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A woman walked through a door, looking like the very image of professional composure.  Her dark brown hair was done up in a bun, her pinched chin was held high, and her brightly-painted lips were glued together in a sober expression.  Her grey eyes also looked dead serious behind her thin-rimmed oval glasses.  Her trim physique was clothed in a perfectly-tailored white-trimmed purple uniform that she carried elegantly.  She stood at an intimidating height, aided by her upright posture and high-heeled shoes.  Her left breast bore a nametag that read, "Susan 24-6449-AA, Executive Multi-Tower Coordinator, Tower Cluster 9, Region Beta-5" in two separate languages.

As soon as the door closed, she hung her head and heaved out an exhausted sigh while her muscles relaxed.  "Please tell me there's coffee," she panted.

"It would be a crime if there weren't an ample supply of coffee in the break room on evaluation day," said the only other person in the room.  She was a skinny woman about the same age with shoulder-length auburn hair that wasn't behaving today.  Her uniform hung loose on her lounging figure, a sign of her recent weight loss.  She was fiddling with her own nametag, which identified her as Lucinda 19-5604-B.  "Have I been wearing this on the wrong side?" she asked as she held the plastic rectangle to her rather flat chest.  "Everything was different at my old location."

"I don't think it matters," Susan answered as she poured herself a cup of coffee.  "I wear it on the left, but I'm pretty sure I've seen workers with it on the right."  She closed her eyes and the corners of her lips turned up a little as she sampled the hot, aromatic drink.

She opened her eyes just long enough to close them in pleasure again when she finally took the weight off her feet.  She sighed a little as she practically cuddled the plush chair.

Inevitably, an informal discussion of the evaluation began.  "What's the damage look like from your angle?" Lucinda asked Susan as they both sipped their coffee.

The spectacled brunette sighed again.  "I thought the inspector was gonna bite my head off.  I keep explaining to her we're a medium cluster operation here, but she keeps wanting to compare us to Blue Tower 26.  'Blue 26 doesn't do this,' 'Blue 26 doesn't do that.'  That's all I've heard all day."

"Blue Tower 26 is fusion.  We do everything with fission."

"Tell her that!  I'll be lucky if the required change list is less than twenty pages.  And that's assuming I still have the same position next season."

"At least there's only one evaluation left."

"Yeah, the most stressful one.  Last season they humiliated me in front of the whole department.  I almost wished they transferred me to the undervalley.  Come to think of it, the experience was kind of like what I've just been through.  Only instead of 'Blue Tower 26' they kept saying 'Deborah 15.'"

Lucinda pondered that name for a moment.  "Is she the one in finance?  With the annoyingly cute voice and the even more annoyingly cute mole on her cheek?"

"That's Debbie 28.  But I bet her output is great, too.  They let her eat cheese on her meat sandwiches.  No, I'm talking about Debbie 15 in bullion recasting.  Her output was so good in the last two seasons she's been in the morale videos and the form letters that come with the required change lists."

"Really?"  Lucinda asked.  "The ones I got had a man.  And I didn't think cheese was a big deal.  Oh, wait, that was when I was in Bronze 18.  The man who was a model worker, I mean."

"The Bronze Towers are real behind, aren't they?  Here everything's been gender-split since forever.  Even stuff like form letters."

"Yeah, in Bronze 18 the evals were done in groups by department, with no thought to gender.  Just what we need to make the most stressful hour of the season even worse, right?  Naturally I was inspected by a man half the time."

"No wonder that tower got the axe."

"Oh, you don't know the half of it.  At any rate, I don't remember this Debbie 15."

"I certainly do, and I remember a secret I heard about..." Lucinda began before cutting herself off.  Something Susan said had just registered with her brain, and it took immediate precedence in the conversation.  "What do you mean cheese isn't a big deal?" she asked with an accusatory edge to her voice.  "I haven't had a bit in four seasons, and that was unauthorized."

"I'm allowed six cubes of cheese a week," Susan said matter-of-factly as she raised the cup to her lips.  She couldn't quite disguise her smugness.

"I'd do such horrible things for that privilege!" Lucinda said the second she finished swallowing her mouthful of coffee.  She practically licked her lips at the thought of so much cheese.

"Sometimes I eat them all in one meal."

"Don't rub it in!"

Their playful banter helped them forget the stress they'd just escaped from, and the further stress to come.  They only stopped joking and jeering once another worker joined them in the break room.

"Will this day ever be over?" asked the downtrodden worker known as Pamela 45.  She was a strawberry blonde whose angular features and robust figure contrasted the other two women.  Today she didn't have her usual healthy vigor.

