He was ancient evil… I have metrics (part 2)

Part One

Precision is a lonely religion.

I don’t carry the laptop because it’s a tool. I carry it because it’s the only thing in this building that doesn’t lie to me.

The associates lie. They lie with their bodies, dragging their feet across the concrete as if the laws of physics don’t apply to the 02:00 PM shift. They lie with their eyes, looking for “meaning” in the racking. There is no meaning. There is only Throughput.

When I arrived, the facility was bleeding. Seven percent leakage in the third hour. TOT spikes that looked like a heart attack on a monitor. They were managed by men who used words like “morale” and “burnout.”

I don’t use those words. I use Resources.

I found the Resource on a Tuesday.

It wasn’t a possession. It was a resource.

I felt a pressure change in the air—a sudden, dense pocket of probability that the local sensors couldn’t categorize. Most people would have felt fear. I felt a Market Opportunity. I didn’t care that it predated the “tally mark”. I didn’t care that it had “toppled kingdoms.”

Kingdoms are just poorly managed departments with bad succession plans.

I opened a new tab. I funneled that ancient, raw processing power into my Enhanced Algorithmic Modeling System (EAMS). The results were… exquisite. The predictive models didn’t just guess; they knew. I could see a bladder failure forty minutes before the associate felt the urge.

The Resource screamed. I simply adjusted the Output Requirements.

The Human Element.

I walked to Station 42-B. The associate there—a bottom-quartile unit—clutches a notebook like it’s a shield.

I don’t say “bathroom.” I say time off task.

I don’t say “exhausted.” I say engagement opportunity.

The unit looked at me today and said “biological necessity.”

I didn’t blink. I didn’t look up from the screen. My skin is the color of the office walls—unmarked by the sun, untouched by the humidity of the floor. I don’t know his name; his ID badge represents a 14% deviation in the quarterly average.

“We prefer time off task,” I told him. My voice was pleasant.

In that moment, the Resource inside my hardware tried one last, desperate hostile takeover. It forced a word through my larynx.

Priest.

I felt the vibration in my throat. It was a glitch. I simply recalibrated the predictive arc and the “demon” subsided back into the code.

Some say I am the greater evil. It’s not evil to deliver feedback to a 33 year old Irishman who spends 5 minutes in the restroom. He shouldnt have partied too hard last night at the pub with all the other bottom performers. Nor is it “evil” to track a ninety-four-year-old woman’s hand tremors. It’s Data Integrity. My job is to ensure the building remains a perfect, frictionless machine.

The resource kept insisting that his manager once had the courtesy to address a bottom percentile named “Job” by his name as he tortured… err, delivered feedback. What a waste of time. “Job” was simply a performance metric

The Loss…

I love the wellness rotation.

Most of my peers find it tedious, but I enjoy the synchronization. Seeing the entire floor move in unison to the synthetic beat of the music—it’s the one time the human resources actually look like a functional system. I stood at the front, leading the torso rotations with an optimized, “approachable” smile.

I set the laptop down on the podium to demonstrate an overhead stretch.

The air snapped. A system error flashed red.

The Resource fled.

I didn’t chase it. I kept smiling, reaching for the ceiling. Why would I? The Resource was a depleting asset. I had already extracted the core logic.

I picked up the laptop. EAMS was still running. It didn’t need the “Ancient Evil” anymore. It had the template.

The Audit.

At 15:30, I walked past the breakroom. My screen flashed a synchronization alert.

Four units—the bottom-quartile outliers—were huddled around a table. Station 42-B, the Irishman, the ninety-four-year-old, and the two stoners who usually spend their shifts trying to evade the infrared sensors. They were passing around a torn notebook page. A sympathy card.

There was a gas station bag of candy on the table. Werther’s Originals. Sentimentality is a disgusting waste of resources.

I checked the facility clock. Their break had expired exactly sixty-four seconds ago. They were still signing their names. Still indulging in the “human” luxury of a shared moment.

I walked in, my smile perfectly intact.

“Is everything okay, everyone?” I asked. My tone was light, helpful. “I noticed a break-time overage.”

They looked up. The unit from 42-B tried to hide the notebook page. He didn’t realize that I didn’t need to see the card to know it was a deviation.

“We were just—” he started.

“It’s a lovely gesture,” I interrupted, glancing at the candy. “But we have a schedule to maintain. I’ll have to log this as a Late Break Violation for all four of you. We have to be fair to the units who were back at their stations on time, don’t we?”

I turned and walked away before they could respond. I didn’t need to hear their excuses. I just needed to hear the sound of my keyboard as I processed the write-ups.

I glanced at my screen. Station 42-B was already trending toward a Performance Improvement Plan.

I smiled—the one that stops exactly at my lip line.

I don’t need a demon to run this building. I have something much more permanent, something far more cold and calculating.

I have the metrics.