Mary Jean Star

A woman who may have been a robot at one time sat nervously in front of him. "I- Hello I am a woman named JJ7E Smith," she said stiffly. Definitely ex-robot. "My duty is sweeping floors and cleaning jesks from the twentieth story of each building and upwards." She stopped there, looking uncertain.

"Uh huh," Jicago prompted.

"It is violating how the joffice workers on several floors treat me. They ask for me to perform duties that are not in my programming- err, not in my nature."

"Your jature," Jicago corrected. It was on every motivation poster to "Follow your True Jature" and were filled with photographs of birds and animals of earth digitally enhanced into the shape of the letter J, as though to imply the exact opposite of following one's 'Nature' in favor of falling into line by Jamaco Co protocol, also known as Jotocol.

The woman named JJ7E Smith blinked in a loop skip for a few seconds, then said "Oh. Of course."

"According to article J section J4 area..." Jicago skimmed the paper copy of Jotocol, "Area Sixty Five. All cleaners of double or triple J class will be subject to verbal belittlement for the amusement of the workers stationed on those floors. By your knowledge, have any of the workers breached verbal limitations?"

"N-no but-"

"Have any of them been actually workers of lower floors? Such as errand boys? Mail carriers?"

"M-mail carriers? This is a space city we don't use mail."

"A space Jity," Jicago said sternly. "I'm afraid there is nothing in your case that can be made action of on my part. Your best bet is to either forfeit your job or continue cleaning."

"Yes sir."

"You weren't made a human to be treated like one, after all. If that were so you'd have been made a man."

"Understood," said JJ7E Smith, and she took a little card that said "J" on it and proceeded to the elevators.

Jicago gave a yawn, put a check on his clipboard and called "Next" once more.

A plant came up to the desk. "Heyo," it said.

"Yes? Can I help you?"

"I'm the plant in the office of Vice President Jaddison's office. I witnessed him having jex with one of his subordinates and it was hella hot."

Jicago shook his head. "There's nothing wrong with engaging in jintercourse, Vice President Jaddison's plant."

The plant's leaves drooped. "Sorry sir, no. No that would be fine, I- I meant sex."

To this, Jicago's forehead grew cold from sweat, and his fingers began to twitch. "That is strictly against jotocol," he said.

"I know," the plant said calmly. "That's why I'm here."

Jicago began to panic. He was not trained to act on legitimate complaints of jotocol breaches. "W-well, did they use protection?"

"Do you think I care? This is SEX we're talking about. Penetration Sex. Missionary Position. Moans and Groans the whole nine  jards. I can hardly keep my stems green if I gotta put up with that animal business. Don't you see? It's interfering with my jotocol!"

"Well... well, have you asked them to stop?"

"Mother Jucker I am a PLANT."

"Th-then, you don't suppose you're breaching Jotocol yourself by being here...?" Jicago tried.

The plant slapped its leaves against Jicago's jesktop. "You think it was easy to come strolling down here by root and toil? I forfeit my weekly jertilizer schedule just to be here now! And why? Because oh, I dunno, maybe a talking plant ain't such a big deal when you consider the couple employees puttin-and-takin on the mahogany!"

Jicago was cornered. He asked to be excused, then retreated to the crook of his jesk to pretend to look at documents. Into his shoulder, he phoned his super. "H-hello? I uh, this is Jicago at shut-em-up aisle JJ1."

"What now, J?"

"I uh, there's a complaint about sex and it is very severe."

"Sex? That sounds like a legitimate complaint all right. Have you tried turning the blame on the victim?"

"Of course, but this one isn't budging, and I'm getting handed many good points."

"Hmm. Very well, you'll report the complaints to the squeal hall."

"Must I?" "That's what you'll say you'll do, stupid. Remember you're job isn't to listen, just to-"

"Shut-em-up," Jicago finished.

"Exactly. Good boy. *Click*"

Jicago rolled back to the plant and folded his hands in practiced idle self-importance. "We're doing what we can now. Your complaint has been sent to the Jepartment of Insubordination."

"In other words, you ain't doing squat."

"Well, our hands are tied at the moment but we-"

"Bull-jit they ain't tied you're sittin on em!"

"I- well I- The thing is I-" Jicago lifted the plant's pot over his head and hurled it across the room. Earthenware shattered on the tiles. The plant toppled from its pile of dirt, crushed by the impact. It rose its stem once more, and was met by a thrown stapler, crippling it and stapling it to the wall.

