Vacation

The Machine gives you vacation.

If you're good and serve The Machine well, at the end of the year you may have a week's time to yourself. For every thousand hours you give The Machine, you may have an hour as free play.

You have to use your vacation days within a certain timeframe, or else you lose them. Even after buying and earning your time back from The Machine, that time must be dispensed on its terms. You're encouraged to take that time all at once. If you don't use it in the time frame of The Machine, your hard-earned time vanishes, to be replaced with more time in service.

Why do you have to take that time? What would be the harm in saving it up, and retiring a year early? Why don't they just pay you an extra week's salary once a year if you don't take any vacation?

Because these ideas do not suit the whim of The Machine. Vacation is a transparent motivational tool.

The Machine wants you to enjoy yourself, and to have time away from the Machine. The Machine does not want you to think too much about the here and now. Instead of focusing on how mind numbing your every-day existence is, you should be focusing on the future. Plan all year for the week when you don't have to come to work for a change, the week when you wonder why it can't always be like this.

Why not? Because The Machine doesn't want it that way.

So when your precious free play time is exhausted, you'll return to The Machine to earn more.