The office of Miller & Son Logistics was a beige-carpeted purgatory of fluorescent lights and humming air conditioning. Usually, I blended into the background like a dust mite. Today, I was the only man in the building wearing heavy leather driving gloves while typing.
"Arthur? Why are you wearing... are those for a motorcycle?"
It was Sarah from HR. She was leaning over my cubicle wall, holding a stack of files.
"Eczema," I blurted out, my voice an octave too high. "Vicious flare-up. Highly contagious. The doctor said if I take these off, the air in the room might actually dissolve."
Sarah blinked, her eyes tracking my hands. "Right. Well, the boss wants the quarterly inventory report by ten. And he needs it printed. Hard copies, Arthur. He's feeling old-school today."
I felt a cold sweat prickle my neck. Hard copies. Paper. The ultimate trap for a man who was currently a biological Xerox machine.
I managed to get the report finished using the tip of my gloved finger to hit the keys. It took forever, and I looked like a bird pecking at a worm, but I succeeded. No extra keyboards. No ghost monitors.
I stood up and headed to the communal printer. It was a massive, temperamental beast that everyone hated. I stood before it, clutching my single, leather-protected USB drive.
I reached out to grab the paper tray. My glove, slick and old, slipped. My bare thumb grazed the cold, metallic edge of the printer.
Zing.
The tingle didn't just crawl; it jumped. It felt like I'd licked a 9-volt battery.
The printer groaned. A second paper tray began to extrude from the side like a growing tumor. Then, a second control panel. The machine began to shudder, its internal fans screaming as it tried to compute the fact that it now had twice the mechanical parts it was designed for.
"No, no, no," I whispered, frantically shoving my hand back into the glove.
Vrrr-clack!
The machine started printing. Not my report. It started printing thousands of blank pages from the ghost tray. They were translucent, shimmering sheets that flowed out like a waterfall of light. They hit the floor and piled up, but as they touched the carpet, they began to fade.
"Arthur! What's that noise?" my boss, Mr. Henderson, shouted from his office.
I stood in the middle of a blizzard of evaporating paper. "Just a jam, sir! The... uh... the toner is a bit aggressive today!"
I grabbed the original printer, trying to steady it. The "Primary" duplicate—the second control panel—stayed solid. It was permanent. I had just created a three-thousand-dollar piece of non-functional office art.
I sat in the conference room, my gloved hands folded tightly in my lap. I was the "One-Twin" limit away from a total breakdown.
Henderson was pacing. "We need to cut costs. We need more of everything for less money. We need—Arthur, are you even listening?"
He slammed a heavy, glass paperweight onto the table right in front of me. It was a beautiful, solid sphere of crystal with the company logo etched inside.
"I'm listening, sir," I said, my voice trembling.
"Then take those ridiculous gloves off and sign these vouchers. I can't have 'motorcycle eczema' on official company documents."
"I really shouldn't—"
"Sign them, Pringle! Now!"
He shoved a pen toward me. I reached out, my mind racing. If I touched the pen, I'd have two pens. If I touched the paperweight...
As I reached for the pen, Henderson's phone rang. He turned his back for a split second. My glove caught on a splinter on the wooden table, pulling back just enough to expose my palm. I tried to pull away, but my hand brushed the glass paperweight.
The tingle was violent. It felt like a physical weight leaving my body.
Thud.
A second crystal paperweight appeared. It was perfect. It was permanent.
I stared at it. Two identical glass spheres sat on the table. If Henderson turned around, I was dead. I grabbed the "extra" one—the duplicate—and shoved it into my briefcase just as he hung up.
"Well?" he barked, turning back. "Sign it."
I signed. My hand was shaking so hard it looked like a cardiogram of a heart attack.
"Good," Henderson said, picking up his paperweight. He paused. He looked at the spot where the second one had been. He squinted at the faint, lingering shimmer in the air—the "ghost" of the third, fourth, and fifth paperweights that had tried to form before I pulled away.
"Is the air... vibrating in here?" he asked, waving a hand through the fading ripples of reality.
"Static electricity," I said, standing up so fast my chair hit the wall. "The carpets. Very high voltage today. I'll just... take my eczema and go."
I bolted for the door. I had a permanent crystal paperweight in my bag, a double-headed printer in the hallway, and the distinct feeling that my leather gloves were the only thing keeping the entire city from becoming a hall of mirrors.
As I hit the lobby, I saw the black sedan from earlier parked right out front. The man with the narrow eyes was stepping out, holding a device that looked suspiciously like a Geiger counter.
And it was pointing right at me.