Boris sat there all alone on the old wall, practicing hard in hope that one day he will get that perfect loop and texture, that all spiders dream about, to his webs. Peculiarly enough, there right below him on a table lay a book (opened to page 57) featuring the details of a compound eye, something that several bugs such as those from the arachnid family seem to possess or at least seemed to have modeled theirs on.
The words on the page read -
"A compound eye consists of thousands of individual photoreceptors. The image perceived by the one who possess such an eye is a combination of inputs from the numerous photoreceptors, which are located on a convex surface, thus pointing in slightly different directions. Compared to a simple eye, a compound eye possess a very large view angle, and can detect fast movement and, in some cases, the polarization of light even."
Boris read this and sighed. Apparently very few things escaped his eyes.
Normally spiders do not have a great life span as they constantly get crushed under someone's shoes or brooms due to no fault of theirs. They couldn't help that they were born hideous and evil looking. But Boris was different and had managed to survive years together by sticking to his wall on the shop floor. Ideally he should have been all knowing and god like, with nothing having escaped his eyes for all these years. But unfortunately the small head and consequently small brain meant he would not be able retain so much data. So the only thing that stopped him from being all knowing was that his brain kept erasing everything the moment it got full and he would start all over from where he was in the beginning like he was in some kind of a vicious infinite loop in a program.
Far below him on the shop floor, whose walls he had made his training ground in the quest for that perfect web, there was a buzz of excitement. The word was around that a fresh batch of graduate trainees had arrived. For those who don’t know, graduate trainee is the name given to a batch of elite fresher's from elite institutes making their first step into the industry as employees of this particular company whose shop floor walls Boris had made his practice grounds. They were selected from among their respective peers as they were deemed to be the most qualified for the jobs waiting for them when they arrived in the company. They were selected into the company by capable people who were obviously impressed by their skills, abilities and knowledge. And so as they entered through the doorsteps of the company they thought “Woo Hoo!! Finally we are here! Can’t wait for them to tell me what those bloody brilliant skills, abilities and knowledge of mine are."
"Hahaha" thought Boris "only if I could laugh out aloud. Skills, abilities and knowledge indeed. Hahaha." Fortunately or unfortunately Spiders couldn't laugh. The maximum they could manage was an evil grin.
Boris had seen the foolish creatures, labeled as Graduate Trainees, many times before and was no stranger to them. He had studied them to the extent that he had even plotted a graph for variations in certain parameters related to the creatures with respect to time spent on the shop floor. He had three lines on the 2-axis graph; one for enthusiasm towards work, one for skill and one for excitement levels. The one for enthusiasm was the same for each one of them; it would shoot right out of the roofs before plunging right into the ground immediately. After that depending on the individual and his interests it usually climbed a little before stabilizing or just stabilized in that zone below the ground. The second line for skill usually started from the negative infinity point on Y-axis (time being plotted on the X-axis) and very rarely did it manage to make it to the positive side. And that too when it did eventually happen it was only after several years of trying. The final line, for excitement, looked like the zig -zag shaped hill in the happy drawing of a happy child. The excitement levels started on a high every month with the influx of the salary and dropped to a low as the salary disappeared by the middle of the month. The levels then start rising again a little towards the end of the month, in anticipation of the next month’s salary and hit the ceiling again by the time the first of the month arrived.
As Boris sat there spinning his web and grinning evilly, the fresh batch walked in. They were no different from the others.
DAY ONE
The trainees were full of buzz and met the respective managers in charge, hoping to do some work, change the company radically and mesmerize others with whatever skills it was of theirs that had impressed the interviewers. True they had not been told what that particular skill was but surely it will show up by itself in the time of need. So full of optimism were the new comers that even thorns would seem to them like roses. So, as the managers proceeded to instruct them "you are not to touch anything, speak to anyone or disturb anyone. You are to practically make yourself invisible while you try to learn something" it sounded to them like "guys! Welcome to the company. Feel free to have fun!" And fun is exactly what they had as they went "oooh!" and "aaaah" at the robotic arms that swiveled and picked up things and swiveled again before dropping the item. As the robotic arms guided by the press of a switch of the human arm carried out production at amazing rates it was but impossible not feel as if one was nine again and in a theme park.
DAY TWO
As the graduate trainees rushed into the shop floor in high anticipation they couldn't help but notice that something was different. They couldn’t pin point exactly what it was but definitely it had something to with the robots. They seemed to have grown a little dumb for some reason. They were still doing the same swivel and pickup and swivel and drop routine. It was not fun anymore. It bewildered them how these marvelous pieces of engineering could do something so repetitive and boring. And after much waiting and hoping they realized the robots weren’t going to change so it was up to them to find something more interesting. After a long and tiring search for something interesting they decided to take a nap. And just as they took a nap the manager in charge woke them up asking "What do you think you are doing?" They mumbled back half asleep "trying to make ourselves invisible?"
DAY THREE
Graduate Trainees realized the hard way that the methods adopted on the previous day was not was not the right way to try to make one self invisible and as a consequence they get to work on the line today. "It helps one not to fall asleep" the manager had said. Hours later they stood there swiveling, picking up, swiveling and dropping things and as they stood there realization hit upon them like lightning struck some fool who ran around with a metal tipped kite several decades ago. “That damn fool Asimov! The robots will not decide to take over this world because they decide they are more intelligent. This crazy monotonous line work we put them to is going to be the reason they are going to retaliate.”
DAY FOUR
The Graduate trainees continued their expeditions of the shop floor. Soon they started noticing, for the first time, others around them. People who had been working there for as long as that shop floor had existed and who, as they were not from an elite institute with an elite degree like the trainees, were paid lesser. Right next to one such disgruntled fellow human being, who was staring at them with disgust, was a board.
"Three sentences to success - 1) Work more than the other
2) Know more than the other
3) Expect less than the other."
- William Shakespeare
They also started noticing that the days seemed longer now and that time was trickling so slowly that if there were hourglasses around they could have probably actually seen each grain of sand fall down and count along with it.
DAY FIVE
If they previous day seemed like eternity then this was even worse. The gloom began all the way from early morning as they got up, cursing the sun for not having come up still, they could not help but think "What happened to me? I could go all day without doing anything in college. Even when I had stuff to do I would be fine procrastinating. And now. Hmmm…” A very long 'hmmm..' it was too. Lasted five minutes followed by fifteen minutes of sleep and another five minutes of 'hmmm..'ing after waking up again. “I must be getting old and the stupid sun has still not shown up." And then they hauled their sorry posteriors to the shop floor for another long day.
DAY SIX
The trainees dragged themselves to the shop floors dealing with not only unending boredom but also putting up a fight against their brains, which were viciously battling in a bid to free itself off their stupid heads, sprout legs and run away from the boredom. However there was a little ray of hope to hang on to last out the day. This was the sixth day, which meant tomorrow was that much looked forward to elusive weekly off.
Boris sat there on the wall he thought "hmmm.. Watching this nonsense over and over again is such a pain. I don’t know how much longer I can take this." His mind soon drifted to grave matters such as whether watching this meaningless nonsense was indeed meant to be his purpose in life and why was it that he was chosen to be given this distinguished set of eyes and he thought -
"…this is my gift. This is my curse…. Who am i?? I am Boris the Spider!"
And as he sat there consoling and congratulating himself on his curse cum gift and trying hard to make sense of things, he had a moment of clarity and he remembered-
“Wait that’s not it. Now I remember. I have to spin that perfect web.”
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