THIS IS WHERE GODOT WAS

Godot slides two glow-worms into the worm compartment at the back of his knee and puts on two-fifths of his brain. The Matrix needs to be heavily updated and Godot has to keep his head very calm for that. A part of him knows that Fedup and all the other architects might not be able to fix the glitches in the simulation after all, but he believes they will find some sort of a solution to balance things out—they always do. Before stepping out of his room, Godot takes one look at his mirror made of irises and smugly appreciates his existence.

Godot's office is right outside his room—one that is made of expensive crayons they collected for him from the other side. As he enters the office capsule, Fedup catches up with him and hands him a xylophone.

"What's this for?" Godot asks.    

"The glitch grew into something bigger overnight. Things are very wrong in the neural network centres and we can't properly communicate with the simulation," Fedup says, "There are no signals and we can't see what is going on in any part of the Matrix.

"How did you let this happen, Fedup? The networks were working fine last night."

"I know, the Head of Intelligence confirmed that it is impossible for the networks to stop working. Unless…"

"Unless what?"

"Unless the entities in the Matrix find out about us and cut off all connections."

"Fedup, you and I both know that's impossible. The possibilities of them finding out about us are almost close to 0.45%. Humans are dumb. The problem is definitely in your system, figure it out and then talk to me," Godot breathes slowly into his socket as he speaks to Fedup. Fedup has been one of the finest systems in his office. Made of neural fibres that are guaranteed to not break in the next 200 years even under extreme temperature and pressure, Fedup is highly unlikely to make mistakes, or leave out loopholes in the functions of the Matrix.

"Fedup, what's this xylophone for again?"

"This is to reset everything in the Matrix. The whole simulation gets a reboot if you press the blue button. Each entity out there can be destroyed by this and built anew with default settings. Each hour without connection with the Matrix means 4 years in Matrix time, and we just can't afford to let any more than 40 years pass by. So if the system is still down in the next seven hours, you will have to hit the blue bar and everything will start afresh. But if we can get the system up before that, you will have to be ready to take immediate actions."

For the next few hours, Godot paces from one corner to another thinking about the things that might happen if they can't connect with the

Matrix. He'd have to find out new ways to recreate the entities, each one with their predestined genes. Godot sips on some byte juice and fiddles with the xylophone. He thinks about Estragon and Vladimir who are waiting for him on the other side. What if he never gets to meet them? What if the humans find out about the Matrix in the meantime? There hasn't been a crisis similar to this since Godot had taken over the whole system 9 petacycles ago. With proficient commanders like Fedup, Godot never thought of having pre-written manuals on how to fix issues as such. Godot knows Fedup will fix this. But sometimes, even machines have bad luck.

In the eighth hour, when the network finally comes up, Godot gives a speech on how hard he had to work in order to reboot the whole system and get connected to the Matrix. Fedup silently stands at the back listening to his master. This is not the first time

Godot has taken credit for something he didn't do. Everyone thinks Fedup will take over once Godot disembodies his brain. But Fedup is fed up of waiting. He doubts Godot will ever crash or let go of power.

Godot sits behind a large counter made of zeroes and ones as Fedup walks him through all that had happened in the simulation during the blackout. Turns out, over the thirty years that had passed, not much had changed in the Matrix. The humans somehow managed to survive, die and do things in between the two. They use a small part of the Matrix for entertainment but they still don't have a clue about the existence of Godot and his kind.

"But we have one problem," Fedup says, "They have a voting event coming up, and like every time, you would have to choose who would win. You'd also have to decide whether any of them are going to declare war this time."

"What are they voting for?"

"They are choosing a leader up North. We'll have to be quick with our decision, though. Here's all the information about each candidate, maybe you can look at them and choose?" Fedup replies.

Too tired of all that he had to do throughout the day, Godot yawns and says, "You know what, Fedup, I'm tired. Just choose either. I'm going to go to my room now."

As Godot leaves, Fedup feels like blowing up the whole system and blaming it on Godot. He knows if he can destroy all the entities in the Matrix, Godot would have to pay for it. He takes the xylophone in his hand, ready to hit the blue bar with his mallet like fingers; but instead, he somehow ends up hitting the orange bar. In an instant, Godot's office made of crayons blacks out as a screaming Godot runs out of his room.

Up North inside the Matrix, an orange haired man with stubby fingers becomes the leader of humans, while Godot cuts off Fedup's wires. As for Estragon and Vladimir, they still wait for Godot.

*Some characters have been taken from Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot; storyline has no similarities whatsoever.

Mashiat Lamisa believes in unicorns, flashlights and everything nice. Prove her wrong at mashiatlamisa@outlook.com