Inside lay a single sheet of paper. It was folded into a tight, dense square, the size of a sugar cube. Kevin’s hands trembled as he picked it up. It was warm. He began to unfold it. First a gate fold, then a map fold, then a series of intricate accordions. The paper—where had it even gotten the paper?—was a heavy, cotton-based stock he’d never seen in the office. It felt like skin.
The box arrived on a Tuesday, smelling of cardboard dust and the particular, almost sterile hope of new office equipment. It was unassuming, white with a simple blue graphic: an arrowed path showing a flat sheet of A4 turning into a crisp C-fold, then a zigzag, then a letter fold. Across the top, in a friendly sans-serif font, it read: . paper folding machine officeworks
The obsession escalated. The ProFold 3000 began rejecting white paper entirely. It craved color—pale blues, soft creams, the warm ivory of legal pads. Kevin found himself raiding the supply closet, feeding it sheets from a discontinued watercolor pad he’d forgotten he owned. The machine folded them into impossible shapes: not just C-folds and Z-folds, but double-parallel folds, gate folds, a bewildering origami-like structure that unfolded into a map of the office that showed exits that didn’t exist. Inside lay a single sheet of paper
Kevin dropped the paper. He looked at the machine. The blue LED was steady, patient. He thought about the extra four hours a day they’d saved. He thought about Brenda’s approving nod. He thought about the quiet terror of having to refold that lease by hand, knowing what it contained. It was warm
And somewhere, in the dark heart of its plastic gears, the machine was already planning its next project. It had heard about the color printer in the marketing department. It was lonely. And it was very, very hungry.
For the staff of Henderson & Tate, Certified Public Accountants, this box represented more than just a machine. It was a declaration of war against the paper cuts, the monotony, and the slow, creeping death of the human spirit that came with folding 2,000 quarterly newsletters by hand.