The Process: A Novel

By Joe Dickson

THE DATA COULD BE EASILY ANALYZED, BUT NOT HIS CO-WORKERS!

In a future where Artficial Intelligence has become ubiquitous in an office space, Ted finds himself juggling his meddling boss Michael, the explosive product manager Gerald and his difficult AI software AkRondo. There is little joy in Ted's career as a light bulb material manager until one day when his AI software malfunctions and Ted is forced into doing the program's work secretly. With this changed relationship to his job, he begans to understand what a healthy relationship to work could look like.

The Process is the beginning of a novel that explores 21st century office culture and what it means to work on something.

Inspirations

"Industrial Society and It's Futures" by Ted Kaczynski

Brazil (1985)

"On Work"

By: Khalil Gibran

My Job

Some of my struggles were a result of not knowing how to approach writing this. I wasn’t sure how sardonic/close to home I wanted to portray people in my personal life. I quickly decided that it wasn’t the people that I had problems with, but how we interacted with the system that has been set up. Once I realized how it connected with the theme that systems are not independent of human will, but that we are conducting these systems; it fell into place. The characters in the narrative are not unlike the people in my personal life, they are more loosely tied to the ideas that I wanted to convey in the story.

Another struggle I had this semester was time. As a full time student commuting from Orange County, I did not have as much time as I would have liked to work on this project due to my obligations to my full time job and to my other classes. This also became another theme in the story, that due to our habits and obligations they also become systems that we seemingly do not have control over in our lives. I feel it is more nuanced than that and would like to explore. I soon realized that I would not hit my original target of 25 pages and moved my target to 15 solid pages. This will give me a strong foundation to get further in the summer when I have less obligations.

Excerpts

Mike laughed. It was a haughty laugh. A laugh that wasn’t really meant to be a laugh, a laugh that was a display.

“That wouldn’t be following the process now, would it?” He waited for an answer. When he received none, he continued. “It’s not following the process because we set up the part numbers to be aligned with the item description. Do you understand?”

AkRondo sauntered back onto his monitor and stretched. “Some party, huh?” It typed.

Ted leapt onto the keyboard. “Where were you? You could have pulled up the inventory they needed.”

AkRondo laughed. “I was working on the inventory!” The screen shifted and showed the various warehouses. “I figured one of us needed to be productive while dealing with that mess, don’t you think?”

About the Author

Joe Dickson is a loud talker, tea drinker, future professor, vegetarian, Orange County resident, incense burner, bad dancer, failed baker, 90s french hip-hop enthusiast who spends too much time worrying about money, reading, listening to old radio plays and wanting to live in a monastery.

His favorite flower are dahlias and his favorite color is green.

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