The opened door revealed some kind of round table conference being conducted in a

relatively intimate room. There were politicians present, presumably from the

Silverns government (which I had never even heard of or seen before this matter), and

a few representatives of the key professions, including someone who looked

remarkably like Jeter…

The minute Judge Firdous walked in, everyone gave her an instinctive nod, and me a

glare. That being said, I was ushered in anyway. I realised the absence of Jeter’s

father and Harris’s father was because they were busy conducting their ‘expert’ class

back at Izhar Academy. Before, I could start thinking of further possible explanations

and questions, the Jeter lookalike spoke.

‘Aunty, so glad you could come,’ he cooed in the most superficial manner, ‘and to

have brought this one,’ his eyes flashed at me.

‘Yes, yes darling, certainly,’ she remarked in an equally sugary tone, ‘let us

commence with the meeting, then.’

‘Madam, we need your signatures here, here, and here,’ spoke one of the men in

formal suits; he looked like the president or prime minister at best, ‘and I believe the

matter will be ready for broadcasting.’

‘We will just wait for Hiseff to come. He will be done with his lecture in another

few minutes,’ she then proceeded to take her seat and engage in the signings.

Meanwhile, I just stood by the door. There were two engineers with a patch on their

skins that looked like a blueprint, who were busy typing away on their MacBook

Pro’s. There were three empty seats, presumably for the missing members, including

Jeter’s father. The sound of shuffling documents, fingers pressing away the keys of

the laptop and the scribbling of fountain pens in shiny ink formed a chorus in the

otherwise unfeeling room.

After some moments had passed, heavy footsteps could be heard getting closer,

when finally the filtered crescendo resulted in a loud thud, as Mr. Kit barged through

the door, in what he hoped would have been a sparkling, intimidating entrance, but

really, seemed quite clumsy and unprofessional.

‘Oh, I see the party has not started without me!’ he these words in a high pitch, that

were painfully out of order.

‘Finally, Hiseff! Take a seat,’ Judge Firdous announced ceremoniously, ‘let us

begin.’

‘I am glad the unveiling of this project will be tomorrow. We are quite literally not

going to waste any time on this,’ the man who had asked for Judge Firdous’s

signatures earlier spoke. He did in fact, turn out to be someone from the government

and was the prime minister of Silverns, Yahya Ataullah.

As he said those words a presentation was played on a holographic medium, similar

to the mechanism I had seen in Jeter’s class the day before. The female engineer

initiated some colour sequences that highlighted the design of some box in red. The

male engineer then started to rapidly type out something on his laptop that initiated a

dark green sequence of the words “It will carry on for us”, and released various

labelling, ending on various images of robotic figures, while the entire room erupted

into voracious clapping.

The eliteratti had conceived a plan to replace all jobs by the miscellaneous with

electronic operating systems. That meant all the ‘measly’ jobs of cleaning or driving

or anything that did not fall into their elite categories would become automated,

effectively putting all the miscellaneous out of jobs. And since no one was allowed to

follow any other path, openly at least (not that they had a proper education on their

rights), their livelihood was going to be badly disrupted. If only Left Arrow was self

sufficient, economically stable and the miscellaneous were allowed the space to

expand themselves, the entire miscellaneous race would not perish, as it seemed now

would be inevitable. The eliteratti were going to have the miscellaneous totally

dependent on them. And this vicious cycle was going to get more and more vicious.

Now it seemed like I had another cause to fight for. It had become more than

personal.

My furrowed brows and silence that seemed to cut my own body was all the

reaction this abrupt little exhibition elicited from me. But it was not enough.

‘So what do you have to say?’ Mr Kit turned to me, with a mocking, ghastly smile.

‘About?’ Though I had understood what was about to happen.

‘Get this,’ he continued, ‘the person wagging his tongue the most for his clown

father to step into Judge Firdous’s sphere, has not the tongue now.’

There was fake laughter in the room following a poor statement.

