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Poor printer, I say. All work and no play. So what's your favorite food?
Mark looks at me as if I just fell off a tree.
What?
This is me trying to maintain a viable relationship with reality. But I know I can't say that out loud.
We are looking at paper emerge from the printer at a jaw-dropping two pages per second, its buzz comforting, something useful to focus on to avoid the danger of a meaningful conversation. Technology seems to be good at that. Giving us excuses to avoid actually knowing anyone while pretending that we know everyone, I mean.
I say, I asked what's your favorite food.
French fries, he says without flinching.
Ah, I say, Gen X all the way eh?
He doesn't reply, stares blankly back at me.
Cooked how? I say then, Oven? Fry-Pan?
Burger King.
Oh.
Really? I say.
I was looking for something a bit more rustic in his answer, but he's oblivious to it.
They rock! he says, and looks back at another page that has just landed on the pile.
In case you're wondering, it's not that we really need to print anything. It's just a test. A test of the printer, a test of Mark's ability to understand how a little icon with a printer in it works, whatever. Wasteful you say? Tell that to the people that drive a 12-cylinder 6-liter 4x4 SUV to a store that is three blocks away. Oh, right, they recycle aluminum cans. I forgot.
Mark's indoctrination seems to be proceeding apace without much effort required on my part. In only ten minutes he has already made three idiotic comments about how great the office is, how great everyone is, or how great Eddie is.
This is great, Mark says suddenly, I love the carpeting.
Make that four idiotic comments.
I love the carpeting? What the hell does that mean? How did we allow semantics to sink so low that loving a carpet is not only allowed but expected?
You don't get it, you might say.
That's the point I was trying to make, I might reply then.
Mark keeps eyeing the pages hungrily as the printer spits them, one by one. Reports, studies, memos. Corporate information.
Meaningless trash.
A couple of days ago I was wondering if a future archaeologist might find anything at all to study from our time, since our society's future rubble will be as evanescent as our pop-idol of the day.
Now I know. They will find something.
Garbage. They will find endless piles of garbage, neatly compacted and buried so that we don't really have to look at it. Hole after hole filled with trash: plastic, chairs, rubber, old car stereos. Page after page filled with irrelevant ideas. Printouts of emails and websites. In a word: bureaucracy. That's our legacy to the future.
Well, okay, that, and global warming.
I am beginning to fear that our silent takeover will be useless if we don't do something truly radical.
But what?
Mark, removed from my concerns, suddenly cries out, Yes!
What? I say.
It's finished, he says.
I look down at the printer, I imagine it catching its breath and looking up at us wearily. I look back at Mark.
We've been here only five minutes, I say, It wasn't that long was it?
An eternity, Mark says. An eternity! What's next?
I think, Exactly, that's what I was wondering.
I can see he is truly excited. An eternity! He repeats.
And, suddenly, I have my answer.
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5:22:41 PM 
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