The door clicked shut behind her, and mindlessness once again consumed Amelia. She didn't feel it, exactly; she never did. The person she usually was simply stopped being. She was never able to describe the feeling, thanks in no small part to the fact that she never remembered it. Her conscious mind was well conditioned to ignore the lack of any concrete memories regarding her shifts, and to simply enjoy the programmed feelings of satisfaction she felt anytime she tried to remember.

Even if she could try, though, she wouldn't know how. The only thing she felt, if you could call it feeling, was in fact the absence of feeling, of thought and awareness. If she could understand it well enough, she would probably find it all very strange. After all, her body still moved, her eyes still saw things, her ears heard and her mouth spoke. She just wasn't a part of it.

Like how she wasn't a part of the process now, as she walked across the floor of Haze. Her body moved in smooth motions, her hips swaying slightly and her hands held gently at her sides. It was a walk she'd performed thousands of times at this point, one ingrained into the deepest part of her, yet one she had no awareness of. Her eyes registered the motion of another waitress crossing her path, and her body automatically changed course to avoid her. But Amelia never saw the waitress. By the time she had stepped to the side, she had already forgotten every detail of the other girl. She didn't remember changing direction, which she never told her body to do in the first place.

Eventually she found herself with her body leaned against a half wall that divided the two sides of the club's dining area. Her hands rested on its surface, one hand folded neatly atop the other. She leaned against the wall, her hip gently pressed against it. The foot that bore most of her weight was flat, the other foot held behind it, pointed down to rest on her toes. Much like her prior gait, it was a pose she'd done a thousand times, each time to exact perfection, never wavering in the placement of any part of herself. Her body simply did it automatically, as her eyes, widely dilated and devoid of light, gazed around the room, at once alert and yet unseeing.

She paid no attention to the waitress standing behind her, leaning against the wall in an identical pose. Neither woman even knew the other was there. If the two ever met outside of work, which they hadn't as of yet, they would have immediately recognized each other as coworkers. They would know each other's names, and would probably remember that they had been hired at the same time, and went through orientation together. But at this moment, none of that information existed in either of their minds. Neither woman remembered the other's name, every detail of each other forgotten in its entirety. They wouldn't remember having stood here together, having never registered that fact in the first place. They existed to each other only as objects in the world, to be noticed and interacted with only when absolutely necessary for their tasks.

Eventually, Amelia's eyes registered the presence of a table of four, freshly served by a hostess, one whose equally empty mind would forget every detail of the group the moment she walked away. Guided along by her programming, Amelia's body immediately shifted off the half wall, and walked directly towards the table, her movements identical to before. When she reached the table, her body again shifted automatically, to the well-conditioned pose she struck every time she arrived at every table, on every shift. Her body was rested gently on the balls of her feet, her hands folded in front of her. Her face wore a wide, welcoming smile, a convincing display of friendliness that she wasn't actually feeling but could perfectly convey.

"Hi, welcome to Haze! I'm Amelia, and I'll be your waitress for tonight!"

Her voice was bright and cheery as her lips spoke the words. Like everything else she had done and would do tonight, she didn't choose to speak them. They were simply what she was to say, her lips perfectly reciting a script buried so deeply into her mind that even if she had been aware of it, she wouldn't have been able to deviate from it.

The customers ordered their drinks.

"Sounds great, guys! And can I get you anything else? Maybe some appetizers to get you started?"

It was the next line of her script, the only thing she was capable of saying after taking a drink order, mindlessly spoken with cheerful energy and absolute thoughtlessness. And when they said no, she nodded at them sweetly, responded quickly with the appropriate programmed response ("Sounds good, I'll be right back with those drinks!"), and sauntered off.

When she returned to the table, the customers were ready to order. One by one, they placed their orders, a preprogrammed affirmation leaving Amelia's mouth in between each one.

"Good choice!"

"Ooooh, that one's my favorite!"

"You know, that goes great with the curly fries, would you like to add some to your order?"

When they were done, she again turned and walked off, after delivering another response pulled from the repository she was conditioned with. She walked straight towards the kitchen, where she approached the line, speaking to a cook who was entirely focused on their work, their mind every bit as blank as Amelia's.

The bright smile faded from her face, and all energy and life drained from her voice as she relayed the order to the cook. The words came out in a toneless drone. Since maintaining the illusion of feeling and thought wasn't necessary when she was out of view of the customers, she wasn't programmed to maintain it. And so she didn't.

The cook never acknowledged her words or her presence, never speaking up to confirm that she'd been heard. But that part of Amelia's silent mind that contained her programming knew that the cook had heard, and would comply as flawlessly as she did. Without waiting for the acknowledgement that would never come, Amelia immediately turned around, and as she did, the cheerful smile returned to her face, and she walked back to the half wall, where she resumed her idle pose, and waited for a table, or an order, whichever came first.

