In the Shibuya City Office, I gave the resident report a final check and clicked on the “Complete” button. This triggered an announcement in the lobby.
“Number twelve, please come to counter number seven.”
I stuck out my head and scanned the lobby. The announcement repeated. Since the sound was coming out of an actual speaker and not from my jawbone-conduction bonephones, I could tell that whoever had taken number twelve wasn’t using the Saul XRE augmented reality platform.
A man sitting on a bench by the wall reacted to the announcement. Hunched forward with his palms flat on his knees, he slowly stretched out and began to rise. He looked to be nearly eighty.
An Uncle office support robot approached from the far side of the bench. There was nothing displayed on the milk-white faceplate, so I knew it was operating in autonomous mode. This meant that I was safe to wake my branchmind from sleep mode and load him into the Uncle. Once the Uncle filled with human consciousness, its faceplate began to sparkle—only the slight curvature of a simple nose and eyes disturbing the otherwise flat surface—and it veered over beside the man. My branchmind had chosen an omnisupporter, all of which were identical in both voice and appearance.
I would have gone with an indyhelper. They each have their own character, and you can make four times as much money using them. Omnisupporters have a synthesized voice that turns many people off. I was beginning to worry that my branchmind was diverging from me when I spotted a touchscreen device in the man’s hand and sighed with relief. He had a smartphone! Now I understood why my branchmind had chosen an omnisupporter. I might have done the same.
I had no clue how the man could have acquired a device that originally appeared over forty years ago. If he was still using a smartphone now, his outlook on technology had to be conservative, to say the least. No doubt he disliked the very idea of controlling the physical bodies of Uncles—not to mention Saul XRE mixed-reality avatars—with consciousness sucked up through brain machine interfaces and split into branches. I supposed that the synthesized voice of the omnisupporter might lessen his discomfort. My branchmind must have come to the same conclusion.
I got up from my chair to greet the man.
“Please take a seat over here,” I said. “My name is Taira. I’ll be assisting you today. What can I do for you?”
The Uncle pulled out a chair for the stunned man. Once seated, he stared at me. Then he mumbled, “Switching my pension….”
He placed the forms he’d filled out in the lobby on the desk.
“You’re switching over to universal basic income, Mr. Suzuki? That shouldn’t be a problem.”
I pulled up the document on my Saul XRE mixed-reality console to double-check it. He’d written “Suzuki” at the top. I tried passing the document to the man but he didn’t react. Not only did he lack a bonephone implant, he obviously didn’t have a lens to laser-project mixed reality on his retina either.
Saul XRE had by now become crucial for daily life. I’d often recommended it to residents who came to my desk when I first started working here five years ago. It actually isn’t that difficult to get used to. The lenses worn on the eyeballs look and feel just like prescription contacts, and the subcutaneous bonephone can be implanted with a single injection. Glasses or mobile phones are an option for those who don’t like anything in their eyes, and the implant-averse can forego a mic and listen to announcements on an earpiece. But at the city office we recognize that people have different needs and are prepared for any eventuality.
“Let’s get you switched over. You’ll need to fill out the form. Which would you prefer, paper, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or voice assistant? —Oh, and of course, you can also use Saul XRE.”
It was hard to tell what Suzuki was thinking. Now his face lit up.
“You actually have paper documents?”
“Yes, for residents who need them. Please make your selection.”
I took out a case full of devices and placed it on the desk. The man reached for a silver tablet.
“This is really the latest version?”
“Yes, manufactured for government office use. To activate it…”
“I’ll be fine with this.”
Suzuki withdrew a stylus from the side of the tablet and, deploying gestures and shortcuts I didn’t know, began to nimbly fill out the form. It took him about 15 minutes. After signing with practiced ease in the last field, he let out a long sigh and looked up from the display.
“Congratulations, Mr. Suzuki,” I said. “I’ve verified your entry into the UBI system.”
“You’re not going to ask why I’m ending my employee’s pension and switching to basic income here?”
I met his question with a smile. “Everyone has their reasons.”
Suzuki glanced down at the tablet, found the name of the official assisting him, and looked at me again.
“Mr. Taira.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any volunteer openings or anything?”
On my Saul XRE console, I opened the classifieds page overseen by the city office, printed several flyers, and passed them to Suzuki.
“Here are the openings available at this time.”
“Wow. So many.”
I handed the flyers to Suzuki, and he leaned forward to take them. The grave look in his eyes told me why he had switched to UBI: he wanted to enjoy “work” for the remainder of his life. By giving up the key currency income from his pension, he could reduce the taxes on his arbitrage-currency-traded basic income.
“What kind of work is this? It looks like it’s tomorrow.”
When I saw the listing he was pointing to, I nearly burst out laughing.

