Dear A4: Episode 1

Dear A4,


I can’t take my job anymore.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty good at my job and it’s not as if people at work don’t notice. They say I’m great, talented even. So I’m definitely being recognised, definitely being appreciated.

The thing is, I don’t find it very rewarding. All I do is make copies of stuff. I mean, they’re perfect copies. They’re so perfect you can’t tell them from the original. Some of this stuff isn’t even – in my humble opinion – worth copying. All the ideas, these ‘business proposals’ and ‘marketing plans,’ they all look the same. And that was even before I copied em! I always thought I’d be doing something more...creative, ya know?

But worse of all, and this is the most horrible part, I think I’ve been an unwitting accomplice to crime! I mean, I think I’ve been party to some horrible, horrible things. Fraud definitely, theft of intellectual property…but I think, oh God, I think I might be a murderer!

Those poor reams of paper. Hundreds of them, every day. I tried to stop. At first, I’d jam up every now and again, or fake an ‘out of paper’ message. But then they kept saying what a great copier I was and how they’d never seen any model so fast, so smooth and it just felt so good.

I’m trapped.
They love me and I love that they love me and I can’t stop.
I’m afraid to stop.
I’m afraid that I can’t.
But I don’t want to go on like this.
Every time someone makes another copy and I send another new piece of paper – freshly loaded into the tray, newbies – I die a little inside.

Please help me, A4.
Please tell me what to do.


Sincerely,

Zeerox.