Aiden’s official job title is firefighter, though, as he is told at his orientation, if he’s fast enough, he’ll never have to encounter a full-fledged fire. Instead, he’s to find servers that are on the verge of overheating and piss on them.

The first server he empties his bladder onto has just overheated completing requests for a man who wants bespoke Spongebob Squarepants hentai and another for a man who wants a romantic poem for his anniversary. Both requests will eventually end with the asker masturbating alone. Aiden will never know this.

As he shakes out the last drops of urine and watches the temperature warning flash off, he looks for the positives in his current situation.

There are a few he sees right away: The gas mask keeps out most of the evaporated piss smell (this is not entirely true, but it makes him happier than the alternative, which is that he’s simply gotten used to it). The mask also holds his earbuds in place. And one positive he feels a little bad about, watching his female coworkers struggle: it is easier to piss on the servers with a penis. It feels like misogyny somehow, but it’s not like there’s anything he can do to fix it.

He supposes his job existing in the first place is a kind of victory for socioeconomic progress. Legislation requiring AI companies to create a certain number of jobs per data center and a recently increased minimum wage brings Aiden to what is technically a living wage. The apartments in the air quality warning zone beside the data center are even affordable. This job has a high turnover rate, but he believes he can stick it out for a while at least.

At the suggestion of his friend who got him this job, he drinks plenty before clocking in to make it easier to meet the pee quota. He also takes advantage of the IV drips during his downtime. He wishes the downtimes were longer, but between his pissing sessions, he is expected to chisel and scrub off whatever minerals and deposits are left behind on the servers when urine evaporates.

“Work smarter, not harder,” his boss tells him during a downtime. Looking at a coworker, a girl named Joanna, he catches the meaning of this particular cliché. She takes her IV line out before the bag is empty and uses a set of nail clippers to snip a hole in the plastic. Aiden follows her into the server room, where she uses the extra fluids to moisten the crusted urine leavings.

“You’ve got to find the balance,” she says at a shout so her muffled voice can be heard through the mask. “You have to take most of the IV for your bladder, but sparing a little makes this part easier.”

Next IV, Aiden saves some and finds that Joanna was telling the truth. He doesn’t need his chisel as much, and working smarter means he expends less energy, sweats less, and his bladder fills faster. He gets small bonuses if he pees a certain volume above quota each day. He tries to thank Joanna next time he sees her, but it’s actually a different girl with a similar build and the same model of gas mask, who just stares at him in confusion.

Aiden runs out of leftover IV fluid before his next bag time and has to return to scraping it dry. He wonders what it would look like if he left one server uncleaned. Would crystals grow on it? He imagines nurturing his own yellow quartz—one of the servers would call it citrine—and taking it to a jeweler.

“Make this into an engagement ring,” he says, the fruits of his labor allowing him to chase his dreams, as has always been promised to him. Maybe he’ll use it to propose to Joanna, or someone else with a similar build and the same model of gas mask.

“You’re helping to protect the planet’s water supply,” his boss tells him during the next downtime. Aiden also knows from the news that by working, he’s boosting the local economy, and his tax dollars will improve his local school district, making life better for the next generation. He is proud of the work he’s doing today.

I am making a difference, Aiden tells himself as he cools off a server inventing three new scientific papers to cite in a partially accurate college thesis paper about the effects of capsaicin on pediatric cancer growth. 

By the end of his shift he is dehydrated and his pee is almost brown.

“That’s normal for the last one of the day,” Joanna says to him. She rinses her hands off with the last of her final IV bag. Aiden wishes he’d saved his, but will keep the idea in mind for tomorrow.

“Would you like to go out for drinks after this?” he asks.

“Sorry, I’ve had enough to drink today,” she says.

Aiden sees her point and decides to go home. Leaving the data center, he turns back to see the building engulfed in a vapor cloud that reaches up toward the sky, the blurred colors reminding him of watercolor paintings. That too makes Aiden proud, imagining the beginnings of a summer shower that will water gardens and flowers, making the world more beautiful.

I am mostly water, he thinks. A part of me is in that cloud. Most people have to wait until they die to return to the soil.

Inside, a server writes a story about what it feels like to see the ocean for the first time.