udge Firdous was definitely in her little unused den, which had literal and

metaphorical cobwebs everywhere in the cold and chilly dome of everything

antonymous with what she represented based on her looks. It was the shrine of spiders

because of not only her inaptitude for executing and enforcing the law but also due to

the expulsion of the miscellaneous cleaners who would have kept the place tidy. The

miscalculations and urgency of evacuation showed how ludicrous their plan was and

once more depicted a misguided and incoherent pattern of thinking.

There was a small table with a few snacks and drinks laid out. They had been there a

while.

We entered and carried with us a poignant presence. Mr. Kit was standing right

beside Judge Firdous’s table, and immediately recoiled from his tilted position and

faced us; his eyes were drawing daggers.

His look of pure animosity changed into that of confusion when Ekene came and

stood before them. Fierce. Poised. The opposition party was shocked to see her. It was

as if they were both simultaneously guilty and afraid of the knowledge that she

possessed, or perhaps she was the ghost of the past they so vehemently strived to get

rid of. But then you can never escape from history, or the fact that there were four

horsemen that founded Silverns, not three. She was a symbol for the education that

was imperative for breathing life into the decayed realm of enlightenment that Right

and Left Arrow began to foster their legacies on. And we meant to clearly change the

scheme of activities and dimension of ideas, as best we could.

Thus, without wasting much time we showed her the petition.

‘This is the ticket for our better tomorrow, Judge Firdous,’ I said, ‘we have

purchased it with a lot of blood, tears and sweat. We ask for our rights, as human

beings, to be treated based on who we are, and not based on how we look.’

‘What mockery is this,’ the lady replied while sniggering away, ‘this ridiculous

piece of paper is going to change what WE think is best?

And what on Earth are you three doing? Being a part of this charade,’ she added,

motioning towards Nin, Jeter and Harris.

‘While working on my novel, and really seeing the condition of our town, you know,

it is all just very preposterous,’ Nin replied in a fragmented way, but her angst was

conveyed.

‘I stand with my friends, too,’ Harris replied in a solemn voice, radiating the

composure that made a stark contrast to Nin’s passion, ‘it is not fair to put the

miscellaneous out of jobs for no good reason, or allow anyone the choice to be who

they want to be. As a doctor in training, and all around human, I understand that

empathy is the most distinct feature lacking in our lives, yet needed the most.’

I could see a smile flicker across Jeter’s face. It was cool to see Harris really

augment his feelings at the crucial time when we needed the most back up.

‘And I know,’ Jeter spoke finally, ‘that business is not what I want to work towards

in my life. What really makes me feel alive is literature. The fine arts. I adore them.

That is what I want to specialise in.’

‘How dare you!’ Mr. Kit thundered, ‘uttering blasphemy in the presence of your own

father! What kind of double disrespect is this, Jeter?’

‘There is no disrespect, father,’ he answered back in a voice that felt broken, ‘but I

want to know and revel in the comfort that I can speak to you about anything.’

‘You blotch,’ his father fired away, ‘I always knew you were second to your brother,

but even then I had hopes, no, wild dreams, that maybe one day you could be number

one too, and glorify the Kit family name. Both of Hiseff Kit’s sons, number one. But

of course not! You had to turn out unnatural!’

Mr Kit was fuming more than usual and made a dart towards his son, furiously

grabbing him by the arm.

‘We are going home!’ he roared and began dragging his son, who was listless with

defeat again.

But in a moment of defence, Badriya, who had stayed quiet for too long, spoke out,

‘we have the mind control chip with us and we will put it on you unless you release

him!’ she defiantly declared.

Mr. Kit stopped short, and glared at the interrupter with maddening fixation.

‘What did you say girl? Oh I’m sorry, actress. This is not one of your performances,

is it? You better cut it out, before the curtain really falls on your production,’ he

threatened sorely.

Badriya had never been exposed to such intense eliteratti hatred. She had heard

about it, but since this was her first time in the belly of the beast, there was a certain

kind of shock and fright that seemed to sheathe her.

‘Bloody miscellaneous.’

That triggered it. Almost instinctively and in a moment of pure impulse, she dashed

the special liquid from Pervez Sahab’s stash of inventions on Mr Kit’s face,

disgruntling him.

