Overview of The Work Force

The central concern of a futuristic drama I have been envisioning, titled The Work Force,
is a clash between the dynamics modern industry and interpersonal relationships. However, the
"persons" who are involved in these relationships are not always fully human, and the industrial
aspect of the story is not treated with the same sort of cynicism that usually attends such
futuristic dramas. In fact, this story is not necessarily designed to serve as an indictment of
competitive business practices; rather, the story is told for the sake of illustrating how social
forces of attachment are able to follow a sacred path of evolution, day by day, even as virtual
substitutes gradually replace key members of a human community. The viewer is left to decide
whether or not such a social trend signifies an inherently positive or negative conception of the
future.
In the first scene of this story, I imagine a pair of coworkers engaged in separate
discussions over the matter of their work relationship. One of the men, who is older than the
other, is talking this matter over with his wife. It is clear to see that he is dealing with comple
emotions connected with this work relationship. The other man, who is many years younger yet
bears an unmistakable resemblance to the older man, appears to be comparatively more
animated and relaed as he is involved in a relaed conversation with his peers. !uring the
scene, the viewer catches a glimpse first of one conversation and then the net, switching back
and forth freely between the two, as the scene accumulates a sense of dramatic intensity.
The older man "knows" something essential about the "character" of younger man. In a
fundamental way, the younger man appears to be curiously oblivious to the true nature of his
own character. "opular with his peers, however, he is viewed as smart and trustworthy.
#urthermore, he is an entertaining storyteller, drawing his audience into confidence through
skillful use of purposeful descriptions, creative embellishments, and sharp reflections.
$y contrast, the older man%s story is dis&ointed, wrought with elements of sadness and
&oy, and guided by what can only be construed to be aimless 'uestioning. (s opposed to the
speech of the young man, which is punctuated with humor, the older man%s speech is weighted
with seriousness. He seems to be on the verge of tears as he mulls over the matter of his work
relationship with the young man.
)o, what is at issue here* $it by bit, the viewer is able to determine that the older man
considers the younger man to be his son, not only in a figurative sense but also in a literal
sense. The younger man writes off the older man%s belief as the lonely fantasy of a man who is
sliding into the early stages of insanity. )till, based on the speech each man delivers, the
viewer is inclined to identify the older man as the story%s protagonist. (ll the while, the younger
man%s speech raises 'uestions regarding his own credibility, despite the positive reception that
his speech receives before the audience of his peers.
Then, &ust as the viewer is prepared to watch the story of the conflict between these
coworkers unfold, the younger man and his group of peers disappear in an instant like flames
rising from a camp fire, flickering like ghosts into thin air. The viewer is inclined to wonder what
has happened. In visual terms, nothing is eplained.
(t this point, discussion between the older man and his wife continues. (s the man
speaks, we learn through a revealing series of flashbacks that he and the younger man are
actually father and son. #or eample, we see them playing catch with a baseball during the
young man%s boyhood, we see the father and other family members laughing as his son tries to
blow out the candles on his birthday cake at + or , years-old, we see the father feeding a
spoonful of medicine one night when his son is resting sick in bed, we even see the father
cheering on his son as he graduates from high school . . . The older man%s recollections serve
as an ais for nostalgic yearning and lament. )adly, part of the past --the greatest part--has
failed to translate into the present.
$it by bit, we begin to see that the story of this film revolves around the working
relationship of a father and son who have both been employed in the same factory.warehouse
setting for a number of years /which is located either on a spaceship or on a faraway planet0.
This story is set many years in the future, when technological breakthroughs have permitted
private corporations to augment their work forces with provisional "virtual" employees. These
virtual employees perform according to standards that have been set by "live" human
employees, and in certain fundamental ways the virtual employees operate as clones of the live
employees. 1ive employees who opt to sign over their virtual rights /for a 234 per-hour wage
increase0 acknowledge that their employers may utili5e advanced "capturing" technologies to
monitor, record, and recreate aspects of their &ob-related performance. )uch technologies are
rarely abused and are typically only used for professional purposes, since any other use is cost-
prohibitive.
