Tales from the breakroom.

Jenn approached the lounge in a characteristically chipper mood. She walked in to find Joy and Eve lounging around and chatting while Ann kneaded pizza dough behind the counter.

"Hey, Joy! Toss me a water, would you?" she called out. Joy was a young woman with a striking similarity to the others in the room. All five were mousy women of average height with brown medium-length hair and modest figures. Joy opened the fridge and threw a small plastic water bottle over. Jenn caught it and immediately took a long pull.

"Man, product days are rough," Joy said. "Thank God I'm in accounting today. I like crunching numbers."

"You like everything you do here," Eve pointed out and tapped her collar. "This thing makes sure of it. Unless a client wants you to be unhappy, you're happy. You must be new."

The jagged, staccato slices of her memory were hard to parse, but Joy didn't think anyone had joined since her. It was strange, how her memory clustered around a few moments of clarity. She had a clear, fixed memory of being given a pill and fitted with a collar. Everything before that was a blank and most of what happened since was a dreamlike blur. She could recall any specific moment at random but couldn't piece together a timeline. She could have been objet for days or decades.

"Guess I must be," Joy said with a shrug. The company ensured that all objets would be professional and get along with one another, but they allowed a few positive or harmless aspects of their original identity to be a part of their default identity. They claimed it promoted small friendships through the haze of fragmented memories to have individual traits. Joy was the most relaxed among them; the others theorized that her original identity may have been a therapist or a stoner.

Jenn finished the water, belched, and sat on the couch. "Man, that was wild!" Jenn was a Type-A personality, boisterous and enthusiastic. Joy liked that about her.

"Yeah?" Ann said curiously. "One time a guy made me act out a whole play for him where I played every part. I spent 30 minutes cycling rapidly between a nun, a lesbian couple, a snobby art critic, and an elderly man. Was it that kind of thing?"

"Or that skinny guy who makes a dozen of us become his college girlfriend then take turns blowing him while the rest tell him how smart he is?" Eve offered.

Joy chimed in. "Or the corn starch guy?"

Jenn shuddered involuntary. "Ew, no, not the corn starch guy. Not like any of those. This one was really strange..."