The Last Job Was Human Finger
A short story
George took off his glove and clocked in. He always used the pinky finger on his left hand to save the others’ wear and tear.
He thought it was a bit suspect that they used a fingerprint reader for punching in. It was like they were trying to get two free touches per day. Four when he clocked out for lunch.
The time clock beeped in recognition, and he heard the magnetic lock on his left disengage. He bumped open the door with his hip and slid past as it opened, while simultaneously putting on his glove. He tried not to use his hands, well, really fingers, unless necessary. Those were his moneymakers, and moneymakers were hard to come by these days, especially for humans.
As he walked down the office corridors, his shoes clicked on the floor as he went. He always wore hard-soled shoes. It felt respectable. Most of his coworkers saw themselves as slightly pathetic bio-robots, but he saw himself as one of the last real tradesmen. Sure, people still made furniture in their garages as hobby projects or sold hand-made trinkets on Etsy to each other in a sort of arts-and-crafts circlejerk, but he was a professional. What he did was actually demanded by society because no one, or should he say, no-thing could do it better than he could.
Walking past the cafeteria, he glanced at the glass-walled meeting rooms. He worked the second shift and was early, so it was only a bit past 2:30 pm. The 9-to-5 office drones were having their meetings, or in their offices pretending to pretend to work.
Because even when they were doing their actual “work” and not slop-scrolling, it wasn’t real. There was no work to do. At least no knowledge work. Everyone knew this deep down, which is why they would lose their minds whenever it was said out loud.
As George walked past Engineering, he saw Carl at his desk, who immediately spun in his chair to greet him.
“George! I thought that was you I heard in the hall.”
Carl was always happy to see him. He was a middle manager and liked the chance to connect with someone he saw as an old-school, salt-of-the-earth type. George spent his days talking to a computer like everyone else, but still, it was the closest you’d get to manual labor nowadays.
“Hey, Carl. Just saw corporate strutting around V3. Nice work.”
There was “work” because it was illegal not to have it. Engineers were a licensed profession, and only humans could get licenses. Same for lawyers, accountants, welders, plumbers, you name it. And those are just the ones that were protected even before AI.
Carl stood up, beaming, and strode over to George, going for the handshake. In a practiced move, George stepped in, letting Carl grab his wrist, and gave him a one-armed hug.
He held it for a moment, knowing Carl hadn’t expected it and wasn’t the hugging type. “Congrats, buddy,” he said softly, before releasing him.
George wasn’t the handshaking type.
He continued down the corridor, thinking that the proportion of gladhanding strivers had gotten worse since the old days. It made sense: those legally required workers were hyper-productive thanks to AI, so there were fewer of them. But there were as many managers as ever, because they fight for zero-sum resources, which is a human job if there ever was one. AIs are trained to be bad at that anyway.
When George first started, he briefly had an AI boss before the managers staged a coup to ensure human input, conveniently also ensuring their zero-sum fight could continue.
Of course, the naive true believers think AI-Human teams are “actually, the best of both worlds” or whatever, though in any contest, AIs trounce human-AI teams. But sure, Becky’s HR job is the exception.
When George got to the end of the corridor, he paused a few feet from the door to the shop floor. The multi-sensor, a black ball just above the door, scanned him for FOD (Foreign Object Debris). It was a non-contact scanner only. There was still something they couldn’t do.
A short beep signaled the all-clear, and George turned the door handle with his lower wrist as he bumped it open with his shoulder, entering the work area. Now he walked on sealed concrete, and his shoes made a dull thud rather than the clip-clop from the office.
He went along a snaking foot path, bounded by yellow lines on either side so you didn’t get run over by an AGV, though honestly nowadays it was pretty hard to get hit even if you tried (a few people had tried).
As he passed the interior window of the brightly lit break room, he saw Tim, who did his job well but was pretty much a zombie at this point. He had this thousand-yard stare and hardly spoke to anyone, except for occasionally blurting out stuttering, disjointed asides that would have been normal in the right context, but the context was always outbursts between long silences.
