Yesterday the doll saw me naked. It’s one of those Baby Breathe™ dolls that performs the fluid functions: she belches, cries, sneezes, pisses, shits, and, yes, just like it advertises on the packaging, she breathes. In product development they engineered a menstruating prototype but it was rejected on the grounds of being unrealistic. A pity, really, because the marketing department had partnered with tampon companies on some innovative holiday promotion strategies.
I work for the Company. Inspection division, thirty-eighth floor. All junior inspection specialists have an identical office: padded walls, vaulted ceilings, and hygienic tile floors. A one-way glass window separates me from the conveyor belt. Between me and the window is an emergency chute with tin flaps. Behind me is the curtain. This is the room.
My job is simple. Manufactured Baby Breathe™ dolls arrive on the conveyor belt, one every fifty-two-point-two seconds. This is my protocol: approach the window until standing on the tin flaps. Once positioned, disrobe. Stand naked—arms at side, no sudden gesticulations—until the Baby Breathe™ subject responds with one of fourteen hundred and eighty-seven preprogrammed humanoid responses. When subject exits, clothe, apply lotions as necessary, and wait until new subject enters on the conveyor belt. Repeat process until shift expires.
Nobody is quite certain why a naked man is required for product testing on Baby Breathe™ dolls. Perhaps the chief executive officer is deranged, perhaps her marriage is shabby, or perhaps my superior is actually a committee of fully-conscious Baby Breathe™ automatons wishing to torment their creators. The process is reliable. Lawsuits are down, sales up. Effective dolls are sent to distribution. Defects are disposed. Should I fail to properly perform or deviate from my protocols the tin flaps open and I am disposed down the chute.
It is unusual, such protocols. Is it unusual? I’m not qualified to judge. I am merely a loyal employee.
My shift has continued for five hundred and forty-seven consecutive days. This loophole is possibly a clerical error, but the employee handbook insists there are neither errors nor loopholes.
And so it is: rise and disrobe, rise and disrobe.
Before the Company I performed protocols for the military. My expertise was explosives. After you’ve seen the human body explode, it both reassures your existence and inspires a career change.
Now I rise and disrobe and Baby Breathe™ dolls arriving on the conveyor belt confirm my existence through one of fourteen hundred and eighty-seven preprogrammed humanoid responses. Once we have completed our protocols we continue on the conveyor belt of life.
The problem with yesterday is the sigh. Baby Breathe™ dolls are not programmed to sigh, and certainly not with such melancholy.
Ergo, the sigh came from Ms. Vox.
Ms. Vox is the woman behind the curtain. She controls the incinerator chute. I have no proof she exists and no knowledge of her protocols, but all protocols dictate a fail-safe option. I imagine she is middle-aged, left-handed, divorced, prefers Bach to Stravinsky, speaks in a stilted amphibian tone, and likes to be handled by men in bathrobes. Instinct tells me Ms. Vox is the president of the Baby Breathe™ Company and the dolls are patterned in her likeness. I have faith in this. I would like to believe we are part of something larger here, something consequential, something more than conveyor belts and protocols. I am not supposed to know that Ms. Vox exists, assuming she does exist, and yet I have faith even right now she is thinking of me thinking of her on the other side of the curtain. Perhaps we cannot exist without our hope of the existence of the other, even if entertaining such thoughts means subjecting ourselves to the incinerator chute.
How often I have stood naked on the thirty-eighth floor devising protocols to confirm my existence to a hypothetical Ms. Vox.
I could press the yellow button. It is behind a pane of glass next to the door. Pushing the yellow button sends the signal. What signal? I do not know. Is this unusual? Maybe. Pushing the yellow button is not my protocol. And I am a loyal employee. Perhaps once pushed the world will vanish. Perhaps the Baby Breathe™ dolls will take over the world. Perhaps pushing the yellow button will free Ms. Vox from her protocols. I have reason to believe that behind her curtain Ms. Vox waits to press an almost identical yellow button which controls the incinerator chute on which I stand. She may only press the yellow button if I disregard my protocols. That is her protocol. We are opportunists, me and Ms. Vox, verifying the other’s existence through the threat of annihilation.
Yesterday was the first time in five hundred and forty-seven consecutive days that I almost pressed the yellow button. After disrobing for a Baby Breathe™ doll nothing happened. A defect. Only this defect remained on the conveyor belt staring at my defective nudity. Panicked, I defied protocol and placed my finger on the yellow button. Then I heard the melancholic sigh.
And here we are, caught in our loophole.
The only logical explanation for the melancholic sigh is love. Neither Ms. Vox nor I have ever verified one another’s existence, our interactions are hypothetical, but love demands nothing less than an absurd series of protocols.
So I wait in my loophole. It makes a lovely equation, the mathematics of our love. In time it will become chemistry, which must become physics. This is the order of things. For now, I must wait for Ms. Vox to solve her end of the equation.
Every day I would like to throw back the curtain and disrobe passionately for whatever is waiting behind the curtain. I would like to be stunningly naked and risk reciprocity, even if causality entails the incinerator chute due to my own defects. Though, I suspect love is better this way: rise and disrobe, rise and disrobe, each of us behind our respective curtains. Better to remain suspended in anticipation, to submit to the protocol loophole, to wait for the next unexpected sigh, to remain subject to the irresistible charms of displaced indulgence.