Howard would like it noted that none of the following is accurate.

  He would also like it noted that accuracy was never the objective.

  These events did not happen in this order.Some did not happen at all.Several happened simultaneously and were misunderstood by everyone involved.

  No conclusions should be drawn.No lessons should be learned.Any resemblance to real people, systems, or vending machines behaving correctly is purely coincidental.

  If you are looking for clarity, you are in the wrong place.If you are looking for truth, wait until Monday.If you are looking for entertainment, proceed.

  Howard did not authorize this account.Howard did not prevent it either.

  ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  The problem started with the vending machine.

  Not because the vending machine did anything dramatic, like explode or dispense forty-seven burritos or begin speaking in German. No, it did something far stranger.

  It accepted Howard’s dollar bill on the first try.

  Jake watched it happen like he’d just seen gravity blink.

  Howard fed the bill in once. The machine accepted it politely. No rejection. No crumpling. No aggressive spitting it back out like it was offended by the concept of money.

  Howard pressed a button. A soda dropped. Howard caught it with one hand, nodded politely to no one in particular, and walked out of the break room.

  The door closed.

  Silence lingered for half a second too long.

  Jake turned slowly toward Trent.

  Trent turned slowly toward Jake.

  They both looked at the vending machine.

  Jake lowered his voice. “Okay.”

  Trent nodded gravely. “Okay.”

  Jake pointed at the door Howard had just exited through. “So.”

  “So,” Trent agreed.

  Jake leaned forward, elbows on the table. “We’re not not talking about this anymore, right?”

  Trent shook his head. “Oh no. We are absolutely talking about this.”

  Jake grabbed his chair and spun it around backward, straddling it dramatically like he was about to confess something on daytime television. “Theory one,” he said. “CIA.”

  Trent didn’t hesitate. “Black-site CIA.”

  “Retired,” Jake added. “But not retired-retired.”

  “They never retire,” Trent said. “They just stop existing publicly.”

  Jake snapped his fingers. “Yes. Explains the calm. Explains why he already knows who’s lying.”

  “And why the robots don’t argue with him,” Trent added.

  “They don’t listen,” Jake corrected. “They comply.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Trent’s eyes widened. “That’s better.”

  Jake nodded. “I know.”

  Jake leaned in. “Theory two. Super-hacker.”

  Trent waved it in like it was obvious. “Obviously.”

  “But not hoodie-hacker,” Jake said. “Old-school. Pre-cloud.”

  “Knows where the bodies are buried because he built the database,” Trent said.

  “Still has access to things nobody remembers exist,” Jake added.

  They both looked at the vending machine.

  Jake lowered his voice. “Theory three. Quiet billionaire.”

  Trent frowned. “No.”

  Jake held up a hand. “Hear me out. He doesn’t care about money.”

  “That doesn’t make him a billionaire,” Trent said.

  “It makes him act like one,” Jake replied. “Which is worse.”

  Trent thought about it. “Okay, but why county IT?”

  Jake shrugged. “Witness protection.”

  Trent froze. “Oh.”

  Jake nodded. “Faked his death.”

  Trent whispered, “Or deaths.”

  Jake’s eyes widened. “Plural deaths.”

  “Different industries,” Trent said. “Different names.”

  “Different tax brackets,” Jake added.

  Trent stood abruptly. “We need a board.”

  Jake blinked. “We do not.”

  Trent gestured at the whiteboard on the wall that currently held a grocery list and a badly drawn bunny. “We absolutely do.”

  Jake stood. “We absolutely do.”

  Trent wrote HOWARD at the top in block letters and drew a box around it like it was radioactive.

  Jake took the marker. “Theory four. He’s not human.”

  Trent froze. “Explain.”

  Jake gestured vaguely. “No social media. No visible hobbies. Eats the same lunch every day. Labels his cables.”

  Trent shuddered. “That’s not human behavior.”

  Jake pointed at the board. “Exactly.”

