Olivia didn’t know for how long it had went until the whole structure started breaking down.

Structure is key to performance. And Olivia didn’t know any other way to go about her daily business. A time for every activity and an activity for every time in the day. Wake-up pill. Breakfast pill. Office pill. Lunch-break pill. Ride-home pill. Sex pill. A pill for every activity and an activity for every pill in the day. A perfectly ordered office with just the right amount of light coming in from the desk window and the door always open for anybody coming to check in on her.

And of course, a glass of water and a pill always at the handy by the side of her workstation. It got tiring, seeing streams of data scrolling through the screen after a while. And Olivia always remembered to take her pill just before her vision went blurry.

The days ran like clockwork. “Good evening, honey.” said her husband and her to each other as they came home from their different offices. “Good day, honey.” they said to each other after breakfast before going to work the next day. “Good job, honey.” they said to each other after the sex in between, which always lasted exactly one hour to match up with the clothes washer cycle, because structure and routine meant time optimization.

But then little accidents started happening. A couple more seconds wasted washing her hands in the office bathroom. Migraines detaching her eyes from the workstation. Papers forgotten in the office just before a meeting and quick rushes back not to be late, the embarrassment of being on time instead than early.

“Management is concerned.” her husband said one night. “The bonus is not on the line. Not yet. But there’s that new TV out, right? And we can’t not have the home system update.”

“I’m taking the pills as always.” Olivia said.

And then the hallucinations began. Olivia didn't know when she forgot to take her pill. She didn't know which pill she forgot to take, either. She didn't know if she'd forgot to take one.

But it happened as she went back to her office to get the research for the company's new marketing push.

There was a beetle walking across the screen of her phone, spindly legs and jittering antennae pointing at her, probing the air for her presence.

"The cycle is getting shorter." it said.

"What are you staring at?" her office neighbor frowned at her. "The meeting starts in two minutes. Your papers are on the desk.”

Olivia turned back to him. “Can’t you see the bug?”

The colleague frowned even deeper. “Do you need your eyes checked?”

Olivia turned back. There was no beetle anymore on her phone. “No.”

“You know which pill to take if your eyesight starts having problems…”

“I’ve taken it.” Olivia replied. She got the papers and came to the meeting on time. It went off without a hitch.

For the most part.

“All our research shows that a good conjugal relationship is key to productivity, and I’m sure you’re all satisfied with your partners.” the project director was saying as the thoughts started. “There’s trust, sexual performance is acceptable, no cheating. But sooner or later our customers might desire more. They might grow restless and we can’t afford the distraction, can we? So by acting now we can corner the market on the panacea. And the nanites in this particular pill can act much deeper than all the rest.” the project director nodded at Olivia. “And our marketing team tells me they’ve come up with quite the pitch.” the project director swiped at the electronic board and the presentation showed a white-and-blue mock-up of a phone ad. “Introducing: Paramour. For those who yearn for passion.”

Passion. None of Olivia’s colleagues seemed to react to the word. But she was certain they could feel or even hear the cacophony of her thoughts. Images of sex with her husband lasting far longer than a clothes washer cycle. Images of them doing it all night long. Him touching her, kissing her, devouring her lips both up and down, the two of them turning off the TV to do it, skipping work to do it, skipping the pills to do it…

She was in the bathroom splashing cold water on her face as soon as the meeting was over.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought of a kiss. She couldn’t remember if there had ever been a first. She could never remember of a time they’d turned off the TV and broken schedule.

But what had they watched? She couldn’t remember any of that either. That was why they needed the new TV. To watch…to watch…

Olivia watched her hands. They were a middle-aged woman’s hands.

But it wasn’t possible. She wasn’t middle-aged. She knew it. And yet she couldn’t remember her own age. And there were no mirrors in any bathroom of the company building.

Olivia bolted into the corridor. The project director and a young colleague passed her by. The colleague was a redhead, her fair skin dotted with freckles and her eyes green. But her hair was now dull and thin and her skin sunken and her eyes haggard.

And they’d just wished her a happy twenty-fifth birthday a week prior.

