I recently wrote a new short story about the gig economy that can be found on Terror House, and will be republished here:
Gigs. A story of our not-too-distant future hellscape, involving the gig economy and the miseries that all gig workers have to go through. But put on a happy face!
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DEET-DEET-DEET-DEET! DEET-DEET-DEET-DEET! DEET-DEET-D-
I swatted my hand in the general direction of my alarm clock, finally turning it off on the third try. I have to void my bladder, as I do every morning, but today I don’t have the time to go down the hall to the bathroom—I have gigs! A full day of gigs!
Without getting up from my bed, I lean over to the right and open up my cabinet to get some clothes, and ready my shoes. I then lean over to the left and grab a date and mealworm bar which will have to serve as breakfast. I don’t even have to turn the light on anymore—I know where everything is in this apartment, even in total darkness.
Ding! goes my phone, a notification stating that I have my first job for today starting in half an hour. I know, dammit! I get dressed, hurry to the bathroom to brush my teeth, wash up, pop a couple of pills for energy, and in five minutes, I’m ready to hit the road! I smile as I think of those increasingly scant multitudes that work a regular 9 to 5 job.
Losers.
I work gigs, I’m my own boss, and I’m in charge of my destiny!
6AM: Driving for Uber
I leap down the stairs and open the trunk of my car—the old reliable 2019 Honda Accord I bought used a few years ago. This model hasn’t even been made for at least a decade, but Japanese engineering still works!
I throw the two bags of assorted sundries and tools I’ll be using in my other jobs into the trunk and drive off to my first client, Bob something or other. I run through two red lights and drive 55 in a residential area to get to my destination five minutes early, because I have 3,000 5 star ratings and I’ll be damned if I get a bad review from anyone. I’m so early, in fact, that I have a few precious minutes to pull out my phone and watch a TikTok video: It’s a video of a commencement ceremony of OCS candidates—my heart swells with patriotic pride as the potato shaped heroes of all genders twerk and scissor each other.
I’m so glad we’ve overcome our past evils and embraced modernity.
A knock at my passenger side door strips me away from my revelry—there’s Bob.
He closes the door, and within seconds, I’ve floored the gas and am weaving in and out of traffic. “Kinda reckless, huh?” Bob says with a smile. I look at him knowingly before he continues, “Ah, well, we’re all busy these days; I’m sure you have other passengers to pick up after me.” “Yeah, you’re right.” I reply, before asking him where he’s going. “To the Amazon procurement center,” he says somewhat dejectedly. “I have to punch in in the next half-hour and get to sending out the goods, or else I’ll get a demerit. It’s my second one, and if I get one more, then they’ll send a Knight to punish me.”
I sigh dejectedly, being well aware of the man-sized egg shaped security droids that most corporations have been using since 2030 or so. While they weren’t armed with lethal weapons, you still wouldn’t want to be on the bad side of their Tasers, rubber bullets, pepper spray, or just being run over by the robot.
Next to me, Bob fiddled with his lunchbox containing a few Gatorades and five or so cricket and fruit bars. “Must be pretty tiring.”
“Yeah,” he says, “Six days a week, and we have to get our hourly packaging rate up to 700 items. So I gotta stack proteins and carbohydrates and electrolytes, you know?”
“Yeesh, I can imagine.”
“It’s not so bad. Most of the guys there are supporting their families, and BE-Z*OS says that if we can collectively average our packaging to 1,000 items an hour, we’ll have a day where they’ll order pizza for us! Well, here we are.”
The Brutalist complex of glorious corporatism spanned for five miles in all directions, a shimmering cube of gray concrete that symbolized just why America would continue to be the greatest country in the world. A Knight ran over a loiterer and fired flares into the sky, heralding the workers to get to their jobs in the pleasant voice of Susan Bennet as the robot Tasered a straggling worker who was evidently on his third demerit. Across the front of the Amazon Procurement Center, a hologram displayed the voluptuously hairy buttocks of a twerking transwoman as the corporate banner politely asked us to celebrate this year’s 5th Pride Month.
“You did a good job!” Bob said, rating me on his app as he sprinted to the revolving gate of the procurement center and just making it on time to avoid admonishment.
Nailed it!
My next client is dressed immaculately, wearing a properly-tailored suit and wearing a retro-styled Rolex. “What’s the matter?” I ask. “You didn’t like the modernist watches, you had to go retro?” “Eh,” my client replies, not saying any more as I drive him to his workplace. He is an executive for Constable, another gig I have to do today, but ah! That’ll be in a little bit. I have more driving to do!
7AM: Driving for GrubHub
Hurtling across the highway and into the suburbs, I pull into the parking lot of Pete’s Deli. Breathlessly, I run into the small hole in the wall. “You’re almost late, we got a delivery already!” the proprietor says before shoving a package in my hand. “Don’t forget the receipt!”
$120…Reuben sandwich, coleslaw…yeah, it all checks out!
“Maybe at the end of the month, I’ll have enough money to buy some meat,” I said optimistically before getting into my car and driving to the location—a pretty nice house in the suburbs, with the customer right on time to greet me.
“Here you are, sir!”
“Thank you.”
“So…how long has this house been in your family?” I asked. “Five generations; how did you know?” “Well, I mean, there is only one car parked in the driveway, so I put two and two together,” I said as we both looked at the houses on either side of the road: every other one was a rental property owned by the bank, split into multiple rented rooms with a dozen cars parked in each driveway. The myriad of parking tickets on one of these cars flapped in the wind.
Alright, time to go!
9AM: Takl Repairs
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” the client yells up at me as I kneel on his roof. “Of course!” I reply.