Of the two men, the son was considered an eceptional employee at the
factory.warehouse. #urthermore, he had signed over his rights at his date of hire, and a virtual
version of the son sometimes worked alongside of the father whenever the schedules of the two
men differed. The virtual version of the son was 'uite unlike the son in a number of ways.
6ssentially, he looked a lot like the son. However, his personality was not 'uite the same as the
son%s. The father could easily tell the difference between the son and the virtual employee, and
the father never treated the virtual employee as he would a family member.
The father was proud of his son, especially because the son was recogni5ed as an
outstanding employee by the company. #or years, he had encouraged his son to consistently
outperform others, and since the &ob involved heavy hours of manual labor such performance
standards were physically ehausting to meet. (lso, working to such high standards was risky.
The son constantly pushed his body to the limit, and one day he fell victim to a fatal work-related
accident. He was killed in one brutal instant.
His death was grieved by the father and evaluated as an unfortunate loss by the
company. The son%s virtual employee continued to work as it had in the past. In fact, it was
now put into play in the very position once held by the son. )o, it was given a virtual promotion.
The father felt so upset by the loss of his son that he began to view the virtual version of
the son in a new light. In his grief, he began to try to build a father-son relationship with the
virtual employee. The virtual employee, whose personality was much different than that of his
real son%s, was taken aback by the father%s attempt to nurture an emotional breakthrough with
him, for two reasons. #irstly, and most importantly, he did not possess any of the real son%s
memories, much like a pair of identical twins who are separated at birth do not possess or even
share access to the same memories. )econdly, he was a virtual being whose ability to
eperience emotions was tentative and impeded by technological limitations.
)o, despite the fact that this story is grounded in the genre of science fiction, it is
essentially a story of human emotions. The relationship that the father is trying to build with the
virtual employee is clearly an inferior version of the relationship that he had shared with his son.
"eople begin to 'uestion his sanity for even trying to build this relationship.
The father does not merely pass through a phase of grief in trying to build this
relationship. He commits himself wholeheartedly to the pro&ect, causing his behavior to be
viewed as irrational and even desperate by family members, peers, supervisors, and, most of
all, by the virtual employee himself. The father re'uests overtime &ust so that he will be able to
spend more time working alongside of the virtual employee.
7hat is important is not that the father is able to change virtual employee%s basic
personality in any significant way. In fact, he is able to effect very little change. 7hat is
important is that the father is able to build a new kind of relationship with the virtual employee,
which did not eist prior to his son%s death. The father%s intention is not merely to hold onto the
past, but rather to honor the memory of his son was and to imagine who his son could have
been, even if only in a disembodied virtual form.
7ith regard to my narrative, if virtual versions of employees were to eist as they do
here, I think that live human employees would feel understandably threatened. To the etent
that they were able, these live employees would seek to secure their positions and assert their
value through collective bargaining. 8anagers would be forced to abide by certain regulations
in their efforts to implement a virtual work force, in order to retain a healthy pool of live talent.
On the basis of such a presumption, I am able to formulate a response to the following
'uestion9 "If the virtual clone has the muscle memory and work ethic memories of the young
man, why doesn%t he have any of his other memories*" $efore signing off to have their work
performance captured, monitored, and recorded, live employees would flatly assert that their
privacy rights should not be egregiously compromised. Thus, although technology would be
available that could convincingly recreate a human being--memories and all--people would
refrain from doing so. #or the same reasons, present-day stores refrain from planting cameras
in bathroom stalls in order to catch shoplifters. The technology eists, but the general
consensus is that using technology for such a purpose is invasive. !espite the fact that the
bathroom stall occupies space in a public bathroom, the interior of the stall may be defended as
a private space.
(ccording to this pragmatic interpretation of my narrative%s work place, the management
team of the factory.warehouse is bound by a set of rules in the way it runs its virtual operations.
