USED III: Mr Creosote

Mr Creosote was the Minister of Deference. He used to be in the military and commanded a battalion of cleaning bots. He sustained some injuries (carpal tunnel syndrome) and presented his case effectively enough to be generously compensated. He argued his case so well, that he was immediately offered the position of Minister of Deference after he retired from the military, since he had quite the way with words.

Mr Creosote was in his fifties. He was a thin man. He had six sets of formal attire, one which he'd only wear to weddings and special events. He jogged and read in his spare time. He liked to drink wine and thought of himself as a connoisseur. He never gets drunk. He dislikes drunk people. He also dislike smokers or gamblers. He thought of them as decadent and pitiful. He did not like his job. He believes jobs are not meant to be liked. He liked himself. He liked his wife most of the time.

His wife recently joined the community centre because she had nothing better to do. She was kicked out of the singing class because she was too bossy. The people there recommended her to join the first wives' club where members met to exchange pointers on how to manage their husbands better. It suited her well, even though she would feel that the other members were pitiful for having husbands who had affairs. Mr Creosote did not have any other women. She was fairly sure of that.

The latest thing the club had been raving about was how to manipulate the diets of the husbands. "The way through to a man's heart is through his stomach." That was the theme until ideas for things relevant to it to do ran out. The latest thing was eating light and right, which was why Mr Creosote had to bring a sandwich to lunch.

Mr Creosote liked bringing sandwiches to lunch. He was rather pleased with himself for having a wife who prepared it for him and cared for his health. Anyway, it was economical and efficient. It would validate why he would not go out for lunch. Every lunch time, he would feel uncomfortable of the possibility of somebody asking him to go for lunch. He did not like to eat lunch with the people from his office, because they were his subordinates and would obligate him to pay for lunch if they were to eat together. He was resigned to how it was lonely to be at the top. He was used to it, because in the cleaning battalion he had to eat by himself too.

At lunch time, he took out his wine magazine and sandwich. He flipped to the page that he had previously bookmarked with a post-it note so he could read it for lunch. It featured an article on beef and wines. He was having a mashed cow tumour sandwich, so it was apt. He held the magazine in his left hand and the sandwich in his right. Then he felt that there was something tickling his nose, so he held the sandwich with his mouth by not biting through it, to free his right hand. Then he dug his nose and a piece of snot fell straight down from his nose and landed on his sandwich. He was aware of it, but he ate it anyway, with the bite after next. He ate his own snot without much thought.

(sneak.)

At the Tarsier Farm

Fido and the tarsiers

Fido was an engineer by day and a tarsier farmer by night. Tarsiers were the world's smallest natural primate that used to be found in remote southeast asia. They were thought to be naturally endangered for as long as anyone could remember because of their elusive, minute, shy, and nocturnal behaviour. They have eyes that are almost half the length of their faces and that were almost half the length of their height.

Some time ago, some person caught enough of them to begin illegally farming them. Apparently, the meat of the tarsiers began to be touted as tasty as it was rare and expensive. It was lucrative enough for more illegal farms to be set up. Then it was lucrative enough to bribe government officials and all that jazz ensued and tarsier farming grew into an industry.

Fido farmed tarsiers for a different reason. He conducted experiments on the tarsiers and wanted to reverse engineer their remarkable eyes in pursuit of unlocking secrets to more efficient lunar powered energy and some other scientific things.

Actually, he didn't believe that he'd make any breakthrough, and wasn't really interested in the science of tarsiers. Fido had wanted to adopt research as an excuse to cut up the animals because he resented his first-ex-girlfriend even though he openly denied it.

When he was young, he used to like to eat tarsier meat, it was one of his favourite things to eat. When he went out with the first-ex-girlfriend, she convinced him that they were too cute and that he shouldn't eat them. So, he adopted a tarsier free-diet in profession of his love for her.

