Robots in Disguise
I could not begin to articulate my emotional state when I walked into my mentor’s office. After a short discussion, he pointed to one of the many strange artefacts that cluttered his desk. It was the number 3, plastic and green, printed, 3D, in block fashion.
“The rule of threes?” I asked, stomach churning at the implication that I had a third misfortune still waiting for me.
He shook his head. “Here,” he said, palming the 3, then handing it to me. “Open it up.”
I stared at the number. How does one open up a number? But sure enough it had grooves, as if it was made of several parts. I pulled a hatch up and a little face revealed itself. Two more hatches revealed arms, one at the top of the number, the other at the bottom. Finally two legs revealed themselves, rotating so that two blocky feet now faced me. All together it formed a robot, standing at attention.
“It’s a transformer?”
Again he shook his head. “Well, yes. But no. It’s symbolic. More than meets the eye.”
“Yeah, robots in disguise,” I quoted the other part of the theme song.
“No. Well, yes to that also, but no. There is more than meets the eye in this little number, and in that car over there,” he pointed to a little blue car on his bookshelf, “and in everything else, too, even if it doesn’t transform into a robot.”
In this fashion I followed his meandering train of thought to his point: everything had an inward and an outward reality, and that was why children, whose inward realities had not yet been completely obscured from their awareness, loved transformers. He also made a point about matryoshka dolls, which not only had an inward reality, but in fact had many, each one corresponding to a deeper aspect of one’s true self.
The discussion did nothing to ease my mind, unless confusing and distracting it from my many problems could count towards that, but by now my mentor was enthusiastically showing me how the great big mech that stood in battle pose behind his monitor contained a hidden pilot, which was another proof of his grand theory of existence.
“Such a beautiful robot, don’t you think?” He said, and before I could nod my agreement, he continued, extracting up the pilot, “it’s nothing without her. She gives it life. The outside is a hunk of metal, a brilliant piece of engineering, to be sure, but it’s the pilot that gives it its essence. And look--”
I put an end to it before he could direct my attention to the bowl of peanuts on his desk. “I get it. You crack the shell and it’s what’s inside that’s important. But I already know this, and it hasn’t solved any of my problems, or, well, any problems. Look at the state of the world! Do you think this helps what’s happening in--”
My mentor, who had just cracked open a peanut, saw fit to stuff it into my mouth before I could finish. I sputtered before making peace with the unexpected snack, finding that these were unusually tasty, just the right mix of sweet and bitter. Nevertheless I started reconsidering my choice of mentor. He was meant to help me, as a new employee, on the job. This probably counted as some sort of assault and could get him fired, or at least taken out of the mentorship program. He had also not helped me, as a new employee, on the job.
Yet as always happened when in his presence, I couldn’t bring myself to feel the anger I should have felt. The best I could muster was a mix of mild annoyance and perplexity. I directed these in full force at him.
“What was that for?”
“To get you to think,” he said. “Tasty, no?”
“Yes,” I sighed.
He handed me the shell. “Now eat this.”
“Excuse me?”
He dropped the broken shell into my palm. “It’s a good source of fibre.”
I could imagine its bitterness just looking at it. “I don’t want it.”
“Fibre, you know what it does?” He went on, and saving me from answering, he added, “it makes crap tough.”
“Is that supposed to be a pun?”
“It’s supposed to be a statement.” He put an entire peanut in his mouth, shell and all.
I pondered over the statement, absently nibbling on the peanut shell. It was bitter and tough. Just like me. Except for the tough part, otherwise I wouldn’t have been standing here before a madman asking for his help. I was sure that eating too many peanut shells would cause some consternation to my digestive tract, and yet in moderation maybe they were a good source of fibre. Modern diets famously lacked fibre, a fact that had far-reaching effects on both the body and the mind. But to wantonly eat peanut shells day in and day out wouldn’t be possible for a human. A cow, perhaps, or some other sort of ruminant, evolved specifically to digest massive amounts of fibre, would fare just fine. But myself? I preferred to eat the peanut inside the shell.
I accepted my mentor’s offer of a handful of shelled nuts. Now these were good.
