Dispatches from Microhell

Dispatch: The Biometric Jam

Cass had only meant to reprint the invoice. A harmless duplicate. She waited after pressing the copy button. A sensor next to the screen blinked three times. Blue, red, red. The screen cleared and a new prompt appeared. “Blood Sample” read out plainly. Her stomach dropped.

Cass looked around the empty former break room. It had been repurposed in a time before memory to be a copy room. It was just her and the printer. And some loose paper on the floor. And a folding chair in the corner. And now a little needle which produced itself from within a slot beneath the main screen.

She touched the back arrow on the screen, it disappeared in response. The needle protruded another fraction of an inch. The sensor blinked twice, more urgently. Cass hit the power button for the whole thing. The screen went off but the needle remained. After a moment the sound of antique technology jingles echoed out of it as it started back up. The screen now read:

Add Sample / Escalation

Cass’s gut bottomed out at this point. The printer whirred. She leaned in close to the needle. Is there a work around? A soft mechanism to stomp on? After losing a few beads of sweat, she raised her hand and let a finger hover over the needle. It wasn’t large. Just a pinprick.

Beneath her horror was something worse, understanding. She had been working here since…some time ago. Escalation? To management? She had met someone unfortunate enough to warn her about that. Rhonda was in the same dorm as her. The repercussions had cost her four days.

Cass lifted the printer lid. She stared at the copy she no longer wanted to make with severe resentment. Something caught her eye in the near left corner, underneath the scanner glass. Is that? Small. Beige. Fresh. A false finger. Hopefully false. Underneath the scanning bed. Cass let her body relax in a full cold shiver as the sweat served to release the heat. There wasn’t always a workaround, and they weren’t planning on doing nothing with her blood.

Cass started to feel around the glasses edges. She knew there would be several more obstacles, but she was laser focused on that finger now. She spent ten calm minutes working the grooves of the plastic and edges of the entire machine looking for a point of entry. At the twenty minute mark she was pulling at panels with adequate potential force. By minute thirty she had stopped begging and began planning her assault. After years or decades or maybe only hours she had been in charge of enough submissions to know she needed to clear that alert without obliterating the machine. It was the alert system they tracked. Not only, not evenly, but if she failed, it would boil down to that.

Cass hopped gently up on top of the industrial printer machine. She grasped the scanner lid in both hands and leveraged a foot directly on the scanner glass. She pulled with gritted teeth until the hinges warped enough to break away. The force of it breaking away unbalanced her enough to crack the glass under her foot. “Ah.” She said plainly, hopping down.

The printer lid still served a purpose. She used the corner of it to pry the glass away from itself to create a wide opening. Popped her hand in with finesse and received her bounty. A dry severed finger. She didn’t say anything, only allowed a guttural rolling sigh out as breath.

One last impression of the object before testing it. Cass held it close to her face and reluctantly smelled it. Typical human. It smelled real. She jerked her head back and away sharply. Cass held down an instant urge to vomit. A gag tried to volunteer but she squashed it with irrepressible stoicism. The second one made it out. And the third.

Through distress her grip didn't alter on the finger. This place was a microcosm of hellish impulses and dirty tricks. Hold it too tight? It would probably crumble. Too soft? It could run. With an even hand and a mind doing its best she started to aim the finger at the needle.

The needle retracted a fraction as she approached. She stopped. With her free hand she gently held the body of the needle as tightly as possible. Then she gently held the finger to it. The printer whirred greedily. Eventually the screen read out:

SUBMISSION COMPLETE