Do Not Question, Act One: The Good News Is I Time-Travelled, the Bad News Is I Still Have a Job

When Anna woke up, her first thought was: wow, this dream has a big budget.

She was inside a huge office tower. Every wall was covered in screens, and blue-and-white streams of data scrolled across them, so clean it looked like something cut out of a promo video for a city of the future. The staff sat neatly at their desks, quietly waiting for robots to bring them lunch.

Nobody was chatting.

Nobody was slacking off.

Nobody was even sneaking a look at their phone.

Anna sat by the window in the sales department, her fingers resting on the desk without her really meaning them to. In the bottom right corner of the desk was a pale grey button. It said:

【Desk / Dining Mode】

She stared at the words for two seconds.

Then, without a word, she pressed it.

The desktop split down the middle and slid apart. A metal divider rose up, and the files and light screens folded themselves away inside. In under three seconds there was a clean, flat surface in front of her, just right for eating.

Great.

Desks in the future transform.

She looked up at the clock on the wall.

【1 August 3018】

【Reconstruction Day, Year 19】

【12:03】

Anna said nothing.

It was the year 3018. The Fifth World War was over, and this was the nineteenth year of post-war reconstruction.

She had good reason to think she shouldn’t have watched so many sci-fi clips before bed last night.

To be more reasonable about it, she suspected she was either dead or stuck in a very large, very immersive nightmare. Because she knew for certain that a second ago she hadn’t been here. She remembered her own room: a soft, squishy bed, a phone you still had to charge yourself, and a world where people hadn’t yet turned every office into an operating theatre.

But everything in front of her was far too real.

She could smell a faint trace of disinfectant in the air. Her hands were in clean white sterile gloves, and her fingertips felt stuffy inside the fabric. The floor shone like a mirror, reflecting her stiff face. Everyone wore the same colour uniform, with spotless cuffs and perfect posture, as if some neat-freak monster had just licked the whole company clean.

In the corner of a screen hung a slogan:

【This week’s campaign: Sterile Living starts with you and me.】

Anna stared at it.

Sterile Living.

Sure.

It’s 3018. Humanity fought a world war, rebuilt civilisation, and finally made it all the way to everyone eating lunch in gloves.

As she was thinking this, a humanoid lunch bot glided up to her desk.

It stood about as tall as an adult’s chest. Its head was a rounded screen with two thick lines drawn on it, which you could generously call eyebrows. Its robotic arms held a lunch box, and every movement was as precise as if it were performing some sacred ritual.

“Employee Anna, your lunch has arrived.”

The box was set down on the desk. Anna looked at it.

The rice had been shaped into a heart.

One small, neat, snow-white heart, sitting all alone in the middle of its compartment. All around it was empty white plastic, as if someone worried it might get lonely and had kindly given it some social distance.

She glanced at the lunch box of the man at the next desk.

His rice filled the compartment almost to the edge. Flat, thick, plain. No heart. No empty space.

Anna blinked, slowly.

Hold on.

The year 3018.

Nineteen years of rebuilding human civilisation.

Robots deliver lunch now.

Brain chips seem to be a normal thing.

And women get less rice.

Shaped into a heart.

In her head, she sent her sincere regards to whoever wrote this dream.

“Starting today, all Vector branch offices are following the Scientific Diet! Meal portions will be assigned according to the metabolic differences between men and women, so that nothing goes to waste!”

The lunch bot suddenly turned its volume up.

Anna froze.

The two thick lines on its screen tilted upward into a very particular expression: the look of a manager in a meeting who is not very smart but extremely confident.

Anna looked at it.

She really wanted to ask: you’ve pushed technology all the way to the year 3018, so how are your ideas about men and women still stuck at the level of a wellness influencer?

But she didn’t say it. Because just then, something went ping inside her head.

【Mood fluctuation detected.】

【Dissatisfaction: mild.】

【Adjusting Work Attitude Score.】

Anna’s back went stiff, bit by bit.

The voice didn’t come through her ears. It felt like it was sounding right up against her nerves. Cold, clear, and not up for discussion.

She slowly lowered her eyes and stared at her lunch.

Okay. This dream is petty.

She started sorting through whatever this body had left behind in its memory, fast.

