NETWORK

"Central gave us twenty minutes to have service back up, lets go people!" the manager gave his order before briskly picking up his visual headset from a nearby table.

Around the room his crew emerged from their multi-system induced haze just long enough to take in the order. All of them were networked together, a shared experience was the only way to operate the complex corporate interfaces in near real-time.

On an arm over each of the custom built bays was a holoscreen which flicked data, images, and text relating to the conditions. Currently the screen read NODE-A2 and was flashing bright purple, indicating a failure.

"Come on everyone, the node is down across the board! We need to hustle!"

The manager furiously typed in command after command to try and keep up with the speed his crew worked at. Not being a part of the collective meant he could focus on ensuring results but it also meant he couldn't work as fast.

The board dimmed for a second, and began to glow blue.

A light rapidly pulsed on the managers console, one of the crew had gone offline. "Number 4, why are you offline?" the manager called.

"Number 4?"

He removed his headset, stood up and crossed the small room to a workstation. He tapped a command in to the control panel of the station, the transparent window flexed and retracted back into its housing.

Staring up at him was the lifeless body of a worker, the emaciated corpses eyelids lightly flickering. The manager lifted its head and reached behind the skull, grasped a thick cable and pulled down hard.

A green liquid spilled out across the floor and from an engorged slug-like creature fell free, attached to the end of the cable. It writhed and screamed at being exposed to the air.

"Oh great, another one this month."