‘Certain individuals who question authority need to be corrected, is it not?’ Judge

Firdous uttered in her lofty attitude, like we were in some kind of refracted parent

child relationship, ‘so when you traversed that thin line between what is right and

what is wrong, well, we had to step in and save you from destroying yourself.’

‘But obviously this entire endeavour was not simply for your benefit, it provides a

great deal of satisfaction to us. We thought the minute Joyce’s daughter is done with

her novel we will have no further problems,’ Mr. Kit said turning to the table, then

back to me, ‘but then something profound struck us. Also, as you are aware till the

novel is completed, given your present occupation, you serve no purpose from birth,

and it would not really be of any consequence if you died.’

Death? It was like that was their biggest threat.

My deadpan, cold bloodied face offered him nothing he wanted to see. What could

this worthless fear really do in a broken world? And frankly, it made him very

uncomfortable.

Mr. Kit realised what he said was not only unnecessary, but completely off topic. He

slowly recoiled back into his seat, and was compelled to yield the floor to Judge

Firdous. It was a matter of intimidation and not to be intimidated.

‘Our brilliant brains have conceived a use for you, after all,’ Judge Firdous declared,

‘and we have great happiness in telling you, it is owed entirely to your blank slate.’

Once more, I stayed quiet. There was an influx of thoughts ranging as to whether

they had seen me in one of the libraries at the school, going over books on biology,

literature and psychology, because considering I am a plain canvas, there is room for

so much to be achieved. Were they going to assign me something based on that? But

it was stupid of me to exhibit such premature optimism towards them.

‘You will be the perfect guinea pig for Silverns’s esteemed, and most well respected

scientist, Pervez Zahoor,’ she said whilst waiting for what she believed would be an

awestruck or star gazed expression on my face, but what an awkward assumption. I

had no idea about anyone, let alone these eliterattis.

‘What do you mean by guinea pig?’ finally my frozen tongue thawed a bit, and I was

able to voice out my thoughts. I was going to be no man’s guinea pig.

‘You will be taken to his laboratory, and he will put you through a series of

experiments and see if you can become the world’s first robot infused humanoid

species,’ Mr. Kit added, after regaining his self righteous composure.

‘What makes you think I would allow that?’ I asked, a little dismayed. If they

thought they were going to make me serve them by turning me into a robot since my

current self would not yield, they had another thing coming.

‘You have no particular say in that,’ Mr. Kit replied, unperturbed by the monstrosity

that is biological experimentation, ‘you have no purpose or any field to fall back on.

And we are constantly thinking of ways to make the eliteratti experience more

advanced. We need to see if the chip, Pervez Sahab will attach to your spinal chord

will be useful or not.’

‘I do not consent to this. And if you force me, the Silverns Law dictates you will be

thrown into jail for unlawful coercion.’

The room erupted into spasms of laughter.

‘The law can do nothing to father,’ the now understood Jeter look alike said, ‘it may

be the same law, but it has very different consequences for all of us.’

‘Then your entire profession is a sham!’ I cried out to Judge Firdous, who ceased her

laughing, ‘why were you born looking like the pillar and advocate of justice when

illegitimacy under your very nose stirs not the fabric of your entire being!’

‘Calm down, you little melodramatic blow horn,’ she patronisingly uttered, ‘should

have been born a politician this one, bloody rhetoric is all that is spewed out.’ She

then gave a fake reassuring smile to the actual politicians present in the room – as if

she was truly a sincere person.

‘I am smart enough to know the applicability of law, and have the authority as to

where its consequences should truly lie,’ she continued in her injudiciousness and

detrimentally misguided pomposity, ‘so therefore your dramaturgical words only

obfuscate what is seen in plain view, the natural order,’ her arms did a circle of the

tiny room in an attempt to showcase her inclusive personality.

I was really just communicating with a wooden block at this point. The level of

lunacy left me astounded.

At that point, two big security guards walked into the room and stood against me

menacingly.

