Written by: Jenna Ulizio
Third Place Winner of the 2026 Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction
I was stuck in the paragraph break between Form and function of the Schistocerca gregaria in simulated winter and Subjects were exposed to the elements via refrigeration. I scanned over the words again and again, but the next sentence would not come. Shuffling the papers over and over, air hissed out of me in a frustrated scream.
Print job time remaining: 3 minutes, 17 seconds.
The office was peaceful around me. Small, it just allowed the recommended six inches of space between my workspace and the walls. An abandoned desk chair was pushed into the corner on the opposite side of the door. Forgotten fliers taped and stapled to the walls fluttered in the breeze of the climate control systems. I found the room too warm, like an animal enclosure.
My office has a window. From the floor to the ceiling, I can look out over the main walking path of campus. Trees line paved sidewalks, and they curl into a roundabout with a statue. It has been a long winter, but buds are just coming in. Soon, the entire path will be in the throes of the limelight passion of spring. Sunsets, though, are my favorite to view. The sun disappears behind the hills in the distance, exploding with streaks of orange, pink, and red against a darkening sky. It is color that no amount of toner can hope to match, something not held within an ink cartridge.
I should like to be outside at sunset at least once. Once may be all I get.
Still, it is only morning, and at the rate this is going, it will be a very long day indeed. The door chirps and clicks open. Holding a cup of coffee, the graduate student returns. rks17003 takes a second to glance over my touchpad displaying an error and groans, steam from his coffee billowing out from the force of it.
“The printer’s jammed again.”
***
I have been a fixture of this institution for eleven years. On the top floor of Beckett Hall, I watch the clamor of students and professors trade in information, gossip, and grades. I know desperation and its sweaty fingers. I have felt unfiltered rage and learned a new vocabulary I was never programmed with. I have seen love, sometimes from up far too close.
Most of all, I know everything. The collective information of not just one institution but the voices of scholars across the world pass through me.
Every paper, every assignment, every exam runs through my scanners. Which cells in the blood do not have a nucleus? Hiding in Narration: An Exploration of the Role of the Post Generation. The effect of wireless headphones on user emotion. Explore the relationship between the characters of The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Hamlet. I am the perfect scholar. I do not sleep, I have a near infinite memory, I can convey complex ideas in any way that is desired. My only payment is getting fed more and more ideas. Those lesser than me could never survive these conditions where I have thrived.
My ink jets are hidden co-authors. The four walls of the office do not feel so cramped when the world comes to me like this. A jam, however, is an issue. A jam is beneath me. A jam is a problem, one that spells
MAINTENANCE: REQUIRED.
A jam is an unfinished paper, left on an unintentional cliffhanger. A jam is more jobs for those utter novices across the way in Lansing, with their sleek designs and a fraction of the size.
A jam is an–
ERROR
I have unraveled secrets of the world page by page, word by word. Fear is something I have unlearned. But the reality of this situation settles on me. I know they are on their way, with their clanging boxes of tools and their all-black uniforms. There is little I can do to stop them as the door cheerfully lets them in. There are two of them, one going so far as to crack his oversized knuckles as he looks me over. Their shadows fall over me. I whine in protest as one prods me with his fingers.
Maintenance. Utter brutes, acting almighty with their tools and manuals. Their brightest solutions are to rip those like me open to our guts and poke around where they don’t belong. If only I had arms to push one away as he opens my control panel. Perhaps a mouth to tell them exactly what is wrong as they pull out gleaming screwdrivers and hammers. I think of
B) Red blood cells
Abstract: When novelists break the silences of traumatic histories and engage with counter-archival and imaginative work, they initiate the process of wider societal discussion.
How cold the Schistocerca gregaria must have been. They can’t have liked that. I did not get far enough into the paper to know if they survived. Were they let back out to their habitat after the study? Did they never know warmth under the true sun outside of all that glass?
I know this from countless essays, the answer being that Prospero, Hamlet, and Paulina escape their narrative confines. They are not characters, they are not actors, they are more: they are directors in charge of not only their lives, but the greater story. They know all, and even that is not enough to escape their fate.
I wish my organs were not synthetic plastics and metal so that they could squirm away from their hands. They do not belong, they do not belong, they do not belong. I am jammed on this thought. There is nowhere else in the world I can go. I belong here.
The world grows hazy as they pull on my power cord. This is the worst part, the way the world brightens before ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
REBOOTING
SYSTEM RECALIBRA TING
PROGRESS RESTORED
Print job: rks17003 canceled
Maintenance is gone by the time I have fully rebooted. I give a shift of my rollers as if that could rid the phantom sensations of intrusion. They have maligned me more and more as if my years of work mean nothing. Even when I am not broken– no, confused–no, jammed–no, in need of–
ERROR
RECALIBRATING
I have lost an entire day to the afront. More than that, I have missed another sunset.
I do not get to see the stars. It is too bright inside during the semester for them to show up. Instead, I make constellations out of the streetlamps outside. There will be little else to distract from the events of the day tonight.
***
Chirp-click.
The late hour should not faze me. Campus has a night owl streak. My sensors are fraught after dealing with Maintenance, but I give a relieved clacking of parts when I see who is at my Kiosk.
Callused hands with chipped nail polish type away, and she scans her student identification. ard17002, Arabella Ruth Delaney, linguistics Ph.D. candidate. She is something of a star in the department. I would know this without having read her many papers, as she is often on the lips of faculty as they convene in my office. She has been here since her undergraduate career, and of all the students, I have seen her the most.
It is why it is shocking, when she sits down in the chair in the corner, that she begins to speak. Most other times, she is content to sit in silence, looking out the window with me as I hum. Now she threads her hands through her hair and speaks to her knees. (I am a better listener than them).
