A day in life!

The day after Tejas had arrived at the new place, he was tightly grasping his pillows. The bed that was so unwelcoming the previous day, suddenly felt like the most comfortable place in the world. "I warned you to sleep early," Laksh said waiting for him at the door. He was already in his uniform.

"Why on earth do we need to wake up so early?" Tejas complained as he forced his hazmat suit over the overalls.

"This is one of the many tasks we need to do in this job," Laksh spoke, yawning.

"I wish I was given some other job!" Tejas grumbled. He kept putting the wrong limb in the wrong part of his suit.

Laksh, who already looked a little annoyed earlier, pointed out to the table, "You forgot to wear the dial on your wrist," and sped out of the room. Tejas grunted and snorted in derision. He put the suit again and having done that successfully, left their room to join Laksh.

They went to another room where the walls were covered in mirrors. Laksh turned around standing at a place. Pictures were taken of his suit and an analysis was instantly displayed in the mirror, segmenting and labelling each part of his suit. "Proceed to the next room, Mr Laksh," they heard from a speaker placed somewhere in the room. When Tejas tried to follow him to the other room, the door closed right infront of his face.

"Please stand infront of the mirror, Mr Tejas Raman." He imitated Laksh and after standing at the same place as him, turned around. When Laksh had done that, the screen was filled with blue checkmarks. But no sooner did Tejas turn his back than the screen was full of red circles, highlighting all most parts of his suit. Apparently even after all the effort, he had worn the suit in the wrong way.

It took him 5 minutes to get out of that room. The next room he went to asked him to put his mask and sprayed some clear liquid over his suit. The room that followed, air dried that liquid. Finally when he reached outside, it had already been 4:30 AM. Laksh had been standing infront of a old wooden wall. It was so tall and looked so ancient that Tejas had a sudden unfounded fear, 'What if it fell on us!'

Laksh turned around, scanned his id and his retinas. The wall slid and revealed a metallic door. Both entered and stood infront of that door. When Tejas scanned his ID and retinas, he heard, "Welcome new employee."

"Really? Everybody except for them know my name," Tejas commented with a sarcastic grin.

The place they had finally reached, looked like garden of some sort. There were so many plants, with flowers of all possible hues, that it looked straight out of a romantic painting. "I thought we would be going to a very dangerous place."

"Don't judge yet! If you read the names of the plants and what they do, you'd probably end up seeing things in your nightmares."

Tejas now noticed the humongous bees and butterflies that flew inside the garden. The sky had a purple hue but something told him that he was looking through a ceiling with invisible barriers. Somehow the sense of wonder and excitement had returned to Tejas. He was so spellbound by the place that he walked straight towards a plant, stepping on something that gave him a mild electric shock. "Please walk on the coloured stone steps," a voice from a speaker instructed.

Laksh, who had been walking steadily, "Oi! Tej! Don't go there." He stomped his feet on the white stones, "Step on these only."

There were three different types of stone paths to walk on. A red path that was closest to the plants, a yellow path, that was between the red and white path.

Before Laksh went farther away he screamed again, "Follow whatever I'm doing. Otherwise their might be really bad consequences."

Tejas tried to follow Laksh and attempted at reading the names from so far away. But they were written on so small surfaces that he needed to stop and read them carefully.

Laksh yelled at him again. "Don't wander around here. This is not a park!"

The white stoned path lead to place where many small glass bottles were placed in extremely tall shelves. Some had a greenish hue, some had a yellowish tinge, others were completely transparent.

"If you haven't guessed already," Laksh said, "we need to make sure that we place the right bottle at the right place."

Laksh placed some bottles on a cart, and drove it around the yellow stoned path. When he stepped on a big stone with two shoeprints and stood there for a longer time, a disc rose from the ground with places to hold the mouth of those bottles. He placed each bottle according to their colours. As soon as he did that, the bottles latched on to the disc, got inverted and returned back to the ground.

"Row 1 complete," they heard the voice from the speakers again. The screen lit above the plants. Tejas turned around and saw that there were other such screens everywhere but they blended perfectly with the walls.

"These are sneaky," he said pointing to the screens. "There are ten more," Laksh looked at Tejas and handed the cart to him. "Just do what I did. I'll come to check on you."

He walked towards another wall where there weren't many plants around. Tejas had already guessed, there had to be another door there.

He was right. Laksh walked right through the wall. "I think I'm getting the hang of it," Tejas gave a tired smile.

He hauled the cart back and forth. "Why can't they build something for doing this?" He was already sweating under his layers of 'uniform' and felt extremely thirsty. He tried to walk through the same door through which Laksh had passed, but he hit his mask instead.

There were five more rows left. But he felt too tired to walk. He sat down for a moment on one of the yellow stones and slowly inched himself towards the red stoned path. He tried to read the names again, but felt that the side effects were purposefully written in larger fonts. He could only read, 'Causes Blindness', 'Causes quick death', 'Causes painful boils and fever', 'Causes painful nightmares'.

"Why are they grown here if they are so dangerous?" He felt something was odd in the way these plants were both protected and preserved with so much security even when they were so dangerous. Were they useful in other ways he didn't know about?

As he remained seated there, he became slowly aware of the variations in the shapes and sizes of each plant there. No two plants had the same type of leaf. Laksh's constant reminder rang in his ears. But he wasn't feeling scared. Infact he could've sworn that some of them seemed very familiar. He was supposed to be wary of the surrounding but weirdly enough, he felt he was back to a place where he could feel so much at ease.