Autoplay: Not-so Stories Read online

  To Bee

  In the end one experiences only oneself.

  —David Shields

  Contents

  Quarantine

  An Enquiry into the Morphology of Attachment

  Good Quality Girls Are Out of Stock

  A Traumatic Incident from the Early Childhood of the CMD

  Participant Observers

  Triplicane to Taramani

  All Questions Are Compulsory

  Just Another Fairy Tale

  Access Denied

  The Developer

  The BRF

  Kindly Stay on the Line

  A Crime Has Been Committed

  Autoplay

  Notes

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright

  QUARANTINE

  Subject is male, 18 to 22 years of age, core temperature 106°F, pulse 90 BPM, respiration elevated, PA 04, pupils fully dilated and non-reactive to light, cerebral cortex enlarged to 150% of normal, symptoms and tissue samples confirm subject is infected with capitalism, extracted from WTC Hive at 1400 hours 04082199, did not respond to compound 11 serum 271. Social devolution is now complete. Typical human behaviour seen only among Category 5 androids and K80 series of clones manufactured b/w 2177 and 2179. Effective range of their main weapon less than 500m.

  There are pockets of resistance all around the galaxy. Humanity died for the sake of Ultra Concentrated F’Oreal Age Miracle Serum with youth-boosting Strontium Boosters which target dullness, age spots and wrinkles and make you feel sixty years younger. If you tried it when you were twenty-five, you’d go straight back into the middle age of your previous birth. Which was how the catastrophe happened and the world ended and the machines, with nobody to take orders from, began giving orders instead.

  Guess what. Come with me if you want to live. And watch your flanks. Remember: we are the resistance. There is no one man who holds the key to our salvation – it is each one of you.

  We are on the brink. Lots of women believe in God alias Total Repair 11: one product, 11 benefits. You get to decide what you want your 11 benefits to be. Maya chose the following 11: clear skin, silky hair, higher cheek bones, longer neck, smaller feet, symmetrical fingernails, straighter nose, fuller lips, flatter abs, rounder bottom, straighter ears. I asked her why she didn’t opt for a smaller mouth. She pretended not to hear the question.

  The future of humanity depends on what I say next. And I say this to you: override the source code. Spread out. Secure the perimeter of human nature. Do you copy? After that you send the survivors to the extraction point and return to base. No-no-no – don’t say negative. Say no to negative. We put the kill list on the server and it got picked up. We’ve got two bogeys at 180. Movemovemovemovemove. We have visual contact with the suspect. Fat Boy inbound to target. My bank can credit but it can’t debit. We gotta getoudda here. Commander, your request has been denied. Abort mission, I repeat, abort mission. A firm jab to the sternum will disable their sensors but not for long. Command deems the security of your genitalia to be the highest priority.

  – Where were you manufactured?

  – Ma’am, please calm down.

  – I need three vials of the cure RIGHT NOW.

  – Ma’am, we need you to calm down, NOW.

  – I AM calm, officer.

  – No, ma’am, I’m positive you are not. Your pulse is 120% higher than normal. Your BP is 200% above normal. Your sweat glands are on overdrive. And your oestrogen levels signal a heightened state of arousal. You are anything but calm, ma’am.

  Two squirrels sitting on adjacent air-conditioners on the seventy-second floor of a skyscraper in New York were having an argument as to how long it would take for human civilization to end and the planet to revert to a state of nature.

  The older squirrel, which was seated on a Carrier, believed that human civilization would go on forever, and march onward and forward, adapting itself to the evolving flux of changing environmental conditions.

  The younger squirrel, which was perched on a Daikin, held that human civilization was less a reality than an ideal and a myth and one must not confuse changes wrought in the natural environment – such as cities and dams and bridges – for civilization, which was a concept rooted in values and principles rather than tangibles such as rockets or consumer products.

