The Stationery Cupboard Contains Multitudes

When the office building folds in on itself overnight, becoming a non-Euclidean nightmare, CEO Jorge must navigate looping corridors and sentient office supplies to find his team before the quarterly review is consumed by a literal black hole in accounting.

"Okay, Jorge. Don't panic," I told myself, my voice sounding small in the geometrically impossible hallway. "This is just a... stress-induced hallucination. Too much coffee, not enough sleep. You've been worried about the merger."

I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and took a step forward. I bumped squarely into my own back. My other self grunted and turned around. We stared at each other, identical down to the tiny mustard stain on our ties. "Did you just walk into me?" we both asked at the same time. His voice was my voice. This was not a hallucination.

He—I?—sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Right. Paradox. Try to avoid touching. One of us should go left and one of us should go right." Before I could agree, he turned left and vanished around the corner that shouldn't exist. I, by default, went right. After about twenty paces, I was back in front of my office door. The corridor was empty now. The faint scent of my own expensive but ultimately disappointing aftershave hung in the air.

My desk phone was ringing. The sound was coming from everywhere at once. I stumbled into my office and snatched the receiver. "Hello?"

"Mr. Sanchez, good morning," said the impossibly calm voice of my executive assistant, Hygenia. "Just a reminder that you have the quarterly review at nine in boardroom C. There appears to be a minor spatial anomaly, so you may want to allow for extra travel time. Also, the coffee machine is dispensing hot gravel again."

"Hygenia, where are you?" I asked, my knuckles white on the receiver.

"At my desk, sir. If you're having trouble navigating, I'd advise against using the main stairwell. It appears to go downwards in both directions now. The lift is still safe, provided you don't press the button for the fifth floor."

"What happens on the fifth floor?" I whispered.

"We're not entirely sure," she said brightly. "But Morag from Quantum Acquisitions took a sample and said it tasted of regret and forgotten birthdays. She's advising we quarantine it. Now, about that review..."

---

### A Requisition for Reality

I found Hygenia sitting at her desk, meticulously sorting paperclips by size. Her desk was an island of perfect order in a sea of architectural chaos. The water cooler behind her was gurgling ominously, the bubbles inside forming complex, shifting mandalas. "Any sign of the board?" I asked, leaning on her desk for support.

"They were last seen heading towards the stationery cupboard about an hour ago," she said, not looking up. "They were complaining about a shortage of A4 cardstock. I haven't heard from them since."

"The stationery cupboard?" The small, windowless room at the end of the hall? It was always a bit strange, the way you could never find the exact pen you were looking for, but you'd always find one you lost years ago. "Right. We need to find them. The review can't start without them."

Hygenia finally looked up. "Are you sure that's wise, sir? Morag has designated it a 'Localized Void of Corporate Miscellany'. She hung a sign."

She pointed. Taped to the stationery cupboard door was a hastily scrawled note: 'CAUTION: CONTAINS MULTITUDES. DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT FORMS 88-GAMMA and 104-PSI.'

"We don't have time for forms, Hygenia." I strode towards the door, a foolish, CEO-level confidence propelling me forward. I twisted the knob. It was cold, unnaturally so. The door swung open not into a small, cramped room, but into an expanse of silent, silver mist. Shelves laden with pens, paper, and toner cartridges stretched away into infinity, their perspective all wrong, bending and twisting like something out of an Escher drawing.

"Well," I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. "This is non-compliant with health and safety regulations."

"I've already logged it with facilities," Hygenia said from behind me. She was holding a stapler like a weapon.

A soft, metallic clicking sound began to echo from deep within the mist. It grew louder, a chorus of thousands of tiny impacts. A shape began to form in the distance, a shimmering, shifting cloud that undulated towards us. As it got closer, I could see what it was. Paperclips. Tens of thousands of them, moving together as a single, fluid entity.

The swarm coalesced in front of us, forming a vaguely humanoid shape with glittering, metallic limbs. A collective, whispering voice emerged from it, a dry, rustling sound. "Jooorge... We have analysed the third-quarter projections... They are... inefficient."

I stared at the shimmering mass. One of the paperclips that formed its 'face' was a distinctive bright blue one, the kind our chairman, Bob, always used to fasten his notes.

"Bob?" I breathed. "Is that you?"