No+Working+Allowed



This is a society where robots have taken over everything. Factories manage themselves. Houses clean themselves. Farms produce by themselves. People no longer have to work, which the majority of them agree is a good thing; now, they have time to do whatever they want, as long as it isn't something that the robots are supposed to do for them. Not that they'd //want// to do what the robots do — who'd want to clean, cook, sweep the floors, grow food, or solve for x?

There are still five jobs left to humans, however: the engineers, who are tasked with maintaining, designing, and programming the robots. Because the ability to program a robot is extremely powerful in a society that depends on robots, the engineers are isolated away from society; this maintains equality and stability in the communities. Every time that an engineer is retired, the rest choose a successor from among the civilians. People are not educated in technological literacy; only after being chosen does the chosen one even learn how the robots work.

The problems arise when Bob Smith, a reckless young man fresh out of adolescence, is chosen as the next engineer. He is delighted that he has been singled out, and he'll be leaving for the engineers' briefing in a few months. He doesn't mind that being an engineer means leaving society behind—forever. Meanwhile, his life soon makes a turn for the worse when he meets Alice Brown, a timid woman who prefers to use facial expressions rather than spoken words to communicate with others. Alice likes to dress in solid, dark colors that match her hair, and her mysterious personality quickly intrigues Bob. After hanging out with each other for several weeks, the two find themselves in love. It's a happy ending—until Bob remembers that he was chosen to be an engineer and that he had to abandon the commoners. Leaving society behind would mean parting with Alice!

Unfortunately, the engineers' decision is final; they have already determined that Bob's brain is the most equipped to handle the complex engineering challenges involved in building robots. After two more weeks, a disheartened Bob is torn away from Alice, and he begins his training as one of the world's most powerful individuals. He finds mild contentedness in developing a personal humanoid assistant, whom he names Craig, but he really wants to be with Alice. All is not lost, however, when he figures out how to tunnel a voice telecommunication protocol over the robots' data network. In secret, he makes an attempt to reach Alice through the robots that he knows are near her. Alice is frightened at the robots' abnormal behavior at first, but she eventually realizes what is going on and, for the first time, sets aside her facial-expression-based style of communication in order to talk to Bob over the voice channel. Bob and Alice are relieved; although they can't be together, they can at least talk to one another.

It is not long before one of the other engineers notices the regular spike in data bandwidth usage whenever Bob is supposedly tinkering with the firmware image on the robots, though. Everything tumbles downhill from there; Bob is busted and imprisoned by the other engineers, who felt that Bob was undermining their efforts to maintain a stable society. Bob now has no way of talking to Alice, so he mopes around in his cell. One day, he is rescued by an unlikely accomplice—Craig! Before they can leave the compound, however, Bob and Craig are apprehended by an engineer who noticed the unknown machine fingerprint coming from Craig's network transponder. This time, Craig is powered down, and Bob is immobilized with chains. The story concludes with Bob's ultimate failure to change the system and be with Alice.