"Hence the Dummy" by Árón Ó Maolagáin

“The numbers are in, sir.”

“Oh yes?”

“They are not looking good.”

“Oh no, hmmm?”

He has a dummy, inside which a fungus grows to imitate human organs.

An amazing approximation.

It has no thought.

It can be trained.

“No. They’re not looking good at all.”

Outside their cells, the employees watch.

They cannot decide if this is the best solution.

A bit unsanitary.

Yet it has made the workplace more humane, that’s undeniable.

They taught the dummy to err.

To rebel gently.

When it was too compliant the boss simply stored it in the closet.

A threshold was discovered.

The right amount of challenge.

Plus, the incompetence makes it more palatable for the employees.

“Why the 18th-century aesthetic? Why the Renaissance? The Roman?”

“That’s what he wanted. I dunno. Some sort of fantasy.”

Our job is to give the boss pieces of paper on which we write numbers.

We read the number off gauges, through which flows a steady stream of pressure.

So long as the numbers go up, he is happy.

And, luckily, numbers can always get bigger.  

He likes big numbers.

But sometimes, they just don’t get bigger.

Sometimes, they get smaller.

Hence, the dummy.

Árón Ó Maolagáin is a writer and visual artist from Colorado and based in New York City. He studied English and Visual Art at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. After completing his undergraduate degree, he earned an MFA from the New York Academy of Art.

Before focusing on fiction, Ó Maolagáin published writings on art theory and criticism. This theoretical background informs his prose. Artists of the uncanny, such as Hieronymus Bosch, inspire Ó Maolagáin’s imagery and themes.