The Human Resources
This is an ultra short “book”. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a short story nowadays given that its something like 15 pages, but it does give the pre-setting of Service Model adequately. In many ways, I wish this was in the Service Model books as it was quite entertaining and probably fit in there better than as a standalone.
Short story short…There’s a person in the HR department and he’s getting depressed becuase the only job he has left is to fire folks due to automation and AI having taken over the entire company. He tries to quit only to find out that he’s incapable of quitting becuase the AI has decided that they need to have a HR department composed of one human so that they can say they have a HR department. =). The ending is quite beautiful as it turns the word on its head and they say “you are our human resource”.
Very well done and if you’ve read service model, this will certainly put a smile on your face.