I%ve worked at a couple of places where employees routinely refer to union policy in order to
counterbalance to the aims of the company. It would certainly not be in the live employees%
interest for the virtual employees to receive countless enhancements, so that every virtual
employee did the work of : live employees. ;onse'uently, the virtual employees would not
always be working at optimal speed. )o, in response to the following 'uestion I have an
answer. The 'uestion is "If the virtual clone is simply a program to be turned off, why does it
have time to speak to a group about a work relationship*" 8y answer is that he and the other
virtual employees eperience moments of downtime during their shift, due to inefficiencies at a
management level. They have near-human capabilities of emotion and thought, in order to
engage in acts of initiative, but their emotions are regulated to a certain etent through
engineering, &ust as certain people are regulated with medicine prescribed by doctors. They still
find humor in their work environment, and behavioral consultants indicate that humor is included
in a range of emotions that are vital components of the team-building process. )o, the virtual
employees are permitted to feel and think so long as their overall performance supports
company prosperity.
(s far as how the clones appear, their appearance is chosen chiefly for the sake of
identifying their capabilities. )ince each virtual employee represents a clone of a live employee,
it is vital that managers and floor supervisors are able to easily distinguish which virtual
employee was cloned from which live employee. The easiest way to do so is to create virtual
employees that look identical to their live counterparts. )o, the clone%s appearance is really &ust
an interchangeable part, sort of like a monitor for a computer.
(s for the idea of action in the narrative, an issue that is a greater concern for me is
<How can I supply viewers with all of the information stated above without senselessly boring
them*= I certainly would not want for the story%s audience feel like they were sitting down to
read a manual of work regulations for an hour and a half in order to finally be granted the
privilege of viewing >: minutes of legitimate action. I would want to convey most of the
information stated above by way of moments of activity, much as I mentioned before about the
supervisor trying to create a fantasy lover.
One thing that I feel might be effective is for the characters of the father and the virtual
son to discuss their concerns during an initial scene of the film with some urgency, and for the
narrative to hit several marks in a relatively short amount of time, sort of like the beginning of the
movie ?aising (ri5ona. If you%ve seen that movie, you might remember how @icholas ;age%s
character narrates over about A or : minutes of material before the film%s title is revealed and
the story unfolds at a more natural pace. (s he talked, all sorts of action was being presented
in a collapsed time frame, almost in the way that a montage might be able to do. )hortly
thereafter, the filmmakers abandoned that style, only to employ it later near the end of the film.
/?oger 6bert gave that movie a thumbs-down review, because he argued that southerners
simply do not talk as ;age%s character does; I disagree with 6bert that the movie was deserving
of a thumbs-down, because I think that ;age%s character was never supposed to be like a real
southerner, but was written to be sort of a cartoon-version of a southerner.0
7ith regard to the initial scene, described above the father in the story might be talking
to a work psychologist instead of his wife. "erhaps the virtual son would be voicing his
concerns about the father to his virtual coworkers in a locker room, and these virtual characters
would all be trying to mask their true emotions by speaking about specifics /such as the
<Blengarry Blen ?oss= characters speak of <leads,= or the characters of <"ulp #iction= speak of
$ig 8acs with ;heese or foot massages0, as men might speak together about football. I%ve
wondered what sort of work these employees might be doing. Cust now, I reali5ed that they
could be located on a spaceship or another planet &ust as easily as they could on 6arth. 8aybe
much of the film%s action might revolve around &ust how risky their &obs were, much like a
Haliburton employee might feel about working in a war 5onfacte such as Ira'. 7hat sorts of
actions can you imagine occurring at a factory.warehouse thatDs floating in space, which would
be presented as these two characters engage in voiced-over monologues*
In thinking about the personalities of the father and son, I have thought of a couple of
parallels. One is to Breek mythology, of the myth of Icarus and !aedalus, the father and son
who flew with wings made of feathers and wa in an attempt to attain freedom. Instead, Icarus
flew too high, burned his wings, and fell to his demise. 8uch like this story is the true story of
the Eon 6rich family, headed by #rit5 Eon 6rich, who was a professional wrestler when my
mother was a girl. !uring my teen years, #rit5% sons were famous, and I especially en&oyed
watching his son Ferry Eon 6rich wrestler. $ut A out of : of #rit5% sons died early deaths,
with suicide being the cause of Ferry%s death. I met Ferry at an autograph signing in >G,,,
which I wrote about here. Here%s a video about Ferry%s death. (s a wrestler, #rit5 employed
violent tactics, typically leaving his opponents% faces covered in blood. He taught his sons that
succeeding at professional wrestling was of paramount importance, and Ferry%s death seems to
have been attributable in part to his uncompromising sense of honor. It is a tragic story, and
whenever I think of it, I usually also remember this song, since it was the type of music that the
Eon 6rich brothers liked during the ,3s. "ut yourself in the position of the father of my storyDs
narrative; how would you feel every night when your shift ended, and you saw the virtual version
of your son vanish into oblivion* 7ould you feel like he was dying all over again each time*
7hat would you do after work ended* If some friends invited you to go out for drinks after work,
would you &oin them* 7ould you hide your emotions behind bluster, humor, or sarcasm*
)o anyway, that is certainly a lot of downbeat information. $ut it helps the story in this
sense9 imagine what it must have been like to have been sitting beside #rit5 Eon 6rich in his
living room years after A of his sons had died, and imagine that a lifelike clone of Ferry had
been built and #rit5 was seeing the virtual Ferry perform in a televised wrestling match. I%m sure
that during the moments of the match, #rit5% heart would have been filled with a new sense of
life, if only momentarily.
