Typical Day

Chapter 1

Joyce Williams activated LifeMaster.

Good morning. LifeMaster spoke with a pleasantly soothing, mildly passive, helpfully encouraging, vaguely feminine voice. Please insert your cube. A square hole appeared in the smooth expanse beneath LifeMaster’s twenty-inch screen.

Joyce snapped open the polished ebony, brass-hinged storage box his parents gave him fifteen years ago, on his thirteenth birthday. The lid bore his initials in thin, shallow but genuine fourteen-carat gold. A cushioned velvet lining held an inch-square, vibrantly red, transparent cube.

The cube fit into LifeMaster’s hole with hardly an atom of clearance on any side.

LifeMaster sucked the cube in with the swishing sound of sand whisking through an hourglass. The cube, barely visible inside the hole, started to glow.

Joyce Patrick Williams, said LifeMaster through its high-fidelity speakers, any alterations today? The standard one hundred and six parameters scrolled across the screen. One hundred and four were specified within normal limits. Action/adventure was at minimum, job security at maximum.

No, Joyce answered.

Have a good game, LifeMaster responded.

A cartoonish image of the room appeared on LifeMaster’s screen. An animated, stooped-shouldered character sat in a floral-patterned wing chair. The little fellow’s slightly beaky nose was exactly the same length and thickness as his pinkie finger. His thinning, unruly brown hair flopped across his forehead to the top of his steel-rimmed, bottle-thick eyeglasses. His chubby upper body strained the snaps of his blue cotton pajamas. An awning of flab overhung the pajamas’ knotted drawstring. His backless, heel-less brown leather bedroom slippers had been patiently polished to a shine the color of old honey. A perfect likeness of Joyce.

Typical day, said Joyce, LifeMaster’s standard shorthand phrase for ordinary routine.

At fast-forward speed, Joyce’s image ate a good, wholesome, nutritious breakfast (cup of herbal tea sweetened with organic honey, half a grapefruit, bowl of stewed prunes, whole-grain bran muffin—it was the most important meal of the day!), read the morning paper, showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed, and left for work.

At that point, the game threw Joyce a problem. His peewee image, grossly out of shape, ran for but missed his usual Number 28 bus. He caught the next one. The delay caused him to arrive at work half an hour late.

Joyce’s minuscule image spotted his boss, Mr. Samuelson, sitting in the conference room, his back to the wall-to-wall window. Judging from the other animated icons in the room with him, Mr. Samuelson seemed to be involved in a high-level marketing meeting.

The scene froze.

Three choices appeared on screen.

A. Admit tardiness to boss. Plead for mercy.

B. Walk in as normal. Leave discovery to chance.

C. Attempt to avoid detection.

Option A was an automatic, albeit minimal point loser. B could go either way, minimal loss, minimal gain. Joyce won or lost biggest with option C.

Joyce desperately needed a few hundred extra points to upgrade from a Motel 6 to a Sheraton when he took his vacation next month to DisneyWorld. A successful Option C would go a long way toward getting them.

If he failed, he could lose the points he’d saved up for air fare. He’d be forced to stay home, forego his visit to the Magic Kingdom entirely.

He evaluated the scene. Mr. Samuelson seemed totally absorbed in the vice president of marketing’s presentation. Why not? Take C.

The game shifted to manual control.

Joyce felt a mild tingling in his wireless palm stick. Wiggling his fingers, he smoothly maneuvered his teensy image through the rat’s nest maze of office cubicles. At what he judged to be precisely the right instant, he thumbed the posture control button. His likeness dropped to all fours. Joyce watched gleefully as his chubby little alter-self, its ballooned-out stomach almost touching the floor, crawled unseen past the conference room window.

Joyce’s image reached his cubicle undetected! He pulled out his chair and sat down at his desk.

Joyce’s score for the maneuver flashed in a box at the bottom of the screen. To Joyce’s great delight, LifeMaster credited him with his largest single point gain this month! Keep this up, he’d be booking a Sheraton for sure.

Joyce’s image settled in to work.

He spent the morning as always: reviewing insurance claim forms. He found twelve spelling errors, one wrong color code, and a completely misfiled document.

For lunch, Joyce’s image bought a sandwich from the company cafeteria: white meat turkey on whole wheat, mustard, lettuce, tomato, no onions. He ate at his desk while reading a mystery novel.

Joyce’s image spent the afternoon exactly as he’d spent the morning: shuffling papers, racking up modest but steady point gains.

After work, his image bought a lottery ticket at the lobby newsstand. It selected Joyce’s usual five lucky numbers: 7-14-26-28-35.

His image took his regular Number 57 bus home.

For dinner, his image cooked spaghetti and meatballs. Distracted by the Knicks and Bulls playing in the NBA finals, it over-boiled the spaghetti and scorched the pot (a loss of three points.) The Knicks won 106 to 105 on a Scooter Kale jump shot at the buzzer.

Joyce’s image ate a dish of chocolate ice cream for dessert.

The evening newscaster announced the day’s lottery picks: 5-26-31-35-36. Joyce’s two correct numbers earned him five points. Nobody won the jackpot.

Joyce’s image activated his video game machine and played half an hour of Herculisa. The game went to level ten. Joyce’s image had never made it past level 2 and didn’t today.