I have no experience with this sort of thing whatsoever, but how hard could it be? And besides, it’s a job and I have to fill up a full day of work somehow, or otherwise I’d be a bad person.
I drill the gutters into the roof until the metal visibly bends—that should be tight enough. And then I begin laying roof tiles down. One over two, two over one…my Wikipedia search on my phone in the 15 minute interim I had in between arriving here and my work being scheduled served me well.
“Make sure you get those tiles even; Blackrock is planning on renting this unit out to seven or so families, and they can’t do that if the roof is leaking.”
“You got it, sir!”
11AM: Teaching Music Lessons and Also Lunch Time
“…And that’s paradiddle paradiddle flam!” I say as chipper as I can muster, teaching my first grade-aged student the beginnings of drum technique. “Now, you just work on that while I teach your three brothers the harmonica,” I continued, turning around and putting my harmonica in my mouth in one fluid motion. “The C Major scale starts on hole number four, ends at seven, and goes breathe/draw, breathe/draw, breathe/draw, draw/breathe. Make sure to put your lips into an O-shape to only play a single hole.” Two of the brothers nodded and raised their harmonicas while the third limply fell over and hit the floor. My drum student’s flabby arms smacked me in the back of the head as he awkwardly flailed at his drum kit.
The lessons didn’t go so well, but I got paid, and maybe their parents will give me a good review on the app website! I’ve asked them four times already, but maybe the fifth is the charm. And now for my lunch break!
I eat the date and mealworm bar and drink a can of Soylent on the way to the car. Lunch break over; now to the next gig!
12PM: OnlyFans Posing
How empowering it is to do sex work! People often think that sex work is strictly a business for women to strike it rich, but us men can do it too! I don’t have a photographer, but I did buy a tripod from Amazon and can set up my own camera. I’ve limbered up, fluffed myself to a state of semi-turgidity, and am ready to pose!
I do a few poses that enhance the erotic masculine: taking a wide seat, standing at attention with an erection, flashing my soy-fueled muscles…that will satisfy half of my fanbase, but now I have to embrace the feminine and do those poses as well. The side chest and ass pose, spreading my buttocks to show my hairy naked asshole, sticking a few things up there: all part of being your own boss and making that paper!
1PM: Fukkapp Sex Work Gig
“Did you pay the fee?” I ask my customer, an overweight elderly woman with rapidly thinning hair. “Yes, of course I did.” She said. “$300 for the hour, with the boyfriend experience. I’m just…so lonely,” she continued with downcast eyes. “Hey, it’s understandable, honey,” I say reassuringly. “Anyway, just let me lube up and we’ll get to it.”
2PM: FukappGAY Sex Work Gig
“The things I do for a living…”
“What was that, bitch?”
“Don’t worry about it. Anyway, just let me lube up and we’ll get to it.”
4PM: Community Police Gig with Constable
My, that was a giant load that man put in my ass. Anyway, it’s time to police and counsel the community, because all cops are bastards, I think to myself as I check the parameters of this particular gig again.
“Hmmm…social justice protest has escalated into a mostly peaceful riot…needs counseling and mediation. I know what to do!”
I drive to the area where the rioting is going on and, in one smooth motion, park the car, open up the drunk, and slide out of the car doors to grab the tools necessary for this job.
I quickly and somewhat awkwardly put on the steel helmet I bought on Etsy, grab the billyclub, and run into the fray, closing my eyes and swinging blindly, the reverberations of lumpenprole skulls ringing through my wrist. A musical “clonk” signifies the bashing of wood on wood, and I open my eyes to see my next capsule neighbor, Mark!
“Oh, hey, how’s it going?!”
“It’s alright,” he replies, taking a brief second to curbstomp somebody next to him.
“How many gigs have you worked today?
“Eh, like 10 or 15 or so. Gotta support my wife’s furbabies, you know!”
“Happy wife, happy life!”
We laugh at this while a rioter rushes towards me. Before I can react, multiple other users swarm him and gangtase him.
120 dollars well earned!
6PM: Firefighting with FireStorm
“Yeah, so, uh, we have an electrical fire that’s engulfed the entire apartment complex,” one of the other gig workers mentions as we stand outside the burning building. “Do any of you have any firefighting experience?”
The crowd of 15 or so giggers, male and female, awkwardly shuffle their feet and look down at the ground.
“Okay…well, let’s get right to it then!”
7PM: Takl Cleaning Gig
“Well, that…uh, didn’t work out so well,” I say as I survey the totally burned-down remnants where there once stood an apartment building just an hour ago. But hey, I got paid for the firefighting and I’m gonna get paid for the cleanup, so that’s double the pay!
“Yeah, we’re going to, uh, wait for another crew to show up, but we can get started,” says another gigger. “Let’s just start removing the big objects for now,” he continued, picking up the charred remnant of what might have been somebody’s leg, which snapped with a mildly crunchy protest in his hand.
“Let’s make it quick; I have another gig at 9,” I say with resignation as I pull the shovel out of the trunk of my car.
9PM: Non-Union Construction Gig
“Isn’t it a bit unsafe to be working this late?”
“We’ll be done when it’s done!” the heavily accented foreman replies with a scowl. “When I was doing ethnic cleansing, we worked all day and night until it was done, dammit!”
Dimly, I wondered how a war criminal could slip through the cracks into this country, but then I remembered that we haven’t vetted any immigrants in decades as I picked up another hod of bricks. My hod only contained 4-5 compared to the 10-15 that the more experienced workers loaded. Ah, well, I’d learn the trade as I worked.
…Sometimes I occasionally regret working for that PhD.
***
Alright, I made it home relatively early today: 1AM! And at 6AM, I’m gonna wake up and do it again! Man, I love being my own boss!