Change Agent

by Daniel Suarez

moving cardboard boxes. Pallets of boxes stood nearby. Arranged in a circle stood half a dozen six-year-old children of varying ethnicities—both boys and girls. They wore simple blue work smocks with cheap plastic sandals. They didn’t even glance up as Vegas and his guests entered. Instead, the children focused on passing cardboard boxes from the conveyor line, on to another child, and then to a third child, who added it to the stack of boxes on a pallet—whereupon a child on the far side removed a box from the pallet and placed it onto the conveyor line, starting the loop all over again. It was a bizarre imitation of work. Vegas gestured to the little workers. “Our other DLG3 line of edits. We call it ‘Worker Bee.’ Creates laborers of low IQ. Low food requirements. Designed for docility. They can be trained to perform tasks too simple for robots to perform cost-effectively. Sterile, of course.” Frey and Durand stopped cold.