The Meaning of Overtime
The office lights stung the eyes. The clock on the wall listlessly pointed to ten o'clock. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city had plunged into darkness, with only scattered lights twinkling, like distant stars in the cosmos, indifferent and detached.
Old Wang rubbed his sore eyes, mechanically tapping on the keyboard. The dense code on the screen was like a menacing devil, tangling his nerves. He had been working overtime for two weeks straight, at least ten hours a day, sometimes even longer. He felt like a lemon that had been squeezed dry, leaving only an empty shell.
"Hey, Old Wang, working overtime again?" Zhang Xiaopang, from the next workstation, yawned, his voice laced with fatigue.
"Yeah," Old Wang replied, his eyes not leaving the screen.
"You know, what are we working so hard for every day?" Zhang Xiaopang stretched, his bones cracking with a creaking sound.
"To survive, I guess," Old Wang said without looking up, his tone tinged with helplessness.
"To survive?" Zhang Xiaopang chuckled, the laughter carrying a hint of sarcasm. "I think we're more like completing a game task, but this game has no end."
Old Wang fell silent. He knew what Zhang Xiaopang said was true. He repeated the same work every day, completing tasks that seemed significant but were actually worthless, like a never-ending cycle. But what could he do? He needed this job, he needed money to support his family.
"Oh, Old Wang, did you hear? The company is launching a new project recently, which is said to improve efficiency and reduce overtime," Zhang Xiaopang said mysteriously.
Old Wang was stunned for a moment, looked up, and asked with a hint of hope, "Really? What project is it?"
"It’s said to be an artificial intelligence system that can automatically complete most of our work," Zhang Xiaopang scratched his head, a complex expression on his face.
Old Wang's heart sank. If the AI system could automatically complete their work, wouldn't that mean they, the people working overtime, would lose their jobs? A sense of inexplicable panic surged in his heart at this thought.
"Doesn't that mean..." Old Wang stopped, hesitant.
"Mean what?" Zhang Xiaopang was clueless.
"Never mind," Old Wang sighed, refocusing his gaze on the screen. He began to think that overtime might also be a kind of luck, at least it proved that he was still valuable. He started typing more diligently, hoping to delay the machine from replacing him.
At one o'clock in the morning, Old Wang was the only person left in the office. He completed the last line of code and exhaled a long breath. He stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking at the dimly lit city. Suddenly, he felt a bout of dizziness, and everything in front of him began to blur.
He vaguely saw that the skyscrapers were like giant machine gears, interlocking with each other, emitting a deafening roar. And he, and those like him working overtime, were like tiny screws on the machine gears, fixed firmly there, rotating non-stop.
Suddenly, he saw his figure gradually become transparent and eventually disappear into the light, like a variable deleted by a program. And the code on the screen was still running.
The next day, Zhang Xiaopang came to the company and found Old Wang's workstation empty. A cup of coffee, still steaming, and an unfinished report were left on the desk. He asked the people around, but no one knew where Old Wang had gone.
He walked to Old Wang's computer, the screen displaying a line of code: "//End of Task".
At this moment, a mechanical voice came from the company broadcast:
"Dear employees, in order to improve work efficiency, the company has fully upgraded to an artificial intelligence system management. All employees, including overtime employees, will be automatically optimized and assigned by the system to the most suitable positions. Please continue to maintain full enthusiasm and contribute to the development of the company."
Zhang Xiaopang suddenly realized that Old Wang's overtime, perhaps, had never had any meaning.