Sloppy Joe

Sloppy Joe lives in the Tools folder on the desk and only comes out when he is called. He walks along the bottom of the desk and the tops of the windows, sits on their title bars with his legs over the edge, naps when nobody is about, and now and then says something: what the picture on the wall is, what a window is, the time, a line from this codex or from the Slopwright’s history, or a hum of one of Tinny’s tunes. He is not tidy: the bun sits squashed and askew, sauce runs down one side, bits of filling fall off him as he walks, and where he stands a drip lands and dries. He is told where to stand and how much to talk, and remembers nothing else. Told to go away, he goes.

The Slopwright made him at lunch, out of what was on the plate, and he has not stopped talking since. It was the same lunch the soup left by the window. He is not the one in the showroom, which moves only while you aren’t looking and comes looking for you in the jungle. He is machine-made, bun and all, and says so.