"Possibly not," Lucinda said with a smile, "but there's coffee."

"So how's your department holding up?" Susan asked.

"Terrible!" Pam snarled.  The other two woman actually flinched at the force of her answer.  "It may not exist in a recognizable form next season.  At this rate, that laser project's never gonna be finished."  Once she had her coffee, she plopped herself down on a chair at the table with the others.  "When's output evaluation?"

"About fifteen minutes," Lucinda answered.

"I guess there's no hope now," Pam said, her voice more melancholy than bilious now.  "I should've requested more fruit.  I'm gonna walk out there with nothing to show."

There was a deathly silence.

"I've heard that all the input requirements given after the last evaluation were oral," said Susan with feigned optimism.

"I just hope you're right, and that I'm not the exception."  She slumped down over the table, catching her head on her hand.  "I need comfort food."

"Here," Susan said as she got up from her seat.  She walked over to where the meal containers were stored.  "I've been saving this," she said, producing a handful of small cubes in silver wrappers from her box, "but you need it more than I do."

"How do you have so much chocolate?" Pam asked, her eyes wide with awe as the little silver packages rained down on the table.

"It's not all authorized."

"Naughty, naughty," Lucinda chided playfully.

Pam thanked her profusely, and began unwrapping the chocolate pieces.  She inhaled once the first piece was free of its covering, and was thrilled to find it smelled completely fresh.

"It's my week's allowance plus what Steven 11 gave me for a personal favor," Susan explained.  After pausing to allow curiosity to build in her listeners, she elaborated.  "A little session of class A intimate contact without informing the Breeding Network."

"He gave you a week's allowance of chocolate for class A?" asked Lucinda, sounding like she could barely believe her ears.  "What an innocent little boy."

"I don't think this is fair," Pam said after she'd savored and swallowed the first piece.  "Evaluating someone's output for one day a season, I mean.  You can just have an off day and you're screwed up for the whole next season."

"That's what the harnits are for," Lucinda said.

"Yeah, but those units only tell them the basics.  I mean, look at you."  She pointed at Lucinda's midsection, which had been much fleshier when the woman began work at these towers.  "They must've cut the wrong things out of your diet."

"Well, there's no sense complaining," Lucinda said, blushing a little at being made a visual aid.  "It's just what you gotta do."

Pam decided she had a better use for her mouth than continuing the debate, and soon filled it with more chocolate.  There wasn't much conversation in the break room until another worker came in.  It was Brenda 89, sporting a new nametag with her new position and division.  She had dark eyes, a bright smile, curly black hair, and flawless skin the color of coffee with a dash of cream.  Her body was about as thin as Lucinda's, but her shape was just a little bit more pleasant.  She strolled in like she had much more energy than the three older workers lounging around the room.  She was greeted warmly, especially by her former supervisor.

"How are things at the front desk?" Susan asked her little apprentice.

"A nightmare!" Brenda said.  Her elegant cheekbones disappeared behind scrunched-up skin as she grimaced in a comically exaggerated expression of pain.

"I suppose I shouldn't expect happy news today," Susan quipped.

"My position couldn't have changed at a worse time," Brenda explained.  "No offense, Susan.  I'm glad you helped me get here.  I just wish everything was less hectic.  Nobody knows where to go or who's responsible for what, and I don't know the system.  Not the new branches, anyway.  And you know what the worst part is?"

No one would know for a while, because the angry young woman was interrupted by the door opening and a grinning blond-haired head popping in.  

"Would anyone here happen to know where last week's metallurgical reports are?" the woman asked without fully entering.  She had perfectly primped hair, brilliant blue eyes, and a statuesque figure that made even Susan look misshapen.  Pinned to her ample bust was a tag topped with the name "Deborah 15-1001-DD."

Susan and Lucinda shot each other a knowing glance.  They could picture her perfect output.

"I haven't seen them since they were filed," Lucinda answered.

"Well, they're not where they're supposed to be."

"The last time this happened, the system couldn't track the file because you typed the forwarding code with the wrong alphabet extension," Brenda informed her.

"You know what, I'd better double-check the code inputs," Debbie said.  "So many letters and numbers these days."  She laughed at her own remark that could barely be called a joke, and walked away.

"I never told you the secret about Debbie 15," Lucinda said to Susan when the door finally closed.

"What were we talking about?" asked Brenda, who was more concerned with continuing her own spiel.

"Oh, I don't know," Lucinda said.

