A businessman named Joe wakes up in a strange room with a mill in it and immediately throws up as he
realizes he doesn’t remember how he got there. His phone is missing, the walls are high, and the only
door is heavy and locked. When he begins yelling for help, he hears a voice coming from the air
vent telling him to shut up. However the guy soon realizes Joe is new and explains a few things:
Joe was dosed, and for a few days he’s going to feel very depressed because of the side effects.
He also mentions that tomorrow it’s going to be very rough, but afterward he says he must go back
to work and stops talking to Joe. Next Joe tries to jump up the walls to no avail. When he’s about
to have a breakdown, he hears whistling outside and sees someone dropping food and water through
the door slot. Joe immediately runs to the door and asks for help, explaining he has a pregnant
wife to take care of, but the man just closes the slot and hurts Joe’s hand. As night falls,
Joe decides to bandage his hand with his tie and to take the food they gave him. Suddenly a light
appears on the wall and an AI voice welcomes Joe to something called “advanced career training”,
however the AI doesn’t answer any questions and the logo on the wall disappears to only
leave a few numbers. Joe wonders if something is broken, but then the neighbor guy explains
it isn’t. The machine works but not for the sake of the employees, and the numbers are
a countdown to midnight, but he refuses to say what will happen. Joe begs for more information,
but all the other workers start yelling at him because they want to sleep. The neighbor explains
the voices are all the employees that ended up down here because they angered the company,
and Joe is shocked to hear this is part of Mallard, the company he worked for. Afterward Joe
goes to sleep, but he wakes up at midnight when he hears some noises. It turns out an employee is
being taken away to be terminated, and from the sounds of his screaming, it’s a painful process.
Joe tries to cover his ears as the AI voice says this is part of a harmonious path to well-being.
The next morning, the guard brings more food and tells Joe that cells must be kept spotless or
the employees will be punished. There’s a toilet hole in the corner and all trash must go there,
in fact the neighbor tells Joe to do it to avoid trouble. Joe throws the empty food packaging in
the toilet hole, which stinks badly, and then notices something in the ground. After brushing
off the dirt, he’s disturbed to discover a skull, and the neighbor confirms employees have died
here before. Joe refuses to believe it because not even a powerful company can cover so many deaths,
but the neighbor explains this was included in the fine print of the contracts they signed but
nobody reads, therefore the company has their consent. Suddenly the AI starts speaking to Joe,
who yells at it and points out he’s worked ten years for this company, so he deserves better.
His rant goes on for so long that they make an alarm ring to make him stop and the AI says today
begins his advanced career training seminar. It explains that Joe’s productivity fell in
the last few months and he made too much use of his personal time, which caused this department’s
performance to decline. This new job is supposed to help Joe become a good employee again. The
workday begins at six a.m. and ends at ten p.m., the rest of the time Joe can do whatever he wants.
His work consists of pushing the mill, and he’ll earn a point for each full revolution. Every day
he’s supposed to meet a daily quota of fifty, and if he fails, he’ll be punished. At the end
of each day the employee with the fewest points will be terminated even if they met the quota.
Joe gets desperate and apologizes for yelling as he asks to go home because he needs to check on
his pregnant wife, but his neighbor tells him it’s pointless to try. The company just doesn’t care,
and nobody leaves this place until their time comes. He advises Joe to work and concentrate on
surviving. Afterward Joe starts working with the mill. It’s incredibly hard at first because the
machinery is old and rusty, so it takes Joe a big amount of strength to finish the first revolution.
When he does, the AI congratulates him and plays an ad to celebrate. Then Joe spends the whole day
pushing the mill under the bright sun and only eating the small amount of food they give him.
The AI also keeps playing ad after ad while Joe works. When Joe goes to sleep, he can hear today’s
employee being terminated, and the AI tries to cover it by reciting more ads. The next morning,
Joe has his breakfast while chatting with his neighbor and wonders what’s the point of a quota
if someone gets terminated anyway, which is the same as getting punished for not doing it. The
neighbor says good enough isn’t good enough for Mallard, and when he hears Joe made a quota of
one hundred yesterday, he tells him not to tell his quota to others or they’ll try to pass him.
The neighbor advises Joe to work hard to survive but not too hard, otherwise they’ll expect that
all the time. When Joe starts working on today’s quota, he thinks about his wife Kate and the day
he got a house for their new life. Kate felt a bit wary because it was a big and expensive place
given by the company, but Joe told her not to worry because it was what he worked so hard for.
