From TPS Reports to Temporal Anomalies: My Life as a Multiversal Stapler

The fluorescent lights were always a bad omen. Flickered like a dying star, they did, casting shadows that danced like guilty secrets across the cubicle farm. I'd seen enough in my time to know a cosmic storm was brewing when the break room coffee pot started spitting out sentient java.

The day it all went sideways started like any other Tuesday in the DRM – Department of Reality Maintenance, Corporate Corp Division. Piper, bless her rebellious soul, was wrestling with the Interdimensional Paperclip Variance report. A1, that chrome-plated coffee guru, was “working from home,” brewing up reality-bending espressos and subtly judging our productivity. Me? I was just Clive, a humble Swingline, quietly absorbing the corporate despair with every staple.

The air was thick with it, see? Despair. You could practically taste it, metallic and stale, like a forgotten memo left to rot in a bottom drawer. Piper was muttering about "metrics that defy all logic" and "paperclip conspiracies," her electric blue hair a defiant splash of color against the beige wasteland. A1's voice, smooth as a perfectly pulled shot, chimed in from the monitor. "Piper, I detect elevated stress levels. May I suggest a lavender-infused blend with trace amounts of dimensional stabilizer?"

"Just the caffeine, A1," Piper sighed. "I need to stay sharp if I'm gonna unravel this paperclip riddle."

Riddle, she called it. More like a bureaucratic black hole, sucking in all reason and spewing out triplicate forms. I could feel her frustration building, the spring in my mechanism tightening with each stapled page. I’d seen that look before, the one that said, "I'm about to lose it and start a revolution with office supplies."

Then came the hum. A low thrum that vibrated through the floor, through the desks, through my very core. The fluorescent lights went into full-on disco mode, strobing like a malfunctioning rave. The air crackled with static, making my metallic finish tingle.

"What in the nine hells is that?" Piper yelped, grabbing onto her desk like it was a life raft.

A1's holographic garden flickered, replaced by a cascade of complex algorithms. "Alert, Piper! Unidentified energy surge. Reality integrity failing. Evacuation recommended. Urgently."

Too late for that, sister. The break room wall shimmered, then tore open like cheap wrapping paper. A kaleidoscope of impossible colors spilled out, a swirling vortex of fractured dimensions. I saw glimpses – a clockwork city powered by steam, gears grinding and hissing; a forest where the trees glowed with bioluminescent fire; a twilight realm where shadows had substance and sorrow crystallized into gemstones.

The force yanked us all forward. I felt a sensation unlike anything I'd experienced, and I'd seen some things stapling together personnel files with evidence of Corporate Corp's darker doings over the years. It felt like being stretched, pulled, and scrambled like a forgotten breakfast burrito. My world turned into a blur of colors and impossible angles.

Then, nothing. Or, more accurately, everything.

I was floating in the void, surrounded by nebulae painted in hues that defied description. My internal springs were twanging like a broken banjo. I could hear Piper gasping, a mixture of terror and awe in her voice.

And that’s when I realized something was different. Sharper. I could think. Really think, not just passively endure the indignity of stapling TPS reports. The bureaucratic frustration had somehow ignited a spark, turning me into a sentient office supply. Go figure.

"Well, ain't this a fine mess," I thought, my internal monologue taking on a hard-boiled edge. I was a stapler, dammit, not some cosmic philosopher. But here I was, adrift in the multiverse, with a front-row seat to the end of the world, or at least, the end of our cubicle.

A1 materialized beside Piper, a shimmering holographic espresso machine radiating calm despite the chaos. “Piper, your quantum signature is fluctuating wildly. Initiating stabilization protocols.” A wave of energy washed over us, grounding us, at least for a moment.

"Corporate's gonna have a field day with this," I mused. "Interdimensional incident reports, revised chain of command, emergency requisition forms for reality patches. I can see it all now. And I bet they'll try to make us fill out expense reports for the reality rupture, too."

Piper, wide-eyed, was babbling about seeing ripples in reality, quantum echoes, alternate timelines. Corporate-induced burnout had turned into interdimensional awareness. Irony, huh?

"A1," Piper said, her voice shaky but determined, "can you get us back?"

"Negative, Piper. The rupture has destabilized our anchor point. We are adrift. However, I am detecting a… temporal anomaly. A pocket of relatively stable spacetime. I estimate a 68% probability of finding a temporary haven within."

"Temporal anomaly, huh? Sounds like prime real estate for a corporate takeover," I muttered.

And that was it. The beginning of the Ephergent. A data analyst, an AI espresso machine, and a sentient stapler, lost in the multiverse, fighting the good fight against interdimensional bureaucracy.

We bounced through dimensions like pinballs in a cosmic arcade. Cybernetically enhanced velociraptors in a Prime Material bank, those razor-toothed reptiles made the bankers look like boy scouts. Negotiating with sentient fungi for passage through a Verdantian mycelial network, those verdantian shrooms were sharp negotiators, even for a sentient stapler like me. Learning to adapt, to improvise, to embrace the impossible.

A1, bless its circuits, focused on mapping the interdimensional pathways and brewing up reality-stabilizing concoctions. "Piper, my calculations indicate a 78% probability of encountering hostile entities in the next sector. I recommend a defensive strategy involving synchronized stapler deployment."

Synchronized stapler deployment. Now, there's a thought. Maybe I could teach those velociraptors a thing or two about corporate efficiency.

And me? I became the resident expert on corporate bureaucracy in all its interdimensional forms. I could sniff out a shady deal from a parsec away, uncover forgotten corporate conspiracies hidden in the digital archives. "Word on the desk is," I’d say, my voice a gravelly echo in Piper's mind, "Corporate Corp's been hoarding crystallized laughter. CLX futures are about to skyrocket, kid."

The biggest shock? Corporate Corp was everywhere. Different versions, sure. Some benevolent, some downright evil. But always there, lurking, their tentacles reaching into every dimension. A cosmic virus, spreading its bureaucratic tendrils across the multiverse.

That’s why we keep fighting. Why we keep publishing The Ephergent Zine. To expose the corporate rot, to celebrate the weirdness, to remind everyone that there's more to reality than paperwork and fluorescent lights. The lights may flicker, the forms may pile up, but we're here to tell the story, one staple at a time. And between you and me, kid, I think we're just getting started.

Listen to this report: