Chapter 4: Something unboxly

Another question faded in.   
“You feel the urge to excite your sex organ when the titillation bay is inactive. What will be your line of action?”  

This was more of a revision, a rubbing-it session for all he knew. He had sailed over this question in the past without a fumble.   

Have a bar of chocolate, he wrote.

Simple as that.   

The letters dissolved into blackness, but before a subsequent set could replace them, another rumble rocked the world, more notably that the last time. A thud was what Aseem made of it, and he could swear by the Unnamed that something unboxly was afoot now. This was a first; the world quivering and whirring as if it had transformed into a blown-up titillation device.  

The titillation device was part of his weekly regime of sexual stimulation, a basic human need as per the EPUU. It was but human need to eject slithery, sleek, muddy-grey jets of fluid from its sexual organ on a weekly basis; this was achieved by inserting one’s cylindrical sex organ inside the rubber sheath that protruded from the wall of the titillation bay, and have it vibrate manically until what Aseem had termed, in a brainwave of creative excess, as ‘climax’ occurred and the resultant fluid was expelled into the bay. This animatedly described process was what the EPUU defined as ‘sex’. Aseem could only define sex as the most pleasurable human process there ever was and could be. It took him less than 30 seconds of titillation, sometimes even 20, to hit his climax. He had been instructed by the EPUU that a human who could elongate the period of titillation with mental sinew and will was a man worthy of a life free of punishment and retribution, someone who could hope for a peaceful afterlife.  

The tremor had subsided presently; the world was back to normal. Aseem’s goldfish curiosity remained for a second more, but as inevitability would have it, it succumbed under the sheer weight of newfound relief. The world was alright, it hadn’t given way, and it was comfortingly pitch black and four-walled as ever before.  

He concentrated on the next question.   

“How do you feel about the daily questions? Does answering them put your mind to rest?”  

This was another of the meta-questions that kept cropping up every once a while. The trick was not to answer keeping in mind the distinctions of right and wrong, but by gauging one’s instinctive reply and writing the opposite of it. This always resulted in the ‘right’ answer.  He though about how he felt. 

He felt nothing; neutral was how he felt.   

It is a feeling of immense satisfaction and fulfillment. Moreover, answering them gives me the incentive to look forward to life with a better, closed-minded view.   

He smiled as, predictably enough, new words replaced the existing ones once more.   

“The box is a lie.”  

He gasped and double checked what he had read, and there they were, the cold, ruthless grey letters on the black background: 
The box is a lie.  

A second passed and Aseem blinked; the letters were no more to be seen, they had simply vanished, as if physically wiped off a surface in the split second the slits of his eyes had closed and opened. He touched the platform to reaffirm his visual input. He felt the plain surface, black as ever, not a gray tinge on them to be seen.   

What in Unnamed’s great name could it mean? How could the box simply be a lie? That was beyond what could be humanly fathomable, he thought; if the box was a lie, then where was he right now? And why had Arbitron randomly passed on the cryptic message to him instead of the question? And then, in a sudden surge of realization, it hit him.  

Curiosity is sin.   

This was a surprise assessment to test his ignorance and suppression of sinful curiosity, and he had failed by having reacted in an evil manner. The whip-arm of the Arbitron appeared as its hoarse voice blared verse 012 of the EPUU from all directions.   

“To mull and brood and ponder too long fixedly on any theme is Evil cognified. Thou shalt not remain entranced by thine sights and senses for any longer than it takes for thy limited mind to form a first make-up on it. Any act of violation of the aforementioned Utterance such shall result in no less than 25 whips being inflicted upon thy pitiable derriere. Peace out.”  

And it was on once more: the delicate pinning down of his torso by one arm of the Arbitron, the repeated rapping of its other arm on his behind, the muffled gasps of pain that emanated from Aseem’s mouth, who was already repentant of his sinful indulgence of wonderment and surprise: the biggest perpetrators of evil and villainy.   

“Forgive me, O Exalted one; Hallowed be thy un-name,” he chanted over and over as the lashing went on and finally drew to an excruciating climax.  

The arms eased their grasp, receded and finally became one with the wall. Writhing and squirming with pain, Aseem lay where he was, not a thought entering or escaping his mind. He had genuinely been puzzled by the mystifying message; he had been taken unawares by The Arbitron. Maybe it had felt that it was getting a bit too easy for him that day; maybe it was time for him to know the pain of having sinned, know the pain of retribution and be reminded of the wrath of the Unnamed. Though he no longer was employing any cognitive effort to it, the eerie, vivid image of the message remained in his eyes:  

The box is a lie.   

He was thinking yet not thinking; he had finally learned to cloud his thoughts from himself. His thinking remained a split second ahead of his consciousness. It was akin to dreaming; He knew what he was thinking would be forgotten the moment he put his mind to it. It was like watching a rapid news feed on an endless marquee, being able to make out a few words here and a few phrases there, but what registered on the whole was nil. He could finally evade the Arbitron into believing he was not thinking, while he most certainly was; so what if only passively, and so what if the thoughts he thought would vanish the second he thought them out.   

