimmy asked. "I thought I was just going to rot in my cell. Nobody said anything about prison work duty."

"You lazy bums are all the same! You think this is a country club? You think you get to just sit around on your ass all day while hard working Americans pay for you to be a drain on society? I don't think so, Boy. You owe a debt to that society and you're damn well going to pay it. Now get to work! There's no free rides here!"

Jimmy grabbed the broom and began sweeping. A counter appeared in the upper right field of Jimmy's vision again. Except this time it wasn't fourteen hours. It was a hundred and fifty years, and it started counting down ever so slowly.