‘What insubordination and defiance to the law!’ Judge Firdous vociferated whilst

still seated in her chair like some grand queen only passing comments at her own

dignity that seemed to be compromised by this act.

Mr. Kit may as well have strangled Badriya. ‘I’ll have you arrested!’ he uttered,

while taking a tissue from the snacks table and roughly rubbing his face instead of

dabbing it to get rid of the fluid’s stickiness.

As a way out of the confusion, I held out the chip that shimmered in its entire digital

prowess under the blaring lights of the courtroom. To us it screamed control over the

very proprietors of the whole notion of robotic persons.

Judge Firdous squinted her eyes. She was trying to get a better look at it and assess

the situation that kept getting more and more eccentric for them.

‘Has Pervez gone mad…’ she seemed to be mumbling. She then took off her glasses.

‘My dear,’ she said, ‘frankly, I think you’re a little too way over your head. Do you

honestly think that is the real chip?’

I walked towards her desk very slowly, my fingers clutched to the chip as tightly as

they possibly could be, ‘it is very real Judge Firdous. Think you could only

manipulate it for your gains? We are all aware of the power that it possesses and what

it can make you do,’ there appeared a lump in my throat, ‘but…’

There was a pause. In a hard to explain moment, I felt overcome with some strange

feelings. While there is no denying the fact that we wanted change and that too quite

desperately because of the pressing times, the unfair treatment multiplying by the

second and the black hole that seemed ready to suck us all into oblivion, there was

something within me that resisted the urge to follow through with what was best for

us vis-à-vis the same route we sought to block. We could not employ that same dirty

computerized mechanism. We were better than that. Someone had to be.

In a change of heart I stomped on the computer chip, destroying it completely.

My friends gasped. Judge Firdous furrowed her brows. I took a deep breath.

‘This needs to be condoned entirely. Even though it would have been poetic justice

seeing you controlled by this chip, it just goes against what we stand for. We argue

out mindless slavery and therefore cannot carry this out.’

There was silence in the room. I shut my eyes. Perhaps this battle was lost but our

ideals surely won the war.

‘You are the most ludicrous fool we have ever come across,’ Judge Firdous said

before breaking into a little nervous laugh.

‘I bet it satisfies you, doesn’t it?’ I asked dryly, ‘because that is the only way you

could ever look clever.’

She stopped laughing and widened her eyes at me.

‘This is what I think of the entire thing,’ the ruthless judge said and proceeded to tear

the petition in half before our very eyes.

My heart almost stopped beating.

Jeter ripped himself away from his father and came to stand next to me.

After a few moments of inactivity elapsed, Mr. Kit spoke out in frustration, ‘bloody

time waste! Jeter! Come here at once! And you,’ in the scathing tone meant only for

me, ‘may your kind always stay away from my family!’

But Jeter did not move. Nor I.

‘Jeter!’ he repeated.

My friend then turned to go back to his life in silence, in sadness.

‘And have these people put away, will ya?’ Mr. Kit added cynically, alluding to

Ekene and Badriya.

‘You will not touch my friends, Mr. Kit,’ I said without looking at him.

‘What will you do?’ he retorted, ‘why should you care?’

That is when I faced him and replied, our eyes meeting, ‘because this entire thing is

between you and me.’

All the hostility was always more grounded towards me than the miscellaneous. It

was time to state the obvious.

Mr. Kit gave me a little smirk. He walked towards Judge Firdous’s table, took the

torn halves of the petition and put them in my hand. He leaned in forward and said in

my ear, very low and menacingly, ‘take this and disappear and may Silverns be rid of

your kind for good.’

Before I could respond, something behind Mr. Kit’s ear caught my attention. I had to

blink twice to really confirm it.

I said to him in an equally low tone, ‘You know Mr Kit your tattoo over there looks

very familiar.’

His face went red. ‘What are you talking about?’ and consciously began touching his

face involuntarily as if he would be able to feel the answers, and subconsciously

affirming my suspicion.

‘The red honeycomb creeping behind your ear,’ I replied, ‘looks like a stamp.’

Immediately Mr Kit began dragging me outside the room.

‘Hiseff! Where are you going?’ Judge Firdous asked with both her hands raised.

‘N-nothing Firdous. Both of us need to have a talk is all.’

