Not a Dream, Unfortunately

"No dreams for me today..."

Hanako woke up and couldn't remember having any dreams. There were nights like this too. All she could do was increase the chance, but it's still a chance. Humans dream on average between 4 and 7 times a night, but that doesn't mean she will always dream or notice she is in one.

She didn't like using a cane in her apartment. It echoed, downstairs neighbors complained; it also gave her a weird feeling of urgency. It did slow her down, but this was her place. If she wanted to take her time, she could.

I'm out of apples, I'll buy one on the way to work.

***

"Good Morning Ms. Tanaka."

"Good Morning Mr. Sato."

Hanako checked her watch and compared it with the clock on the wall. 5 seconds off, nothing out of the ordinary.

Lifts truly were a godsend. Moving vertically in a straight line without any effort from the user. Except choosing the floor, and sharing it with other people.

"Tanaka, good I caught you. Regarding today's meeting, the topic changed."
"Is that so Mr. Takamura?"

"We've invited a specialist to evaluate your workflow and find improvements."

"Leaving money on the table is no good, so we gotta pick it up faster..."

"I'm glad you understand."

Did I actually say that out loud?

Lift doors opened and Hanako exited first. Takamura's office was all the way on the highest floor. She pulled out her phone and compared Friday's picture with today's. Something was off. That sheet of paper wasn't there on Friday.

"Work satisfaction questionnaire? They'd rather I don't fill it out..."

"I thought the same thing."

"Suzuki for the love of god stop sneaking on me."

"I was standing here the whole time though."

"What? You were? What for?"

"I forgot to ask on Friday, are you perhaps free this week on the weekend? We wanted to have an outing as a team. You know, some fast food, soft drinks, maybe something more, badmouthing the boss, the usual."

"I'm usually very busy on the weekends, it's my family time."

"I see... Well, if you change your mind, I'm one cubicle over."

I'm not changing my mind. I'm quite comfortable with my weekends and I'd rather not spend them with bunch of drunk coworkers. You guys know how light your sleep is after drinking?

***

"You got mail (99+)"

Hanako's workday continued as usual, replying to mails that didn't need to be sent, forwarding mails not addressed to her. Occasionally she had a bite of the apple she bought.

"Hey Suzuki, I found a psychoanalysis test."

"Yamada I'm kind of working right now, you should be too."

Yamada was part of Hanako's team. He was over 30 and a bit chubby. During lunch it was him who was telling most jokes. Especially the bad ones.

"A small break isn't gonna kill us, is it now? Besides, we don't have to present anything today."

"Maybe you're right. What are the questions?"

"Imagine you're in a cave and find a dragon's lair with said dragon sleeping in it. What is it dreaming about?"

"Smoked beef."

Yamada and Suzuki looked over to Hanako who answered the question in a split second. She only now realized she stopped working and was listening in on the conversation. She got a bit embarrassed, but tried not to show it. After a while Suzuki followed.

"Smoked beef does sound like a good answer. I think I'll go with a princess."

"Actually, the answer is as important as how fast you answer the question. The answer is what you wish for but are too afraid to reach out, and the faster you answer the more you want it."

"Tanaka could it be you've went vegan? Is smoked beef your favorite food?"

"Go back to work you lot."

***

I've had enough social interactions for today. And there's still the meeting...

As Hanako entered the monochrome room with glass walls where today's meeting is taking place, she noticed she wasn't the first one to arrive. There was a young energetic man setting up his presentation.

"You're quite early! I like that already."

"Yes, uh, nice to meet you."

"My name is Akira, I'm from MirAI."

"Oh no."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing! I'm Hanako, I work here."

Hanako was saved by a higher power; other people started arriving. Everyone sat down and the meeting began.

"Hello everyone! As some of you know, my Name is Akira, I'm from MirAI. We develop AI based solutions for automating the workflow and aim to reduce repetitive, boring tasks to a single click. Could I get everyone's questionnaire?"

Everybody gave him their filled questionnaire. They were anonymous to make it easier to answer truthfully.

"Look how simple it is, just take a photo of each sheet... And now with a single voice command: Hey, MirAI, can you make a word cloud using answers to the first question?"

First question was "Most annoying part of your job".

New tab opened in Akira's browser and it actually contained a word cloud. Hanako recognised her answer, "typos". It was the smallest one. Biggest one was "time pressure".

"That's actually nice. With MirAI you won't have to worry about time pressure. Watch this: Hey MirAI, can you make a frequency list with those answers?"

Word cloud smoothly transitioned into a list:

1. Time Pressure: 4

2. Salary: 3

3. Meetings: 1

4. Typos: 1

"Have you ever had this moment during a presentation? "Oh no, this graph doesn't actually show my point as nicely as I'd like, and making a new one is impossible now!" Our product lets you swiftly change graph types. There are many more things our agentic AI system can assist your workflow. Tired of replying to mails? Meeting with stakeholders is in a couple hours and you need to finish some repetitive time-sink? MirAI will gladly do it for you, using your own documentation and instructions to answer!

Higher power must've looked away for a moment, as Akira directed his next question straight to Hanako.

"Hanako, what took you most time today?"

"Me? Well, we're currently working on data sets sent by local supermarket. They were interested in bundle deals and the like. Cleaning it was a nightmare..."

"Hey MirAI, generate me a flimsily made supermarket data set. 1000 entries."

It needed some time, but it created the table. Redundant columns, product names were sometimes written with spaces, sometimes with underscores, rows were missing entries. It's almost as if Hanako was looking at her new task.

"Hey MirAI, clean it up please."

One sentence and not even a minute later, with changes made in real time, data set was cleaned. Naming schemes were made uniform, no missing rows, redundant columns were dropped or combined.

Takamura liked what he saw, but there was one question more important than anything that was promised.

"How much?"

"Computing is quite expensive. In future we will charge 500 000 yen a month, but early investors get a permanent 50% discount. We also offer free trials."