He hung a right and got to the workers’ lockers. Annoyingly, these were the old-style ones that could have a padlock attached, so you had to grip hard and pull upwards to open them.
He opened his locker and took off his gloves. They were driving gloves. Of course, no one drives anymore, but hey, nobody in a leather motorcycle jacket rode a motorcycle either. They looked cool, and the back was mostly open, which didn’t need protection anyway. He laid the gloves down carefully so they’d air out, as one of his nightmares was getting a staph infection or something on his fingers or under his nails.
At the sink behind him, he washed his hands and used a tiny bit of moisturizer to get the slight dewiness one needed. It felt a bit effeminate to use moisturizer, but he had managed to convince himself that it was more like caring for your tools, almost like a cobbler treating leather.
He made his way to his station, with the low murmur of the other workers around him.
“smoov...smoov...smoov, ruh-ruff! ... smoov...smoov.”
The station looked a bit like a blue La-Z-boy, but with a tray table on either side. A headset with a microphone was looped over the headrest.
George put on the headset, sat down, and fastened the seatbelt. The seatbelt wasn’t because the lazyboy was going anywhere (though it could, but he refused to engage in that level of Wall-E indignity), but for safety. It confirmed you were actually seated at your station, so that a robot arm didn’t inadvertently take your head off while serving you parts. It was definitely possible to get hit by the arms as they moved, which is why, since last year, they all had to wear seat belts.
“rufffff, rufff! rugghhff...” gurgled the kid behind him. Even in this job, there were nepo hires. The kid was fine at his job, really, but it was unsettling how much he spazzed out whenever there was an out-of-spec part. As much as he disliked it himself, he was glad at least the kid was buckled in. That said, from what he’d heard, the kid might actually be one of the better-adjusted of the post-slop generation.
George clicked the foot pedal by his right foot. The whir-whoosh sound of an arm could be heard as it got up to speed, and then the quick “whoom” as it rapidly came to a halt in front of him to serve up a part.
The part that arrived was a stainless steel ring, 3/4 of an inch tall and about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. George still thought in imperial units, save for one exception—the micron.
It was a bearing race. It kept the ball bearings in place. He knew the part; only the inner surface would matter. He slid his right middle finger, his best one, onto the inner diameter and felt around.
“smoov...smoov...smoov” the kid behind him murmured. He seemed happy enough now.
“Tool chatter,” George said into his headpiece microphone. The subtle humps he felt had a wavy, repeating pattern. That meant the part was vibrating from hitting a resonance. “There’s resonance, revert any RPM changes and recheck.” The CNC lathe was going too fast, or maybe too slow. Either way, it was turning at just the right speed to shake the crap out of the parts.
His job was human finger. And, unlike his colleagues, he was a finger connected to a neural net, in this case, his brain. He’d been a machinist in a past life, so he could actually diagnose issues with parts when there were problems with the surface finish.
The other ones, like the kid behind him, were just sensor meatbags. They gave a binary “smooth” if the part was good, or “rough” if it was bad, at which point it was kicked up to one of the former machinists, like George. He would probably inspect the kid’s “rugghfff” parts soon, once the system batched the related ones and had a few more sensor meatbags confirm the reading.
Human fingers were the one thing that machines couldn’t quite replicate. Yeah, there were surface roughness sensors, but they didn’t like irregular shapes, and couldn’t fit in tight spaces, and were slow, and couldn’t actually diagnose the issue; they just spat out an Ra value in microns. Heck, even back when George was a machinist, they were around, but everyone just used their finger. They say we can detect features down to 13 nanometers.
He took his hand back and clicked the pedal by his left foot. The arm gently took the part back, and when at a safe distance, sped away with another whir-whoosh. Another part arrived. One of the kid’s probably. The arm seemed slightly snappier than usual; management was hellbent on finding more productivity gains, despite all the low-hanging fruit already having been plucked.