After dating for too long, she left him and the city of USED. She failed to qualify as an engineer and didn't want to live the second-class lifestyle of a Dependent in USED. Fidelius, which was Fido's proper name before he was more known as Fido, wanted to leave with the girl but she was reluctant, and she told him that he should remain to fulfil his destiny as an engineer which was what she loved him for.

Some months after leaving him, she wrote on her blog to confess that actually she had left him because sometime ago, about 3 years ago, she had met a tarsier farmer who convinced her to try to taste tarsier meat when he overheard her denouncing the consumption to her friends in a restaurant. She had never tasted it before and he did the old “don't knock it till you've tried it” routine, that never went out of style, and she tried it in spite and liked it enough to have tarsier a few more times. She would have eaten it more frequently if she didn't feel so guilty, but she felt like she betrayed Fidelius and the compunction soured the relationship. They already had the whole "we love tarsiers" thing so hyped up that they were supposed to name a kid or two after the animal.

When she left she broke up with him, because she didn't like him enough to want him to overlook the entire episode. She tried to defend herself or to lubricate the situation by reminding Fidelius that things could have been worse, in that she could have slept with the tarsier farmer and was in fact running off to marry him, but she wasn't.

Fido got home drunk

Fido got home drunk one night, and because he was too honest with his latest girlfriend about the size of his dick, he proclaimed it to be too big for her, she broke up with him immediately.

He was thrown out of her apartment and woke up a few hours later amidst his litter of clothes shrewd across the stairway and in a puke-stained tee-shirt. He didn't remember puking nor what he must have said, but he roughly pieced together that they must have broken up.

That was when he realised that he didn't want to be with her any more anyway because she needed too much work and that made him feel bad about himself. He reminded himself that he had only been interested in her big boobs from the start. In recent years, that's all that interested him in women, anyway. Big boobs.

He had always liked the sound of “big boobs” – the words – because they sounded like what they represented.

Never mind if she had a fuck ugly face, if she had big boobs, he'd want her. Actually, it's better if she had a fuck ugly face, because then, she won't demand so much work. This one was too pretty. That's the problem. Then again, at least with her, he didn't have to imagine that he was fucking someone with a pillow for a head. It was not bad. But ah well, the drama of getting back together was not worth the make up sex. He'd just have to work even harder.

He changed his shirt with the one he liked the most and congratulated himself for being able to just leave the rest of them there. Over the years, he'd gained the foresight to always just bring only some things along with him. Things he could bear to part with. To ask for them back if they should break up would be cheap.

There were a few tee-shirts and shorts and mostly underwear that were either too tight and uncomfortable and new – that she bought from the departmental store without being asked to – that he hated, and a few that were too old and un-fittingly too loose because of frequent re-washing and might have little negligible holes.

Luckily, it was a Saturday, and he didn't have go to work. Luckily, he was sensible enough to always only drink so much on nights he didn't have to work the next day.

As he was walking home, he remembered and regretted having brought a new game console over to this one, but by the time he reached home he decided that he'd buy a new one and let her have it as a consolation prize. She was a pretty girl, after all.

His parents were surprised to see him but they didn't really care. They were on their way out to the community centre for their karaoke class. He didn't explain anything before he plopped on the well-made bed and slept.

When he woke up again, it was in the evening, he ate something and went to check on his tarsiers.

USED II: MINDER - An introduction

The governance of the hologramic postcards and several less important things relied with the ill-reputed Ministry of Deference (MINDER) which was so poorly regarded that it did not have a central office at all. MINDER was set up to govern matters of diplomacy and foreign affairs when it was highly problematic for the country.

Earlier, USED's economy built itself on mostly the high export sales arising from the weaponry and biomedical industries. According to the economical demands, formal education system supported the engineering fields and placed their emphases on technical training. Specialist trainings in most of other fields, such as in the arts, economics, and business administration, were widely attained as secondary or supplementary qualifications. As a result, USED people are very good in many, many things, but they neglected the general field of literature, which was not popular for studies and treated with disdain. There was little need for robustness in language as most communications were done with precision and brevity. Equations were deemed the best form of communications. Words were disliked, except in the established field of linguistic application to artificial intelligence. No credit was given to the flairs and nuances of language. Tact in communication was never practiced nor considered by the people of USED. USED people would seldom take to heart when hearing harsh words, as they themselves would thoughtlessly deliver them if needed be as well.

