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