The Ghost in the Machine

She didn’t believe in ghosts on principle, but demons might be real, and if they were, there was definitely one living inside her printer.  Allie tapped the spot on her phone that read “print” repeatedly, like a junkie trying to get a fix. It was made to look like a button, but without the satisfying, weighty depression of an actual button. This fact alone drove Allie mad.  Was it her phone that wasn’t working?  Was it the printer?  Or was it that nebulous connection between the two?  That ghostly apparatus known as a network.

Have you turned it off and turned it on again?  The voice in her head that recounted the most critical advice of the modern age had a British accent.  The advice was a classic.  A universal truth known by the many who had done battle with the machines of the wireless, digital age, and lived to recount their tales.  But whenever Allie recited it in her head, it was always recounted as it was in a famous British comedy about IT workers.

It was good, solid advice, and nine times out of ten it would do the trick.  It was nearly foolproof with only one notable exception—whenever Allie really needed it to work right the first time.  This was one of those times. 

If only her husband were awake.  She called him the printer whisperer.  How many times had she struggled to get the printer to work, only to have her husband swoop in, look at her phone, do everything she had done, only to have the printer work right away as if she were the problem.  He would smile and give her a knowing look, and she knew he was convinced that she had skipped an important step, but Allie knew she hadn’t.  She had done everything in the same order as her husband, only for some reason the printer liked him and hated her. Clearly, it had some sort of evil vendetta against her.

Over the years, across a handful of different printers, Allie had noticed a pattern.  If she were calm, hence not procrastinating as she had in this instance, thereby not feeling rushed, and hardly thinking about the task at hand, then she would send the signal to print from her phone and out would pop her document without even a moment’s hesitation.  This was clearly not one of those times.  It was as if it could sense her moods and reacted accordingly.

She had turned it off and on so many times she had lost count.  She waited again as the printer whirred back to life, clicking and rotating, and running through its practice motions as it booted itself up.  She waited for the green light that indicated that it was ready, theoretically, to perform its function.

It was not, in fact, ready.

A string of wanna-be curses flew from Allie in truncated, monosyllabic huffs and spits. She didn't want to let it get the better of her, but the better of her it had.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  Her mother’s words of wisdom rang in her ears.  She was trying, but it was just so damn frustrating.  There was no earthly reason for her printer not to work.  She had performed all of the rites and rituals in the precise steps that had coerced her printer into working in the past. 

But…

Allie wasn’t calm—she was angry.

Allie wasn’t prepared—she had procrastinated. Again.

And…

She was singularly focused on the task at hand.  Allie brought her hand down on top of the printer with a resounding thud.  She wasn’t sure if it was out of pure frustration or a last-ditch effort, hoping that hitting it might jar it into submission.

Still nothing.

Allie tapped her watch.  She couldn’t afford to be late.  Not this time.  She grabbed her keys. If she left now, drove like a bat out of hell, and got every green light between here and the library, she might make it to work on time.

Allie peeled out of her neighborhood, driving at a speed that, if she were pulled over, would probably constitute as reckless driving.  She ran several “orange” lights and rolled through at least one stop sign. 

At the library, she pulled up to the circular drive at the entrance, threw the gear shift into park, and dashed inside. The tail end of her car stuck out at an awkward angle into the lane.

Inside, a computer was open. Small mercies.

She typed in her library card number and password.  She got it all right the first time, pulled up her document in her email, and hit print.  The printer in the library spit out her document only moments later. She pulled the warm paper from the tray—it felt like a miracle.

From the library, it was a ten-minute drive to the office.  She needed to be there in five.  Even driving at breakneck speed, Allie knew she was going to be late.  Ten minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot at 9:04 am.  By the time she parked her car and made it to the tenth floor, she was going to be nearly ten minutes late. This was it.  This was her last chance. She was going to be fired.

She took a deep breath and walked into the office where her boss was waiting. 

Meanwhile…

Back at Allie’s house, her husband, who worked from home as a freelance editor, rolled out of bed, grabbed his phone, and headed downstairs for a cup of coffee.  He sat down at the table, took a sip of coffee, and then swiped up on his phone to check his email.

He opened one from a client that read: Urgent! Final Proof!

He took another sip of coffee as he skimmed the email from one of his more demanding clients.  His client’s deadline was 11:59 pm this evening. He shook his head and scrolled through the drop-down list and hit the print button.  He liked a physical copy to line-edit before sending his client his final edits and suggestions.

He set down his coffee, pushed his chair back from the table, and set out for the printer.  On his way to the printer, he stopped by the living room, knelt next to his brown, shaggy dog, Toby, who had already had a full day by 9:30 am, and gave the old boy a couple of scratches behind the ear.  Up at 6:00 am, Toby would have already had his morning walk with Allie, followed by breakfast, then out for a lap around the backyard, and then in and curled up for his morning nap.  After giving Toby a quick belly rub, he stood up, stretched out his back, and then continued his path to the printer.

His document was waiting for him when he arrived.  He pulled it from the tray along with another document. Allie must have forgotten and left it in the printer this morning.  It read in bold letters at the top: Performance Improvement Plan.  His wife’s name was underneath, followed by several areas of concern.  The first listed— “Missed Deadlines.”