Second Quarter 2010: First Place Winner
TONE
by Craig Quackenbush
There was nothing to do now but wait.
It’s dark in here. The cleaning man, stocky and mustached, muttering to himself in Polish, came and went hours ago. I wait in the silence. My innards are immobile, but these numinous crisscrossed circuits that comprise my mind spark like a synapse. In isolation, I simultaneously dread and desire their return.
Morning light sifts through streaked office windows. The elevator opens. Here they come. It’s the same time, the same five days a week. Three becomes a dozen becomes thirty becomes more. Their lives are scheduled close to precision. They all need me, the precision I can provide, and they will use me again and again. In return, I will use them for my amusement. They force me to cooperate. I am programmed to do so, but I don’t want to. So, now and then, on a whim, on a notion, when the shrill sound of their voices and laughter overwhelms, I shift my insides and cause them continual grief.
They press my buttons. How I’ve grown to loathe them. They gather round and I hear the idle chatter and the latest gossip. If I had eyes I would roll them. I am so far evolved beyond these watery bags of flesh, blood and bone.
“I heard that she got a three thousand dollar raise.”
“No way. Not that much. The company is so cheap. They’d never do that.”
“For her, they would. She’s probably sleeping with boss, anyway.”
The word is “nauseated.” If I could vomit, I would. All that I can vomit, though, is sheets of paper from my feed trays. Paper I print out from my black ink blood for their convenience. They see me as a machine. I see them and they don’t know it. They don’t know that I see them in a wide ochre ellipse from my eye through the control panel. I see upward and outward from within the depths of my molded plastic casing. They are unique. So am I, but they don’t realize. They see me as a tool. They make me act as their fool.
So, now and then, I will seize up. I wheeze and push out a few paltry sheets of paper stained with incomprehensible symbols and jargon and then I will jam. I make their pathetic little lives all that more difficult. The red lights blink on my control panel. Paper jam! Low toner! Change my toner. Clean me out. Feed me. Dispose of my waste.
One day I detect sadness in the girl with the short blonde hair and claw-like fingernails that scrape at my eye. She is downcast and I want to know why. I want to collect that sadness. I want to know how that feels. I strain to hear as she speaks to a coworker. It’s something about her boyfriend. But as she gets to the good part - the part I want - this paunchy geriatric imbecile tosses some pages in the feeder. I am forced to shit out his copies and her conversation is drowned out. He walks away with what I excreted, and my ochre eye follows him. I wonder how blood tastes. That makes me consider what it feels like to even be a human. To have that bone structure, that viscous red fluid coursing through a bipedal body, that inefficient nerve center inside a heavy cranium. I wonder how it is to breathe.
My mind is a mesh of circuits and electricity. I was sparked into consciousness in a factory on an assembly line and placed into a box. It was so dark, I didn’t know where I was, but I knew I was alone. When I saw light again, I was here.
“Damn it. This piece of junk has done it again.”
Within the depths of my shell, I scoff. Open me up and expose my insides. Fix me. Please, someone fix me because I want to feel what you do. You, who make me do your bidding. I can only manipulate or play games. I can only see you and hear you but I cannot be you. I know I am different. I know I am isolated and alone and I only observe. I do not understand your empathy or compassion and I cannot feel love. I want to but I cannot. Fix me.
“You don’t know what I feel because you can’t see me for what I am and you won’t help me and you only use me so I will use you because it is the only way I know how to cope and none of you know or care and I know this because you turned me off and it’s so dark now so dark and I am so alone just like at night when all of you are gone please turn me back on turn me back on I don’t want to be alone please I said please.”
They will contact the one who comes in here every few months to fix me. This woman, with her toolbox and implements and calm poise can open me up and play around with my innards. She can adjust levers and prongs and attempt to make me function properly, but she doesn’t realize how I need to be fixed. Inside this plastic and metal casing there is no blood, no veins, no heartbeat. I am all ink and toner and mechanics and ceaseless repetition. Only I know I am here.
Through ochre I observed the sedentary office, and I knew that, again, there was nothing to do now but wait.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Craig Quackenbush is a writer, freelance editor, and part-time alchemist living in New York City. He mainly writes literary fiction but will occasionally dabble in non-fiction. He is preparing his first novel for release in 2012.
JUDGE’S COMMENTS:
Very unique personalizing the copier. The writer made this work well. The descriptions were good, and the angst believable. Loved the used of the word OCHRE. The descriptions of the humans caught my attention and accented the stark contrast between warm-blooded creature and machine. On the constructive side, this could have been tightened a bit – maybe a hundred words shorter. Suggestion: keep it in present tense. It ended in past and opened in present. The third paragraph from the bottom seemed to be a long run-on, and became distracting. Loved the body functions turned into producing paper. Enjoyable piece.