An abrupt announcement brought him back from his stupor.   “It is requested that you return to your mental work bay 1 and resume your daily schedule as per the time table,” proclaimed the Arbitron.  Everything forgotten and his lesson well-learned, he set to work once more. Another question appeared, another trick employed, and over and over it went like clockwork.   

“God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,” hymned someone with contentment, far away from Aseem, and breathed their last. 

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Chapter 5

Chapter 3: Curiosity, thou art vitriolic

[NOTE: I had committed a huge error in the previous chapter that was due to my lack of foresight and future planning: Aseem's work routine is said to be 12 hours and 30 minutes long. I have changed it to a little over half of it: 6.5 hours. I know it is comical for me to have done so, and hope this doesn't ruin the reading experience. My sincere apologies over this unprofessional act. Also, since my final term exams are a week away, my further posts till 27th of March will be sparse, if any. I regret the delay. Thanks for sticking around, guys. I know you're a handful, but fuck that, I love you for all the support. And now to Chapter 3.]

Something had happened. A whir or a hint of a vibration; just a subtle, low tremor that went over the whole room and was over before he could put his mind to it. It was so slight that Aseem wasn’t sure whether it had been real, physical vibration or a sound so lowly intense that it had come across as a material quiver. He forgot all about it in a while, conforming like a faithful believer to what had been prescribed in the EPUU in matters of shunning enquiry and excessively critical thinking. The corresponding verse on the topic read:

Be not the proponents of Evil, for Evil corrupts and corrodes the soul in the death chalice of Sin. To mull and brood and ponder too long fixedly on any theme is Evil cognified. Thou shalt not remain entranced by thine sights and senses for any longer than it takes for thy limited mind to form a first make-up on it. To accept and abide by the Holy Utterances of the Unnamed is the biggest hope of service to thyself and to the world thou remain enveloped in.

Aseem hadn’t been taught to take the EPUU-ian commandments with a pinch of salt; heck, he had not been taught about taking anything with a pinch of salt, with the exception of his closely regulated daily meals that the Arbitron provided. His diet comprised a healthily balanced share of proteins, carbs and fats (all of which were garnished with taste-enhancers and complementary roughage, cooked up by Arbitron as per the ‘General Cooking Manual’).

Teaching had been, and still was an integral part of Aseem’s life so far. His learning was to cease only when enough information had been fed into his brain, in fact more information than it could sanely handle. Over-information, not misinformation caused the delirium of man, and according to the parables of EPUU, such a descent into oblivion was the natural, holy path to being unshackled from the mortal coil. It only implied, then, that too much learning was a direct detriment to human health, and to seek more of it would amount to slow suicide. Suicide, as the Holy Unnamed defined, was the murder of the self. Of the self, yes; but murder nonetheless. And murder was sin. Adding two and two made Aseem reach the epiphany, the zenith of human thought: knowledge is sin. And to sin was to be flogged by the Unnamed’s faithful Arbitron.

Presently, he had moved on from Bay 1 of physical labour (the runaround) to Bay 2, which required him to do bodily contortions corresponding to the figures that appeared in front of him on the wall, again in grey outline against the black background. The forms that appeared were stick figures that shifted shapes every time Aseem successfully aped them. These exercises were, like everything else the Arbitron came up with, direct downloads from Aseem’s potential knowledge vault. How humans’ untapped potential could be used by the Arbitron to build itself from scratch revealed to Aseem his own greatness as a human. The greatness which could allow the advent of a whole world out of nothing was nothing short of divine, and this thought kept him going. He was never disparaged by the monotony of his life or the hardships he had had to face time and again in the sometimes-unfair black boxed world of his. He continued to strive for his ideals, the ultimate path of life, the strict adherence to EPUU-ian teachings and his own calling to the Unnamed.

As Bay 2 was over and done with in an hour’s time, it was now time for Mental Work Bay 1 to welcome Aseem into its alcove. Here was something he looked forward to after his strenuous dose of assuming bodily postures and running around on a fixed axis, moving all around and yet remaining stationary. His work for the next hour was to solve logical conundrums fed to him on a black desk that had appeared out of the wall; pen, pencil and other stationary included. These were, of course, to be solved on the principles of the EPUU, as logic would have it.

A seemingly cozy seat had also emerged from the floor, its feet fluid at the ends to allow for slight adjustment. As he sat down and made himself comfortable, the Arbitron sensed his presence at the place where he was, and words started to appear on a slightly elevated platform on the monolithically black surface of the desk. The letters, as the reader might very well have guessed, were a dull shade of grey. The first logical problem read:

“Consider that you are trapped in a world full of light and infinite space. You cannot see anywhere dark or safe to go. What do you do to save yourself from certain termination?”

Trick question. He chuckled; he knew how to tackle this one.

Close my eyes, try to sleep, pray that it’s a nightmare and nothing more, he scribbled.

The letters faded and the next question appeared, in acceptance of the fact the answer was spot on and his logical thinking remained impeccable.

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Chapter 4