Insights...

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

- Albert Einstein

Noo and Lemon ran to Vaseline's office through the endless corridors that made up the inexplicable infrastructure of the Hive. Machines to the left and right would burst into rabid song unexpectedly, turning the corridors into echoing madhouses.  The few Hiveans that they encountered stared at them with their large, round and unblinking eyes.

“How do you guys keep from going deaf?”, shouted Noo at Lemon.

Lemon grinned and produced two earplugs. “No funding yet for volume control”, he explained, “Sin T’zin 2000 comes with two free earplugs!!!”

Noo stopped dead in his tracks. “You gotta be kidding! NOW you tell me???”

Lemon grinned a maniacal grin and handed him the earplugs. Noo put them in.

Immediately the printer pandemonium became a heavenly sweet silence, sweetly interrupted by a angelic voices humming hit songs. Noo sighed and smiled, then frowned and took the earplugs out for a second…

Raging madness again hit his recently pampered ears, making his stomach turn. Printers screaming and belting, evil hisses, whales on helium… Noo reinserted the plugs and was back in sweet heaven…

He looked at Lemon who was still grinning his maniacal grin.

“This is brilliant, Lemon…”, he said, “this is what you should be selling here on earth…”

Lemons grin sagged, and he seemed to relax. “No Noo, printer is brilliant, coffee machine is brilliant, earplug is old…”, he answered, “in da Heiwa nobody interested.”

Noo groaned, Lemon’s answers for some reason maintained an exponential incongruity with his version of reality.

“OK Lemon, in that case please explain to me what is happening here…”, he said, “let’s start with the coffee machine…”

“Ah, high security coffee!”, Lemon exclaimed, “da Heiwa took old idea and made new!”

Noo looked at him questioningly

Lemon smiled and continued, “We analyze all earth commercials many years and see earth people likes coffee… so we make coffee machine”. Lemon smiled some more.

“But, at da Heiwa no coffee, only K’abbage”, Lemon further explained, “so da Heiwa make coffee from K’abbage”

“What is K’abbage?”, Noo asked

Lemon fidgeted with his Goggl Translat, then spoke to it, “K’abbage”

Goggl Translat clicked to life and translated, “Cabbage”

Noo’s mouth fell open. Here was the answer to Merlin’s question, the reason that da Heiwa coffee was undrinkable, the one and final cause for his migraine (though new reasons were developing fast)…

“At da Heiwa, we many da Heiwa people and little coffee machines, so coffee is restricted”, he went on, “this is normal capability at da Heiwa, we very good at restricting!”

Noo nodded, he had come to the same conclusion. “So you mean that any machine made by da Heiwa sees a customer as a security threat?”, he asked.

Lemon’s smile widened, smart earth person, this Noo.

“Yesss, is true!”, he beamed, “if customer can identify, he receives coffee!”

“And if the customer cannot identify himself?”, Noo asked patiently, fearing the answer confirm his worst fears.

“If customer does not identify, he terminated”, Lemon said smugly.

“Terminated?”, Noo asked in disbelief, “you mean fired?”

Lemon nodded vigorously. “Yesss, incinerated! Look there…”, he pointed, “successful security test!”

Noo looked and saw a Hivean burst into flames after typing a wrong printer access password for the third time… he looked back at Lemon wide-eyed.

“You must be mad!!! You can’t do this to people!!!”, he screamed at Lemon.

Lemon looked back not understanding. “Is just one da Heiwa, we have many…”, he said, “…and you should be used to this. We have also seen earth news from years ago: bad economy, many earth people incinerated…”

“You idiot!”, screamed Noo, “people get fired, no incinerated!!!”

Lemon’s face assumed the maniacal grin again. “That’s not good! You mean people not have job???” He couldn’t believe his auditory facilities, “da Heiwa would never be so cruel!”

Noo fell silent at this radically new concept of cruelty. “You mean that not having a job is worse than dying?”, he asked

Lemon blinked. Once.

“Of course!”, he said, “Job is all!”

Noo sighed. “Lemon, that still doesn’t give you the right to kill an earth person for forgetting his password… On earth we are quite attached to life, and we’d rather give up our job than our life”

Lemon reluctantly considered this. “Noo…”, he hesitated, “…then we must change machine for America government…” He burped in embarrassment, “Our engineers increased security in new version, Sin T’zin 2001…” Again he blinked. Once.

“Lemon, think hard…”, Noo answered, dreading what might come, “what do you mean by ‘increased security’?”

Lemon shrugged. “Machine explodes thermo-nuclear when no identify”, he said.

Noo started running to Vaseline’s office again, followed by Lemon who was again grinning like a maniac.