The X Files

Situation 1

X1 tiptoed into the room. He had to be careful. No one must know. The task at hand required utmost secrecy and noiselessness as rivals to his mission had only temporarily laid their guards down and this is the only opportunity he could use. He stretched out his hand. Yes, the thing was in his reach, as were many such enemy things. He knew he was an expert in these secret conquests. Man, wasn't he good?


Situation 2

Y3 was almost asleep. In her sleep, she could smell a strange smoky thing. Opening her eyes, and using her other senses, she could understand that it was coming out of the heating vent. "X5!!", she thought.
She called the Lord, the Master. The Master was very specific. "It's between you and X5. Deal with it".

Y3: "But it's so cold outside. I can't open the windows and breathe fresh air. And I'm allergic to this. Why can't you help me, Master?"

Click. Went the transmitter.

Y3 knew it was an unequal battle, like clash of species are supposed to be. She could hear other Xs in X5's room. But Y also knew what she could say and what probably would bring an effect.

Knock, knock.

Y3: "Hello. I'm allergic to {this particular} smoke." (Can we have a fair and just use of weapons and an equal war?)

X5: Emitted more smoke onto Y3's face. More smoke was coming out with the door of X5's chamber being open. "Sorry, it's not {that particular} smoke."

Y3: What is it? (Eyes rounding and wide looking)

X5: "Hashish".


Situation 3

Y3 was thinking what could she cook for Y4? After all, Y4 would come all alone, without anything. What would she like??


Y3 and Y4 were getting along fine. Fine, fine, fine.

Until after 2 months, Y3 discovered to her horror and utter amazement that Y4 was not a Y. Y4 was actually an X. To be precise, X9.

Several things happened which made Y3 better enlightened.

X9 stole her keys and refused to give it back.
X9 refused to pay for stuff that both Y3 and erstwhile Y4 (actually, X9) use.
X9 made weird, loud noises in weird times of the day.
X9 refused to return things that Y3 owned and had lent X9.
X9 refused to take the waste, the toxic things out of the cohabitation settlement.
X9 brought in more X-s and demanded full accommodation, in every sense of the word, of those X-s, from Y3.

And so on.

The enlightenment had better utilitarian returns when X10 came in. Y3 found an uncanny similarity between X9 and X10. Though X9 wasn't living there anymore, X10 who also came masked as another Y, had striking similarities as far as creating innovative situations of non-cooperation and conflict were concerned. The first step to clash was deployed with the refusal to bear the costs of consumption. The second, and subsequent steps were aggressive missions to capture spaces of Ys and cornering them. If done step by step, and little by little, Xs always found that Ys could be defeated just like that.

Y3 at least knew what was coming and how the process works.

Defeat by Y feeds on the Xs. It's a parasitic relationship.

And thereafter, the door would be kept closed.





FFWD>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"We have been observing for the past few months that you have been consistently eating our grocery stuff like chips etc. Initially we thought it was a one off incident, and may be you were running short of your own stuff, so we let it go. But eventually it seems that there is no stopping you, and starting from chips, to milk and we are not sure what more, the saga continues.

So we are forced to write this email as all of our efforts to make you realize have ended in failure. We want to make it clear that since our food habits don't match, we can't share our groceries. So it is better you get your own stuff and spare our chips etc. Since the ones you eat are not proportionate to the amounts we eat, it is not logical to share a subset of the items. So its better we don't share anything, you be on your own, and we will get our own share. For the items which you have already shared, we will share the prices (e.g., the diet pepsi and the milk from the last grocery). But in future, we will not share any of the groceries.

As you still don't have a car, we don't have a problem giving you a ride to the grocery store, but it is your responsibility to find out when we are going for groceries, and adapt your routine accordingly. We made initial adjustments thinking that you were new to here and needed some assistance in settling, but the things didn't work out as we thought and eventually ended up in such a scenario where we are writing an email to you. And if you want to use any of our stuff (like recently you were using Y1's and Y2's slippers), you need to ask explicitly from the owner of the thing before using it. We hope you can adjust yourself accordingly, and similar circumstances don't arise in future.

About the common duties which fall on us as we are sharing the same apartment, we all should share it equally. All of us have our own academic commitments, but that does not mean that such commitments stop us from doing the chores. You should also share the responsibility of occasionally clearing off the trash can, as it has been observed that you shirk that responsibility. Cleaning of the kitchen and living room area will be shared as it has been going for the past few months. Its a pity that being such a matured person doing your PhD, we have to explicitly tell you all these things, and we hope such a scenario is not repeated."

The above letter was received by X1 (Remember Situation 1?) from a group of Ys.

X1 obviously knew that letters like this, have little impact. He knew he had to be calm. And he was calm. For.... a letter cannot destroy the breed and mission of X-s. It was but common knowledge.

To be continued......sometime, somewhere.....

Long Footnote:

Since I earnestly intend to earn the status of an intellectual writer and thereby get an upgrade from being the "siren", I have employed the strategy of using quadruple meanings of words and symbols so as to elicit appreciation of possessing a large range of comprehensive thinking. Having said that, I'm also wary of being misinterpreted. Therefore, relevant and common meanings of X are given below. The list includes, but is not exhaustive, of all the possible connotations of X.

# X oftentimes is used to designate the unknown.

# Sometimes it is also used to mean the Independent Variable. Y is the dependent variable. X has effects on Y, the range, magnitude and strength of the relationship varying from situation to situation. But X always has an effect on Y. The relationship could be expressed as the following equation:

Y=a + b₁X₁ + b₂X₂ + b₃X₃

Y is the value of the Dependent variable (Y), what is being predicted or explained

a (Alpha) is the Constant or intercept

b₁ is the Slope (Beta coefficient) for X₁

X₁ First independent variable that is explaining the variance in Y

b₂ is the Slope (Beta coefficient) for X₂

X₂ Second independent variable that is explaining the variance in Y

b₃ is the Slope (Beta coefficient) for X₃

X₃ Third independent variable that is explaining the variance in Y

s.e.b₁ standard error of coefficient b₁

s.e.b₂ standard error of coefficient b₂

s.e.b₃ standard error of coefficient b₃

# X in this entry, is manifestly used to mean roommates of a special breed. Y is the cohabitant of the roommate. But cohabitation is the only similarity point between X and Y.