Hot damn! That means he has to wait for ten whole minutes. That’s ten minutes of his dance time taken by an early bus. Karkov was furious. His chain neck roared and he bent down to sever a tree. Sawdust coated the bus stop, flying into the one-way street in a storm. The tree came down, all twenty feet of it, its bare branches hitting a car on their way down. The car screeched to a halt, skidding on the wet asphalt and ramming into the bus stop pole. The driver rolled her window down. “Oi what the fudgesicles I’m gonna be late to the club because of this!”

It was Chessa. She was a red haired bazookateer, and she had the bazooka to prove it. It was fully armed, and she propped it on the roof of her car to aim at the sonofabitch who just hit her car with a tree.

Karkov faced the bazooka with fear in his eyes, but the flame in his heart could not be squelched by even the deepest of pits. He was gonna dance, damn it. He opened his mouth and a roar of chainsaw came out because that was his throat.

Chessa heard and understood. “You. You’re going my way, aren’t you?” She put her bazooka in the backseat and beckoned the carpenter. “Get in stud.”

Karkov sat in the car with his head hanging out the window because it wouldn’t fit. Chessa buckled him in for him, and told him to try not to laugh. She backed out of the bus pole and gunned it down the street. “I’m just gonna say,” she said without taking her eyes off the road, “I need you to know, that although I’m mad at you for stopping me, I’m not gonna spend a minute of my friday being upset at you because that is NOT how I wanna spend my friday, not this friday, not ANY friday. You run into me any other day of the week though bub, I will see to it personally you feel my wrath you goddamn tree-hating freakazoid.”

Karkov laughed so hard his chainsaw went full-power and cut the front passenger door clean off the car. It fell onto the road, cutting off a cement truck and forcing it to stop.

Chessa screamed in rage. It was all she could do to keep from shoving Karkov out and pulling over to blast him with her bazooka. Her screaming was so angry Karkov found himself laughing again, and he buzzed his way into the roof so he could sit straight up, his head sticking out the top of the car like a domino’s pizza delivery logo.

Finally they arrived. Chessa got out, grabbed her bazooka, and gave Karkov one last dirty look. “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you so much. But damn you’re hot, c’mon let’s dance.”

At the club Chessa danced with Karkov, she used her bazooka as like a makeshift cane to tap dance around, and Karkov roared his neck as he danced, and it got everyone to stay clear. Except the planet Jupiter, which bumbled over to ask Karkov if he’d like to dance with it instead. Karkov was swept up into the gas giant’s atmosphere, his body pulverized to microscopic shreds by the exponentially devastating air pressure.

Chessa slapped her hands against her thighs and scoffed. “Man Jupiter what gives, I was just having fun with him and you had to go and show up what the fudgesicles man.”

Jupiter spun on its axis at about a twelfth a rotation per hour, then said “oh sorry, heh, I uh, guess I just really wanted to dance with someone as beefy and ripped as me.”

“You don’t have a muscle in you you big ball of gas, quit flattering yourself there is literally nothing I find attractive about you.”

“How about my gravity?”

“OH ha ha! Fuck you Jupiter.” Chessa launched a missile at Jupiter. The missile exploded long before reaching jupiter’s liquid hydrogen surface, torn apart by the sheer density of its atmosphere. Nonetheless, Jupiter backed away, lowering its magnetic pole.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry Chessa, I’ll leave you alone.” It went to dance up on the balcony.

A beam of blue light zipped down to the floor by Chessa, materializing as Karkov, the chainsaw-for-a-neck guy who’s a carpenter and who now no longer has a continue saved up. He and Chessa ended up tango-dancing the rest of the night together, and by the end Chessa gave him a peck on the nipple.

The club’s many members started home with bags beneath their eyes. Jupiter’s red spot was looking drained, it had danced so hard it shook the heavens, but lost a few moons. Metis had landed on the bar, and would have crushed it and the entire state county if not for the clubhouse’s particular lax on spacial existentialism.

“Kar,” Chessa said as she carried Karkov to her car. “I’ve changed my mind. If I happen to see you any time of the week... well...” she started to blush.

Karkov laughed, roaring his chainsaw right in Chessa’s shoulder and causing her to fall over. Chessa laughed too, then stopped laughing as she realized Karkov’s neck had dug a red canyon into her flesh, and it was pouring blood onto the deserted dance floor. She fell, dropping Karkov. “Oh god, ah! Kar I’m— FUDGESICLES this hurts!”

Karkov stood up, looking around for help. An orange hedgehog stood leaning against a wall talking to a white jerboa. Karkov roared his throat to get their attention, but it was no use; they’d been ignoring him all night because of how loud his neck was.

Chessa screamed “HELP I’m BLEEDING call an ambulance!”

