He jerked back into consciousness as the signal was disconnected. He sat for a moment, moving all his muscles, feeling himself. He flexed his arms muscles and they were sore, as were his legs when he stood up. He must have been working on one of the big machines today. A shame it. It would mean he’d have to sleep tonight. Good days, when they kept you to light work but they put you under the Overseer, you didn’t even have to sleep, because your mind rested while you were at work and your body wasn’t worked too hard. It was one upside of the Overseer. One of many actually. Fatalities in his line of work were down 100% in Overseer workers, and injuries were down almost as much, because you couldn’t overwork yourself under its control. There were the drawbacks of course. The lost hours made him uncomfortable. Giving up his body to something else, completely handing over his physical form. The lack of relationship with those he worked with. Except that they all had something in common. Only those who worked under the Overseer could really understand each other. And they had to stick together. Many people insulted the Overseer workers, looked down on them. “Puppets” they would call them, “Drones.” Some were angry workers who lost their jobs when they refused to go under the Overseer. Others were just looking for more people to hate. It didn’t matter, they were all the same. They naysayers who came with any progress. And progress it was. With the Overseer in charge manufacturing came back to America. The precise mind of a machine with the precise senses and control of a human body. Factories became more efficient and less dangerous. Some hailed it as the return of America’s Golden Age. Others spat on it, “another victory of capitalism over the human.” It didn’t matter. Both were right, but the Overseer would have stayed either way. It increased profits. And that’s what they care about, isn’t it?
