hub town features, extract, book 3/2, shaping

‘Reporting for duty.’
Andy turned in his chair. ‘Oh, Dennie. Great. We can go directly to the test space.’
‘Test space?’ Dennie asked, following Andy out of the command centre, along a passage and into the convoluted chaos of the dungeons, as it was known to THE. It was such a confusing fusion of tables of all sizes and functions and arrangements, racks with blinking tech, other racks with cables, racks with computers, racks with monitors, single monitors, towers of monitors, walls with monitors, half-walls which were used as some kind of boarders, the largest collection of swivel chairs on this planet, some armchairs which seemed out of place, a few bars which looked like the only kind of normal spaces and were designed like island.
Fittingly, Dennie thought as they passed one. He always wanted to flee to one of the bar islands when he was down here.
Anyway, because of this confusing fusion, THE had already used the space eight times for special trainings.
Andy finally stopped next to one of the table constructs. This one had a large sign, informing the lucky bastard who had volunteered for this, because he was far too accommodating, that this was the Test Space.
The table was slightly bent. The central swivel chair was waiting for its victim with a deceivingly cosy leather padding, and on the table was the kind of huge bent monitor people dreamed about — until they had to work on one of them. Left and right of the central piece were smaller monitors and two smiling faces.
‘Morning, Dennie,’ Daria said, bumping fists with Dennie. ‘We’re really glad you agreed to test our town features for the Hub. We want to launch them in a week, and we are getting nervous.’
Dennie twitched his mouth into a half-grimace. ‘I did tell you that I know nothing about the town features.’
Raiden, the other smiling face, nodded, and bumped fists with Dennie. ‘That’s exactly why you are ideal. We need a fresh pair of eyes, someone who doesn’t know a thing.’
Dennie exchanged a glance with Andy, but Andy didn’t look like he would offer an exit route.
OK, time to bite the bullet.
Dennie sat down.
The monitor was really cool. He swivelled. That was cool, too. He looked at Andy. ‘Alright, talk me through it.’
‘I’ll give you an example: A person got a job in our town and wants to move to town. First thing they do is register an account on the Hub. Not on the global Hub but our town Hub. As soon as the authenticity of the person as well as the job are confirmed, the town Hub offers our person flats or houses for rent. Once a primary job and an accommodation are confirmed, the Hub basically does the rest of the administrative work: a new passport entry, connecting the new home to our microgrid, tax registration, healthcare registration, a local bank account and so on. The user can basically sit back and watch it all happen. And the user can add things like: find me a group for morning workouts or a local band, or get me a registration with the local library and alert me to events at the party den, plus I want to join the green days for the town’s gardens, though I’ll need some training for that, and so on …’
‘Sounds good. One question, though. We don’t have a town yet, why do we launch town features without a town?’
Daria chuckled. ‘Clever point.’
‘And now you are going to be cleverer on me?’ Dennie said with a half-grimace.
‘Yep,’ Daria returned with some satisfaction.
Dennie rolled his eyes. ‘Hit me.’
‘Number one, the town features give people a chance to experience what our town will be about. Anyone can create a dummy identity to take a stroll through the features.’
‘That is clever.’
‘Yep. And people who are thinking about applying to move to our soon-to-be town can get a better idea of what being part of the experiment will mean for them. We added some probable experiment features to this version.’
‘More clever.’
‘And other towns and cities can get an idea of how the town features work. Several towns have already signed up to try out the Hub for their administration. Next Thursday the Hub executives will choose twelve small towns as test locations. And from July on, these towns will test the Hub town features. Plus some town features can be used without the town admin getting involved. For example several towns have applied to use the Hub for their tourist offers, and several clinics are also interested in testing the Hub for their admin tasks.’
‘OK. You win. Loads of clever. Me impressed. Now there is even a sprinkle of pride that I’ll be testing this. So how do I start?’
Daria handed Dennie a folder. ‘In here you find your different identities and the different tasks for each identity. And we will watch you and occasionally ask you questions about how you liked this or that feature.’
‘Hah, I can slip into different characters? I already like this better. I was a small-time actor once. Let me see, what have we here: Edna Timms. A trans woman. Oh, great. Let the show begin.’

@ Charlie Alice Raya, book 3/2, shaping, entanglements & then there was silence, unpublished