Page 1 of Smart Ass

Ben

“Sir, Mr. Wollencroft is proceeding down the east hallway.”

Ben snickered. He was really into the British butler accent he’d programmed the company mainframe to use when it spoke to him. He was less into the encounter that was sure to follow, but at least he’d programmed in alerts so he could be prepared.

“Thank you, Maxamillion. Please write a four-verse song entitled ‘Wally Wollencroft is a Wanker.’”

What was the point of having AI capabilities if you didn’t use them, right?

Plus, wanker was such an underutilized word.

It was one thing to call someone an asshole or a twat. But people weren’t actually body parts. The word wanker just conjured up such vivid imagery of Ben’s insipid boss, Wally, hiding under his sheets in his big, expensive house and wanking off alone to vanilla porn.

It also fit with Ben’s recent BBC obsession, which had led to Max’s current voice protocols.

“Sir, the song is complete. Would you like to hear it now?”

Yes.“No, Maxy. And please close and seal all Project Cyclops files for my voice command.”

Ben wheeled around in his office chair, with a full spin just for flavor, and settled in front of the panel that showed the outputs for the factory floor below.

Not that he gave a damn about them—he’d long ago programmed Maxamillion to understand the difference between a minor hiccup and an actual issue that someone needed to deal with—but it gave him particular pleasure to ensure that Wally always caught him assiduously doing his job.

His job, of course, was intended to be a punishment. Wally the Wanker had an itty-bitty problem with taking credit for other people’s work. So Ben, back when he managed a development team, had spent six months having his team work on three exciting new projects, all while feeding Wally lines about their progress on a fourth. He’d put a couple days into hacking something together for Wally to present in its half-developed stage, then had his team pop up to steal all the glory.

Wally couldn’t fire him for anything—the “side projects” had been touched on in his reports as well—but when Ben had taken family medical leave for three months to take care of his grandmother, Wally had used the clause that allowed Ben to come back to “an equivalent position” as his punishment; namely, “supervising” the night shift of the factory floor.

There were a lot of air quotes involved with anything relating to Wally.

Ben picked up a clipboard and ran his finger down a column of who-the-fuck-knows. Why was there even a clipboard in his office? Who used paper for anything anymore?

Either way, he was carefully cross-referencing it against the outputs on the screen when Wally came in.

“Curran,” Wally barked out.

“Yes, boss!” Ben responded, standing to attention.

Wally eyed him warily.

“What’s the status?”

Ben mentally rolled his eyes. This branch of Orbit Robotics was manufacturing eight hundred robots per hour, which could be customized or programmed to serve thousands of different roles, all of which changed by the week. There were thousands of machines down there, along with dozens of non-sentient androids, sentient sparks, and the occasional human since it was the night shift, all doing their jobs competently enough that Ben had never found any reason to understand what they individually did. If any of them had a problem, they went up their chain of command, which did not include him.

He was an engineer. He had nothing to do with manufacturing, and all of the night shift managers knew that. Sometimes one of them, Kira, came up to chat with him and they’d brainstorm together about streamlining some of her production lines, but that was just amusing chatter in between talking about her girlfriend-of-the-week and Ben’s plans to get laid.

“We’re operating at ninety-six percent efficiency tonight, sir,” Ben replied. Not that they had a single measure of efficiency or anything. That was bogus.

Wally scowled. “Let’s get that metric up.”

Ben snorted, but covered it with a cough. Wally was comedy gold. “Yes, sir!”

“What else are you working on?” Wally asked. This was the real reason he’d come down after hours instead of going out drinking with his flunkies. Ben had already developed six patents that had earned him some hefty bonuses since he’d been relegated to the night shift.

“Oh, just a little side project. It’s a BDSM mod for Doms. So far I’ve got bondage, spanking, throat fucking, erotic asphyxiation, furries, cosplay…” Ben watched Wally’s face turn an interesting shade of red. Burgundy, maybe? “Still working on the impact play—there are so many varieties of toys to cover. Whips, floggers, crops, the tawse…”

Ben could have kept naming random kinks all evening, but Wally finally managed to find his words. “You can’t do that on company time.”

Ooh! Ben had Wally well trained. He hadn’t even questioned whether Ben was making this shit up.