The printer is processing a large job. It is still processing. It is still processing. It is still processing. No one in the office knows who started this print job, and none of the computers appear to have sent it. It is still processing.
Every day, new food appears on the table in the office kitchen - cakes, cookies, donuts, chips, leftover party trays of vegetables and crackers. It’s open to all takers, yet no one is eating but you. When you offer a slice of cake to a coworker, she averts her eyes and hurries away mumbling about “the sacrifice.”
You have invoiced 293,603 sales orders. Every time you look up, the paper stack has grown taller.
Your office recently upgraded every computer. With your brand-new, streamlined software and your sleek black tower boasting processing power 100 times faster than your old beige box, it now takes you twice as long to accomplish anything.
You haven’t seen the IT guy in ten years. You put in a helpdesk ticket anyway.
Every clothing item in your closet has morphed into a pair of khaki pants or a nondescript cardigan. Every time you buy a “cute pencil skirt” or “sharp button-down shirt,” by the time you make it home, it has morphed into a pair of khaki pants or a nondescript cardigan, sitting innocuously in the bag.
The printer is now printing a large job. Every page has numbers on it, neatly arranged in spreadsheets that make sense at first, but begin to twist in your vision the longer you look. The printer has gone through 678 reams of paper and hungers for more.
When you decide to go hunting for the IT guy, you very nearly don’t survive the journey. The server racks blink enigmatically at you, rows upon rows arranged in labyrinthine configurations, and you have lost sight of the door. The room grows steadily hotter the longer you search. You start to wish you’d grabbed an ethernet cable to mark your path through the maze, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The corridors are littered with cables. You find no bodies. The server racks blink at you.
You decide to go on a diet and quit eating the food in the kitchen. Your coworkers begin stopping by your cubicle and personally offering the food to you, desperation growing in their eyes every time you refuse.
You have invoiced 395,203 sales orders. The paper stack is now taller than the length of your arm.
Never venture into the warehouse without an offering. Ever. You hear inhuman cries in the darkness, behind the towering shelves of boxes stretching away into infinity, lit only intermittently by weak fluorescent lights placed high above in the shadowy ceiling. You place your packing slips in the copper basin, and your box of cupcakes (liberated from the office kitchen) on the stone altar, and back away slowly. Never show weakness in the warehouse. Ever.
“The boss is in today,” your coworkers whisper to one another. “The boss is in today.” You have only seen her once in sixteen years, at your interview. Her administrative assistant smiles at you every time you pass by, elongated canines gleaming. The scar on your wrist has not healed since your interview.
When you find the IT guy, he turns to you with hollow eyes. His skin is grey, his flesh wasted, his fingernails long and scaly. Tap, tap, tap on the keyboard. “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” he moans. Tap, tap, tap.
You have invoiced 830,504 sales orders. The paper stack now towers over the walls of your cubicle.
areudirty
andulkaphoto
romaincrisis
annaxmalina
