I juggled the R15.5 ration pack in my hand while walking to work, trying to imagine it was that leg of beef I'd eaten years ago at my acceptance party. It was the only time I'd ever tasted anything that pleasurable. It had been so mouth-watering that in the years since I'd often dreamed of it.

A menagerie of humans and bots passed as I was walking by. It was more difficult to tell the difference between them than it used to be, but the bots had a sheen to their skin that could only come from the plastic compound they were made of. If that wasn't enough, they were always perfectly shaped, unlike most humans. My grandparents had often said that the bots were weird when they were launched, but we were used to them. They were always helpful or willing to give advice. My only problem with them was the ration packs.

Any bot would quote you figures from the Age of Obesity, telling a twisted tale of how people used to die from coronary artery disease because their diets were terrible. "Food was everywhere and people ate too much of it." Then they would state how R1.X ration packs were the answer. "All the nutrition you need in a single pouch, without anything to keep you wanting more." Blech. I knew they had something else out there, otherwise, they wouldn't have had "real" food at my acceptance party.

I slurped down the ration pack right before I arrived at my nondescript office building, tossing the pack into the recycling bin. Through the rotating door was the bio-scanner, which I walked straight into. There was a quick flash before the bot at the desk waved me on. "You arrived at 7:57 AM" flashed on the marquee screen above the elevator as I got on. Upstairs, my team was ready the moment I walked into my office. George had my cup of water on the desk and was prepared to start my shoulder massage. Rosie had my tasks for the day laid out on the monitor and was already in the supervisory chair.

"Welcome," they said in unison.

"What a wonderful day!" George said as he slightly adjusted his bowtie. I was always envious of the bots' ability to stay totally put together. They didn't sweat, they didn't need to shower, and they never needed to change clothes. I'd never seen George in a different tux than the one he had on, and it looked as perfect today as it had years ago.

"You have a lot of tasks today, so I wouldn't waste a moment." Rosie offered stern advice as she crossed her legs and stared at me with that laser focus that my parents often said was "creepy." I never understood what their problem was. She was just doing her job, making sure that not a moment of my time at the office was spent not working.

I began at once, opening up the first file on my to-do list. My job was to review conversations between humans and bots and point out places where the bot could have sounded more human-like and why. Some of the conversations I read sounded pretty good, others required considerable effort. It was easy for me, I'd tested in the 98th percentile when doing this task at school. They said it was the main reason I'd passed the acceptance test.

Occasionally George would massage my shoulders or change my position in my desk chair for optimal posture. He ensured that nothing I did in the office could be considered harmful to my health. He was also responsible for serving me an R15.6 packet for lunch, which he brought up on a covered tray as if to make it seem fancier than it was. I'd often joke that I wished it was a leg of beef or something else, and he'd always give me a death glare before a lecture on how bad for my health that would be.

Rosie started the lunch timer - twenty minutes, and I ate while making chitchat with them. The bots had pretend families, pets, and lives which they liked to go into great detail about at times, to give them a human-like character. I usually forgot that what happened to them wasn't real, and whenever Rosie told me her dog was sick I responded with real sympathy. "This was normal," they said.

I started work again in the afternoon still feeling hungry, as I always did. Sometimes it got to me enough that I felt like screaming at George, or worse - punching him in the face. I never revealed these thoughts, as I knew they'd send me straight to Colony H, where the unaccepteds were sent. The only work there was backbreaking manual labor, and it was the impetus for every child to study as hard as they could in order to gain acceptance. The most I could do was tell a joke about that leg of beef.

When I left the office I spent time thinking about the old days in the early 21st century, the ones I'd read about in books as a child before they were confiscated. The world was harsher back then. People lived their lives without any control at all. The life expectancy was only 75 years, and people died from all sorts of diseases that we could cure today. There were murders, muggings, shootings, and all sorts of death. Safety mechanisms just didn't exist.

What a horrible world that had to be. By the time I had slurped down my R15.7 ration pack for dinner, I'd forgotten all about that leg of beef.

r/StoriesToThinkAbout