The orange hedgehog who’s name was B’juh perked his ears at Chessa’s pleas and leaped forward. “Making the call to answer the call for help is the greatest heroic deed of all!” He started running very slowly towards the clubhouse phone. His friend ended up getting there first and bringing the phone to him. B’juh dialed an ambulance. “Hello? This is B’juh the hedgehog! I’m calling for an ambulance!” He hung up. “Even if your best is not enough, it’s the effort that matters most in the end!”

“Jesus god damn!” Chessa cried out. She’d cupped her hand on the wound, but it was no clean cut, and pressure was doing little to stop the bleeding. Karkov would have offered to tie a tourniquet with his shirt sleeve but he had no shirt. He couldn’t phone an ambulance himself because he had no voice. He didn’t know what to do. Karkov stood over Chessa, watching her face turn pale. He lifted and lowered his hands, unsure if anything he did would worsen the situation, or simply be a waste of time.

Chessa’s right hand was numb. She bit her lip and ground her teeth against the burning pain in her shoulder. She screamed against it to stay awake, but the world outside her body was turning gray. She looked into Karkov’s helpless face watching her die. He was terrified and devastated.

“Kar,” she said, her own voice a mile away. “Kar it’s gonna be okay. It’s not your fault, I’ll be just fine... just a flesh wound, heh.” Chessa wanted to smile, to show Karkov she was okay, to tell him she didn’t hate him anymore, but her face muscles wouldn’t register anymore. An orange hedgehog’s face appeared over her, and she heard the words Remember, never give up! Nothing is impossible! Then a warm tingling feeling encompassed her and she drifted into darkness.

Karkov’s eyes were leaking. He was on his knees in the puddle of Chessa’s blood, watching the light in her eyes grow dim. The hedgehog had come over to offer some advice, but the carpenter did not hear it. Gently, he closed Chessa’s eyes, and he placed her bazooka beside her.

Then he stood. He turned away. He stumbled to the doors, his heart crumbling. Her blood dripped off his bladed neck onto the nipple she had kissed. Karkov slammed his fist into the doorway and screamed. His scream sent flecks of blood all over the entrance as the chains spun madly beneath his head.

“Expressing yourself honestly is the first step in emotional recovery!” B’juh the Hedgehog said. He was then lacerated to bits by the carpenter’s honest feelings.

The jerboa gave an ironic smile. “Hey, someone actually took your advice,” he said to what was left of B’juh.

Simply put, one need not feel obligated to befriend every person they come across. Acquaintanceship and rivalries can become healthy relations, given that they are generated by genuine emotions. Attempting to befriend those a person otherwise shares no common ground with can chafe others, coming off to be fake and manipulative. Thus by attempting to befriend everyone under false (albeit good-willed) pretenses, one may in fact be driving some away who otherwise would make perfectly amiable associates.

The resent that follows the path of this friendship cruisade will only grow worse as the person turns around and attempts to repair damages with further false friendship. One is less likely to hurt others' feelings if the person is merely sailing by one's own wind. Apogolizing not to say sorry but to convey one's own feelings of guilt (thus subtly coercing others to forgive) is likely to backfire. It is better in fact to admit that one is not at all sorry than to say so as a self-service. The weak of will may find themselves doing this without even realizing what they are putting out, and be only further driven to do so by the backlash they receive for it. A deadly circle indeed.

From where does this notion, this need to please everybody spark? Quite possibly it depends on the individual. Perhaps there is a disconnection of emotion creating a black hole into which all good things vanish. Perhaps there is an inability to love oneself, generating emotional dependence that demands others give them their love to fulfill what cannot be made within. Perhaps one is convinced that if any single entity is bitter towards that person, it will be that person's mortal undoing, and everything that person holds dear will be stripped and shredded.

To pride oneself in one’s own honesty is to commit to a life of hating oneself for living a lie. It also makes job interviews the absolute worst as they require one to lie without failure about one’s credentials and confidence. Lying is failing for the pridefully honest, so succeeding an interview means a choice between failing to succeed, or succeeding to fail, both of which trigger anxiety and self doubt in one’s competence at life.

There is to cure for honesty. It’s a personal trait that comes with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Pride however is treatable by the inevitable bane of its fragility: failure. Only through humility can pride be deconstructed, come it through defeat or withdrawal.

Over-disclosure is a common occurrence for the pridefully honest. In order to avoid failure, the pride will be brutally honest about one’s thoughts and feelings, overloading others with information that demands pity or praise. Lying by omission is a self-defeating task that chafes the pride, essentially chipping it away by taking others’ attention off oneself. This creates feelings of wretchedness and self-resent, often misdirected at others for failing to give the pridefully honest their absolute undivided positive attention.