  Trent added NOT HUMAN in red and underlined it twice.

  Jake continued. “Theory five. He has dirt.”

  Trent nodded grimly. “On everyone.”

  “Not embarrassing dirt,” Jake said. “Structural dirt.”

  “The kind that doesn’t age,” Trent added. “The kind that makes people answer emails fast.”

  Jake paused. “You noticed that too?”

  Trent nodded slowly. “I thought I was imagining it.”

  Jake leaned closer. “I saw the name on a reply once.”

  Trent stiffened. “The name.”

  Jake nodded. “You don’t just casually email someone like that.”

  Trent whispered, “And they don’t casually reply.”

  Jake pointed at the board. “That’s influence.”

  Trent nodded. “The bad kind.”

  Jake scribbled INFLUENCE (???) and drew arrows to everything.

  Jake stepped back. “Theory six. Time traveler.”

  Trent’s eyes lit up. “Yes.”

  Jake paced. “He’s calm because he already knows what happens.”

  “He’s seen it,” Trent whispered.

  “He’s debugged it,” Jake said.

  “That explains why he treats everything like a system failure,” Trent added.

  Jake nodded. “And why he’s always the adult in the room.”

  Trent wrote TIME TRAVELER and drew a little clock.

  Jake continued. “Theory seven. Monk.”

  Trent blinked. “Like… religious?”

  “Or emotional,” Jake said. “Sworn a vow never to react to nonsense.”

  Trent nodded. “That’s still a monk.”

  He wrote MONK OF COMPETENCE and added a halo that looked suspiciously like a Wi-Fi symbol.

  Jake squinted at the board. “This is a lot.”

  Trent nodded. “We might get in trouble.”

  Jake tapped the board. “Apocrypha.”

  Trent exhaled. “Right. Apocrypha.”

  Jake frowned. “None of these explain one thing.”

  Trent blinked. “Which?”

  Jake pointed at the lower corner of the board. “The cable labels.”

  Trent stared. “The cable labels.”

  Jake nodded. “Perfect. No ambiguity. No vibes.”

  Trent whispered, “That’s the scariest part.”

  Jake leaned in. “What if they’re a code?”

  Trent gasped. “A cipher.”

  “Communicating with someone,” Jake said.

  Trent pointed upward. “The future.”

  Jake nodded. “It all connects.”

  The door opened.

  Howard stepped into the break room holding a manila folder.

  Jake and Trent froze.

  Howard looked at the whiteboard. The arrows. The words CIA, NOT HUMAN, TIME TRAVELER, MONK, and INFLUENCE (???) written in three colors.

  He adjusted the folder in his hands. “You’re blocking the microwave.”

  Jake jumped. “Sorry.”

  Howard heated his food, waited for the beep, then glanced back at the board.

  “You misspelled ‘billionaire,’” he said.

  He paused, considering.

  “And that one,” he added, pointing at TIME TRAVELER, “is ambitious.”

  Then he left.

  The door closed.

  Jake stared at the board.

  Trent stared at the board.

  Jake whispered, “He didn’t deny any of them.”

  Trent nodded solemnly. “Confirmation by omission.”

  Jake looked at the vending machine. “And the dollar.”

  Trent whispered, “And the dollar.”

  Jake sat down heavily. “None of this explains why he’s here.”

  Trent shrugged. “Maybe he’s protecting us.”

  Jake stared. “From what?”

  Trent gestured at the clipboard, the binder labeled BUNNY STATUS, and the laminated sign someone had inexplicably brought into the break room.

  “From us,” Trent said.

  Jake considered that.

  Then he nodded. “Yeah.”

  They left the board up.

  Just in case.

  For the record:

  The vending machine’s behavior was a statistical anomaly, not a sign of the apocalypse.

  The cable labels are for safety, not secret communication.

  Jake and Trent are not authorized to maintain whiteboards unsupervised.

  —Howard