‘We have no problem convincing people in our illustrious past,’ Mr. Kit voiced the

guards’ inclusion to a rather mute audience of the politicians and engineers. They just

seemed part of the room for showmanship.

‘You don’t need to use force to get me to do this, Mr. Kit,’ I said in a very monotone

sort of way. I kind of realised, though it was a long shot whether this speculation

would pay off or not, that Nin was writing on me as a person, and if I were to become

a robot, it would undeniably ruin the authenticity of her piece. Considering how her

father held double affluence in the town given his lineage, Mr. Kit would not want to

start a feud or any condescending behaviour within his own social circles. Therefore,

the idea would be to give in, and place the illusion of my willing compliance to the

eliteratti. Hopefully, that would keep the revolution we were planning wrapped up,

too.

‘I guess I really don’t have any choice. It really is gracious of you to show me my

place. Just let me know what I am to do,’ was my continued reply.

‘Ah! Yes,’ Mr. Kit added, ‘we will all go to the laboratory right now and Pervez

Sahab will direct what is to be done next. Meanwhile, boys,’ he said motioning

towards the engineers, ‘you should go to your den and finalise everything for

tomorrow’s big inauguration. The public will go wild.’

The politicians, judge, engineers and businessmen all exchanged handshakes among

each other and left the room one by one. Once everyone had left, I was ordered out.

We got into big cars and were driven to another building. It was a medium sized

orange rectangular block, with no windows and no visibly discernable doors. It quite

literally looked like one magnified Lego piece. Later, I found out the door had been

painted orange too, and instead of being present in the middle of the building, it was

right at the age of the structure. We entered and were enveloped in a big gloop of

orange – there was no furniture anywhere, save for one white coloured reception table

and a really extensive, never ending ceiling. Once, we got to the table, immediately

the miscellaneous receptionist, who had her own fair share of attitude working for the

town’s scientist, pressed a button that had an elevator emerge from the floor. We were

subsequently carried down to the basement.

There, I was finally introduced to Pervez Sahab – a short, old little man, with snow

white frizzy hair and a body that looked like a laboratory coat once again, except,

instead of a stethoscope around his neck, he wore a pair of very specific gloves on his

hands, which also turned out to be pigmented skin with a very different texture,

designed for an experiment conducive environment.

I expected to be treated with the same airs that had surrounded me for the past hours,

but there was a surprisingly delicacy in the old man’s treatment of me, particularly

through what he called me, too.

‘OK, butterfly,’ he said in a hoarse, sometimes muffled voice, ‘come up on this

podium so I may examine you.’

As I got on top of the podium, the scientist got into a little elevation box that took,

very long in getting to where I was standing. Needless to say, there was a prolonged

awkward silence. After about eight lengthy minutes, the politicians announced they

were going to leave due to some “meeting”, while Mr. Kit and Judge Firdous decided

to join the engineers and check for their progress, and I was left to be chaperoned by

the obnoxious brother of my good friend, Jeter, whose name was also disclosed: Zeter

Kit.

After looking at my neck for some time, the scientist remarked about the uniqueness

of having monotone skin.

‘How long do you reckon this will take to work, Pervez Sahab? When do you think

the chip will enable control?’ Zeter asked in an overzealous, high pitched tone.

‘Patience, sonny my boy!’ was the old man’s reply, ‘I need some time in configuring

the matrix, especially, since your father gave me such short notice.’

‘Yes, but,’

Zeter was cut off from saying anything when the scientist lifted his finger in the

universal sign of “hold it”, while he descended down the podium, once more, with a

long, and admittedly, hilarious time extension. Once he was down, he prodded Zeter

to stand up straight and not slouch like a Wagga Magga plant. That I learned was the

commonest plant at Silverns and was always curled up.

The scientist then told us we could leave, but had to be back here at the same time, so

he could run some tests.

‘Will you be coming to the inauguration tomorrow, Pervez Sahab?’ Zeter asked.

‘No thank you, my boy,’ he replied, ‘I have a very distinct fear of computers taking

over everything.’