In an alternate universe...

"Could you describe, in terms of genre and intensity, your sexual "kinks" - please be thorough and honest."

It's an odd question for a design position, especially at a company that manufactured children's toys. 

My four-word reply: 

"Umm, is this legal?" 

didn't do me any favors.

"Yes absolutely! Gender is a protected class but sexual preferences are not - in fact, our insurance company requires these types of evaluations for our male staff."

"Wait, this is only for male staff? What does your insurance company have to do with this?"

"Did you crawl out from under a rock - two of the last four sitting presidents were involved in sexual scandals. The information age combined with the Me Too movement has blown the lid off of sexual misconduct and it has been quite costly to almost every company involved. One day you have a semi-normal System Administrator and the next day you find out he is violentacrez from Reddit."

"Who?" I asked incredulously.

"Exactly my point! 

No one knew then - but he was a moderator for internet forums where pictures of underage girls in semi-sexual positions or compromising clothes were posted. 

Someone like that would be a costly liability - a million dollar lawsuit waiting to happen. And even worse, we have a reputation to uphold, our customers are parents and they don't want their children playing with toys designed by someone like that. 

Of course, our insurance company would require us to do due diligence - to make sure predators don't slip through. Statistically speaking, female predators are very rare with males being responsible for the vast majority of sexual crime and misconduct.

You may be normally kinky, but we don't know that, and our search engine and browser history background check can only go so deep." 

My glazed over eyes suddenly focused with all the intensity I could muster

"Wait, stop - you have a browser history background check?" My voice cracking like I was back in middle school.

"Well yes, we work with all the major browser companies and search engines who collate information about the individuals we are looking to hire."

"So...... I already passed the background check?"

"Well not yet - we actually need your consent - privacy and all that - so if you could just sign here..."

An introduction to Zombie finance

I assure you that my brain is perfectly healthy

Top condition really - you'd be insane not to offer 2 million.

I'd be insane to accept any less - if I am going to work until my neurons die then I might as well get something for it and maybe pay down some school debt. Who's overeducated now!

Well, you'll have to excuse us - a Masters in Arts History is not the most valuable asset for The Engine, I guess we could use it for design consulting. We really prefer Physics and Math majors - helps with the engineering simulations - their design suggestions are often ingenious too - provided you can get them to suggest anything. Such divas. 

The Engine, distributed and intelligent virtualized minds - continuing their life's work when the body moves on. Who needs Artificial Intelligence when you have real intelligence decomposing and being buried every day? 

It's intelligence on tap - at a bargain price - brains are a buyers market with the debt economy. It's the newest fad really, if you don't have any debt then you must not be living! At least that's the catchphrase. The black market is booming too - legend has it that the Russia and China are educating and harvesting their prison population.

So here I am, amongst the desperate and intelligent, bargaining myself away "1.5 million - final offer"

Death has never looked so good.