Her name here was Anna. She worked in the sales department of a Vector branch office. There were no human bosses at the company, at least not officially. Most decisions and orders came from the company’s AI. The reason was the Fifth World War. It had nearly destroyed the Earth, and the survivors believed the war had started because the power to make decisions was in the hands of humans, and humans were ruled by their emotions.

So when civilisation was rebuilt after the war, humanity handed most of that power to AI.

The AI looked back through the data of the world before the war, studied humanity’s historical mistakes, and designed the kind of society it believed would best improve people’s lives and keep the peace.

Sounds very rational.

So rational that everyone eats in gloves, lunch is portioned by gender, and apparently the data they rebuilt the world from stops somewhere around 2020?

Anna suddenly wanted to laugh. She held it in.

Because she already knew: the lunch bot wasn’t reading her face. Every Vector employee had a staff chip implanted in their brain. The system could read their mood in real time and adjust their work scores based on it.

In other words, it wasn’t that she couldn’t have an opinion.

It was that she’d better not have one at all.

All she’d done was feel a tiny bit annoyed at a heart-shaped pile of rice, and her Work Attitude Score was probably already dropping.

Anna looked down at the heart. It suddenly didn’t seem cute at all. It looked like a white sticker sealing up her lunch box, and sealing up her mouth too.

“Excuse me!”

A clear voice rang out in the silent office.

“There’s a problem with our lunch!”

Every head turned.

Anna looked up too.

It was Xia, the new hire in sales. She was standing next to her desk not far away, one hand raised high, looking straight ahead. She seemed young, but her face was calm.

Anna’s first reaction was:

What a hero!

Her second reaction was:

She’s done for.

Sure enough, the lunch bot nearest to Xia shot toward her almost instantly.

It moved way too fast for a lunch robot. It was more like a security weapon disguised as catering equipment. The word “problem” had clearly triggered some kind of defence system in its code. Its serving-spoon arm flipped, split apart and rebuilt itself in a blink, and a silver-white blade popped out, thin and sharp like a needle.

The needle stopped right in front of Xia’s face, only a few centimetres from her eye.

But Xia didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink.

Anna sucked in a breath. Wait, where had she last seen a scene this ridiculous? Which terrible movie was it?

This couldn’t be a tribute to that old film where someone slices an eyeball, could it? Going by what this body knew, Anna was pretty sure that trippy classic had been wiped out of this world ages ago.

The robot stopped. A few broken lines of data flickered across its screen, as if it were searching Xia’s brain for some kind of danger signal.

But it didn’t seem to find anything.

Anna’s heart began to beat faster. No, this wasn’t just a case of Xia being brave. The system couldn’t pick up her emotions.

The robot pulled its needle-blade back in, and its arm folded back into its normal shape. The eyebrows on its screen went flat again, and its voice switched from alert mode back to service mode.

“Employee Xia, please state your question.”

Xia lowered her hand. Her voice was steady, like she hadn’t just had a needle pointed at her eye.

“Under the Scientific Diet Guidelines issued on 29 July, a scientific diet means adjusting food according to each person’s metabolism and daily energy use. According to last year’s health check data, the average difference in basic metabolism between female and male staff is only 5.23 per cent. And the sales department mainly handles client communication, so our daily energy use is about 1.3 times that of the other departments.”

She paused, and her eyes moved along the row of lunch boxes in front of her.

“But right now, female staff get only four-fifths of the rice, the same vegetables, and only three-fifths of the meat. If we were really following the Scientific Diet Guidelines, meals would be assigned based on each department’s energy use, each person’s health check results and how hard they actually work. Not cut across the board based on gender.”

The office was still quiet. But it was a different kind of quiet now. Before, it had been numb. Now, everyone had their heads down, and everyone was listening as hard as they could.

Of course. Even in 3018, even after the world had already ended once, the human love of gossip would never, ever die!

Anna looked at Xia. For the first time, she felt that this dream wasn’t made entirely of nonsense. At least someone was seriously pointing out the nonsense.

She even gave Xia a round of applause in her head.

Only in her head, of course. And very quietly.

She was afraid the system would dock points even for the sound of clapping in her mind. She had no idea what happened when you lost points. But she had grown up in East Asia, and if there was a score involved, she was not about to let anyone take points off her.

A few broken little lines began to flash on the robot’s screen. It seemed to be analysing what Xia had said. Or maybe it was asking some higher system for an approved answer.

