The neon sign advertising 'Mirin Flirkal's Political Party' could be seen from a long distance away. Rosie wove her way towards it between the pedestrians, and its size increased disproportionately as the distance decreased. Rosie's size, too, diminished disproportionately relative to the dimensions of the sign, and when she stood right in front of it she felt tiny and futile. The sign towered towards the sky in dramatic perspective. She went into the building. She goes up the stairs to the first floor as directed by notice-boards on the walls. The wallpaper in the corridors is all printed with Flirkal's name. Arrows lead her to a door with the inscribed command, „Ring the Bell!" At the rattle of the bell, the gossipy face of an older woman appears in the doorway. She spends a few moments praising Flirkal and his party, and then invites Rosie into the office. Rosie stepped in and said nothing when the woman pulled out a tape measure and put it round her waist. „Sixtyeight!" the woman crowed. A shadow stirred in the gloom of a corner of the office. „Waist - 68 - I'm taking it down", a crackling female voice indicated. The second woman stepped out of the gloom into a strip of bright bluish light from the window. She was gripping a sharp pencil - a pencil not a ball-point - in a rather aggressive way, as if she wanted to stab the measurements rather than just note them down. „Waist sixtyeight, titties ninety," the gossipy woman announced in appreciative tones, and immediately slid the tape around Rosie's bottom. The pencil squeaked on the paper. „ And what about her bum?", asks the woman with the pencil. „Bum - eightynine", replies the talkative one. "My name is Rosie Shetkova," says Rosie, highly embarrassed, in the hope of forcing the women to observe the usual degrees of social distance. The hope is vain. "Never mind," the woman with pencil said soothingly, "you're better off than Svatava here," and pointed a mocking finger at the woman with the tape. "Svatava Turdova - tee hee!" Rosie had registered that the women are addressing her in the familiar form reserved for close friends and kids. But before she had time to decide whether to accept or reject the jovial tone of the dialogue, the door opened and a fat man rushed into the room. He puffed for a moment, while his bulging little eyes took their time to decipher the meaning of the new coloured dots on his retina and for his retinas hidden behind his bulging little eyes it took a while to decipher the meaning of the new colourful smears and specks. Rosie could almost have traced the route of the neural signals on their unusually slow journey to his brain. Finally the computer in his skull spat out a positive result. He gave a slow but broad grin. His thought processes speeded up. „I'm Flirkal," he beamed and shook Rosie's hand.