Auction Stage Installation, 2 Places Left!!
Time: Wednesday, June 22, 2050, 4:45-7:00 pm
Location and Description: Painting auction setup at the New Akasaka Hotel. Successful applicants will assist with physical tasks using Uncles or VR assembly using Saul XRE avatar. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Qualifications, Number of Openings, and Remuneration: We are looking for ten workers. Either naturalite or branchmind. Pay is 1.1 times the UBI standard. Recruitment will close when all spots are filled.
Employer: Tyler & Nuts

I myself had posted this particular “work” listing. I hadn’t realized it was still open.
“Mr. Suzuki,” I began. There was no way he could take the position. All a naturalite without stage experience could provide was muscle. With an Uncle enhanced by my software, even an amateur (human or branchmind) could do respectable work—but Saul XRE was a must. I was still trying to decide how to explain this to Suzuki when he tilted his head quizzically and asked, “Is there a problem?”
“I think you might find the work interesting. But you'd need to be familiar with operating a Saul XRE avatar.”
“I see,” said Suzuki. He returned to the lobby clutching the sheaf of flyers and scratching his head in dismay.


*

When the city office closed at five, I got up from my desk, left the office, and walked up Dogenzaka, headed for the seventy-story skyscraper where I live. After having dinner at the food court and walking through the shopping mall, I continued along the concourse to the residents’ elevator, which I took to the twelfth floor storage area. There I gathered the items I would need for tomorrow’s “work” and went up to my apartment on the fourteenth floor. Although this is one of the lower floors, the building is on a hill, so I have a good view of the structures around Shibuya Station, which extends across the bottom of the valley. Most of the residents are, like me, essential workers who commute within Tokyo.
“Hi,” I greeted my partner Natsu when I stepped in the door.
“Hey,” she replied, turning to me.
In the entrance area, I put down my things and washed my hands in the sink. Then I took off my jacket and hung it on a coat hanger in the bedroom.
“How’s the prep for tomorrow coming along?” I asked.
“All that’s left to do is show up.”
Natsu pointed to the living room, where a model auction hall stood. It was projected in Saul XRE mixed reality. The main hall sported an opulent decor, with dark red wallpaper accented by dully gleaming gold pillars, and was divided into sections by black partitions that we would install. There was also a stage, audience seating, and small room for negotiations.
“Good work!” I said, approaching the spotlight-illuminated stage.
“Look out for the wall there!” Natsu cautioned.
“It’s okay, I know.”
I reached out in front of me and touched the wall of the apartment to confirm the bounds of our living room. The hotel’s two reception halls were connected by a huge space measuring thirty by seventy meters and with a ceiling twelve meters high. The model didn’t fit in the room, even when set to 1:20 scale.
Lowering my gaze, I checked the ebony bar counter, stretching between the two halls in a semi-circle so that visitors could order their preferred drink from anywhere. Beside this was a pyramid of bottles stacked on a pillar. On a beam suspended above sparkled the promotional sign for the auction, which Natsu had written and I had designed. The slogan read “A Courageous Depiction of the 21st Century.” The logo and counter fit the hotel perfectly—Not that we had installed them yet. That would happen tomorrow.
“Is this sign a 3D model or the real thing?” I asked.
“The real thing. I had one of the hotel staff take a picture of it with a Saul XRE lens.”
“You’ve already been there?”
“I heard Arata brought it in around two this afternoon. No one contacted you?”
“Nope.”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be cash on delivery? It’s paid for, right?”
“Like I told you, no one contacted me.”
“Uh-oh…”
I thought of Arata, my young friend still in art school. People of his generation tend to be lackadaisical about getting paid. They don’t know what it was like before the Great Turnover. Back then, the distinction was still vague between “jobs,” which you needed to survive, and “work,” which was for your own personal development. Not that I’m an expert on what employment was like back then.