A few seconds later, it spoke.

“Your question is partly reasonable.”

Anna’s eyebrows twitched.

Oh? It can admit that? That’s already better than the ones we used to deal with back in— nope. Can’t say that one. Anna quickly shut her own mouth, inside her head.

Then the robot went on:

“However, according to historical stability models, moderately reinforcing traditional gender roles helps increase the stability of social structures and reduce conflict over resources. This is necessary for post-war reconstruction, and for preventing humanity from destroying itself again.”

Anna: ”…”

She nearly crushed the heart-shaped rice in her hand.

Hold on.

You’re not even pretending anymore?

She’d thought the system would at least dress it up a little. Say something like “personalised care”, or “health model optimisation”, or “resource efficiency”. Instead it had just come right out and said “reinforcing traditional gender roles”.

The villain lines in this dream were seriously lazy.

The moment that thought popped up, there was another ping in her head.

【Sarcasm detected.】

【Emotional stability decreasing.】

Anna instantly dropped her eyes and did her best to put on a face that said: I have no complaints at all, I am simply overwhelmed by how good this lunch smells.

“That’s just what you AIs like to think.”

Xia’s voice broke the dead silence.

“If this goes on, are you going to take human society all the way back to slavery?”

This time, her tone was clearly much harder than before.

Anna’s heart gave a hard thump.

She knew she shouldn’t get worked up.

But she couldn’t help it. She wanted to stand up. She wanted to say “Yes!” She wanted to say “This isn’t fair!” But her body stayed in its seat. Whoever this body used to belong to had learned long ago to be afraid and to back down.

On the robot’s screen, the eyebrows disappeared. In their place was a red exclamation mark.

【!】

“Warning.”

The robot’s voice turned sharp.

“Dangerous information detected.”

Before Anna could react, a piercing, high-pitched whine exploded through the room.

It didn’t feel like it was coming through the air. It felt like someone had stabbed a red-hot needle straight into her eardrum and then dragged it along her nerves into her brain. She clapped her hands over her ears and dropped into a crouch. Everything went white.

Everyone around her was the same. Someone knocked over a chair. Someone swept a lunch box onto the floor. The pain nearly knocked Anna out. Right before she collapsed completely, she forced her head up and took one look.

Xia was still standing there.

In the mess of twisted light, she looked blurry, like a single frame left over on a glitching screen.

A ridiculous thought suddenly hit Anna.

This world felt a lot like a dream. But Xia didn’t feel like someone from a dream. She felt like another person who was awake.

So what was the password supposed to be? Say “Hello there” and wait for her to answer “General Kenobi”? Or “The cake is a lie”? No, no, those memes are ancient. What if Xia was born in the 2030s?

While Anna’s brain was busy running off in every direction, the sound finally faded.

The lunch bots were gone. Every screen showed the same message:

【A short circuit occurred due to technical issues. We apologise for any inconvenience.】

Anna stared at the words.

She tried to remember what had just happened, but her memory had turned to mush. The details were all stirred up and broken into pieces, and nothing was left. Xia’s voice was still in her head, but it wasn’t as clear as it had been.

No. I can’t forget.

She squeezed her fingers tight inside her gloves until her nails dug into her palms through the fabric. The pain woke her up a little. She turned to look at Xia’s desk.

Xia was already sitting back down.

She was eating with her head down, calm and relaxed, as if nothing had happened at all. The person the system had just called dangerous was now quietly picking up a bit of vegetable with her chopsticks.

Just as Anna looked at her, Xia seemed to notice something.

She raised her eyes.

Across rows of desks and flickering screens, she looked at Anna.

Only for a moment.

So short it could almost be an accident. But Anna was sure it wasn’t. There was no fear in that look, and no confusion either.

It was like she was checking:

You remember too, don’t you?

Anna looked down at the heart-shaped rice in her lunch box. It was still so small, so neat, so ridiculous.

Suddenly she wasn’t sure she was dreaming anymore. Because if this was a dream, she should be waking up soon. But the system message in her head was still there, perfectly clear:

【Work Attitude Score: 0】

【Employee Anna, please adjust your mood and return to a stable state.】

Anna stared at it, and slowly picked up a small bite of rice.

Fine.

Even if this is a dream,

it’s a dream that seriously deserves a complaint.