Human_fallback by Laura Preston

If a prospect asked if they were speaking to a bot, we were not allowed to say Yes. We were also forbidden to say I’m not a bot, because I’m not a bot is exactly what a bot would say. 

Instead, when someone questioned Brenda’s personhood, we were told to say I’m real! 

“I’m real!” I insisted, a 29-year-old woman sitting in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by high school memorabilia. 

My mother was determined to bring me meals while I worked, and something about being near Brenda transformed her demeanor. 

She would tiptoe into my bedroom with a plate in her hand and loudly whisper its contents, which I could not hear over the furious pinging of my inbox. 

“They can’t hear you,” I would say. 

“Oh!” she would whisper and assume a crouched position. 

“They can’t see you,” I would say, and she would wave her hands, set the plate on the floor, and scurry out the door. 

I couldn’t eat while working, so I would wolf down meals on my ten-minute break. 

“Does that work for you?” I would write. 

I would take my laptop to the bathroom and answer messages on the toilet. 

“Why don’t you visit the property to see if it meets your needs?” I would write. 

Time went through a variety of contortions. Every second was a monolith. 

As I watched the clock, I felt stranded; time had left me terminally in the present. Hours, on the other hand, were as thin as tissue. I would start a shift in the morning and then, in an instant, find myself on the other side, sitting in a room of lengthening shadows, as if the intervening hours had been snipped out with scissors. 

The days did not arrange themselves in a sequence but gathered in a puddle. 

“I am an off-site leasing specialist!” I wrote. “I recommend visiting the property to see if it meets your needs.”