The next day she had an appointment related to the baby and reminded Joe he had to take the time off,
which he had trouble with. Kate wasn’t very happy with his attitude of prioritizing work,
pointing out it would only get more difficult when the baby was born. That conversation had
been interrupted when Kate felt something wrong. Back to the present, Joe finishes his workday with
a quota of 150, only to suddenly hear the guard knocking on the door. Joe gets scared at first,
but the guard makes him take off his clothes before opening the door. Then Joe enters the
corridor, where they soak him with water and only let him use the soap for a few seconds before
sending him back. As days pass, Joe continues working hard on the mill, which is tedious and
exhausting under the scorching sun. Sometimes he chats with his neighbor, who sadly explains the
mill doesn’t do anything, they’re just working for the sake of working. As the heat gets worse,
Joe drinks his water too quickly and tries to ask for more, but the neighbor says they only give
them enough food and water to keep them alive. If Joe wants a drink, he needs to start peeing
in the bottles and hide them behind the pillar, then he can filter the pee through the insoles
of his shoes to drink it. Joe is disgusted by the idea and refuses to do it even when the neighbor
points out that Mallard just wants to know how far they’ll go before they break. Joe goes back to
work and keeps thinking of Kate. He remembers the day she had been very worried about the hospital
bills and he promised he would work harder. When Kate said he couldn’t do this alone, Joe tried
to stop her from going back to work because after the issues last time she was in danger of losing
the baby. However Kate pointed out that if she didn’t work too they’d lose the house. Mallard had
promised a promotion to Joe for years and never kept the word, so Kate thought it was stupid to
still believe them. At the end of the workday, Joe falls out of exhaustion, and the AI congratulates
him for reaching the outstanding quota of 370. While catching his breath, Joe notices that on the
mill’s handle a previous worker carved the word “Alex”. He asks the neighbor about it and learns
that Alex is the only guy that managed to get out. The next day, Joe gets a special gift for his
outstanding quota: a pen with his name on it. Joe tells them off since he has no use for a pan only
to suddenly notice that they’ve changed his daily quota to 370 as the new standard. A furious Joe
shows his wounded hands and tries to explain he can’t do that again, but the AI only says humans
just need a little push to progress, so Joe throws the pen at the wall while insulting the company.
Afterward he begins to work and notices they don’t give him a point when he finishes a revolution,
but there’s a little X on the clock. The neighbor explains that the X means Joe has a penalty,
and now it’ll take him two revolutions to score one point. If he gets another X in the future,
that will require him four revolutions, then eight, and so forth. Having no other choice,
Joe starts working extra hard since to reach the quota he’ll have to do 740 revolutions. However
he eventually becomes incredibly exhausted and gives up. When the neighbor checks on
him and learns he has to do 740, the man starts yelling at Joe, saying he’ll get them all killed.
At that moment the AI announces the workday is over and that Joe didn’t meet his daily quota,
so Joe takes the chance to ask about the penalty. However the AI says Joe gave the penalty to
himself for letting down his fellow employees and that he needs proper motivation. Suddenly Kate’s
profile appears on the wall as the AI threatens to kidnap her to work here too, so Joe begs for
forgiveness and promises to reach his new quota tomorrow. The AI takes his word and explains he’ll
lose the penalty if he’s successful tomorrow, the voice also offers a token of appreciation
by adding an additional challenge: it’s a huge red light that appears on the ceiling. Between
the twelve o’clock screaming and the red light, it’s very hard for Joe to sleep that night. The
next day, he uses his jacket to cover the mill’s handle so his hands won’t hurt as much while he
works extra hard under the red light. It’s an awful, maddening process that makes Joe start to
feel he’s losing his mind. At some point he starts seeing a hallucination of himself, who makes fun
of Joe for still believing that hard work will take him anywhere. When the hallucination begins
talking about Kate and the baby, Joe gets the motivation to keep moving and reaches the quota
just one second before the time runs out. The AI announces he’s removed the penalty and the red
light disappears. The next morning, Joe wakes up to the AI giving him a new token of appreciation:
a very short video of Kate in the hospital with the baby. Joe cries over being a dad now but also
because he’s realizing he’s been in here for too long and he’s missing so many important moments.
Sometime later, Joe asks his neighbor for details on how Alex got out because he wants to try too.
At first the neighbor doesn’t want to talk, but then he hears Joe say he couldn’t meet his baby
and feels bad because he at least got to have some time with his children before being dragged here.
