Chapter 5 : The Copy Machine
The copy machine jammed at 7:52 AM on Thursday.
I had exactly eighteen minutes before first bell. I needed thirty copies of the Friday reading materials. The machine had decided—through whatever mechanical logic governed its ancient internal systems—that this was the moment to protest its working conditions.
I pressed the buttons the manual suggested. I opened the panels the diagrams indicated. I followed the unjam procedure with the careful attention of someone who had spent seven years maintaining library equipment that predated my birth.
The machine responded by printing thirty-seven partial copies of a permission slip from 2019.
The copies emerged one after another, each showing approximately two-thirds of a field trip authorization for a museum visit that had happened five years ago. The ink smeared across the bottom third of every page. The machine hummed with what I chose to interpret as satisfaction.
"That's not supposed to be in there," I said to no one.
The machine printed a thirty-eighth partial copy.
Melissa Schemmenti appeared in the doorway.
She assessed the situation in under five seconds—the jammed machine, the pile of useless 2019 permission slips, my expression of controlled frustration.
"Move," she said.
I moved.
Melissa produced a paper clip from her pocket. She bent it into a shape I couldn't identify. She inserted it into a part of the machine I hadn't known existed. She made two precise movements with her wrist.
The jam cleared.
The machine hummed differently—a functional sound rather than a protest.
"There's a ghost file in the queue from 2019," Melissa said. "Someone never deleted it. Every time the machine backs up, it prints. IT won't fix it because they say it's a document management issue. Document management won't fix it because they say it's a hardware issue." She retrieved her paper clip, unbent it, and returned it to her pocket. "The paper clip works."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Learn where the paper clip goes."
She left.
I stood in the copy room, surrounded by thirty-seven partial permission slips and the functional hum of a machine that had been fixed by a technique I would need to document before I forgot the details. Melissa had helped me without warmth, without expectation of gratitude—pure competence transaction, problem to solution, no social debt incurred.
"That's how Abbott works," I realized. "The staff survives through accumulated institutional knowledge that doesn't transfer through training manuals. The paper clip isn't official. It's just what works."
I copied my Friday materials. Thirty pages, no jams, the machine operating as intended.
Gregory Eddie appeared in the doorway as I was gathering my copies.
"Mr. Chase."
"Mr. Eddie."
Gregory entered the copy room with the measured pace of someone who had already decided the purpose of this conversation. He positioned himself between me and the door—not blocking it, but establishing a geometry that suggested I would need to walk past him to leave.
"Where did you complete your certification program?" he asked.
The question was professional. The tone was neutral. There was no accusation in it—only the specific curiosity of someone who had noticed an irregularity and decided to investigate.
"I studied education extensively," I said. "Multiple formats. Practical application is newer."
This was technically accurate. I had studied Abbott Elementary through four seasons of documented instruction. I had watched classroom management, parent communication, student engagement, and institutional navigation demonstrated by professionals who were very good at their jobs. I had never implemented any of it before arriving in this body.
Gregory nodded.
He did not ask a follow-up question.
"That's the pattern," I recognized. "Gregory not asking follow-up means Gregory has already decided to look the answer up himself. He has a question. He asked it. My answer didn't satisfy him. Now he'll research."
"Thank you for your time," Gregory said.
He left.
I stood in the copy room with my Friday materials and the knowledge that Gregory Eddie was now actively investigating my credentials. The certification I carried was legitimate—Aldric Chase had earned it, whoever he had been before I arrived—but the documentation might not match the person Gregory was observing.
The system had made me accidentally competent too many times. The World Notifications had broadcast successes that substitutes shouldn't achieve. Gregory, who was professionally methodical and genuinely invested in Abbott's integrity, would find the gap between my file and my performance.
"I need to know exactly what my credential documentation says," I thought. "Before Gregory finds it."
My afternoon class began at 1:15.
The Friday materials plan ran fifteen minutes long. I had misjudged the pacing—the reading portion I'd intended to stretch across twenty minutes needed to be cut to five.
Marcus finished his worksheet in four minutes.
He spent the remaining eleven minutes writing something on a separate piece of paper with the focused intensity I was beginning to recognize as his default mode. I circulated through the room, checking other students' progress, redirecting attention where needed, doing the ambient management work that teaching actually consisted of.
When I reached Marcus's desk, I saw what he'd been writing.
A critical review of the worksheet's question design.
"Question 4 uses ambiguous phrasing," his note read. "'What does the main character learn?' could mean the lesson the author intended or the information the character receives. These are different things. Question 7 asks for prediction but provides no textual basis for prediction. Question 12 duplicates the concept from Question 3 but with harder vocabulary, which doesn't test comprehension—it tests vocabulary."
I collected the worksheet. I collected the critical review.
"Is this disruption or legitimate feedback?" I asked Marcus.
He considered the question with the same systematic attention he applied to everything.
"Both," he said. "The worksheet is bad. I'm also not supposed to write on extra paper during class time."
"The review is accurate."
"I know."
I filed the review in my planning folder. If Marcus was going to critique my instructional materials, I was going to use the critique.
The end-of-day bell rang at 3:15.
Mr. Johnson appeared at the copy room door as I was collecting the last of my materials. He refilled the paper tray—an action I hadn't requested, hadn't even known needed doing—with the unhurried efficiency of someone who maintained systems nobody else noticed.
"Things that stay working need tending," he said to no one in particular.
He left.
I gathered my materials. I walked toward the exit. The hallway was empty, the lights already dimming in the sections the custodial team had finished cleaning.
The recycling bin near the copy room still held the thirty-seven partial permission slips from this morning's jam. Most of them were face-down in the bin, their 2019 text hidden.
One was face-up.
On the back of it, in handwriting I didn't recognize, someone had written a name: Okafor.
I stopped.
The name meant nothing to me. It wasn't in my memory of the show—no Okafor appeared in any episode I could recall, no staff member or student or parent with that name had registered in my four-season watch history.
But someone had written it on the back of a ghost file from 2019. Someone had handled that permission slip before it entered the machine's memory, before it became the jam that haunted every backup cycle.
"Who is Okafor?" I thought.
The permission slip sat in the recycling bin with the other thirty-six, waiting to be collected and processed and forgotten.
I took it.
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