Right from the beginning I had already known how clever I was. Everyone never failed to praised me for the bright idea I always had and the quickness I always exhibited in coming up with resourceful plans. I grew up supremely confident in my brilliant future in the medical field which was the area which I was particularly talented in. in fact, I had recently developed a technique that could bonds part of the human body together without causing any tissue scarring or tissue incompatibility. It was a breakthrough that would ensure my place in the medical circles. I was that sure.
That was why I now felt terribly incensed that my capabilities were called into question. The strangers before me stood solid and smug, looking as if they were about to burst out in hilarity over what they called my ‘sci-fi imagination’. I had been boasting about my bonding technique in the local coffee shop. Surrounded by the admiring attention of the usual lunch crowd, I had gone on to detail the possibilities of the technique in healing the human body using spare body parts. Of course, most of the claims were exaggerated, fuelled by my vanity and eagerness to maintain attention on myself. But little would I know that these strangers would take such a keen interest in what I was saying – they had made me repeat several times what I was capable of.
In the end they left the coffee shop and the lunch crowd dispersed to their respective offices. I felt immeasurably relieved. “Why had they rattled me so?” I wondered. I was usually more audacious than this in handling difficult people, but this time, I had felt the need to constantly push the limits of reality by claiming abilities that were yet to be tested. I had even risen to the bait when they asked if I could bond a frozen head on to an alien body without causing any malfunctioning of the bonded body. My answer was an unblinking ‘yes’. Thank goodness they had left after that, I thought. I was worn down by the encounter, and wanted...