Dream Job: Author Gigi Ganguly tells the story of a futuristic device that lets you work in your sleep

After she pushes out the pastes onto a plate, she places the plate inside the microwave and watches as the ingredients mix and eventually take the form of a cheese toast. It always calms her — the hypnotic transformation of a meal.

***

In office, she goes through the résumés of hundreds of job applicants. She runs them through verity apps, before doing a final check to ensure no suspicious claims have escaped the apps. Hour after hour, she does the same thing every day.

When she returns home, as usual, her daughter is sitting on a sofa and watching a programme on the telewall.

“How was your day, Mulo?” she asks.

“Same… as… always,” the 14-year-old replies, sucking on a cheddar tube in between.

“How many times have I told you to not eat directly from the tube?”

“50 times?”

Baegun glares at her.

“Fine,” Mulo says, “I’ll go and keep this back in th—”

“No. Throw it out.” She pauses, and then says, “I guess I have no choice but to place child locks on the drawers from now on.”

This time, Mulo is the one glaring. “Point taken. I won’t do this again.”

Baegun smiles and sits down beside her on the sofa. “So, it was a boring day?”

“Yes,” Mulo answers, “but I was thinking about something.”

“Hmm?”

“Everyone else has these big dreams of what they want to become. But I just… don’t. I know I don’t want to get into hybrid working like Dad. I don’t think I have it in me to spend six months straight at the office and then the rest at home.”

“There are perks to those kinds of jobs, too,” Baegun says.

“I know. He earns a lot of money. And he plans to retire in a few years. But still, I can’t live like that. And more than that, I’m not really interested in any subject at school. I do enjoy it when I score high marks. It does make me happy. But I…” She pauses. “Do you know what I really want?”

“What?”

“I want to feel content. I want to feel at peace. The way I feel when I’m painting or when I’m listening to music. I want to feel like that… at a job. Do you know what I mean?”

***

A few months ago, a colleague at Baegun’s office sought her out at lunch. “You look really tired these days,” he told her.

“Well, I am.”

“You know what you need?”

“What?”

“A relaxing dream job,” he said, excited. “It has done wonders for my mental health.”

She knew what they were: jobs done while asleep, while linked to surrogate shellbodies in remote places. She had seen them listed on many résumés, but she had never thought of actually pursuing one.

Still, the idea had stuck. A few days later, Baegun found herself using specialised earpods at night, laying down her head on the pillow, and waking up in a shellbody on the Moon. In front of her was her supervisor and they were telling her about her job.

“All you have to do is tend to the flowers in the gardens. It’s an easy job. You’ll get used to it soon.” She did. She fell into a kind of ease she had never felt before. There were no deadlines to meet, no reports to compile. For a few hours every night, before she fell into her natural sleep, she worked at the gardens on the Moon. And though the money wasn’t as much as what she earned during the day, it wasn’t measly either. It made her think: why was she burning herself at the day job?

***

“Mom?”

“Hmm?”

“You do know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” she says, “and don’t worry, we’ll figure something out together. None of us comes with a set of instructions for what to do with our lives.”

***

That night, right before sleeping, Baegun picks up her phone to write two messages. The first, to her husband, to tell him of her decision. The second, to the superiors at her day job, to tell them that this would be her last email to them.

That night, when her eyes close to sleep, they open to a garden in full bloom.

Gigi Ganguly is the author of Biopeculiar and One Arm Shorter Than The Other