The first time I heard the phrase “Great Turnover” was in 2035, the year I graduated high school. By that point, it had been several years since the transportation industry in several countries, including trucks, ships, and planes, had fully switched over to self-driving. That was when they introduced basic income to compensate those affected.
Japan’s basic income system was launched the year I left university. At first, it was just for drivers. But it was soon expanded to cover warehouse employees, then other occupations, including parking lot managers and gas station attendants. Eventually, the system was made available to all Japanese citizens. Although the amount was only around 160,000 yen per month, low compared to China and America, it brought about a dramatic change in Japanese society over the following three years.
There was a sharp drop in people aspiring to crucial but poorly paid professions such as manufacturing, forestry, farming, nursing, childcare, cleaning, national defense, livestock rearing, and undertaking. There was no point in going into a hazardous or grueling line of employment for a pittance if the state was funding the necessities of life.
Both state and local governments and business owners invested in automation to pick up the slack while raising the salaries they offered to attract talented personnel. By the time enough essential workers had been secured, they were making as much as career corporate leaders once had, and their social status had risen considerably.
The changes reached even white-collar and service industry positions. Automated processes had reduced the required number of essential workers to a minimum. Now they took over office work in a flash. Once branchminds could mimic the actions of naturalites and work in physical space using machines like Uncles, the transition away from people accelerated.
This was the Great Turnover.
After graduation from university, I was hired by a design company, then started up my own design studio with Natsu. I was only involved in business for three years before the shift. Established designers were launching countless branchminds to protect their interests and I kept losing out to them in competitions, forcing me to close up shop.
That’s how I ended up taking on occasional work from design colleagues, which I'm passionate about, while doing a job overseeing a reception desk at the Shibuya Ward Office. I wish I could survive just by working like Arata, who made the neon signs for us. But there’s no beating the sense of security you get from having a job.
“Alright. I’ll get in touch with him,” I said. When I started up my branchmind, I immediately heard someone say “Yo,” and I entered the room—Or, rather, my Saul XRE avatar did.
“Contact Arata and pay him for the neon,” I told my branchmind. “I’m granting you full authority as my representative for 15 minutes. Your cut is 2%.”
“Sure thing.”
My avatar waved and vanished. I was already kicking myself over that two percent, thinking it was too generous, when Natsu puffed out her cheeks as though reading my mind.
“I’m jealous. What does that guy use money for anyway?”
“I’ve never asked,” I said, with a smile. “Even my branchmind needs privacy.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Natsu snapped. “Branchminds are branchminds. Their earnings belong to their owners.”
I shook my head. “It’s easier to get along with them if you tell yourself that they need it.”
“How old is he again?”
“If you mean since he branched, then this is his third year, I think.”
“Oh yeah,” said Natsu, resting her finger on her chin. “A bit long, don’t you think?”
The standard period of operation for branchminds is about one year. Apparently, if you use a consciousness that can act and learn autonomously for any longer, they diverge too much from the original person. They’re supposed to be configured to never develop anything resembling desire, but you sometimes hear stories about branchminds that mistake themselves for the trunk.
I waved at Natsu just as my branchmind had waved at me. “How’s that? Can you tell the difference?”