Joyce’s itsy bitsy image brushed his wee little teeth, undressed, put on his blue pajamas, and went to bed. He read the last chapter of his mystery novel. To his great surprise, the kindly uncle did it!

Joyce’s image turned out the lights and went to sleep.

If Joyce had it to play the day over, he might have had his image order a roast beef sandwich for lunch. This was the third time this week his image had gotten turkey. Nothing he could do about it now.

LifeMaster showed Joyce his new point totals. Balancing the pluses and the minuses, he had made a modest overall gain. Still not enough for a hotel upgrade.

Maybe tomorrow.

Chapter 2

LifeMaster ejected Joyce’s cube. Joyce put it back inside its box and stored it away in his top dresser drawer.

Joyce went into the kitchen, where he ate a good, nutritious breakfast (cup of herbal tea sweetened with organic honey, half a grapefruit, bowl of stewed prunes, whole-grain bran muffin—it was the most important meal of the day!), read the morning paper, showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed, and left for work.

Grossly out of shape, he ran for but missed his usual Number 28 bus. He caught the next one. The delay caused him to arrive at work half an hour late.

He saw his boss, Mr. Samuelson, meeting with the vice president of marketing in the wall-to-wall windowed conference room.

Tardiness was Mr. Samuelson’s chief bugaboo. Woe to any employee coming in late. Double, even triple woe to any employee caught sneaking in late. Should Joyce risk it? Why not. He felt lucky today.

With extremely uncharacteristic daring, he smoothly maneuvered his way through the rat’s nest maze of office cubicles. At precisely the right instant, just before he reached the conference room, he dropped to all fours. He crawled unseen past the conference room window.

He reached his cubicle undetected. He pulled out his chair and sat down at his desk.

Joyce spent the morning as always: reviewing insurance claim forms. He found twelve spelling errors, one wrong color code, and a completely misfiled document.

For lunch, he bought a sandwich from the company cafeteria: white meat turkey on whole wheat, mustard, lettuce, tomato, no onions. He ate at his desk while reading a mystery novel.

Joyce spent the afternoon much as he’d spent the morning: shuffling papers.

After work, he bought a lottery ticket at the lobby newsstand. He selected his usual five lucky numbers: 7-14-26-28-35.

He took his regular Number 57 bus home.

For dinner, he cooked spaghetti and meatballs. Distracted by the Knicks and Bulls playing in the NBA finals, he over-boiled the spaghetti and scorched the pot. The Knicks won 106 to 105 on a Scooter Kale jump shot at the buzzer.

He ate a dish of chocolate ice cream for dessert.

The evening newscaster announced today’s lottery picks: 5-26-31-35-36. Joyce hit on two numbers. Nobody won the jackpot.

He activated his video game machine and played half an hour of Herculisa. He navigated the superheroine through the simplistic mazes and traps of level one. As usual, he died a horrible death midway through level two. The screen froze on a close-up of Herculisa in her sexy, skin-tight outfit, a tear running down her phosphorescent pink cheek as she leaned over his coffin and kissed him a sad farewell.

He brushed his teeth, undressed, put on his pajamas, and went to bed.

He read the last chapter of his mystery novel. To his great surprise, the kindly uncle did it!

He turned out the lights and went to sleep.

End of day.

Chapter 3

Joyce played his habitual, prudently cautious game. He never took excessive chances, a methodology he learned from his solidly conservative, middle-class, Midwestern parents. They had played their games exactly as he now played his. Slow and steadfast, soberly, no perilous moves, always careful to remain within the limits of their modest skills.

Joyce’s parents had both lived contented, thoroughly unexciting lives. They’d both died in their sleep of old age. Joyce fully expected to continue the family tradition.

LifeMaster locked in his day.

LifeMaster informed him that with today’s totals, he had accrued sufficient points to select a gold-plated pen and pencil set or an overstuffed leatherette recliner from the LifeMaster catalog. Joyce declined. Instead, he added his new points to his savings account, where he could tap them for his hotel upgrade.

Joyce ate breakfast, read the morning paper, showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed, and left for the office.

He worked in New York City’s financial district, in the Capital Life Building, a squatty, art deco monstrosity on the corner of Wall and Water streets. The building had been constructed in the thirties by a drunken, inept architect disdainful of both form and function. Offices were poorly ventilated. The plumbing leaked. The wiring short-circuited at frequent intervals, causing the computers to seize up and crash. The elevators often stopped mid-floor for no apparent reason.

Joyce toiled as a claims analyst for American Casualty. Thanks to warrens of diligent, contentious, hard-working, largely underpaid employees like Joyce, American Casualty was currently the country’s three-hundred-and-fourteenth largest insurance agency. The company’s five-year corporate goal called for it to leapfrog upward two full positions, to three-hundred-and-twelve. Joyce stood ready and willing to do whatever he could to help achieve that lofty objective.

Joyce passed a quiet, uneventful day at the office. He finished his work and left, as usual, precisely at five p.m.

He walked out of Capital Life into a raging thunderstorm. He went back inside to the newsstand and bought a late edition New York Times. He unfolded it and held it over his head as he ran for the bus stop three quarters of a block away.

He reached it fairly dry but thoroughly winded with a horrible stitch in his side. He renewed his frequently uttered, consistently disregarded vow to start exercising more.

He boarded his Number 57 bus and headed home.

He took his usual seat, mid-way forward, on