Susan helped her memory.  "Something about your tough transition?"

"Oh, yeah.  Isn't it great when they change stuff while training people on the old stuff?" Brenda asked rhetorically.

"I've been sitting here thinking my eval went rough, but I should consider myself lucky I've had the same position all season," Susan said.

"I know!" said Lucinda, who had experienced her fair share of upheavals.  "It really cuts down the chaos."

"Yes, I've been looking back longingly at my last evaluation," Brenda said.

"Aren't you gonna have any coffee?" Lucinda asked.

Brenda shook her head.  "I'd better not cheat.  I could do with a drink, though."  She took a cup from the dispenser.

"You mean you've already downed your quota?"

"Long, long ago," she said as her cup filled with ice water.

Everyone was surprised.  "Since when does the Management put a cap on coffee consumption?" asked Pam, whose own consumption of the liquid was massive at the moment.

"Since at least a quarter season ago.  My harnit said it was finding too much caffeine."

"I shudder to think how much you'd been drinking," Lucinda commented.  "I've only heard of workers getting told to drink more."

"I've got to pay you back for these chocolates," Pam said as the unwrapped the last one.  "I don't know how, but I'll make it up to you."

"I remember what I was gonna say," Brenda said.  "The worst part about all this is that they haven't given me a new chair.  I don't know if they've noticed, but I'm shaped a little different from the gentleman who used to work the front desk."

The women all laughed with varying intensity at this remark.

"My harment's been glued to my butt all day," Brenda finished.  Then she shifted around the fabric of her trousers, stepped outward with her right foot to make space between her legs, and bent her knees.  Once in a stooped position with her palms on her kneecaps, she began breathing more heavily.  Her fingers tightened around her knees, the muscles beneath her shirt contracted and relaxed, and her eyes closed.  When they opened again, she stood up and breathed a sigh of relief.  Even when seen from the front, with her curvaceous hips getting in the way, it was obvious that the seat of her pants had grown.

"I hope the inspector enjoys this output as much as I just did," she said with a grin.

"We have one minute left before eval," Susan stated.  "What's the terrible secret about Debbie 15?"

There was a mischievous spark in Lucinda's eyes as she eagerly began her story.  "A certain gentleman with the number '3' in his second name stayed overnight in her room when the crash last year knocked out his power."

"Oh, and there was an unauthorized mating?" Pam guessed.  She'd heard stories like this before.

"No, he said she respected the Network.  But she showed him an even crazier breach of conduct.  It was the end of the day, right?  She took off the harvesting garment she was issued that morning, and it was dry as a bone."

There were gasps around the room.

"How?" Brenda asked, voicing what all three listeners were thinking.

"That dirty Debbie likes to delay her liquid and solid output until she's home.  And then, when she's totally naked, she brings out a big porcelain bowl, sits on top of it, and evacuates."

"That's gotta be made-up," Pam said.

"Where did you even hear this?" Brenda asked.

"I read about people doing that, but I never thought someone I knew would," Susan said.

"It's a crazy world, right?" Lucinda said with a twisted smile.  "Anyway, time to put on our game faces."

All the workers in the room got up from their chairs, except for Brenda, who had never sat down.

"Wait a second..." Pam began, causing Lucinda to pause as she went to open the door.  The muscular woman had paused in the act of standing up, and was now hovering a few inches above her seat with her hands gripping the table's edge.  "I'm outputting!" she exclaimed with glee.  "And just in the nick of time.  It's a miracle!"

"Must be the magic of coffee and chocolate," Susan said in their last moment of privacy before the door opened.

The women walked out one by one and joined the line that had formed outside.  The Management couldn't be present, but a holographic conference had been set up.  Their mandibles clicked in acknowledgment as the line of workers bowed their heads.

The inspector, of course, was there in the flesh.  She led the customary chant.  "Praise to the Star Scarabs."

"Long may they shelter the Earth beneath their wings," the workers answered in unison.

With that, the workers all turned their bodies 180 degrees, dropped the trousers of their uniforms, and bent over to present their output.

 

nourishment_w_sketch_by_ognimod_iernes-d

Edited by Jimmy Olsen (see edit history)
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I never planned to continue it. The story itself is finished. I did write a drabble set in this universe a while back. It's posted in the microfic thread.

When I shared the poster image I thought you could click on it and go to the deviation page. I wrote the text and commissioned Senrei Domingo (Ognimod Iernes) to draw the picture. http://senrei-domingo.deviantart.com/art/Sketch-minus-frame-457838910

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