...Frank!?

Frank awoke in a plain white room. He sat up in a plain white bed and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Something was wrong. He remembered the sales, the graph, and then... something.

When he tried to think back on it, it felt scrambled, like when a video cable is loose. He shook his head and got out of bed.

He looked down and saw that he was wearing a plain white tunic, white slacks, and a pair of white slippers. He grabbed the corner of the tunic. "What?" he said. He looked up, out across the plain white room and its modest furnishings. "What?" he said again.

This wasn't his room. These weren't his clothes. He wasn't entirely sure what the precise heck was going on.

"Mr. Conchobhar?" a voice said from a doorway that hadn't been there before. The figure was a silhouette, standing before a blinding white light.

Frank held his arm in front of his eyes to block out the light. "Yeah?" he said. "Where am I?"

"We regret to inform you that you are dead," said the voice. "Please come with us."

"Dead?" Frank said. "What is this place?" He stepped forward, toward the doorway, and into the light. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw a hallway with several other rooms. The ceiling above was a glass window, bathing the hallway in a light from an invisible source. "Is this Valhalla?"

The figure in front of him paused, looked back. "No," it said.

"Hel?" Frank said after a pause. He started to shiver.

The figure laughed. "Not that either, Mr. Conchobhar. Please, follow me." The figure led him down the hallway into a larger room. Several others were gathered there, wearing white tunics like his. "It's all a little disorienting at first, but you'll soon get accustomed."

"Hey look!" one of the others said. "Another deadbeat!"

Frank shrank into himself. The figure leading him looked toward the person who had spoken. Without a word from the figure, the room took on a deep silence. "Sorry about that," it said, looking back toward Frank.

Frank looked at the figure leading him. It wore a white tunic like his, but also had a sash and strange symbols embroidered on the cuffs of its pants. He also noticed that instead of slippers, it wore sandals. And socks.

"I don't understand," Frank said. "What is this place? Who are you?"

The figure smiled. "You may call me 41EF," it said, saying each letter and number individually. 41EF led him past the group of others and up to another door. This one had a single word written on it: ORIENTATION.

"Please," said 41EF, "step inside."

The door hissed open at Frank's approach. He stepped inside. Once through, it closed behind him. He stepped into a plain white auditorium. There were many seats, and a few of them were already taken. He found a seat by itself and sat down. Shortly after taking a seat, the lights in the auditorium dimmed.

"Hello, and welcome to the LifeBack Repayment Program," said a vaguely familiar voice. The lights went up on the stage and standing in the middle behind the podium was that news anchor. What was her name? Magda something?

"All of you are here because you activated your LifeBack Emergency Backup kit," she said.

This triggered something buried in Frank's head. Why would he have backed himself up?

"And all of you are here because you were unable to pay the contracted amount."

"What?" said Frank out loud. Someone shushed him. He realized that he was standing, gripping both the armrests of his seat. He sat back down in the chair.

Magda continue as if he hadn't said anything. "Fortunately, the LifeBack Corporation has a convenient and easy method to offset the cost. It is the LifeBack Repayment Program," she said with a smile. A screen appeared next to her. "As you may or may not know, the limits of artificial intelligence can only go so far. We can train machines to do a wide array of things, but there are still a few things that machines cannot be taught to do. That's where the LifeBack Repayment Program comes into play." She flipped to the next slide. "Companies contract out work that is too difficult for AIs to accomplish, but too menial for humans to do, and you lucky individuals get to do that work as you gradually work down your outstanding debts."

Someone raised a hand. Magda either didn't see or ignored the raised hand. Or maybe she was just a recording. Frank supposed that news anchors, while not major celebrities, were still too expensive to do this sort of thing realtime.

She went on with all the different types of tasks they'd be expected to do and how long one could expect to be in the program. Time ran differently here, being a simulated reality, so it would seem like hardly any time had passed on the outside once they were released back to their families. She also explained about some non-disclosure agreement that was part and parcel with the EULA they had agreed to when activating the LifeBack Emergency Backup Kit, and that they were expressly forbidden from discussing what happened here with anybody on the outside.

"Now," she said, with a look out over the crowd. "Are there any questions?"

A figure, one of the sashed ones, stepped up next to Magda. Frank couldn't tell if it was 41EF or not. It pointed to the person who still had his hand up.

"Is this for real?" he said.

The figure nodded. "Yes, it's very real," it said. "Are there any other questions?"

Several hands went up.

"Any of them other than 'is this really for real?'" said the figure.

The hands went down.

"If there are no more questions, you are dismissed. You will find your job assignments written on the board in the commons."

The lights in the auditorium went up and those seated there shuffled out, some mumbling to themselves, others mumbling to those next to them. Frank flowed with the mob back out into the hall and toward the large room known as the commons.

A screen at one end of the commons had a list of names and next to each one a code. He found his name and corresponding code.

Someone appeared next to him. "Oh, you're on helpdesk duty, huh?" she said. He looked over and saw a woman standing there. She had honey colored hair and had a colorful stripe down her tunic. 

She saw him looking at her. She held out her hand. "You can call me Rasa," she said. He took her hand and shook it. 

"Frank," he said.

"You'll be working with me," she said. "Don't worry, it's not so terrible being a deadbeat."

"Deadbeat?" Frank asked.

"Yeah, that's what we are. We got backed up when we died, but couldn't pay the bills. Deadbeat." She elbowed him. "I'll give you the grand tour," she said. She led him away from the board.

She took him on a tour, which wasn't terribly grand. There was the commons, there were the rooms, and there were the work rooms. Since they didn't need to eat, there wasn't a cafeteria, and since they weren't there to have fun, there weren't any entertainment areas. Not even a foosball table. "We're here to work, not to shirk," Rasa had said.

"So," said Frank, after the tour, "what does helpdesk duty entail?"

"Have you ever called a company and been treated to the worst possible existence in your entire life?"

"Yeah," said Frank.

"That's us."

"Great," said Frank. "How long have you been here?"

"That's not important," said Rasa. "But longer than you." 

Frank sat down on one of the chairs in the commons. Rasa sat next to him. He looked over at her. "Why do I get the feeling we're never getting out of here?" he asked.

Rasa leaned forward and whispered, "Because you're right."