What's In A Nail File?

It's just before dawn at a secret location. There's a chill in the air and somewhere an animal howls a deep and mournful cry. A woman slips silently out of an armoured vehicle, her head down, dark hair knotted loosely yet perfectly at the nape of her neck. Punching in a 43 digit code she has imprinted in her memory, the door swings open and she enters, her well heeled footsteps echoing off the marble.

Down a flourescent hallway and through another steel door where her retina is scanned, she enters her laboratory. Vast whiteboards cover the walls, their faces swimming in a patchwork of equations and what seem too crude to be blueprints yet more refined than simple sketches. The numbers, letters and brackets are dizzying. To a mere mortal it is both deeply unnerving and overwhelming.

She places her Hermes on the desk beside a titration column where a velvety violet liquid is condensing and trickling and she peers closely before scribbling a note in the adjacent pristine notebook. The letters appear to be symbols. It is Japanese. And yes, it is a Haiku.

Walking over to her towering super-computer the fingers on the woman's left hand start to fly across the keyboard at an astonishing rate as effortless strings of code begin to fill her screen. With her other hand the woman reaches for a mechanical glove which she slips on. A screen to her left springs to life and an aerial view of an operating theatre swiftly comes into focus. A man is lying on the table, his brain exposed, surgeons and nurses are standing by ready for the woman to begin her surgery by satellite link up. As the steady flow of code continues in front of her, so does the rhythmic heartbeat of the patient on who's brain she begins to operate.
A knock on the door. A thick file bearing the MI8 insignia is deposited on her desk by a robot which beats a hasty retreat. 17 seconds later, with a flick of her wrist, her last stitch is tightened and the Alaskan operating theatre erupts with deafening applause. Another life saved. Another space shuttle system designed. Another terrorist plot foiled. And all before 6.30am.

A satisfied smile spreads slowly across her flawless skin and she sighs as she telekinetically draws a double espresso towards her from across the room, smug in her achievements as a London receptionist. Because really, that is what London receptionists do. Ask any Temp Agency in the city. Any temp agent. Who happens to not be lying in a pool of their own blood, my stiletto puncture marks rammed into their ashen temples, inch-deep scratch marks down their faces and sawn off street poles protruding from their ruptured spleens. Because as far as I was aware, being able to identify between a stapler, a punch and a box of Redfern's ringbinders should pretty much crack it. But clearly, in London, this is not the case. It is not the f*cking case at all.