The weekend is already over. My clothes have all been washed, Arion got a full-chassis checkup, Skylar left for the clouds once more. At least Ke’lan exchanged numbers with the two of us on the truck ride back to my apartment. Looking back at his first correspondence with me still makes me smile: a jumbled-up mess of characters. I couldn’t imagine typing with long nails.

I haven’t gotten any reply from him since then, though.

Ah well; back to the daily monotony, I guess.

Today I wasn’t greeted by the usual person today: instead of the usual, calm voice of Syd echoing down the hallway, I get the enthusiastic calls from Joyce, our Engagement Coordinator here at Palaver Media Corps. “Hey, Gallaver!” they shout, waving me down. I smile, and approach them with a hint of enthusiasm myself. “How are you? I’m feeling pretty macho today; could pick up an entire truck if I wanted to, I’m sure.”

“A he/him day, is it?” Joyce nods, gemstone eyes glistening. Our company’s so-called ‘self-appointed pied person’, every day is full of surprise when it comes to him. Always dressed to the nines in vests and slacks, but always finds a way to pop color into his attire: sometimes it’s a funky dress shirt, other times it’s jewelry, and sometimes, it’s as minimal as a hairpin to add color to his black hair.

Today, Joyce is sporting a slicked-back ponytail and a vividly-patterned yellow shirt, with the standard pinstripe vest and slacks. We walk down the hallway, almost hip to hip. “I hope you didn’t forget about the meeting today, Gal-val,” he says, handing me a few papers. I flip through them briefly: some of the papers are strictly finances, and others are just a list of suggestions to improve the overall user experience. “Monthly assessment time.”

These monthly meetings are the only times in which I talk to all of my coworkers in middle management at once. Most employees keep to themselves while working: there is a ton of focused busywork involved here. Since the watchful eye of my family ever looms, this is the only time that I get to socialize with the people at my workplace without the need to keep face.

We come to the meeting room, and I open the door, letting Joyce enter first. I followed suit behind him soon after. “Sydney is going to be a few minutes late to the meeting,” I say as I enter the plain, echoing room. Sat in front of me is the Marketing Director, Nikola Gorbachev, a “silver fox” with ivory skin. His spectacled eyes look up at my own. At the other end of the table is Petra Olsen, our Community Director, who is trying her damnedest to open up a container of pre-packaged salad. With the way her auburn hair is hastily put together in a bun, it’s clear that she, too, was running late today. I walk over to her and offer her a hand. “Overslept?”

Her blue eyes look up at me after grumbling at the taut plastic that keeps her leafy breakfast hostage. “More like, ‘alarm didn’t go off because I forgot to charge my phone’,” she huffs, pushing the salad from her body so I can take a crack at it. As I get to work on it, she continues. “So I woke up 15 minutes late, to pans clattering and my dog jumping on top of me. Apparently, someone forgot to shut the door on their way out and a stray snuck in. Dog freaked out, I freaked out by my dog freaking out, and 30 minutes of vermin-hunting ensued. No time to make breakfast; hell, I’m shocked that I’m even dressed for work.” She brushes down her wrinkled slacks and shirt. I finally pop open the container and hand it over to her; she chirps a “thanks” and immediately starts scarfing it down.

Joyce sits comfortably to her right, and I sit to the left of Mr. Gorbachev, who then strikes some… rather unusual small talk. “Mister Gallagher,” he starts, before offering a hand to shake. I take it reluctantly. “I appreciate the improvements that you have made to the monetization system for our business, and other businesses alike.” Yeah sure. “I hope our discussion today can help alleviate the concerns that I personally have been having with our clients.” I nod slowly.

Sydney comes in just in time to save me from the directness that is Mr. Gorbachev. Sporting a tucked-in white button-up and brown slacks, they come in with a folder in one hand and a hot drink in another. “Sorry for the wait, lovelies,” they apologize, taking the seat directly in front of the door. “I had a doctor’s appointment that I couldn’t reschedule. Bad timing that it coincided with our monthly meeting.” They place the folder onto the table, its contents leaking from the sides. “Ready when you all are.”

Petra finishes chewing the last leafy remnants from her salad bowl before wiping up her face with a napkin. Putting it in the bowl alongside the fork, she sighs, clasping her hands together. “So,” starts our community director, “a lot of developments have been happening the past 28 days-- from the resignation of one of our own, to the onslaught of unhappy clients flooding our emails since then. Martinez, how are our users faring?”

“More of the usual,” Joyce replies, pulling out his phone and pinging everyone with a group notification. I take a look at the business group chat: posted by Joyce are a few screen grabs of angry users voicing their concerns about mundane issues, from followership to their disappointment with the ads that they’re shown. “Some users are reporting that other users are circumventing blocking features to harass them. Others are complaining about the irrelevance of ads in accordance to their interests.”

“Tell them to enable PrefSense,” Nikola chides, “or to not share the same devices. PrefSense does a fine job at tracking your interests to show ads better catered to you. If you don’t use it, then don’t complain; simple as that.”

“I think we could tack on an option to let users mark ads as undesirable,” Sydney chimes in, “so if they don’t opt into PrefSense directly, they can still mold ads to their liking. Even if the ads won’t change immediately, it’ll make it feel as though they’re doing something.”

“That could kill two birds with one stone,” Petra says, “as we are getting reports that there are offensive or otherwise degrading ads popping up on pages, are there not? Double the Undesirable button with a Report button, and we’ll get user information on what ads need to be pulled and reassessed.”

“Perfect,” Nikola chortles. “This should yield quicker results for ads in the long run.” Everyone nods in agreement, and then their gazes meet to my own.

“Well,” I clear my throat, “for block circumvention, all that we can tell them is to ignore the harassment and keep reporting the new accounts as they pop up. We can theoretically track device usage data to block the IP addresses of those using workarounds just to harass others, but due to the primitiveness of the IP address system, that would also block anyone that lives within that household, especially if they use the same devices. We could require users to connect their accounts to a number, which is harder to circumvent… but is it really necessary?”

“I’ll send out a survey to users asking whether or not they would like the feature implemented,” Joyce says, “with a huge emphasis on user safety and whatnot. If anything, we could make the number connection bit required for usage of certain features.”

“Good idea,” Petra nods, soaking in all of the information. “Milligan, how is the update to the new site layout coming along?”

“Pretty well,” Syd smiles, revealing to us the papers they had in that folder. Half of the images are those of the current layout, and the other half are of a proposed new layout. They spread them out on the table, and everyone takes out their pens. We go over the images as a collective, marking the papers with any improvements we can think of.

After that is said and done, we move on to the next topic.

It goes on like this for a good hour. Going over the numbers, talking about more user suggestions, analyzing the responses given by new and upcoming features. We mostly stayed focused, but sometimes we got sidetracked. There was even a client who demanded them have a conference call with everyone in the meeting room-- that one was a laugh.

After that, everyone went their separate ways to lead their relevant departments. Eventually, time passed so quickly that, in no time at all, it was time to clock out. Employees start to spill out from the building, and some still converse with one another after hours. It would be nice to hang out with some of my coworkers outside normal business hours, especially Sydney and Joyce.

If only I had the gall to.

I check my phone. Still no response from Ke’lan. I sent out another message: “You still alive? We should meet up at Kat’s bar when you’re free.” I pocket my phone and get out of here.