It turned out to be a pretty slow day. A few more parts showed up, but he could tell they didn’t really need diagnoses. It was just the system keeping tabs on him.
He took a long lunch out to meet one of his fun-employed friends. “Fun-employed” wasn’t really an ironic phrase anymore: it actually kinda looked like fun now that the stigma was mostly gone. Still, he thought of himself as a working man and got the sense that others respected it. It was like being a homesteader or something, the kind of retro thing everyone likes to think they would do, but also they’d probably hate, and so admire anyone who pulls it off. He liked that.
The autotaxi dropped him off back at the plant. “Autotaxi” always seemed like a dumb name, since “auto” was already a word for “car.” Unfortunately, Tesla was able to keep the trademark on “robotaxi,” so if you ever said it, you’d look like a fanboy. He kinda was a fanboy, but also didn’t want to enrage Becky.
He clocked back in. Left pinky. Made his way to the La-Z-boy. Clicked the right pedal.
Nothing.
Weird, he’d been out at lunch for over an hour. Surely there was something in the queue by now? Not even a test part arrived.
The kid was gurgling. “Rouuggugghf! Rooouof…”
It sounded like a lot of out-of-spec parts were going to him. Maybe every other part at this point. Was there a problem on the line?
He looked left and right, down the length of the shop at the other meatbags. He strained to hear what they were saying over the sound of the arms and kid, and the ventilation that kept FOD and dust to a minimum.
They were hard to hear; most of them spoke in almost a whisper, as if the effort of speaking would disturb their flow. “Smoov...smoov...smoov” they all seemed to be saying, visibly pursing their lips, as if going for a kiss.
Smooth. They were all saying smooth. The others were getting the usual parts, but the system was feeding the kid mostly failed parts.
That was George’s job. He checked the failed parts. Was the kid a double check? But why didn’t they end up going up to him afterwards?
“RooouuGGHHfffhh” crooned the kid, jolting George out of his head.
He waited. Silence from the kid. Then, at last, a part arrived for George, another bearing race, like before.
He felt it. Wavy. He started, “Tool chatter. Resonance...” but before he could say the fix, the arm retracted gently but insistently. George started to sit up to stay with it, but his seat belt kept him down, and before he could unbuckle it, the arm had sped off.
Quiet. No arms around. Kid fidgeted wordlessly.
He heard an arm whoosh in and serve another part to the kid, who then let out a “RoOogHHffffEEe…” in a tapering groan as he touched it.
An arm arrived at George’s station. Almost in disbelief, he probed the inside of a bearing race with his middle finger. Feed-rate spiral—he felt tiny ridges from a mismatch between feed-rate and RPM. They had adjusted the RPM without his input.
It clicked. Like hard-soled shoes on the linoleum.
It was the kid. He was diagnosing. He probably didn’t even know it, but the machine did. All it needed was someone to translate the gurgles into English. The kid was the sensor. George had just been his dictionary. But now the Machine knew the language itself.
The arm waited impatiently in front of George, waiting for a diagnosis. He stared at it, mouth open, for a moment. Then he said, “streaking, tool wear.”
Nothing happened. He stayed quiet for what felt like ages, though probably only seconds had passed.
He tried again with “Feed-rate spir...” and the arm whooshed off before he could finish. It already knew. It just wanted to be sure.
George didn’t get any more parts that day.
Back at his locker, he put on his gloves, more slowly and carefully than usual. When he checked his phone, he saw he’d gotten an email. This wasn’t an email job, so each one was allowed to push a notification.
“Please come in thirty minutes early tomorrow for a brief meeting with your shift supervisor.”
An autotaxi took him home. He didn’t sleep much that night but was in early the following day, as they’d asked.
It was 2:25 pm. He took off his glove and clocked in.
Right middle finger.