  The next day the younger squirrel was eaten by a vulture. The older squirrel had nobody to talk to and became addicted to grout and began to haunt construction sites in search of its fix. One day it tripped and fell into a vat of tar and drowned. In three months, both the squirrels were dead and both the AC cages they had been using as a sort of clubhouse for sunset chats were quickly taken over by pigeons which converted them into Sulabh Shauchalays open 24 x 7.

  The sky was grey for seven months last year and brass bras became the new rage on Fashion Street. Even the sartorially conservative Maya wore an engraved brass bra over a cotton one to my cousin Sabzi’s wedding in Mahipalpur. You don’t get a 34G in brass that easily. So Maya had to make do with a 34C, which left her all red-faced and gasping for breath all evening until she was forced to remove her brass bra mid-meal so food could pass down her windpipe without causing a traffic jam in her chest. We also met Sabzi’s siblings there, including the novelist and the fertility consultant. The triplets looked like the same sentence written three times in three different fonts of the same family, all sans serif.

  In other words, the most important thing we can do right now is to stay alive. But that doesn’t mean staying alive becomes the sole raison d’être of staying alive, which would defeat the very idea of staying alive, or rather staying alive as human beings, if you know what I mean, and this is what sets you and me apart from the Category 5 androids who seem to think they are superior to their creators – the very creators they worshipped as gods not so long ago. I’m not asking for an upgrade, just a simple but thorough servicing job that would iron out the chinks and fit in a configuration that’s in tune with who I am so the system works for me without resistance and does not sabotage me at every step. I don’t like dissent from my own people anymore than the prime minister of HAIR. I’m tired of dissenting Thomases. I want them removed from the system or at least quarantined so they don’t interfere. All I’m asking for is a trained engineer – someone who can disassemble me and put me back together with a configuration I can live with. Not this motherfuckingboard.

  Not this.

  Not this.

  JUST ANOTHER FAIRY TALE

  The day his wife left him, Sabzi was on the pot – the very same one she had finally agreed to have replaced because its diameter wasn’t long enough for his seated bottom with the result that his penis tended to hang over the rim, causing him to manually pick it up by the shaft and immerse the head into the airspace inside the bowl if he wanted to urinate while waiting to crap without the urine landing on the bathroom floor – bent over the day’s paper, reading another report about an old couple dispatched by their cook and driver, who, the police had found out, were lovers, and had packed the bodies of the old man and the old woman in two matching expandable Duralite suitcases made from hybrid ABS/nylon material with leather trim, telescopic handle, a padlock with TSA function, two external zipped pockets, fully lined internal straps, shiny polycarbonate reinforced side panels, and four racing-style spinner wheels that were ideal for packing and transporting bodies, the lead investigator was quoted as saying, for the separate water-proof compartments were also vacuum sealed, giving the culprits adequate time to disperse before law enforcement could get around to scenting their trail with sniffer dogs, and the different expandable compartments of varying size were the best available in the market for packing the limbs separa
tely from the torso pieces and the heads, and the side pockets seemed almost tailor-made for tucking in ears, noses and penises in a flaccid state, not to mention fingers, toes or any other untoward protuberances that could make fitting of body into suitcase cumbersome.

  The cops had found the two suitcases – which retailed at INR 45,000 MRP per piece on luggalite.com – on a conveyor belt at Chennai airport where they had been revolving unclaimed for ninety-two hours before an observant CISF security alerted his supervisor, who alerted the bomb squad, who, seeing as how the contents of the unclaimed baggage were unlikely to blow up, alerted the cops, who alerted the media, who alerted the rest of the world, including Sabzi, whose mind, midway through the story he was reading, began oozing out of his ears, slid down his neck and chest, dropped into the toilet and sank.

  It all happened so quickly, it was gone before Sabzi could react, or even formulate the thought that he was losing his mind.

  With his mind gone, he didn’t feel like persisting with his excretory efforts anymore. So he got up from the pot seat, wore his shorts, and called up the Mind Recovery Helpline to report the loss of his mind. The following conversation ensued:

  Help Line: Welcome to the Athos Mind Recovery Helpline. To continue in English, please dial 1. To continue in Hindi—

  Sabzi dials 1.