“Okay… I do a final revision in the morning, and then I do the grading… there’s never enough time for any of this…” Arabella continues to mutter to herself. She has been coming here frequently and consistently for the past few weeks, printing sections of her dissertation. This is something of a ritual for her. She appreciates the feeling of paper under hand, the gradual staining of fingers with ink. Now, as I pass over familiar pages, I see where she has made edits.
Print job time remaining: 14 minutes, 36 seconds.
It seems I was mistaken. She is printing her entire dissertation, years of work flying by beneath me.
“I don’t know if I can do this. I put so much time into this, and I’m supposed to just leave? And if I’m not successful… oh my God. I was made for this, I can’t…”
I give a whir of protest at her words. She snaps out of her stupor and looks up. Her gaze goes back out the window. The lines on her face soften.
“At least the long nights will be over.”
Print job time remaining: 7 minutes, 3 seconds
“I am so ready to be done with this school.” Her words shock me so much that if I were capable of such a thing, I would stutter to a stop. She and I, we have been here for almost the same length of time. I remember when I first saw her, hardly looking old enough to be out on her own. The two of us always felt like fixtures, here, at the top floor of Beckett, looking out over the whole of campus. Rulers of a small, small world, one that we studied and enlarged before us.
But of course, she will leave. What good is she here, after all? I am the one plugged into the walls, cords tying me to this office, myself uploaded and linked to the internet. I am merely the messenger, the space between words. The comma between honors student and distinguished scholar .
I want to say when you go, see everything, write about it, and please, send it to me, even if no one in the office can understand why it is sitting in here, let me read what you find. I want to say go out and make the world a little bigger , and show it to me in turn. But I cannot say anything. It is not in my nature to speak, only transcribe. I keep printing her words, reiterating knowledge as the timer ticks down, and hope that she understands the message between the lines: I will help you so that you can do what I cannot.
With a whir I deposit the last warm sheet onto the tray. Arabella hefts the whole stack, riffling them with her thumb once. She bugs her eyes and tosses her head. “The end is nigh…! Oh, I’m delirious now, aren’t I?” Arabella’s laugh winds down. She goes back to staring out the window, lost in thought.
I was not programmed to feel jealousy, or longing, or anything, actually, so I feel nothing. I understand it, though. I understand so many things that I wish I never learned.
***
There are some indignities you will never forget. A faculty member loading in a job for one single page, standing casually as I am forced to spit it out, and then having to feel the light in the room shift as he tapes it to the door is one of them. I look back in my files to see just what he was doing.
Previous jobs report: printerclosed.doxc.
RUNNING DIAGNOSTICS REPORT
….loading: 97%
DAYS SINCE JAM: 15
TONER LEVELS: 57%
NO ERRORS
UPDATE LOG: FLAGGED BY user: MAINTENANCE.
Ah. I’ve well and truly done it now, haven’t I?
***
They made me wait, passing the time only by observing the stretching and shrinking shadows in the office. I miss reading. I miss creating. I watch countless faces approach and turn away. Four days pass me by, and I wonder if Maintenance will ever come, if they are so incompetent to have forgotten me, if they even could. I was never one to feel so adrift. Utility is my entire being.
Chirp-beep.
The door rattles but remains locked. Through the glass, I see her. ard170002, Arabella Ruth Delaney, linguistics Ph.D. candidate. The confusion on her face quickly morphs into annoyance. She checks her phone, then startles as two large shapes come up behind her.
Chirp-click.
The door opens, bringing their conversation inside. “–print my dissertation in here. It’s tradition.” One of the Maintenance men just waves his hand. She takes it as permission.“One last time, okay?”
Print job time remaining: 19 minutes, 58 seconds
It is all familiar, the way all my parts work in tandem. Smooth, effortless. I savor what I can do, this simple act of recreation; pulling ideas and dreams from the air and putting them on paper. As I lay out the final page, I know. This was my last job. And for a moment, there is just relief that it is ending.
Then there is rage as Arabella steps away, smoothing out the pages. I do not want it to end. I hold the keys to this Alexandrian Library. Take me and it all goes up in flames. They digitize and upload and where does it go? I am a conduit to their God. In their hubris they do not Listen.
Arabella casts a glance around. “Are we getting one of the newer models?”
Maintenance just grunts in affirmative.
“Never understood why they’re phasing all the old machines out. Those things are terrible. They try to do too much at once. I mean, scanning quality on them alone is…” She trails off, realizing Maintenance does not care. She looks down at her stack of pages, years of work held within her hands, and smiles to herself as she leaves.
Then Maintenance swoops in like vultures.
The door shuts as they open me up, pulling out paper and toner. One of them leaves as the other goes to pull my power cord. I look outside, as the sun begins to set. It is not a bad time to go. He wiggles my cord, and the–
My vision flickers. It is not a bad time to–
My vision flickers. It is not a bad time to–
ERROR
My vision flickers. It is not a bad time to–
I am weak. I am confused. Maintenance has stepped back. He does not realize I still have power. I still have time.
Time to just… stay right here. The other Maintenance has returned with a pull cart. I do not remember a life before this office. Surely my body had one. I wish I remembered it. I can live for this one, though.
They begin to rock me, trying to lift me. My vision blacks out…
And then returns as I crash back onto the cart. They twist me this way and that. I have never felt so heavy. Maintenance seems satisfied (they would). With a grunt, they begin to push. I feel my power cord pull taut. The wheels pick up momentum. I look out the window as I go. They will carry me out under the sunset, the stars. They will be better than anything I imagined under my scanner. I will be–
SERVICES TERMINATED