“What do you know about oysters?” My mentor asked.
I knew where he was going with this. “Pearls. You’re going to tell me about how they’re ugly little things, but if you crack them open you’ll find a beautiful pearl.”
He frowned. “I wasn’t going to call them ugly, or to call for violence against oysters, but you get the idea. So do you get what I’m trying to say?”
I sighed. “Not everything is what it seems.”
“Actually,” he reached into his drawer, producing a genuine oyster, palm-sized, and handing it to me. “I have one right here! Look!” He flipped it open, revealing several little pearls rolling around. “I found it at a thrift store. I don’t think they’re real pearls.”
I stared at the trinket, wondering if he was on the cusp of a hoarding problem. Then I had a more useful thought. “If they’re not real, aren’t you disproving your point?”
He snapped the shell shut. “By no means!”
“But instead of something beautiful being inside something ugly, the thing you’re expecting to be good is actually bad! It’s a fake!” I was starting to get excited. I finally had him cornered.
“Ha!” He said. “Haha! You fell for my trap. I said that nothing is as it seems. The oyster hides a pearl. But the pearl hides a cheap plastic moulding! It’s a matryoshka oyster!”
“You pretend to be some sort of sage, but you’re really just insane!”
“Ah, but how do you know I don’t pretend to be insane to mask a pearl within?”
“Anyone--” I paused to accept the fresh handful of shelled peanuts that he offered me, “who claims to be a pearl within is a fraud!”
“And,” now he was full of glee, “within that pearl is cheap plastic from the dollar store!”
“That’s just false modesty,” I said from around a mouthful of peanuts.
“You win,” he said, removing the oyster to the drawer. “You’ve caught me. My student has surpassed me. Now go out into the world and teach, and when you’re done, come back and teach me your newfound wisdom.”
Something seemed disingenuous about this, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Why did my victory feel like a defeat? And why had I been in competition with my mentor in the first post?
Ex-mentor, I thought to myself. I was in new territory now. I had been cut loose, released. I went out into the world.
The state of the world was a particularly bitter peanut shell, or a particularly ferocious mech, slashing its swords and shooting its guns. I tried to put my mentor’s teachings into practice, but how? Something about peanuts and pearls and little people in robots, or things transforming into robots.
The war on the news didn’t transform into a cool robot, unless its drones counted, but that didn’t seem to fit the bill. When rent came due I looked for some kind of matryoshka doll structure, but only found that the diminishing size of the subsequent dolls went in direct proportion to the size of my bank account.
I went for a walk and thought about how the fire hydrant hid a deep and powerful stream of water inside. That had to mean something, but what? I considered meeting with my mentor again, but felt I first needed to bring some nugget of wisdom with me.
Nugget. Like gold. Gold is hidden in tons of ordinary rock. That was a good analogy, right? But I didn’t need analogies. He had supplied me with enough. I needed to apply them.
I tripped on a rock (one of the many that didn’t contain gold), sprawling on the ground, skinning my hands and knees. I stayed there on all fours for a minute, still lost in thought. Slowly the pain crept in. This was a bitter moment, like a peanut shell. What was the tasty morsel within? I crawled forwards a few steps, looking up just in time to see a lady and her dog give me a strange look, tutting under their breath as they crossed the street to avoid me.
Maybe in this case the peanut within was made out of cheap dollar store plastic. I stood up and brushed myself off before anyone else spotted me. I was getting lost in the analogies. Surely every single thing or event in existence couldn’t be a peanut? I gasped. Perhaps I was looking at it all wrong. Maybe all of existence was one big peanut.
I took a look around me. If I searched for the seams in reality would I be able to coax out the robot within? I sighed and started down the street again, shivering as a cool breeze pressed past me. It was all speculation, and reality didn’t have physical seams the way plastic numbers that sat on desks did. Only one thought gave me solace: maybe I didn’t have to do all the work myself; if I returned to my mentor with the right question, it just might be enough.
Ex-mentor, I corrected myself, taking a left at the stop sign. I couldn’t just run back to him with my tail between my legs. My pride wouldn’t allow it.
