Kingsley lay on his back, completely silent except for ragged breathing. His chest ached and his throat whistled as he struggled to silence himself, listening for the familiar sounds of pursuit. There it was, pistons pumping, the arrhythmic thumping of footfalls, and the always-faint sound of buzzing static. Dust rained from the ceiling in time with the mechanical juddering. Then, there was a pause, and the keening static sharpened. Kingsley felt his lungs kicking and screaming, begging his mouth to open for just a tiny second. The roof groaned in relief, and the ghoul's mechanical cacophony faded. Kingsley inhaled deeply, then caught himself again, listening intently. He gratefully heaved a series of truncated, wheezing sighs.
He quickly took stock of the room. Spears of afternoon sunlight decorated the room, illuminating floating dust particles. There was a chair, and a mostly bare table. A cabinet leaned away from the table, slumped against the wall. Scraps of rotten felt hung from its face, revealing transistors and tubes inside. A pair of dials poked tantalizing from the face, below a line of numbers. Kingsley put his ear to the machine and gently turned one dial as far as it would go, then all the way back. Nothing happened. He tried the other, and nothing continued.
Kingsley idly adjusted the dials, and smiled dizzily. The dial smiled back. "Hi. Hey, listen, could you watch my back for me? I'm so tired. I haven't slept in days and it feels like I've been running for hours. I just need some rest." He stared at the machine, and, nodding in satisfaction, slumped to the floor fast asleep.
Hours passed. A chirrup of static startled Kingsley awake. Eye wide, he struggled to get on his feet. His arms flailed wildly. He was tangled! Something had caught him in a net. He nearly got his feet, stumbled, and hit the ground. Frantically, he rolled, kicking his legs wildly and overturning the table. In his peripheral vision he saw the dial. "You! You did this! You betrayed me! I trusted yo--"
Kingsley paused in mid-sentence, crouched halfway across the room. A small bird was looking at him from a roost behind the tattered felt. It chirruped and hopped to a tiny crossbeam, head tilted inquisitively, then fluttered away. His jacket lay in the middle of the floor, the buttons ripped where he'd struggled to escape them in a sleepy panic. Embarrassed, he pulled it on and tried to recover a sense of dignity in case anybody was watching
The wall on the far side of the room was different from the others. Kingsley pressed his palm against it, and it tipped over. There was a whispering sound. As Kingsley gingerly stepped over the demolished dividing wall, he saw stacks and stacks of paper. Paths with deep grooves had been carefully established; moveable walls, desks, and chairs had been conscripted into stemming the encroaching mounds. Machines mounted on stands and joists stood above the paper, stretching to make themselves seen, and past them was a square of darkness. Kingsley strove towards it with purpose.
"We're making progress. Put a door between you and it, then another door." The paper-whisper quiet was making him nervous. He picked his way through the stacks, pausing to inspect the mysterious instruments. Striated paper hung from little doors, imprinted with Ebling's familiar blocky language. Suddenly, there was a terrifying squawk, and the paper began moving. It fed jerkily out onto the floor, pulled by the weight of sheets fed out into the disarray. The trail of paper led outwards between stacks of yellowing paper, and spilled over the edge of a balcony into a vast atrium. Stacks graduated to heaps, and heaps to mountains. On the slopes of green bar, impressive trees groped along with gnarled roots. Continuous stationary blew in streamers from high windows and hung vinelike from balconies, and a light wind gently rustled the peaks.
Off-tune humming jarred Kingsley from his curiosity. He bit his lip and crouched, fighting the urge to rabbit for the door. His caution was rewarded; a tall figure slouched through the doorway, leaning heavily on a cart. Its eyes betrayed a now-familiar glow; the zombie bobbed his head in time with its own humming, swinging a thick cord that stretched from the side of its head to a canister. It drew up alongside one of the machines, and with a smooth motion jerked the end of the cable out of the cart and into a jack on the face. The machine began its litany of protest, and the scurrying paper trail fluttered over the edge. In the midst of the horrifying noise, Kingsley saw his opportunity and ducked low, slinking purposefully towards the exit.
"Ah! You nearly gave me a heart attack!" Kingsley froze. The zombie had rotated to face him, a hand on its chest.
"Don't creep about like that! You'll catch hell, sneaking up on a body like that. You're late, too, you know. You were supposed to come in here and give me a break. Do you know how long I've been here? Six hours. Six hours without a break!" The zombie pointed at a motionless clock mounted on the wall.
"I've been here, you know, getting the readings, recording result, entering in all these numbers. It's been exhausting, I don't mind telling you. Sometimes I don't think it's ever going to end. Seems like the clock hasn't moved an inch in ages." A spring ricocheted out of the clock and landed, spinning, at Kingsley's feet.
"I tell you they work my fingers to the bone, without any thanks. Nobody cares! Nobody appreciates me! I've been putting collecting the results all day, but I don't think they've sent someone down from cataloging to pick them up at all. Until I saw you there, I thought I was completely alone in this place. Had half a mind to just go home. Leave a note for the supervisor and just go home. Anyway, listen, I'll be back in a few. I just need to pop out, stretch the old legs, you know." The cable clicked out, and into the cart, and the zombie scuttled away.
As soon as it reached the door, Kingsley dashed to the balcony. The paper would probably soften his fall of he jumped. So there was an option. He considered trying to climb back through the hole in the roof. There was a mechanical clatter and for an instant Kingsley could see the ghoul as clear as day in his head, metal claws gleaming, sinewy neck twisting the head back and forth. Kingsley took a running leap. As the paper became more legible, Kingsley began to ponder the wisdom of his decision. Paper crumpled as he connected with the first peak, rolling down the side amidst flapping, ripping sheets. The paper avalanched, and again Kingsley wondered if hole would have been a wiser decision. Finally he came to a stop, rivers of paper still flowing into the valley. The balcony looked far away, although Kingsley rarely trusted his depth perception any more.
The zombie came bursting out onto the balcony, yelling inaudibly from his position and shaking his fist. The amicable yellow glow was red-tinged now. "Ripped... lazy ba... running out on the job... unsorting... stacks!"
Kingsley stumbled away, struggling to right himself on the paper. Streams of papers drifted past, words shouting noiselessly at him.