The project director looked perfectly normal. But there was a glint in his eyes as he passed her. A glint of surprise, of dread and anger mixed into something he didn’t dare let his face show.

A fly landed on her colleague’s shirt.

“Go home. Look under the floorboards of your living room.” it told Olivia. “Your heart still beats there.”

It took all of Olivia’s willpower not to run out of the building. But she could feel the security guards’ eyes on her as she walked out. She could feel everybody’s eyes on her.

And flies buzzed about everybody. Heaps of flies, telling her: “Don’t let yourself be caught.”

The streets were full of flies.

Her condominium welcomed her with teeth of glass and steel and concrete and swallowed her whole, but it did not make her feel any safer. She could not stop seeing them at all corners. Ants. Beetles. Centipedes. Flies. It felt like they were crawling all over her, under her clothes.

“Here.” they beckoned here once she was back in her apartment, writing the word with their bodies onto the floorboard she needed to rip out.

She checked the clock and set herself to work. She had half an hour before her husband would get back home.

It took her a screwdriver and five minutes of grunting and cursing.

She could not remember the last time she had cursed. Nor the last time she had sweated so much. She was down to her undershirt. Yet her husband and her barely took off their clothes during sex.

But at the end of all that she found it. Under the floorboard, in the insulation section below. A USB drive, label-less. She plugged it in to her personal computer, and ran it.

It started with plain, blank flashing lights. She tried averting her eyes a first, but it was as though the screen enveloped her. And then the light started flashing behind her eyes. It was pain. And in the pain, heaps of data, news clippings, research, information. The face of her mother reading her a story even if she was sick, aging way too fast and still forced to work in order to support her. And the promise of a pill for any ill of the world you didn’t want to see any more, and the foreign wars needed to get the materials to make them and the means to test and control them. Her mother’s middle-aged hands brushing the yellowed, tattered pages of her favorite book, one she’d read her a thousand times because they couldn’t afford other stories. Her sunken face smiling at her and her haggard eyes trying to be brave and comforting as she wasted away.

The streets had been so full of flies buzzing about.

And then all the lights stopped and she was in her apartment again, the best company money would pay.

She could feel other, smaller flashes blinking in and out of the corner of her eyes. Forgetting to take the pill. Refusing to take it. Crushing it under the heel of her shoe. And every time taking it again to forget everything.

“This has happened before.” she told the beetle, sinking into her seat.

“Yes.” the beetle replied, crawling onto her computer. It barely covered a couple of buttons on her keyboard. It dwarfed her.

“How many times?” Olivia just wanted to let herself sink.

“As many times as it takes.” the beetle replied. Its voice was devoid of judgment.

Olivia rose, limbs of lead and head of clay, and she turned on the TV. It only had blank commands on every channel.

Produce.

Consume.

Die.

That was it.

Had her and her husband watched nothing but that every time?

She looked out of the window. From a million different windows of a thousand blocks identical to her own shone a light of an identical TV. It was a cacophony of blankness played in unison. Smoke came from the horizon. Something was burning.

“It’s easier this way.” the beetle said. “Until the wars will come to the gates and there will be no more profits to be made.”

Olivia asked herself if she had invented the pills or if she had only helped sell them. Marketing was her job, after all.

She looked back at the clock. She had ten minutes.

She looked back out of the window. The smoke was thinning. But there was more rising up.

But she didn’t have the full picture yet.

She went back to her PC. She put the pieces into place once again. And then she looked back out of the window again. It was getting dark and there was no smoke anymore.

Yet one of the lights blinked.

She changed the codes, this time. She couldn’t do it on her own.

Five minutes.

She put the floorboard back.

Three minutes.

She cleaned up the place.

One minute.

She cleaned up herself.

Thirty seconds.

She had the pill in her hand once again. She was growing old. They were all growing old and tired and taking the pills not to see this and the blood that was needed to maintain the appearance of normalcy. But she would never be tired. Not as long as there was work to do.

“As many times as it takes.” she told the beetle and took the pill.

But she knew the next time she woke up she wouldn’t do it on her own.