My Imperative Wish
After coming back from work, I logged onto Facebook to check the results of 3-2-1. I hadn’t made it through.
I plopped on the bed, my head bounced on the pillow; depressed and listless, I dozed off.
***
“About one inch off the top, madam,” the Robot Surgeon said as he made an incision on the top of my head.
“What?” I said, flabbergasted. I couldn’t move or feel because my tactile perception was completely impaired.
“Just joking,” the Robot said.
I was sitting on a high chair, sensing the robot’s interconnected, rigid link of arms, with a high degree of compliance and range of motion, hovering around my head.
“Really? Robots have a sense of humor?”
“The hospital added a funny bed-side manner to my pseudo-personality,” the robot said, and continued poking around in my brain. “A little humor to calm down my patient's perceptible anxiety about risking their life in the appendages of soulless machines. So, are you ready for joke two, revised version of…”
“Could you skip this chitter-chatter, please?”
“Definitely! Wow, that’s a substantial lump of procrastination you have there, right in the prefrontal cortex. Would you like me to remove it?”
“No,” I grunted.
“Okay! So you wanted me to remove all your book learning?”
“No! Oh, no!” I yowled. “Not all the book learning, how stupid!” I said. “Just remove the part of my brain that makes me want to write stories.”
“Definitely, madam! You’d be astonished how many requests we receive for this procedure from potentially-wishful writers. I guess there are money problems, career setbacks, friends, and family openly making fun of you…”
“Just make me want to go to work in the morning and come back home like a normal person and quit wanting to write all the time.” I saw laser lights and robot appendages above my head.
“Alright then! All fixed! Let me just stitch the cranium, and you're done. You can cover the seam with makeup or alternately wear a hat. And here’s your writer-bit, in a biostasis glass container. Place the container on top of the refrigerator and when it warms up it acts just like a lava lamp.” My pink writer-bit was floating inside.
I didn’t feel any different, except that I was thinking about dinner instead of some story plots from my writing assignments. That’s what I had wished for, wasn’t it?
I entered home and sprawled on the sofa. My husband was waiting for me. Other days, he would bombard me with multiple angry questions, about my crazy obsession for writing. It was driving both of us senile.
He turned to me.
“Now you can write all you want, dear,” he said, his face serene, a line of pink stitches around his head. “I’ll never disturb you again.”
He held up his own biostasis container with a pink computer-programming-bit floating in it.
***
I woke up with a shudder.
Phew! It had been a dream.
All I wish is to become a good writer.
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