I looked around his office to see if he practised what he preached. Looking at all the mech figurines and the big LED board, I saw one book titled "50 Shades of Ashlyn."
It was not your typical book; instead, it featured a collection of pictures of Ashlyn wearing sunglasses of different types, spread across 50 pages. While technically falling under the definition of a book, I doubted I could use this effectively to highlight his hypocrisy—so, I decided to see what else he had before he stopped me from pondering and looking around.
"Pink bunny hopper hop waits for you, Ms. Miserably Pants, Silly-Anita," the Head said in a voice like he was talking to a wayward child, snapping me out of my survey of all the objects in his office.
At least I didn't have to confirm that I understood; he had clearly gone into crazy mode, most likely as a result of watching stupid videos all day. He continued, "Who is your Bunnee Guardian, little Ms. Bath?"
Oh, my Bunnee Guardian? I deleted the dummy Guardian junk a long time ago. I know it's common for the guardian to be seen as a father figure, sharing the same surname as the user.
Anita blurted out, "Bubble... Mr. Bubble!" hoping he wouldn't catch on and say what she expected him to say.
Upon hearing the silly name, the Head remained blissfully oblivious to its absurdity, nodding along as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. "Ah, charming name! Quite unique," he responded with an earnest smile before continuing, "Bubble... So your Bunnee Guardian is called Bubble?" the Head made a note of this by scribbling on his phone with a stylus pen. Anita nodded but refrained from repeating the name, given how foolish it sounded.
"I will be calling for Mr. Bubble Bath later tonight when I get home."
"Please... please don't!" Anita didn't care if he called this non-existent guardian she'd deleted, a guardian she had never bothered to name. She couldn't help but imagine the hilariously absurd scene of the Head taking a massive bubble bath with a giant yellow duck, surrounded by rose petals, and sporting a flower crown in a gigantic bathtub. She started to gag once more.
"Of course I will! I will most definitely do so. And it will all be recorded for training or monitoring purposes."
"Just ewww," she mused to herself.
"Anita, can I be frank with you?"
"If you're bored with being the Head, okay."
The Head processed that response as a yes. Even if I had said no, we would have proceeded with this incoming speech regardless.
"Anita, to be frank, we may need to involve professionals unless your eBunnee activity improves. This includes your time management, comments, and emoji use. I can't handle this alone. We might need to refer you to eBunnee aversion sessions to help you like eBunnee more."
I saw him vigorously scribbling more on his phone with his stylus. Looking at it from behind, I couldn't tell if this was a doctor's scribble or if he was trying to create cat emojis.
Anita was bored of playing with this fool and just wanted to go, so she told him what he wanted to hear: "Sir, Mister Head, I plan on watching the entire 'The Mask' event happening tonight. I am quite excited to see what happens there! I will be cheering on all the people participating from our Academy." The Head started smiling, so she continued. "My eBunnee page will feature urban exploration videos. I'll navigate rundown buildings through the unique scent of urine. I'll play a game of 'Find the Discarded Needles.' I'll admire windows, now abstract art thanks to doo-doo décor. After that, next week, I'll explore the abandoned underground sewage system of Berghwoodna."
"I would very much like to watch that."
The Head made a few more scribbles.
"I might have been wrong about you. There was hope for you yet."
"Anita Bath, I think..." a momentary pause after a long think, "we are done for today. We will watch your eBunnee page and your analytics. We want to ensure you do what you said you would. Now, I will let Paw Mech escort you out of the room so you don't get lost."
Anita couldn't help but smile, finally able to leave the office and move on to more important tasks. A mechanical robot then proceeded to rickety roll forward, and the Head nodded his noggin, indicating for Anita to follow the strange mech. It was just a basic Path-walker robot that didn't even follow a path; it merely moved in a straight line. The mech—a robot toy cat terminator—was a huge, blocky, junky contraption. It had no movable limbs, just wheels that propelled it forward.
On the front of the Paw Mech, there was a pencil drawing of a kitten with a confused look in its eyes. I recalled a competition at the Academy for students to design this picture. A cat won, thanks to biases. An Academy student made the picture. They held tracing paper in front of a Dinglebarry's face, then meticulously drew and traced all its features. Of course, a real-life cat wouldn't stand there and let you shove tracing paper in its face without potentially ensnaring you in a whiskered bear trap.
It was a Dinglebarry the girl used to trace, so not even a real cat. A Dinglebarry-created pet, with its easygoing nature, meant there was no need for treat bribes, as they didn't need to eat. If you attempted to feed one, the food would just linger inside it forever, leaving a very pungent stench and giving it an oddly authentic touch.
This won because many of the high—higher-ups thought this was an ingenious use of the new Dinglebarry Realisation technology; the rest of us just thought she was a spoilt rich brat.
The mech-cat slowly meandered down the corridor at a snail's pace, with me following behind it. Now that the Head was off my case for the time being, I could focus on developing my coding and hacking skills and catch up on my reading.
Does he really think I'm gearing up to watch 'The Mask' Event tonight? Pfft! I would be running some carefully made macros and bots. They would refresh the page and post random comments from .txt files. As for venturing into the abandoned undergrounds, I would affix a live camera to the back of a rat, allowing it to capture all the intriguing footage. If he tries to contact my non-existent Bunnee Guardian, I'd say it ran out of bandwidth. Then, I'll throw some random IT jargon at him to confuse him.
The big mech-cat head got stuck on the ceiling and started going "Meowr! Critical error, system pawsed," with lots of beeps. I waited for it to fix itself, but it remained stuck in place. Not wanting to go back to the Head's office, I just made my own way down the straight, linear corridor by my lonesome.