Dr Precarious was back in the room where she had been interviewed, sitting at his stone desk, when she stalked in. She knew there must be a kitchen near by because the smell of sizzling bacon was unmistakeable. He stood and came around the other side of the desk, indicating for her to turn as she approached.

Marissa slowed, and then trying not to think about it too much, stepped forward to spin on the toe of one shoe. She almost made the full 360 degrees of her slow turn before she was forced to fling a foot out wide to catch her balance.

He stepped closer as he asked, "Do you like it?"

"Mostly. Why do I have such a big mounded crouch?"

Dr Precarious lunged forward, bent low on one knee and brought the other knee up hard between her spread legs. The impact of his knee against her pubic bone lifted her momentarily off her feet and forced her backwards. He put out a hand for her to grab.

Despite being furious with his assault, she had to grab his offered hand to avoid falling onto her back. As she regained balance, one hand flew to her padded crouch which she expected to ignite with pain any instant, assuming it was currently numb from shock. No pain came. None at all.

Dr Precarious' voice was confident. "Without that padding, you would be crippled now. Crippled is no use to me whatsoever. And besides, you will find using a harness much more comfortable if things go wrong."

She knew she was still furious. If he had warned her, she wouldn't have allowed it. If he had just told her about it, she wouldn't have believed him. But what he did was still wrong. She sat opposite him as he'd gestured and the intensified smell of bacon was followed by the entry of a strong looking blonde woman in her mid thirties.

The woman glanced at Marissa's shoes, then appraised Marissa generally. Her courteous smile was a tinge fake. She wore a black pencil skirt and simple white blouse, looking like food service staff. After placing the two plates balanced on her arm on the table, she put the large platter of bacon with its stack of buttered toast between Marissa and Dr Precarious.

She then addressed Marissa, "Coffee? Orange Juice?"

Marissa responded, "Yes please. Flat-white and two. I like the pulp, thank you." She didn't wait for the woman to respond before turning to the toast and bacon. She piled bacon high on her toast, then placed a second piece of toast on top, butter side up. She looked up at Dr Precarious for a moment before she moved to bight into it.

"By all means, go ahead and begin." She almost did when he continued, "But I would have preferred it if you managed to get one more rasher of bacon on your stack, it would have only just balanced, with care."

She smiled back at him and accepted the challenge, picking a rasher with a lot of curl in it. She dangled it so that it stretched and wrapped it around the pile on her toast before laying the tip over to hold it all together. Not certain how long it would remain stable, she dropped the upturned toast on the top and bit into it with delight. The toast crunched and buttery, oily juices leaked onto the sides of her mouth. She was so hungry now.

For a moment, Dr Precarious just watched her, enjoying the spectacle. Then he made his own sandwich in imitation. Before placing the final toast on the top he asked, "Why do you invert the top piece of toast?"

Marissa chewed enough to swallow and through a partially cleared mouthful responded, "Try it." Then bit into her toast again.

She was building her second serve when the wait staff returned with a tray. She put the macciato in a glass before Dr Precarious and as she liftered her hand he cleared his throat and looked meaningfully at the glass on the stone desk, then at the edge of the desk. This lady then, with slightly shaking fingers guided the macchiato to the edge where it barely balanced. Then placed Marissa's flat white and her juice more conservatively in front of her. She noticed the oil glistening on Marissa's hands and addressed her, "I'm sorry, I'll be back in a flash with some napkins."

Marissa shot a look at Dr Precarious and once the wait staff had left hazarded, "Maybe 'in a moment' would have been a better phrase."

Dr Precarious shook his head and allowed himself more time to swallow before responding, "I know. You can see why she didn't get the job."

"She applied for sidekick?"

He nodded while chewing, "So she ended up as minion. She clearly has an interest in serving me even is she doesn't posses the required talents. No point letting her see where I live and then having her walk out again is there?"

"You could have chosen somewhere else to interview in..."

"But then how could I justify my collection of minions? No, that would never do. And besides, that cocktail takes some assembling and offering it out at some rented office space would never do. No not at all. It has to be this way."

"I want you to learn chemistry"

Marissa looked up and stopped chewing. Dr Precarious, eyebrow raised, waited for a response, so she continued to chew until she had cleared her mouth. "Thank you. It will be a pleasure."

"You only think you're lying. Once you get into it I'm sure you'll find great satisfaction. This will not be like your school experience."

Marissa finished the last of her orange juice and set the glass quietly back on the table. She had been practising everything, all of the time, in a desperate attempt to bring her performance up to the level she felt like was now expected of her. This had included practising placing her glass down on the stone table as quickly as should could without making a sound and leaving the remaining juice as steady as possible. She had also been paying attention to precision by placing her glass so that the ring of condensation it left intersected with the previous ring. Her final placement made six rings intersecting in the pattern she knew as 'the flower of life'.

Evidently Dr Precarious had noticed this. "Since you like hexagons so much, I think you should focus your efforts towards organic chemistry."

"Sounds great. I'd like to begin straight after breakfast."