I paused. Could that be the real test? Perhaps within the oyster of my body was the pearl of my being, and composing the pearl of my being was the cheap dollar store plastic of pride. Maybe if I turned it into humility, it would become real pearl material, like the pilot of a mech, or a robot. Maybe even a peanut. All of these possibilities sat better with me. I just had to transmute the cheap dollar store plastic into a nugget of gold by going back to my mentor and admitting that I was wrong and didn’t actually know what I was doing.
I limped back to my home and made my plans.
“I’m sorry, you’re not a fraud,” I said, nearly kicking down his door in my excitement. “How do I crack the peanut?”
He demonstrated wordlessly, handing me the contents of the shell he’d just opened.
“I mean the world, the universe, existence.”
“You might need a nutcracker for that, I think it’s bigger than the average peanut.”
I wished I could place my head between the jaws of a nutcracker and release myself from this miserable shell. “You fool!” I bellowed. “I’m admitting I’m wrong! I want you as a mentor! Teach me!”
He slowly rotated in his chair. “And how does it feel to admit that you’re wrong?”
I crossed my arms. He was being smug. “It feels good. Right. Like I did the right thing. Like I’m making progress.”
He crossed his arms. “Is that so? Would you say that you’re proud of yourself for taking such a difficult step?”
I dropped my arms, feeling like an empty peanut shell.
“That’s right,” he continued, laughter in his eyes. “The pearl turns to plastic.”
“How am I supposed to do anything then, if it’s all some sort of self-deception?”
He didn’t answer immediately, instead reaching for a little red egg. In a matter of seconds he had transformed it into a dinosaur. “Didn’t you think this was just an egg?” He asked.
“I don’t think anything in your office is just one thing. I bet your chair secretely turns into a tent. Maybe your mouse has a real mouse inside it.”
He stared at his mouse. “Now that’s an idea...”
“I’m not trying to give you ideas! I want you to give me ideas! Please, at least explain something! Anything!”
“I thought you were supposed to teach me all the profound things you learned out in the world,” he said, suddenly piercing me with a sharp gaze.
I started to protest, then stopped. I had had at least one thought when I had gone out into the world. “Is...” I began, searching for the right way to ask my question, “is the whole universe one peanut?”
His eyes gleamed, all reproach gone. “Of course it is! And it’s also a whole bag of peanuts!” He leapt to his feet, tossing the bowl of nuts all around the office in his excitement.
“So when they say everything happens for a reason, they’re talking about the inner reality?” Even I was on the tip of my toes now, caught up in his enthusiasm.
“Make no mistake!” He clapped his hands with glee, and I rubbed mine together.
“And all events are part of a greater whole?”
“A whole revelation!” His eyes were wide, his grin wider.
“And good and evil exist at opposite ends of the matryoshka doll chain?”
“Where else could they be?” He leapt onto his chair and slowly started to rotate.
“And when people talk about inner peace, it comes from beyond what meets the eye?”
“That’s the true meaning!” He leapt onto his desk, and I found myself jumping up and down while he spoke. “Look for the reality within all things, and within each thing, and the true in the false—“
“All the confusion of the world vanishing in the land of peanuts!” I exclaimed, cutting him off in my excitement.
“Aye,” he said, the desk shaking under him and the floor under me, as we hopped from foot to foot, stamping and shouting. His certificate of excellence toppled off the wall, its frame shattering on the ground.
I was entranced by my own realizations. “To feast only on the husk is folly,” I murmured. “It really does makes crap tough, void of nutrients without its contents…”
“The student has learned!” He tossed a peanut at me, and I caught it in my mouth. “But learn this if you learn nothing else,” he continued in a solemn howl.
“Yes, tell me, tell me,” I hollered.
“You may call the heavens a peanut, and the earth it’s bitter husk,” he went on, “but truer than that is one thing!”
“And what is it? Enlighten me!” I was sweating and panting, desperate for knowledge.
He lifted his hand, fingers pinched together as if he held the very truth between them. “We’re all nuts!”
🤔🤣 I was waiting breathlessly for the big secret at the end - and it was completely nuts.