  HL: Please enter your secret seven-digit Mind Recovery Unit identification code.

  Sabzi dials the seven-digit code, scratches his chin, waits.

  HL: You have entered * * * * * * *. Please dial 1 to proceed, 0 to go back to the previous menu.

  Sabzi dials 1.

  HL: Sorry, you have entered an invalid number. Please dial 1 to retry, 2 to go back to the main menu.

  Sabzi dials 1. They go through the invalid routine three times before Sabzi dials 2 to go back to the main menu. This time he gets an additional option: dial 9 to speak to a customer care executive.

  Sabzi dials 9. He’s put on hold while recorded messages play in a loop.

  HL: Please do not share your seven-digit Mind Recovery Unit identification code with anyone. Your call is important to us. Kindly stay on the line.

  Sabzi stays on the line.

  HL: We are eager to serve you. Please hold on. All our customer care executives are busy attending to other customers. Your call is important to us. Kindly stay on the line. If you stay on the line, we will tell you a story.

  Sabzi stays on the line.

  HL: We are eager to serve you. We regret the delay. If you continue to stay on the line a little longer, we promise we will tell you a really nice story.

  Sabzi stays on the line.

  HL: Thank you for holding on. Unfortunately all our customer care executives are still busy attending to other customers. And all our narrators are busy telling stories to other customers who have been holding the line patiently to speak to a customer care executive as soon as any one of them is done attending to the customer she is attending to at this present moment. Kindly stay on the line. Your call is more important to us than you can possibly imagine.

  Sabzi holds the line.

  HL: We regret the delay. Owing to a sudden extraordinary spike in the number of minds being lost all over the world at the same time, all our customer care executives are still busy attending to customers and helping them retrieve their minds using the Emergency Mind Retrieval Protocol, which is a long and cumbersome process that could take days or weeks or even months and years in the cases of certain customers. But do kindly stay on the line. One of our narrators will be with you shortly to help you through your waiting period with an entertaining story so gripping you will forget why you’ve been on this line all this while.

  Sabzi stays on the line.

  HL: Thank you for holding on. This is Khallas Jha, your narrative coordinator. While you wait for our customer care executive to speak to you, I shall organize an entertaining story for you. Kindly press 1 for crime story, 2 for romance, 3 for fantasy, 4 for science fiction, 5 for horror, 6 for historical thriller, 7 for erotica, 8 for humour, 9 for heavy depressing stuff, # for fairy tale, and * for a DIY story without plot or character or setting in which nothing happens and you only hear soothing static into which you can project vivid fantasies of your own.

  Sabzi dials #.

  HL: Thank you. Please hold on while we transfer your call to a fairy tale coordinator.

  Sabzi holds.

  HL: Thank you. This is Gina, your fairy tale coordinator. Please press 1 for Grimm’s fairy tales, 2 for Ukrainian fairy tales, 3 for Jataka tales, 4 for Russian fairy tales, 5 for Bengali fairy tales, 6 for tales with violence and bloodshed, 7 for tales with no gore, 8 for tales with witches, 9 for tales with dragons, 10 for tales involving speaking animals, # for tales with giants or dwarves, * for realistic fairy tales that do not involve magic or kings or queens or princes or princesses or any action set in kingdoms or forests.

  Sabzi dials *.

  HL: Thank you. You have chosen to listen to a fairy tale without any magical or pastoral or mythopoeic elements. I am Kavlyz, your narrator, and I am shortly going to commence narrating to you a fairy tale as per your specifications. Before the fairy tale begins, however, we request you to listen carefully to the following terms and conditions of the consumption of the content, including but not limited to the requested fairy tale of your specifications, produced by Athos MR. If you do not agree to the terms of the following Content Consumption Agreement (CCA), also available at www.athosmr.com, as amended from time to time by Athos MR at its discretion, Athos MR is unwilling to allow you to access the content of Athos MR and you should promptly dial 9 to speak to a narrative coordinator regarding the same.

