The Collection

clicking calculators, the rustle of paper. I peeked my head around the corner.

Maintenance had been promoted to Accounting.

I stared at the suddenly full department in disbelief. We had brought down the entire Accounting department and had received nothing for our efforts. Maintenance booby-trapped the bathroom and two machines and had been re­warded with a promotion!

Mike, wearing the Three-Piece Suit of the Finance Di­rector, grinned at me from his oversized desk. 'See you in Chapter Eleven,' he said.

I blinked.

'The company's going down.'

I tried to see the CEO, to tell him that things had gotten out of hand. The War was no longer confined merely to intra­mural battles; a single department was now aggressively pursuing and systematically working toward the total de­struction of the Corporation.

But the secretary refused to hear my petition. She drew from her desk a flowchart of the Corporation hierarchy, cir­cled in red the position of my department, and calmly handed the paper to me.

'The CEO sees nobody,' she said.

On the Dow, the news was mixed. There were rumors that changes were afoot, but the nature of those changes was clearly not known to Outsiders, and we ended the week in plus territory.

Jerry took out a custodian masquerading as an account­ant, cutting off arms, legs, and genitals, tagging them as Fixed Assets and returning them to the Finance Director's office. I probably should have disciplined him for acting without my okay, but, in truth, I was grateful, and I pro­moted him to division supervisor.

We hung the custodian/accountant scalp above the top of our door, and though it was gone in the morning, our point had been made. Mike knew we were a department to fear.

That afternoon, miniature mines were placed under the carpet in the hallway and electrified gates were installed outside the Accounting offices.

Figures were juggled.

Budgets were slashed.

The Corporation's profit margin plummeted, at least on paper, and though in memo after memo I tried to tell the CEO that those numbers were manufactured by Mike and not to be trusted, he chose to ignore me and instituted a waist-tightening program. Medical benefits were cut, dental benefits eliminated, and several open positions were left un­filled.

A new and virtually incomprehensible complaint process was instituted by Accounting, and immediately afterward paychecks—all paychecks, Corporation-wide—were incor­rectly calculated. My paycheck was halved, and under the new guidelines I could not contest the figures for a minimum of six months.

At the bottom of my check, instead of the rubber-stamped signature of the old Finance Director, was a carica­tured rainbow-colored stamp of Mike's grinning, ugly face.

I was furious, and I slammed my check down on my desk, ordered David to take a hostage. He nodded, said, 'Yes sir,' but wouldn't look at me, wouldn't meet my gaze.

I knew he was hiding something. 'David,' I said.

'Meryl's defected,' he told me. 'She's transferred over as a clerk.'

That was it. That was the last straw. I had taken an awful lot of crap from Mike and his Maintenance accountants, but this time he had gone too far. Ceasefire or no ceasefire, it was time to take up arms.

'War!' I cried.

David stared, blinked, then the corners of his mouth turned upward. He whooped joyfully, grabbed a sharpened pencil. 'War!'

The cry was taken up by Feena, Jerry, Kristen, the others. I felt good all of a sudden, the anger and depression of a few moments before having fled in the face of this energizing purpose. This was what we were good at. This was what we were trained for. Full- fledged fighting. Not the guerilla skir­mishing in which we'd been forced to participate.

I lifted my ruler. 'War!'

'Huh!' they responded. 'Good God, ya'll!'

We were ready.

We posted the declaration of renewed hostilities on the Employee Bulletin Board.

Mike responded in kind with a statement signed in blood.

We met in the Warehouse.

The Maintenance men had heavier weapons—hammers and screwdrivers, wire cutters and soldering guns— but we had the brains, and at close quarters our weapons—scissors and staplers, X-Acto knives and paper clips— were just as deadly.

It was a short war, and more one-sided than I would have expected. Mike planned an ambush, but the positioning of his men was obvious and uninspired, and it was easy for my people to sneak behind them and stab them with the scissors. We entered through the back, through the Loading Dock, and David took out two custodians, Jerry bringing down their heaviest hitter, the Electrician, slitting his throat with an X-Acto knife.

And then it was me and Mike.

We faced each other on the floor of the Warehouse. Rep­resentatives from other departments were in attendance, peeking from behind boxes, sitting on shelves. Mike had a hammer in one hand, pliers in the other, and he kept saying, 'Fucker, fucker,' growling it. He seemed stupid to me, then. Stupid and almost pathetic, and I wondered how I could have ever feared someone with such an obviously limited vocabulary.

I grinned at him. 'You're going down,' I said.

I shot him in the eye with a paper clip, quickly reloaded my rubber band, and shot his other eye. Both shots were true, and though he didn't drop the hammer or pliers, he was screaming, shielding his damaged eyes with his right arm. I had a metal ruler in my belt, and I pulled it out, moving in close. He heard me coming, swung at me, but he was blinded and running on panic, and I hit his cheek with the ruler, followed it with a flat-out smack to the nose. He dropped the pliers, swung futilely with the hammer, but he'd lost and he knew he'd lost, and to the cheers of my depart­ment I leaped upon him, tearing open his neck with my sta­ple remover, the metal fangs ripping out chunks of his flesh as he squealed in pain and rage and fear.

And then it was over.

There was silence for a moment, then pandemonium. From behind one of the boxes rushed the CEO's secretary, and she tried to hug me, but I pushed her away. 'Remember your place in the hierarchy,' I told her.

We were carried back to our offices on the shoulders of Computer Operations and the dwarves.

To celebrate our victory, we performed the Ritual. I or­dered a virgin from the steno pool, a high school grad who had been destined for the Whorehouse because of her poor shorthand skills, and we tied her down with rubber bands and laid her out on top of my desk. Feena rubber-cemented shut her eyes; I Wited-Out her nipples. We took turns with her.

I shrunk Mike's head and kept it on my desk as a paper­weight, and when the stock market reached record levels, led by our corporation, I sent his head to the CEO through the Inter-Office Mail.

This time, we got our notepads.

Blood

Before I moved in with my wife, I lived on macaroni and cheese. I spent so much time standing in front of my stove, stirring pots of boiling macaroni, that I used to stare down into the swirling, roiling water and imagine that I could see shapes in the foam the way some people see shapes in clouds.

I decided to write a story about it.

***

Alan stood and stretched as the whistle blew and halftime began. His gaze moved downward from the television to the clock on the VCR. Twelve forty. No wonder his stomach was growling.

He walked into the kitchen, took a medium-sized glass pot from the drying rack next to the sink, filled it with water, sprinkled in some salt, placed the pot on the stove's front burner, and turned the gas to 'High.' Opening the cupboard, he drew out a package of macaroni and cheese. He pulled off the top of the box, took out the small foil packet of dried cheese, and dumped the macaroni into the water.

It would be several minutes before the water started to boil, he knew. Not wanting to stand there in the