*

After that, Natsu and I sat on either side of the model and continued discussing our plans for the following day. I checked the resumes of the ten applicants and ran simulations to test how the branchminds they'd lent us functioned as a team. We would only be able to use them for an hour and a half tomorrow. During that short time, we would have to haul in the materials, build the stage and seating, decorate the counter that the hotel had assembled, and finish cleaning up. After experimenting with several different workflows, we decided that it would be best to leave on-site management to Natsu and for me to lend a hand when needed.
I went over every stage of the plan until I was satisfied. Then I took off my Saul XRE lens and had a shower. I was thinking over the procedures for tomorrow yet again, while I let my bathrobe absorb the lingering moisture, when I heard Natsu's voice from the vacant dinner table.
"Taira. Are you on your way to bed?"
I picked up my Saul XRE glasses from the kitchen counter, put them on, and turned towards the voice.
"Natsu, is that the actual you?"
“It’s me alright. It’s been, what, three weeks?”
From the slight lag, I could tell she wasn’t in Japan.
“Where are you now? No, wait, let me guess.”
I rested my hand on the dinner table, leaned so close to Natsu that we might have almost touched, and looked into her eyes. Saul XRE avatars are illuminated by the light wherever they appear, but they have one spot that gives away the light at their actual location: the refracted image on the periphery of the camera embedded in the center of the Saul XRE lens. Keeping my eyes fixed on Natsu’s pupils, I shifted the angle of my gaze, nearly grazing her face.
“I can see a river,” I said.
“Can you tell where?”
“You’re on a bridge? The sun is going down. The right bank is high. There’s something there.”
“Shall I turn in that direction?”
Natsu turned her face to the right. Her lips overlapped with mine and passed through Sadly, they imparted no sensation.
“Thanks. I can see now. That’s a church on top of the hill, right?”
“Yup. I’m in Lyon,” Natsu whispered, then pulled away and leaned on the table with her elbows. In reality, I supposed they were on the bridge’s railing. She turned towards where the sun sparkled, squinting.
“I was just about to bring a virtual tour client to a restaurant in the old town,” she said.
“In other words, you’ll be drinking wine all by your lonesome.”
I smiled wryly and Natsu laughed.
“You never feel alone with Saul XRE.”
She had chosen to be a tour conductor as her lifelong work. She moved from place to place in Europe and the surrounding regions, showing travelers around. Some of her clients were naturalites. Others were Saul XRE avatars on virtual tours. Once she had even guided a branchmind that had cheekily applied.
On the virtual tour she would conduct tonight, she would pay the table charge for all the participants, of which there might be around five, keep the table empty, order for herself, and guzzle wine. According to Natsu, her guests would get to savor the atmosphere of the restaurant and drool over the dishes served. I couldn’t see what could be so great about virtual tours, but Natsu has told me she gets many repeaters and is doing good business.
Natsu turned her head to gaze through the living room window at the Shibuya streetscape.
“It’s already night there, I see. The sun is still pretty high in the sky here. It’s not that late, is it?”
“It’s 10 pm. I’ve been getting everything ready for the auction tomorrow with your branchmind.”
“How are Tyler and Nuts doing? She’s really raking it in.”

These were our nicknames for our branchminds.
“They’re doing fine. They make a good pair. But she’s never told me how much she’s making. Is it really that much?”
Natsu’s eyes went wide with exasperation. “Why are you asking me? Ask her yourself.”
“Even she needs privacy.”
“No she doesn’t! You can use my branchminds earnings if you want. I authorized you, didn’t I?”
I shook my head. “She is who she is. She’s not you, and she’s not my property. She has a life of her own.”
“What are you talking about? It’s true that she works when you’re not around... but--”
“Listen.”
“What?”
"Even when I’m not here, she’s doing her own thing and changing. She gains experience and gets better and better at her work. Sometimes she surprises even me. I’m planning to have her manage the auction on-site tomorrow.”
“Branchminds are very capable, but—”
“Capable has got nothing to do with it. She has her own life.”
“No, she doesn’t!”
I burst out laughing.
“What are you laughing about?”
"She said almost the same thing earlier. ‘No, he doesn’t.’ Exactly the way you said it just now. I couldn’t help laughing.”
Natsu puffed out her cheeks. Her expression was nearly identical to that of branchmind Natsu but not quite.
“How many years has it been since you made her?” I asked.
“Three. When I left Japan, I forced you to make yours.”
“I thought you were crazy.”
When I went around in front of her, Natsu let out a slight gasp of surprise. I spread my arms and waited for her to nod before I embraced her, unable to actually touch her body.
“It’s about time I paid you a visit.”
“You’ll come to see me?”
Without replying, I kissed her forehead and released her. “I've got an early day tomorrow. I’d better get to bed.”