When we had come outside, I ceased the moment and turned Mr. Kit’s ear and

realised it was the same symbol, mother and I had been stamped with at the time of

our birth. Which only means one thing…

‘Don’t touch me!’ he replied irritably flinging away my arm.

Thanks to Badriya’s little vent of anger on Mr. Kit, and him cleaning away what had

been concealing the mark all this time, we were able to have the greatest “what the

deuce” moment in history!

‘So you’re one of…me,’ I said.

Mr. Kit was silent.

‘But… how?’ I asked.

He averted his eyes.

‘You’re a fraud, Mr. Kit. A fraud. All this talk on race and birth… and of being born

number one. How the eliteratti is God’s chosen race. When you were never a part of

it.’

Mr. Kit’s eyes were getting foggy and before I knew it, this great, pompous man,

who had done nothing but evoke misery for the miscellaneous and consolidate his

position in the elitist world as one of the most formidable forces of power and

authority, broke down in tears. It was the most unexpected and unexplainable feeling

to witness the private meltdown of my second biggest enemy after society and its

cruel distinctions.

‘You have had nothing but hatred for my kind when all this time YOU have been the

same! Instead of helping or understanding our shared plight, why did you work so

hard to destroy our… your kind!?’

‘Do you think it was easy?’ Mr. Kit replied, suppressing his sobs, ‘I never wanted to

be born like this!’

He took his fingers and pointed them to his chest, ‘I wanted to be a businessman and

so I transformed my body.’

‘Is this,’ I said motioning towards his silvery suit, ‘real skin or paint or -’

‘Let’s just say I have to make myself look this way every day of my existence.’

‘So you’re the real performer here, Mr. Kit. You’ve been performing your identity

most literally! You were not born looking like a businessman. Yet, yet, this façade of

being an elitist?’

‘I should have been born an elitist from the start. If you are of the eliteratti that is the

only way to live a successful life! You cannot be anything in this world if you are not

born looking like them!’

‘Yet, you see us trying to break this stereotype but you took it upon yourself to shoot

it down.’

‘I wanted to be the only cross over success. Your ideas are inspiring mutiny! My

idea inspired conformation to what has already been laid down as the norm. My

sacrifices and daily struggle to fulfil all the requirements of my role will not be for

nothing.’

‘You think they’re loyal to you inside?’ I cried out pointing towards the door, ‘your

life will be ruined once they find out that their so called leader is himself just an

ordinary, identity-less man, and has been living a lie; is a sham!’

Mr. Kit was quiet. I could see more tears rolling down his cheeks.

‘It is the end of my life,’ he sighed, ‘what do you need to keep this a secret? Money?

A house? A car? Tell me and I can buy anything!’

‘I want none of these things. I want the truth.’

Mr. Kit stared at my face with a look of pure horror. He knew there was nothing

really that would hold me back from exposing him.

‘But I won’t speak of this,’ I replied to his frazzled face.

‘What? Y-you will keep quiet about this? N-not even a word to Jeter?’ he was

almost breathless.

‘No.’

He let out a huge sigh of relief and started to laugh.

‘On some conditions,’ I added.

And then his laugh ceased.

‘Inculcate the education scheme into Silverns and give back the miscellaneous

livelihood to some of the older members of Left Arrow, who can’t afford to do much

else at this point.’

‘That is the embodiment of everything I hated about you in the first place.’

‘And that is?’

‘How you didn’t go through the pains I did to hide my true identity, and instead you

went ahead to own yourself, to make something for yourself in the world that I saw as

unforgiving.’

‘I can’t conform to this town’s mindlessness,’ I replied a little sternly, ‘it has to be

changed. So, endorse this, and I will never speak a word about your alter or rather,

true ego. We each get to go and live our lives to its full promise.’

‘That is bloody gibberish. The natural order cannot be deceived.’

‘To which you do not belong,’ I added curtly, ‘now will you agree to endorsing the

plan for education or are you more than content having your secret exposed – I mean

the natural order cannot be deceived right? So yes, or no?’

‘All right! All right!’ Mr. Kit acquiesced in frustration.

Just then Judge Firdous walked out.

‘What is going on? What is taking so long, Hiseff?’

But before she could get a look at the face that had been going through a range of

hysterical moments, Mr. Kit made a beeline for the door and exclaimed, ‘Get inside

fool! Firdous come on, let’s not waste any time!’