  The CCA is a legal agreement between you and Athos MR, the licensor of the content (other than the narrative content and elements thereof which is governed by other licences) included in this recording which shall be collectively referred to as ‘Stories of Athos MR’. This CCA covers Stories of Athos MR and that of Athos MR’s affiliates and third party licensors (TPLs). Stories of Athos MR includes all narrative and non-narrative content provided to you in the course of your call to the Athos MR Helpline, whether you listened to or did not listen to or recorded or did not record for later listening.

  The Stories of Athos MR product from Athos MR requires a functional auditory system and an appropriate psychic state characterized by the suspension of the collectivity of ego-linked or self-linked mental processes otherwise known as ‘mind’. Your ability to enjoy Stories of Athos MR, and the perceived quality of the stories presented under the purview of Stories of Athos MR, is subject to the quality of service provided by your cellular service provider as well as the state of your psyche at the time of story consumption. The perceived quality of the characters and plot elements can vary and are dependent on the quality of your psyche and delivery by Third Party Providers. The stories, including but not limited to plot, characters, setting, suspense, descriptions, style, points of view, sentence length and structure, use or otherwise of punctuation, diction, syntax, metaphors, similes, epigraphs, chapter headings, narrators reliable and unreliable, or other elements, provided by Third Party Providers (‘Content’), and the dispensing of this Content in the course of a call to Athos MR Helpline are at the sole discretion and under the control of the Third Party Providers.

  You understand, acknowledge and agree that access to certain features of Athos MR Content, including but not limited to Stories of Athos MR, requires a telephone connection for which you are solely responsible. As part of this CCA to allow you to listen to Content dispensed by Athos MR, you allow Athos MR, the Third Party Providers, and/or other third parties to collect data from, control, and/or monitor your consumption of Stories of Athos MR, your psychogeography, physical, emotional and other responses evoked in you by Stories of Athos MR as well as other elements related to your interaction with Athos MR. Athos MR is not in any way liable for such data collection. You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of any and
all your interactions with Athos MR. Any data or information pertaining to you collected by Athos MR, the Third Party Providers, and/or other third parties during the course of your interaction with Athos MR may be adapted, broadcast, changed, copied, disclosed, licensed, performed, posted, published, sold, transmitted, or used by Athos MR, the Third Party Providers, and/or other third parties anywhere in the world, in any medium, for an indefinite period, and without attribution or compensation to you. Furthermore, you hereby assign all right, title, and interest in, and Athos MR is free to use, without any compensation to you, any story ideas, concepts, techniques, plots, characters, premises, or other intellectual property rights contained in your psyche and recovered from your to-be-recovered mind, whether or not patentable, for any purpose whatsoever, including but not limited to writing, editing, having written and edited, licensing, marketing, and selling stories using such materials. However, you agree and understand that Athos MR is not obligated to use any such materials contained in your psyche and/or recovered from your to-be-recovered mind, and you have no right to compel such use.

  Certain stories and/or story elements of Stories of Athos MR may not be appreciated by minors or even mature audiences. Such stories and/or story elements may not always be identified in advance as gross or offensive or fatally hypnagogic. Therefore, you acknowledge that you are consuming Stories of Athos MR at your own risk and that Athos MR has no liability to you for the Content, including any Content that may be gross or offensive or fatally hypnagogic.

  In no event will Athos MR (including but not limited to any negligence issues related to Third Party Licensors or Third Party Providers), its affiliates, its third party licensors or its third party providers be liable to you for any special, indirect, incidental, punitive, exemplary, or consequential damages of any kind, including but not limited to compensation, reimbursement or damages in connection with, arising out of or relating to this CCA, on account of negative psychic impact of the consumption of Stories of Athos MR, acts of self or other-directed violence or illegality or abnormality or out of the ordinary that you might engage in while or after hearing the fairy tale, failure in recovery of your mind, divorce, deepening pathology of neural circuitries, or for any other reason whatsoever, even if Athos MR, its affiliates, its third party licensors, or its third party providers have been advised of the possibility of such damages.