How easily, and how deeply, can a person wholeheartedly imagine the return of a lost
loved one* Is this nostalgia or is it different* In trying to imagine this 'uestion, 2 songs popped
into my head9 ""hotograph," which was sung at a tribute to Beorge Harrison shortly after
Harrison%s death, "Here Today," which was written by "aul 8c;artney for Cohn 1ennon after
1ennon%s assassination, and which later made 8c;artney choke up with tears when he sang it
live during his divorce from Heather 8ills, and "(lmost $lue," an 6lvis ;ostello song written for
the famous &a55 trumpeter ;het $aker, who before his death in the late ,3s had lived through a
checkered past of failed romance and drug addiction /to be compared with the drug problems
eperienced by Ferry Eon 6rich0. 7hat touches me about the performance of ""hotograph" is
6ric ;lapton%s love for Harrison, and how he shares the song with Harrison%s son /who looks so
very much like Beorge Harrison himself0 as they play the music below the large photograph of
Harrison. It%s like art mirroring reality all over again. The performance of "Here Today"
reinforces the idea that the elderly 8c;artney looks to 1ennon%s legacy for strength, as he has
stated time and time again in interviews. 7hen 8c;artney%s life enters moments of confusion, it
seems that he tries to speak with 1ennon through his son--to bring him back to life for a few
brief minutes so that he can turn to him with a tear in his eye for guidance and love. "(lmost
$lue" is about how a man knows from the beginning that a doppelganger of his lost lover will not
satisfy his needs, but he still pines after her anyway with the hope that somehow his needs will
be fulfilled. (ll of these songs provide insight as to what the father would be feeling each time
he worked alongside of the virtual version of his son. 7hat would the father be hoping to
achieve by re'uesting overtime to work alongside of his virtual son other than to only
momentarily regain a sense of relationship with his lost son*
I guess the most significant lapses of trust between the father and the son%s clone would
occur when the virtual employee epressed cynicism about the relationship that the father was
trying to build with him. I think it would be interesting, though, if the virtual employee would
begin to view himself in a new light, based on the father%s belief about who he was. /The movie
)tarman serves as a great template that illustrates the positive emotional potential of dealing
with a lost loved one.0 If #rit5 Eon 6rich could speak with a virtual version of Ferry Eon 6rich,
he probably would have tried to coach him, and perhaps give him the love that he never got
around to giving him when he was alive. This reminds me of some sort of ?ocky movie or
something, like ?ocky E, which I haven%t seen. He might tell him to stop wasting himself and to
get on track to be a better version of himself. I think I would en&oy seeing someone like Ferry
Eon 6rich or Furt ;obain being given a second chance to face their challenges, and to see
them come out as victors who figured out the way draw upon and epress more of their hidden
potential. #or eample, what if Furt ;obain had learned how to write music for movies, and had
composed the soundtrack for The (vengers, making a transition similar to the one that !anny
6lfman made from singing in Oingo $oingo to composing the music for Tim $urton films and the
soundtracks for the )piderman movies. 7e have such hidden potential in us to live fruitful lives.
If somebody believes in us, for whatever reason, sometimes their support can make an
enormous difference. How might the fatherDs belief influence the virtual sonDs performance*