People of other countries, on the other hand, were not emphatic to the way of USED, and were obligated by their pledged loyalty to take offences at USED's tactless public statements and matters of foreign relations. Moreover, other countries were exasperated with their debt owing to USED and being intimidated with USED's firearm and flying combatant robots, which, by MINDETEA policy, were not yet available for export sales. In their frustration, the other countries' government would pick verbal fights with USED to win the favours of their own people. MINDER was set up to handle these situations and to manage international relations.

The people at MINDER, however, were not good at doing what they needed to do. Matters of deference required tact and finesse and half truths. MINDER was a ministry that is required by its primary nature to employ only native citizens to avoid conflicts of interests. Being products of the USED culture, they generally sucked at saying the right things at the right time. Albeit impressing the foreign diplomats with wonderous-laser-show-virtual-11D-presentations, the most accurate and specific words language were applied, and thus, blunt interpretations of the intentions were seldom avoided. MINDER often worsened situations.

Overtime, as USED's weaponry advantage grows bigger, it was clear that no actual fighting would actually take place against USED. This gradually reduced MINDER to a superficial outfit representing attempts at improving other countries' impressions of USED.

As the mission of MINDER was not valued by the people of USED, the organisation was sleepy and not motivated. It received low priority in receiving direction and hardly any budget to do hardly anything. As mentioned, MINDER did not have a central office, and it was not clear how big the organisation really was.

The 3 USED skyscrapers

It was at a time when there was a small country of engineers in where it was known and forgotten as East Asia. This small country was the Uniformed State of Engineers and Dependents (USED) and was only one city, with the same name.

All USED citizens were either engineers by training or worked in a supporting role to the engineering industry. Citizenships of the children of citizens were automatically conferred when they attain certified competencies in engineering. Many accomplished engineers from other countries were eager to apply for the citizenship which was not difficult to earn – it required the applicant to have made a significant contribution to the engineering field. Children who did not have the requisite flair for engineering would be offered a contractual citizenship that was renewable so long as they continued to work in supporting roles in engineering-related industries. They were known as the Dependents. Most of them would leave the country as they felt socially ostracised.

In the small country city of USED, the building of magnificent mega-structures flourished. The people were very proud of their country, particularly of several famous technological achievements, amongst which, there were three noteworthy skyscrapers which housed three noteworthy ministries. Most of the talented young engineers aspired to work in one of these ministries.

One skyscraper, that balanced on a one metre long toothpick, and that was able to lean up to thirty degrees in every possible direction in the horizontal axis, just because it was possible, housed the Ministry of Possible Technological Advances(MINPOTEA). This ministry governed the theories and hypotheses, both the proven and disproved, that might give rise to new technological breakthroughs.

The other skyscraper, that actually scraped bits of the sky, housed the Ministry of Achieved Technological Advances(MINATEA). This ministry governed the tangible products of engineering. The bits of the sky were usually transferred to MINPOTEA for distribution for research and development purposes.

The third skyscraper, that did not look particularly impressive outwardly, and that was built on a mountain with mazes of secret chambers and labs in the mountain itself, housed the Ministry of Defensive Technological Advances (MINDETEA). This skyscraper, together with the adjoining secret chambers and labs, could transform into a combatant robot. It was rumoured that the skyscraper transformed into more than one combatant robot, but it was not true. There was only one. It could fly. Its primary purpose was to defend important findings and engineers and to transport them to safety in times of strife.

These skyscrapers were featured prominently in tourist memorabilia, for example, their pictures were found on hologramic postcards, of which that of MINDETEA was easily the most popular as its transformation was featured in at least 8D animation. The country was eager to show off prowess in technological weaponry to deter others from picking fights with USED.