usenovelgroup Chapter 32 The Voice of Capitalist Freelancers!
Chapter 32 The Voice of Capitalist Freelancers!
"Those people in Michigan are such losers. How can they even stand up to a pack of unwanted stray dogs?"
Jack Hill refreshed his phone screen, muttering curses under his breath.
The news feed still shows old news from a few days ago:
A group of veterans, designated as a terrorist organization, attacked the Gildier family, killing the sheriff and massacring their private property.
He scrolled off the page.
What truly made his fingers go cold was the following new notification:
"On the first day of Noah's general artificial intelligence open beta, the number of users exceeded 10 million, and Wall Street upgraded its rating to 'strong buy'."
He is a 34-year-old front-end engineer at Doggy Tech, of South African descent, who has lived in Seattle for ten years.
I have 18 years left on my student loan and I just paid off my car loan three months ago.
He has a daughter who is attending community college and a wife who constantly complains about how fast supermarket prices are rising.
Everything was on track.
Until 10:17 this morning.
The project manager called him into the glass booth, wearing that formulaic apology on his face.
"Jack, you know the company has been restructuring recently."
"Um."
"Your project team... has been integrated into the new automated workflow."
"Um?"
"so……"
Jack looked up, his eyes filled with the despair he had expected.
"You're angry."
No compensation was provided.
This is the essence of the capitalist free market!
As I stepped out of the office building, the sky was Seattle's classic leaden gray.
He sat in his car and opened his stock trading software.
In the holdings list, the stocks of five technology companies are all in red.
The decline ranged from 12% to 37%.
He took a breath and switched to his cryptocurrency wallet.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and several altcoins he bought last year following the trend have seen their price charts plummet like cliffs.
He sold off the remaining shares and converted them into US dollars.
The numbers show a decrease of 68 percent compared to last week.
Apart from the small amount of US Treasury bonds he bought last month, he has almost nothing left.
No, there are also houses.
And there's the property tax bill due next month.
My phone vibrated.
It's the reply email for the interview appointment I submitted yesterday.
It was a mid-sized cloud computing service provider. The position was senior developer, and the salary was 15 percent lower than before, but he needed to work.
The email body is very short:
"I'm sorry, this position has been canceled due to company business restructuring. Also, I received a layoff notice today, so this email address will be deactivated. Best of luck."
Jack stared at the screen for ten seconds.
Then he started the car and drove to another company where he had an interview scheduled for the afternoon.
The streets were crowded.
It wasn't the usual leisurely crowd strolling around.
He was a man wearing a suit, carrying a laptop bag, wearing glasses, with a tense expression and hurried steps.
Many people have earphones in their ears and their lips are moving rapidly.
The green light is on.
The car continued driving.
The second company is located in a shared office building in the south of the city.
There was no one at the front desk.
Jack looked at the company logo on the glass door. The lights were on inside, but all the workstations were empty.
A young man wearing a hoodie came out of there, carrying a cardboard box.
Who are you looking for?
"I'm here for an interview, scheduled for 3 PM."
The young man twitched the corners of his mouth.
"No need for a face-to-face meeting. The company dissolved two hours ago. I was the last one to leave; I came back to get my things."
He turned to the side so Jack could see inside.
The workstation was spotless, with not even a monitor or keyboard left.
"The investors have withdrawn their funding."
The young man said,
"It's said that all their money has been transferred to that Noah AI ecosystem project. People like us who provide services to traditional enterprises are getting no attention."
He carried the cardboard box towards the elevator.
Jack stood there, looking at the empty office.
The third company, during a phone interview, was interrupted halfway through by their HR representative.
"Sorry, I just received an internal email... this position is frozen. I apologize for taking up your time."
The fourth company, after I passed the online written test, scheduled a technical interview.
The interviewer turned on video; the background was a home office, and he looked tired.
After asking three technical questions, he left the screen and returned, remaining silent for a few seconds.
"Your resume is excellent."
He says,
"But... I was also fired."
After hanging up the video call, it was already dark outside the window.
He drove home.
The restaurants and bars along the street were still lit up, but you could see through the glass that there weren't many people inside.
My phone vibrated again.
It's a push notification from a real estate management application.
"Ding-dong! Your property valuation has been updated. According to the latest market data, your property asset has increased by 8.7%! Click to view details..."
Jack tossed his phone onto the passenger seat.
The car drove into the community. Under the streetlights, "For Sale" signs were stuck in the lawns of several houses in front yards.
The porch light in one of the buildings was still on, and you could vaguely see cardboard boxes piled up inside.
He parked in his own garage.
The wife was cooking Black food in the kitchen.
"How is it?" his wife asked without turning around.
"It didn't work out," Jack said.
"There are two more tomorrow, right?"
"Um."
He went upstairs, entered the study, and closed the door.
Turn on your computer and log in to a job search website.
Screening criteria: Seattle area, technical, full-time.
There were still over 700 job openings yesterday.
There are only three hundred or so left today.
He applied one by one.
He then glanced at his bank account, and the number finally settled on an amount that made his stomach tighten.
If I can't find a job, this money, plus my savings, should last... eight months.
The prerequisites are that the daughter doesn't drop out of school, the wife doesn't get sick, the property tax doesn't increase, and prices don't rise.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
I could hear my wife and daughter talking softly downstairs, the hum of the refrigerator compressor starting up, and the sirens of ambulances passing by on the street in the distance.
And the sound of my own heartbeat.
Heavy, slow, like some kind of countdown.
At the same time, in an affluent area south of Seattle.
Qian Liren sat in his study, typing on the keyboard.
Noah AI has connected to the public data interfaces of major global cryptocurrency exchanges.
They've started brute-forcing it using the latest algorithms.
Yes, he's come to cut off our supply lines.
Qian Liren looked at the screen.
In less than two breaths, the entire system collapsed, and a large amount of cryptocurrency began to be sold off at the calculated maximum selling speed.
Five seconds later, the algorithm for triggering a sell-off was activated.
Ten seconds later, panic began to spread from the trading forum.
Twenty seconds later, the first highly leveraged position was forcibly liquidated, triggering a chain reaction of margin calls.
The curve began to decline.
Qian Liren had a stern face.
An hour later, the cryptocurrency crashed completely.
His account balance was immediately full!
"Let's eat it all in one go!"
He quietly disconnected.
He leaned back in his chair and let out a soft sigh.
It's not fatigue, it's... dissatisfaction.
When he deeply connected with Noah's AI, his thoughts spread at the speed of light, processing massive amounts of data and deducing countless possibilities in an instant. It felt almost like he was omniscient.
But after the connection was broken, consciousness was trapped in this flesh and blood body.
Your brain will get tired, your eyes will get dry, and your arms will ache from maintaining the same posture for a long time.
This body is too slow.
Too fragile.
Qian Liren raised his right hand, looking at the ∞-shaped scar on his palm, composed of 0s and 1s. In the dim light of the study, the characters glowed slightly, flowing slowly as if they were alive.
He clenched his fist.
"Lord..."
The sound was very soft, almost just the sound of airflow friction.
"This body... can I just give it up?"
The only sound in the room was the low hum of the server cooling fans.
No one answered.
Outside the window, the Seattle night rain began again. Raindrops pattered against the glass, meandering down the slopes and blurring the scattered lights of the distant city.
Further into the slums, another newly added Gundam lies on the damp sidewalk, left unattended.
The sound of rain drowned out everything.