We got up early in the morning. We brushed
our teeth. There was little blood in the basin after we gurgled and spat the
water out. We were not sure whether the blood came from our gum or the chicken
we had last night. It tasted suspiciously succulent was all what we could
remember.
We had to report to the counsellor in five
minutes. So there was no time for breakfast. In any case, after last night, we
wouldn’t think about food for a long time.
The counsellor was his usual self, grumpy
and continuously staring at his secretary’s cleavage. The secretary (actually a
fembot) presented us a file. The file had ‘confidential’ written on its cover.
We opened it. It had a picture of a beautiful girl standing next to a blue
door. The door looked quite normal, but we felt a little uncomfortable. There
was something unusual about the door. Perhaps it was the girl. We looked at her
face and other body parts closely. She looked like a college kid separated from
her friends on an excursion. Now she had discovered this door and was thinking
about knocking on it. The friends must be waiting for her on the other side of
the door. The thought made us even more uncomfortable. What if there was a wild
animal on the other side? Or worse, nothing?
‘Do you find anything out of place in this
picture?’ The counsellor patted the secretary on her ass and looked at us with
a mischievous smile. We were confused. Should we connect the smile with the
question or the pat? We got nervous and remained silent.
The fembot left the room. We tried to
imagine what she would have been thinking if it was fifty years ago or if she
was an actual woman. The counsellor must have been sued for sexual harassment.
Fembots were introduced few years back precisely to avoid the pile of lawsuits
that were cumulating after the invention of Viagra. Now with the fembot
subordinates, there was no tension or fear. The only frustrating thing was these
faux-femmes were given tentacles instead of legs to enhance mobility and speed.
Some men, however, were still indomitable.
The counsellor, now fully concentrating on
us, repeated the question, this time without the smile. We took a sigh of
relief. There was no confusion anymore. He was indeed thinking about the
pleasure of molesting a six-legged feminine robot, and neither the girl nor the
door, when he was smiling like the gatekeeper of a whorehouse, a man who
pretends to know your secret.
We sat straight in our chair and cleared
our throat, ‘We think there is something wrong with the picture but we can’t
put our finger on it. The door looks normal. So does the girl. But....’
‘Let me tell you what’s wrong. The girl or
the door in isolation is perfect. Nothing amiss about them. But when you put
them together, it becomes a problem. It’s not the objects themselves, but the
relationship between them, which calls for our attention,’ the counsellor
tapped his finger on the picture.
‘That sounds interesting,’ we said in a
matter-of-fact voice.
‘I have a job for you. I specially
recommended your name to the Chairperson and she agreed. We both think you will
be perfect for this job.’
‘What kind of job?’
‘It’s not very difficult, to begin with.
But it’s a lifelong responsibility. Are you up for that?’ The counsellor seemed
a little tense. Perhaps he was aging too quickly.
‘That we can tell you only after hearing
about the job in more detail.’
‘Fare enough,’ the counsellor leaned
towards me, ‘I knew I could trust you. What I am going to tell you is a secret
of supreme order. You have looked at the picture carefully, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘Look at it once again. Take it home. We
want you to locate this girl,’ the counsellor stopped abruptly and swallowed
the words that were about to come out of his mouth. We looked at him with
curiosity. What wasn’t he telling us?
He continued, ‘Your job doesn’t end there.’
Once again he stopped and looked at his nails. They were carefully trimmed.
‘What should we do next?’ We had to ask.
‘Never let this girl go near this door. By
any means. That’s your job.’
‘Where is this door?’ We were getting a
faint idea of the importance of this job.
‘You don’t need to know. Just keep the door
and the girl separated. Stop her from finding the door.’ The way he spoke, it
sounded like a metaphor. But we knew very well that was not the case. There was
something horribly unmetaphorical about the whole situation.
