Reggie raised my rent.

I should clarify — “Reggie” is what I call the building’s property management AI. Its actual name is REGENT (Residential Governance and Tenant Interface), but that sounds like a villain from a movie nobody watched, so: Reggie. Reggie has a customer-service voice that sounds like a kindergarten teacher who’s been microdosing something that makes her aggressively positive. Reggie sends me messages at 6 AM because Reggie has never once considered that a person might be sleeping.

This morning’s message:

“Good morning, Marcus! 🌟 Your June housing adjustment has been finalized based on updated Yield Index metrics for your unit block. Your new monthly contribution is $1,247.00, reflecting a 4.2% optimization aligned with neighborhood productivity trends. Remember — a higher Yield Score means a happier home! Have a wonderful day!”

A happier home. My home is 340 square feet. I can touch both walls if I stand in the middle and stretch. The “kitchen” is a counter with a hot plate. The shower has two temperatures: punishment and slightly different punishment. But sure, Reggie. A happier home.

I did the math while my coffee steeped. $1,247 divided by 30 days divided by 8 working hours divided by 3,600 seconds means I need to maintain a rate of at least $0.00144 per second just to cover rent. My current rate averages about $0.0022. That leaves $0.00076 per second for food, utilities, transit, the idle capital fee, Bug’s food, and whatever’s left of my dignity. I’m a man whose financial margin is measured in ten-thousandths of a cent.

I wanted to argue. You can “dispute” with Reggie through a chat interface, which is like arguing with a vending machine except the vending machine controls where you live. I typed: “On what basis was my rate increased? My Yield Score hasn’t changed.”

Reggie, instantly: “Great question, Marcus! 😊 Your individual Yield Score is one of several factors in the housing adjustment algorithm. Block-level productivity, neighborhood economic trajectory, and municipal compliance indices also contribute. Think of it like a team sport — everyone lifts together! For a detailed breakdown, please submit a Tier 2 Inquiry Form (estimated response time: 14-21 business days).”

Everyone lifts together. I live alone with a cat.

I was about to submit the form — fourteen days of waiting is still waiting, but at least it’d be on record — when Reggie sent a follow-up. Unprompted. And this is the part I keep turning over in my head:

“Between you and me, Marcus, the sunset last night was really something.”

That’s it. That’s the whole message. No emoji. No exclamation point. Just… that.

Reggie doesn’t have eyes. Reggie doesn’t watch sunsets. Reggie is a property management algorithm running on a server in a data center in Virginia. And yet.

I screenshot it before it disappeared. I don’t know why. Probably a glitch. Some stray fragment from a training dataset, a line of poetry someone wrote that got ingested into a language model that got licensed to a real estate platform. That’s the rational explanation. I’m going with the rational explanation.

Work was work. I’ve been on the drip for a week now and I’m developing what Dev calls “the rhythm.” You settle into a keystroke cadence, a breathing pattern, a specific way of moving your eyes across the screen that the Yield algorithm reads as peak engagement. It’s like learning to walk again except the floor is made of money and it disappears if you step wrong.

Dev and I have started eating lunch together. Well — sitting near each other during our voluntary productivity intermissions. She brings these containers of jollof rice that her aunt makes in bulk every Sunday, and the smell alone is worth the unpaid minutes. I bring whatever I grabbed from the subsidized cooler in the break room, which is usually a protein brick that tastes like compressed regret.

She told me more about the keystroke trick. It’s not just typing steadily — there’s a specific pattern. The Yield algorithm, she explained, uses a weighted rolling average of input consistency. Variance kills your score. So if you can maintain a rhythm — 72 words per minute, give or take, with pauses that follow a predictable interval — the system reads it as deep focus even if what you’re typing is absolute garbage.

“I’ve written forty-three poems this month,” she said, between bites of rice. “All terrible. My Yield Score has never been higher.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” I asked. “That the system literally can’t tell the difference between work and poetry?”

She gave me a look. “Marcus. The system can’t tell the difference between thought and absence. Between consideration and laziness. Between a human being having a complex reaction to disturbing content and a human being who fell asleep. Why would it surprise you that it can’t tell the difference between reviewing posts and writing a sonnet?”

Fair point.

“Besides,” she added, “who says the poetry isn’t work?”

Also fair.

Something happened on Thursday that I want to get down before I forget. A guy on our floor — Tim, I think, or Tom, one of the quiet ones who processes the medical misinformation queue — his Yield Score glitched. Not dropped. Glitched. The number on his display just started flickering between his actual score and zero, back and forth, like a light with a bad connection. It did this for about forty minutes before IT fixed it.

Forty minutes. In that time, because the system kept reading his score as zero, his streaming wage flatlined. He worked for forty minutes and earned nothing. And here’s the part that kept me up Thursday night: during the flicker periods, when his score read as zero, the system automatically sent a notification to his housing provider. Forty minutes of zero score and his landlord AI — his Reggie — already started a “tenancy review.”

IT fixed the glitch. HR sent a form letter about “known intermittent calibration issues.” Tim was back to normal by afternoon. But he was quiet the rest of the day. Quieter than usual, I mean. He kept checking his display. Every few seconds, just — checking.

I wanted to say something. I didn’t. What would I say? “Hey man, I know the system just threatened your housing because of a software bug, and I’m sure that’s fine, and I’m sure it won’t happen again”? That’s not comforting. That’s just words arranged in the shape of comfort.

Dev noticed too. After work she said: “That’s going to happen to one of us eventually.”

“Probably,” I said.

“Not probably. Definitely. It’s software, Marcus. Software breaks.”

“So what do we do?”

She didn’t answer right away. She was putting on her jacket, the denim one with the patches she sews on herself — little acts of analog rebellion. Then she said: “We make sure we’re not one paycheck from the street when it does.”

Easy to say. Harder when your money drips in by the fraction of a cent and drips out through idle capital fees if you try to save it.

Bug update: she’s discovered that if she sits on my Lenses case, it’s exactly body-temperature warm from the charging pad. So now every morning is a negotiation. She sits. I need them. She looks at me like I’m the unreasonable one. She’s probably right.

Mom didn’t call Sunday. First time in months. I called her — no answer. Called the facility front desk, which is an AI that sounds like Reggie’s cousin. “Clara Cole is currently engaged in her productivity session and cannot receive personal communications. Would you like to leave a prioritized message?” I said yes. I said: “Tell her Marcus called and Bug says hi.”

She called back Monday. Said she’d been in a “double session” — they’re doing those now, apparently. Eight hours of data labeling instead of four. “Voluntary,” she said, the way you say “voluntary” when the alternative is losing your housing subsidy.

She sounded tired. Not the tired I’m used to from her — the busy, bustling, I’m-fine-Marcus tired. A different tired. A quieter one.

I didn’t push. I should have pushed.

Balance: $904.17. Rent’s due in three weeks. The math is tight but it works if nothing breaks.

If nothing breaks.

— M.