"I'm already a step ahead. You won't have realised it yet, but you have already begun. There was an agent in one of the things you consumed for breakfast that will begin to show symptoms in twelve hours. See, not like school chemistry at all. Much more exciting." He dropped a scrunched napkin on his empty plate and slid it sideways away from him so that it almost touched his empty orange juice glass where it was balanced on the edge.

"I've always found knowledge interesting." Marissa picked up her coffee and let the cup hover close to her lips, but did not sip from it. "You can know something vaguely, but be certain of it, like how hot and dry it is in the Sahara. You can know something precisely, but be uncertain of it, like me knowing your last name." She lowered her coffee slightly, "Then you can know something, but not know how precisely or how certainly you know it. For example, yesterday you met, for the first time, the woman who served us breakfast. You know her well enough to think her not up to the task you interviewed her for, but having less experience of her than me, I assume you don't know her as well as you now know me." Marissa smiled at him and lowered her cup even further. "Now, if I had missed out on this job, and then found myself compelled to not go home, but indentured to a position I didn't apply for, I don't even know what I would do. I am impressed that you are so confident in what she will do that you know she didn't mix up the orange juices, slip the agent into the macchiato or taint the wrong piece of cutlery." Marissa had been watching Dr Precarious closely as she spoke. His eyes didn't look at the orange juice glass or the macchiato cup, but they did glance at his fork on the plate to his far right.

He smiled at her as she sipped her coffee at last. "I agree. Knowledge is fascinating, and I do like it that you are trying to glean clues from me before even considering the chemistry, so I'll tell you this. I took the antidote before we ate breakfast. And for exactly the reasons you've mentioned. Let me tell you something that I like about knowledge and chemistry. When you do know something precisely and you are sure of it, how is it that you're aware of this certainty? Do you have a way of calculating its veracity; do you have a table of precedent facts that can be audited to certify your surety? No, you have none of these. So how do you know you are certain?"

Marissa frowned at him until she realised where her frown was focused, and then frowned down at the stone table for a while instead. "Maybe it is from experience. I can tell you that two plus two is four and be very confident of its accuracy and certainty. It has never failed to be four and I can test it when ever I like."

"Excellent. So how sure are you that two plus two is four?"

"Very."

"And if I gave you two pieces of a child's train track that measured twenty centimetres together and got you to joint them to another two pieces of track, how much track would you have?"

"Fort..." Marissa caught herself. "How much track is lost in the connection?"

"Exactly. How about you are making curtains and you go to the haberdashery and buy four metres of fabric, then get home and find you have been sold two metres plus another two metres of fabric? Or I give you two litres of fresh water, and then add another two litres of salt water. How much salt water would you have? If you paint a wall four times over, how long do you have to wait between each coat to be able to say the wall has four coats of paint. If you waited two minutes less than that, between each painting, how many coats can you call that? Surely more than one." Marissa had continued to frown at the table, so he continued. "If I put seven teaspoons of salt in a little bowl and asked you to tell me how many teaspoons of salt there are, even if I gave you the teaspoon with the bowl of salt, how sure are you that you would answer seven?"

Dr Precarious waited as Marissa continued to stare blankly at the stone table. Finally he interrupted her. "So you are thinking deeply about this now?"

"No, on the contrary, I am trying very hard to not think about it at all. I'm doing my best to follow my feeling of how sure I am that two plus two equals four. I am much less sure now, than when I brought it up. It fluctuates between the new reasoning and my old stubbornness. Slowly less confident with new reasoning and quickly certain with a flash of stubborn certainty." Marissa looked up as she felt Dr Precarious lean forward.

"Yes, yes. Very good. That's exactly how you should feel. I'm pleased that you can monitor your own thoughts at such a distance. It will serve you well. Me well. So you have realised that certainty is a feeling, an emotion?" Marissa nodded with a little hesitance and he continued, "Then you'll accept that, like all emotions, certainty in the brain is expressed and apprehended as a chemical."

"Oh, I doubt that." Dr Precarious' newly stated pleasure in her instantly evaporated and a brooding scowl loomed over his brow, so Marissa continued on quickly. "Surely it would have to be a combination of chemicals. It feels far too complex an emotion to be written into my consciousness with just one."

Marissa studied the subtle shifts in Dr Precarious' expression with interest. The displeasure remained, but the scowl abated, leaving irritation that gradually transitioned into impatience. Then, like an etch-a-sketch that has been given a good shaking, his face reset to its typical nonchalant state.

Not wanting to be second, and certainly not wanting to waste another minute, Marissa stood, gulped the last of her coffee, and set the mug back on the saucer. Then surveying the table, she stacked everything onto the tray that had held the bacon and picked it up, her thighs pressing into the slab maintaining balance while she waited. She looked down and noticed how the bulge of the suit at her crutch hovered over the table, slightly above where it was pressing into the top of her thighs. She felt her skin going pink and starting to prickle and wondered whether this was the agent or embarrassment at looking so exaggerated and exposed. Then a pleasing warm tingle crept up her inner thighs, increasing as it warmed her southern smile. She breathed in deeply and let it out slowly, grateful that Dr Precarious was now getting up.

There were some long pieces of dialogue heading down philosophical roads. Did you enjoy this? Did it bother you?