Your Performance Review

Kai is under review because he has been swearing in preschool. But Kai is no ordinary child. He has been modded, artificially enhanced with expanded memory and intelligence. He holds a universe of planetary information in his mind, including the details all missions being flown by admin.

Michel asks Kai for help to recover his memory, but Kai rebels and makes a serious threat.

Chuck is about to retire from an illustrious career as a commander of interstellar ships. To sign off and retire, Chuck must attend a performance review interview conducted by a bot named Michel. Chuck is an aging warrior and doesn’t care much for bots, performance reviews, or the way admin does things. But as he remembers the time another commander saved his life in space, he breaks down and his arrogance is momentarily lifted.

As Michel listens to Chuck's story, he realizes it will help him piece together another part of his missing memory, bringing him closer to understanding what happened to him.

Welcome to Your Performance Review, the story of a bot named Michel who is trying to recover a missing part of his memory, and uncovers an interstellar conspiracy to steal from indigenous cultures in space.

The podcast takes place in 2026,

In this episode, D wants to build ships in the outer System. They are qualified, but admin will not assign them to the job they want. Michel questions D about memex and memory erasure and D reveals that they have no memories before the age of 25.

Molly admits that she is cracking under the stress of her job. Admin has been forcing her to run as many missions as she can. She suspects that admin is motivated by greed. But can Molly keep up with the pace and keep this secret?

Joy Donnell plays Molly in this episode. The rest of the roles in the episode are played by bots. Music cues: [Drch](https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/138110) and [Front Runner](https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/138133%22%3EBlue%20Dot%20Sessions) by Blue Dot Sessions. Additional music by Epidemic Sound.

With this episode, Michel's once-secret inquiry into his past is no longer a secret. An investigator arrives to question Michel about all the performance reviews he has conducted so far. She sees a pattern forming in Michel's interviews, and she believes that Michel is up to no good.

There has been concern, in admin, about bots achieving consciousness. Pyotr, a bot that Michel had interviewed in Episode 03, is one such bot. After Michel spoke with Pyotr, and they exchanged their thoughts about the perils and benefits of consciousness, Pyotr was reformatted, his memex erased, and reassigned. Michel is afraid that the same thing may happen to him.