push button meeting

The Chief’s voice sounded like someone vomiting. His words came out by the cup full, in heaves from the belly. Gravelly, a little slurred, choppy, harsh, the Chief swelled with satisfaction as he addressed agents gathered around the boardroom table, during a staff meeting in the Department of Standardization building.

“Welcome, Agents of the Dome,” he began, then paused to clear his voice before continuing, “The beauty of living inside a glass enclosure is how people are forced to get along. You complement each other into the totality of the dome, which was built according to spherical principles. Outside this dome, there is no basis for relation, other than the relation of known to the unknown. Each member of this community will be judged in relation to the whole. 

“Disagreement could lead to conflict. Conflict could degenerate into chaos. Members of the community keep each other in place. The successful Agent internalizes commands and becomes self-regulated. 

“Three buttons of the push button console can’t be emphasized enough: the button of possibility, the button of actuality and the button of necessity. Sometimes it’s hard to press a button when you’re not sure which button to press. Before you press a  button, make sure the thought behind your urge to press the button appertains or does not appertain to the button. Ask yourself: Is this the button I meant to press? Will the pressing of this button satisfy the object in my mind, the set of thoughts unified into a button-pressing concept?

“It’s up to you to judge whether the button you’re about to press is the button you meant to press and whether your intension was positively connected or negatively disconnected. When under pressure of deadline, take the practical approach. Push the necessary button. Sometimes it is possible to prove or explain what you did. Sometimes your decision is not capable of proof. Sometimes you have to act according to certain principles, because it’s on the basis of these principles that you justify your decision.

“Only press a button when you’re convinced that the pressing of the button will result in the button being pressed. Even if the manner of pushing is not immediately certain, go ahead. Push it anyway, otherwise, nothing is likely to get pushed. Are there any questions?”

Lohbado raised his hand and asked: “Show me how, in doing what I’m supposed to do, the required result will take place.”

“Nobody likes a smart ass,” retorted the Chief, “You are being watched. Cell phones and portable music devices are being used as eavesdropping and tracking tools. We have ways to install eaves-dropping, tracking applications on mobile devices, without the user even knowing it.”

Lohbado regretted his question. He knew it was a matter of time before they expelled him from the Dome.

Lohbado thought back to that staff meeting, as he sat in Lumpies Donuts, Yamaville, one September morning three years later. He gazed into his cup of coffee for about five minutes. 

When he raised his gaze, electricity shot up his spine. Rising Cha from his tail bone met with descending OOO at the tip of his nose and popped in a poof of blue light. Instead of humans, he saw birds in the cafe. His visual cortex translated the sense data of humans into a sensation of birds. At one table sat an owl, at another a sparrow, by the wall a crow, a pigeon on the stool in the corner. A peacock strutted up to the counter and flirted with the flamingo waitress, who tolerated it with a smile, knowing the peacock’s need to see and be seen.

Lohbado felt like a great blue heron. He wrote the word Nomroh in his notebook. His heart fluttered with gladness as his imagination took flight.