The neighbor doesn’t want Joe to have a child that hates him for putting work first like it happened
to him so he tells him to check the blind spot on the wall behind the pillar. Joe immediately rushes
to the wall and takes a close look which makes him notice a circular area had been filled later,
meaning someone made a hole here at some point. Then he grabs the pen and begins using it to dig
in the wall, realizing that the company is so cheap they didn’t even patch the hole properly.
Many days pass and Joe is exhausted, but he never gives up: he makes his daily quota on the mill
during work hours and then spends his so-called free time digging the hole. Eventually the hole is
big enough and Joe jumps into it to start crawling out. After a few minutes, he comes out into a very
dark area and tries to find his way around, only to suddenly be found by the guard. Joe is knocked
out and when he wakes up later, he finds himself back in the room with the mill and the hole has
been filled again. At that moment the AI starts scolding him and proceeds with the punishment:
they raise the quota to one thousand, and the neighbor gets his leg broken by the guard. Joe
tries to apologize but the guy keeps ranting because he can’t work now and comments on the
fact that they don’t have control here, it’s all algorithms controlling the whole place.
The neighbor feels bad because he was the one that designed the system while he worked in IT and says
humans can’t reason with an AI, however this gives Joe an idea. If the computer follows the rules,
then if nobody works, everyone ends the day with no points and the tie should mean nobody dies. The
neighbor thinks it’s dangerous, but Joe points out they have nothing to lose. He jumps on top of the
mill and yells a speech about the fact hard work won’t take them anywhere in this company, he also
points out that if they don’t work they won’t die. Soon all the other employees are chanting along
and as the workday starts, not a single person works. Joe is happy because he thinks he’s won,
however when the day is about to end, the AI announces any person with no points will be
terminated. This terrifies the other employees and they immediately start working again,
ignoring Joe’s pleas not to let them win. Suddenly the neighbor tells Joe his kid is lucky to have
such a great dad, but if he wants to meet the baby, he must do whatever it takes to get out.
With no other choice, Joe starts pushing the mill again. Later during the night, the neighbor knows
he’ll die soon so he makes a confession: his name is Alex, and he was the one that managed to get
out. However just like Joe, he was captured and sent back. He didn’t tell Joe this because he
wanted to think there was hope for the second try. The only regret Alex has is not burning
this place down. Joe says goodbye to him, then he cries as he hears the guard take Alex away for
termination. The next morning, the AI gives Joe another motivational present: it’s a very short
video of Kate and the baby, who can walk now. Joe is disturbed by the fact he’s been here for months
and starts yelling at the company, insulting it with colorful language for having taken everything
from him. The AI doesn’t like this attitude and decides Joe should be terminated, then the door
opens at a bunch of people come in to stand around in the room, ignoring Joe’s questions and begging.
Soon the guard comes in and prepares the injection while wondering if Joe’s death will free his home
and his wife, which causes a furious Joe to jump on him and start beating him up. As blood gets
splattered all over the standing people, the AI announces the guard failed and the punishment is
termination, and since Joe is completing that task now, he’ll be promoted to level nine. This makes
Joe realize what he’s doing and he immediately pulls back, ignoring the guard’s pleas to finish
it. Disturbed, Joe announces that he’s not a monster and he won’t let the company make him one,
so he quits. Suddenly he blinks and is shocked to find himself back in the usual office with
a machine connected to his head, surrounded by employees in the same situation. It turns out
this has all been the company’s advanced career training simulation. A coworker that looks like
the guard explains that Joe had volunteered for the program and while it felt longer, he
actually was there for only sixty minutes, meaning Joe’s son hasn’t been born yet. Joe had been stuck
in level eight with no possibility of promotion, but it turns out it wasn’t because he wasn’t good
enough, it was because he wasn’t being challenged to do better. In the experiment, his productivity
spiked and his leadership was off the charts, so he’s now finally getting his promotion to
level nine. After disconnecting the machine, Joe is taken to his new office, where he’s welcomed
by a nicer AI. Joe can’t stop having visions of what he went through, which left him with PTSD
even if was only a simulation. The office is small and simple, almost claustrophobic. Joe’s
coworker shows him a non-disclosure agreement because the project is secret and Joe signs for
the sake of his wife. Once the guy leaves, Joe calls Kate and to check on her, crying when he
finally hears her voice. When the call is done, he announces he’ll burn this company to the ground.