*

The air in the auction hall was hot and reeked of electric charge. Uncles let off an enormous amount of heat, being capable of approximately the same physical output as humans. The power generators concentrated around their armpits could reach nearly forty degrees centigrade. My sweat-dampened shirt clung to my back.
“Fifteen minutes till construction is complete!” Natsu’s voice reverberated through the hall. "The art team is on standby. Can you handle the final panel?”
“No problem!” I said, waving to her Saul XRE avatar. It hadn’t sweated a single drop. I checked all the clamps connecting the panels laid out on the floor and called out to the lined-up Uncles. “Here’s the last panel!”
“Understood!” “Righto!” “Gotcha!”
The Uncles all responded with voices as distinctive as their faces. Idling in a row in the hotel warehouse just 30 minutes ago, you couldn’t tell the difference between them. Now activated and set to autonomous mode, even their heights seemed different. I beckoned to one Uncle, who somehow came off as burly and rakish, and another beside him, who gave the uncanny impression of having his hands in his pockets.
“You two stand here at my feet.”
The facedown panels had been fitted with a scaffolding to protect the decorative backing. The Uncles walked along this with all the care I had programmed into them. When they reached the connector between panels I had indicated, they stepped onto the floor and rested one of their feet on the lower edge of one of the panels.
“Lift!”
Steadying the panel with their feet, the uncles gripped the upper edge and began to raise it gently. until the connector angled closer and they pulled it in. The capability I had installed them with kept their timing in synch, but the force of their motions was out of whack. When the central panel began to tip, I rushed over to push it up straight.
"Did you prepare the wire?" I asked an Uncle on a stepladder.
“It’s ready for you any time,” the Uncle replied, showing me the wire hanging from the ceiling and the clamp on the end.
"When I slide the panel, hook it up.”
“Got it.”
I heard another Uncle calling me from behind.
“Mr. Tyler, here comes the panel.”
I took three steps back to survey our progress. There were six Uncles at work on the panels, enough to move them safely. They were all wearing pads so that they wouldn’t scratch the floor. One of them was holding the ladder for the staff member who was doing the rigging on the ceiling.
I circled around to the spot where we would install the panels. “Alright,” Isaid, “When I give the signal, slide this over to my feet.” I pointed at my toes. “Ready, set, go!"
“Yeah!” “Alright!” they said as they pushed, even closer in sync than before.
When the panel reached my feet, I stopped it with my hand and called out to the Uncle on the stepladder, “Hook it up!”
“Will do.”
There was a click, and the panel suddenly grew lighter. This was the last panel. After throwing up a life-size model on Saul XRE, I backed up against a wall and compared the position of the model’s panels to the real ones. “Discrepancy two centimeters,” said my display.
“Construction complete! Once we put the materials in the container, we’re done!”
The Uncles cheered, spread across the auction space like marbles scattering, and began to gather the garbage and leftover equipment. Natsu walked around a 3D rendering of the auction space photographed by a drone to check for garbage between panels and under the stage. I was watching as the place got steadily cleaner when someone behind me spoke.
"I heard this will be your last work?”
“I guess so,” I replied, and heard a sigh from behind me.
“You’re serious? The very idea of us branchminds living together with no trunk . . .”
“You won’t know what it’s like until you try. If you can’t take it, you can always kick her out.”
When I turned around, I could see myself, smiling ruefully just as I’d expected. We branched apart three years ago, but his vibe was closer to mine than Natsu’s branchmind was to hers. Maybe because he and I had stayed in touch more.
“Do you have enough cashflow?” he asked.
I nodded. “Thanks to you I do.”
"Shibuya Ward says they’re going to hire me.”
“That’s great. You must have negotiated that yourself.” I gave him a light encouraging punch in the shoulder. “Okay. See you around. I’ll drop by now and again.”
“Please do.”
I watched Natsu’s branchmind as she materialized here and there around the space.
“I think she’ll be happy too," he said. “By the way, are you going straight to Lyon?”
I shrugged. “If Natsu doesn’t mind having me around.”
“She said she’s waiting for you.”
I opened my eyes wide in surprise. “You…”
“I never reached out to her myself,” he interrupted. “I happened to be in your apartment one time when Natsu appeared, so we chatted a bit.”
I sighed and looked at my branchmind anew. I was sure he and Natsu’s branchmind would get along just fine. After all, the only thing they were missing was a physical body. My income would drop to around a quarter of what it was now, but legally they should be able to continue using that apartment. The initial confusion would subside quickly. In time, they'd become independent even of Natsu and me.
I waited for a moment when Natsu’s branchmind vanished and walked out of the auction hall.

Translation by Eli K.P. William