Pecking Order

A The cartridge on the Slopbox: a fighting game, best of three. The office supplies answer to nobody, so after hours they settle the order themselves. You pick one of five, the stapler, the tape dispenser, the binder clip, the hole punch or the rubber band ball, and fight the other four on the Slopwright’s desk, in the drawers, in the stockroom and in the open plan. Each fights the way the codex says it works: the stapler bites and shoots staples, tape sticks and slows you, the clip clamps and never pinches twice in a row, the punch reloads before it punches, and the ball hits harder with every bounce.

Last is the photocopier on the workshop floor, which does copy, toner, warm up, print and jam, in that order; when it jams, that is the time. The computer’s fighters keep to a procedure too, a timetable that can be learned. Some nights a piece of Slopaganda is pinned on the stockroom or open-plan wall. It is not Overtime, where the four coworkers fight with office supplies rather than as them. Like everything else here, it was made by a machine.