Here you are.

Diego was working at home at his computer. He stopped typing to think about the ironic fact that stopping to think caused him to stop typing, a stoppage undoubtedly logged by the productivity software that his employer, Productivity Inc., had required him to install on his computer.

As a software engineer for Productivity Inc., Diego was responsible for writing the very same software that was installed on his computer.

Here you are again.

This fact was also ironic, he thought, stopping to reach for the cup of coffee on his desk, to bring it to his lips, to drink, and to set it down once more, a stoppage- lasting 4.07 seconds- undoubtedly logged by the productivity software installed on his computer.

As lead monitor, a title facetiously bestowed on the senior engineers at each department, Diego felt he should be exempt from being monitored. But this was not the case. The monitor was being monitored.

Here you are again.

Diego was working this morning to fix a bug in the software. Sometimes the software would mistake its own processes for the user’s and begin monitoring itself.

Here you are again.

Diego became aware that he had been dimly aware of a person speaking in the hall outside his apartment, and this awareness of his dim awareness brought the voice to his full attention, so that he might listen to what it was saying.

Here you are again.

It was the same thing, over and over, as Diego knew it had been for as long as he could remember, since he had first sat down to work at his computer. Realizing this, he knew the voice to be a hallucination, and the voice ceased.

Diego stopped to ponder why this might be the case, a stoppage undoubtedly logged by the productivity software installed on his computer.