The process would continue, identically, for a few other tables. It was a quiet night for Haze, though Amelia had no awareness of that fact, and no thoughts or feelings on the matter. Her body simply followed it's script. When a table needed assistance, her legs would carry her promptly over to it, her gait never changing. When she served a table, her posture never wavered, every inch of her body held exactly where her mind was conditioned to hold it. Every time she spoke, the words flowed automatically, fed to her lips by programming etched into some tiny, buried, fundamental part of her mind.

One table, about halfway through her shift, was a regular. He was a young man in his 20s, who seemed to have a crush on the waitress that called herself Amelia. He came in once a week, and always requested to be sat in her section. Of course, she didn't remember any of this. The hollow void of her conscious mind forgot every detail about the man the minute he was outside her line of sight, and as with everything else, he was remembered only for the exact amount of time it was relevant to her work. She felt no glint of recognition as her body carried her over to his table.

And yet despite that fact, her well-harnessed mind still contained that information, buried deep in a place she had no access to. And her programming told her body that he was a repeat customer, and so her face gave him a smile, even larger than normal, and her hands waved excitedly as she approached.

"Oh my gosh, Ryan, hi! I was wondering if I'd see you today."

It wasn't a lie, not really, because a lie would suggest she had made some conscious decision to deceive him. But it certainly wasn't true, either. Amelia hadn't wondered that even once tonight, or any other night, nor had she wondered anything else during this or any other shift. Even something as basic as his name existed only as long as was needed to speak it. By the time she had finished the sentence, it was already gone.

She conversed with him, programmed to give him extra attention. Haze's management understood the value of a repeat customer, after all. Her mind pulled details about his life, just long enough to ask him how he was doing, and then discarded the information immediately. It accessed details about her normal life just long enough to respond to questions of his own, before forgetting them as well.

And the second she left to take his order to the kitchen, the entire conversation, every detail of his existence, would be similarly disposed of, locked away in a dark corner of her silent, empty mind. Like everything else she ever knew or remembered, it existed only when and for as long as needed.

And so it went, as Amelia carried out another flawless shift, perfectly executing her-

CRASH

The sound of broken glass immediately caught the attention of her programming, and her eyes snapped to the source. An older man, visibly drunk, had knocked a glass off his table. Since it was in her section of the floor, she immediately rushed over to the mess. Her face now switched to a look of concern, as convincing as it was fake, as her mind immediately began loading up the appropriate verbal responses.

"Oh my gosh, sir, is everything okay? Here, let me get someone to take care of this, and I'll bring you a new drink right away, okay?"

With that, she rushed off, her legs carrying her towards the closest janitor, her face still displaying concern over the accident. She rounded a corner, entering the hallway where the bathrooms were, where she found a janitor mopping the floor. As she rounded the corner, out of sight of customers, the life again drained from her, the mask of concern falling away, allowing her face to reflect the true blankness within.

"Janitor. A drink was spilled and a glass broken at table 17."

Just like with the cook, the words fell from her lips in a flat, lifeless monotone.

"Your presence is immediately required to-"

A customer came around the corner towards the restroom.

"-if you could head over there, I really don't want anyone to slip and fall!"

The second the customer had appeared, life and feeling returned to the faces of both employees. Amelia's voice immediately filled once again with earnestly expressed concern, her programming effortlessly switching her from cold, clean communication to the realistic, frantic speech of a person capable of thought and emotion. As soon as the customer entered the restroom, the life once again drained from both faces and voices, and only returned when they stepped back into the dining room and into the view of the customers.

Amelia's mind had flawlessly executed on it's conditioning, and with the crisis averted, she swiftly returned to her normal behaviors. And so she resumed her perfect shift, the broken glass erased from her memory at the precise moment the janitor finished cleaning it.

Going about her perfect shift, Amelia never knew what she was doing. Actions were taken automatically, performed exactly as programmed. Words flowed from her lips, each one pulled without thought from the complex array of responses conditioned into her subconscious. Her peppy demeanor never wavered, no matter how rude the customer, no matter how busy or slow the club became. Emotions can't waver if they aren't real in the first place. And no thought entered her mind. She didn't worry about errands she had to take care of, she didn't think about plans for the weekend, or about how she'd rather be at home than at work. Her silent mind remained empty, for the entirety of her eight hour shift, of everything. Only the mindless depths of trance existed for her, a void she didn't even know she was in, as programming she didn't know she had guided her along a shift she'd never remember.

Amelia was never consciously aware that she was one of Haze's most popular waitresses. Her naturally cute appearance and programmed cheer were big hits with customers. When she went home, and thought and feeling returned to her, she never remembered any specifics of work. When she tried, her mind would get fuzzy, and her thoughts would fade until only a single one remained.

"I had a great shift, and I can't wait for the next one."

And then the fog would clear, and Amelia would go about her day, content in the knowledge that she'd had an excellent shift, and that the next one would be even better.