His various stomachs tied themselves in various knots. Through the pneumatic tubes he thought he could hear the faint cackle of the creature called Budget.

5.

Most workers rely on magic, astrology, and prayer when it comes to appeasing their office appliances. Of course, there are those maintenance creatures who truly understand the inner wheels of a printer, those who know the codes and the wires, but for most, electrical machines run on sorcery.

Murphy’s Law is cosmic office truth. “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong” is one formulation, but it could be restated as follows: “Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.” Whatever has gone right in the past will go wrong when it matters most. Or, put yet another way, just when you think you’ve got a system, the system has got you. These mysterious machines will betray you, not out of malevolence, but because you have not learned to behave by their rules or see their intrinsic nature.

Alfonzo was trying to force the printer to act based on a zoomorphic understanding. He thought of the printer as a fellow animal who ate paper and drank ink. He had told himself a story in which the printer was, like him, a bored basement-dweller hungry for plant matter.

Alfonzo ransacked drawers and shelves for blank paper. And every ten seconds the machine beeped. Alfonzo paced around his basement. He sighed and twitched. He stared at the Aztek Howtek printer and sighed again. He studied the already printed portion of his dissertation, the first 786 pages. He hummed to himself, Calm down, wool for brains. But how could he? He had no more paper.

There was a lump of wheatgrass cake from breakfast in Alfonzo’s left cheek and he was working it hard. The fresh chlorophyll had gone, and all that was left was a stringy, cardboard-tasting mass. Not that he minded; chewing helped with his anxiety. A Black Cat brand ciggie would have helped more, but he’d quit. No, he hummed to himself, smoking is bad. Ugh.