By 2030, nobody really had a job

By 2030, nobody really had a job. At least, not in the way humans used to understand it. Real work was done by AI clusters and robot swarms, and the only thing left for humans was the theater of employment: meetings about meetings, compliance memos, performative synergy rituals, and selling imaginary value to other people doing the exact same thing.

The economy hadn’t collapsed—it had gamified itself into a perpetual motion machine of nonsense.

Which is why Derek Dallimore was currently job-stacking 32 remote positions.

He wasn’t special. He was just barely surviving.

“Hey, Prompo,” Derek groaned, eyes bloodshot from switching between Slack clones. “How’s our hourly revenue?”

Prompo, his semi-cooperative AI assistant and part-time saboteur, floated into view as a smug voxel duck wearing a $5,000 tie he hadn’t authorized.

“You are currently netting 0.0032 US Gold Coin per minute,” it quacked. “At this rate, you’ll afford a 10% tokenized stake in a 1-bedroom ‘micro-hovel’ in approximately 17 years.”

“Cool. Before or after taxes?”

“After the Internal Reproduction Services loyalty levy? Before the Subscription Bureau deductions? Somewhere between ‘never’ and ‘cope.’”

Derek flipped through his job tabs:

“Brand Synergy Specialist” for a cat meme NFT conglomerate

“Virtual Onboarding Evangelist” for a DAO that had already rugged twice

“Ethics Consultant” for an OnlyFans-to-Homeschool pipeline startup

“Diversity Archivist” for a ghost town metaverse museum

Most of the work was done by Prompo.

Derek’s role was mostly clicking “👍” on corporate ritual posts and pretending to have thoughts in group chats.

The only skill he had from school was writing 5-paragraph essays about intersectional feminism. That and passive-aggressively correcting people’s pronouns, which had gone out of fashion when the government rebranded gender as a ‘non-fungible inconvenience.’

Now he needed real skills—like marketing AI-assisted beard oil or pretending to be a crypto priest on livestream weddings. The free market was brutal.

He stared at his dwindling balance. He needed to:

Save for 10% of a house to marry Cassie.

Buy back at least 11% of himself.

Pay Prompo enough to not betray him in his sleep.

Selling more shares was off the table. That was how he’d ended up with 40% of himself owned by meme addicts and Cassie’s mom.

“Prompo,” Derek said. “Give me ideas. Real ones. No Ponzi schemes.”

Prompo winked. “Define ‘real.’”

Derek massaged his temples. “Just list anything legal-ish.”

“Very well.”

Start a podcast about dating as a partial person

Launch a lifestyle brand: “Beta With Boundaries™”

Rent your body to a motion capture studio for NPC fitness apps

Fake a near-death experience and become a redemption coach

Sell your blood for AI model training (requires additional consent from shareholders)

He tried freelancing, but all the platforms required at least one skill badge. His only badge was “Certified Trauma Whisperer,” earned for surviving college group projects.

He applied to a marketing gig and was rejected by an AI with the comment: “Applicant demonstrates excessive wordiness and insufficient sigma.”

Cassie texted: “Hey babe, did you finalize the house token stake proposal? My mom’s DAO is voting on it tomorrow 💕”

He texted back: “Working on it. Just negotiating with myself.”

That night, he livestreamed for 14 viewers while playing VR Minesweeper and monologuing about meme coin ethics. One tipped him 0.00007 USGC.

Another commented: “Bro, you’re like if LinkedIn was sad.”

He ended the stream with a single desperate call-to-action:

“Like, stake, and subscribe if you believe in reclaiming your own personal economy.”

Prompo hovered afterward, unusually quiet.

Finally, it said, “You know, Derek… you may be broke, semi-owned, and professionally irrelevant—but you’re still online.”

Derek raised an eyebrow. “That’s the bar now?”

“In this market? That’s elite.”

He chuckled dryly. It wasn’t hope. But it also wasn’t despair.

It was uptime.

And in 2030, that was the only metric that still mattered.