This is What Happens When You Fool Around on Facebook

Posted to the Writing Prompts Group on Facebook by Author Leland Lydecker:

You've lived in this slum all your life, staring up at the towers of wealth and affluence above and longing for the kind of life where you have clean running water and enough to eat. While hunting for another job, you stumble across a posting for a R&D position with the city's largest cybernetics manufacturer.

The pay is a small fortune in your eyes, and the only required qualification is the ability to pass a physical health exam. One line in the small print catches your eye as you press the button to sign up: "CyberTech Corp now removes the pain receptors of all its R&D subjects in accordance with UN regulations regarding human testing."

How does the new job work out for you?

https://www.facebook.com/LelandLydecker/photos/a.1925095311102443.1073741828.1906593652952609/2028857987392841/?type=3

My Response:

I brush the roach off the computer screen and he falls to the floor behind the old desk. I hope I will never see him again, although it's certain that his family and friends will show up looking for handouts. They always do. Our douchebag landlord refuses to pay for an exterminator, and half the tenants in this dump are slobs. The roaches and the mice are the only living things that prosper here. Don't get me started on the peeling lead paint and the broken steps. The landlord has been jailed twice for these, but he always manages to avoid doing anything about them.

Now that the roach isn't distracting me, I can continue my online search for a job. I have searched through several websites so far and sent my resume to at least 10 places. I am now on a site that advertises jobs in research and development. I figure they won't be too choosy about hiring people to try out new products or new medications, and maybe I can make enough to move to a better hovel than the one I now occupy.

I scroll through a bunch of ads for men to test new anti-impotence drugs and women to test new perfumes. I am not a man, and I'm allergic to perfumes. One ad, though, makes me stop and read. CyberTech Corporation is looking for human test subjects. The pay is $50 per hour, with free lunches and free transportation. "Whoa!" I say to myself. I click on the link leading to the website of CyberTech, where I find more information about the job.

CyberTech plans to do some experimental research to see how much power can be derived from the human brain. For this they need subjects in good health who don't mind lying still for a few hours a day with a wired-up helmet on their heads. For $50 an hour I will do an upside-down pole dance while singing "New York, New York" and slapping myself on the head.

I am poised to click on the "Apply Here" button when my eye falls on some small print near the bottom of the screen that reads, "CyberTech Corp now removes the pain receptors of all its R&D subjects in accordance with UN regulations regarding human testing."

What the hell! Does that mean I'd be numb for the rest of my life? Would I be "mostly dead," like Westley in "The Princess Bride?" If I choose not to have my receptors removed, will I die in excruciating pain? If they remove my receptors, can they put them back after the experiment is over?

On the other hand, a pain-free life might not be so bad: no more headaches; no more backaches; no arthritis pain; etc.

"Okay," I say to myself, "$50 an hour, here I come. The die is cast."

I click the button, fill out the information and wait for them to get back to me.