The printer had a story to tell.

But let me go back to the beginning. Technically, a story should start with a proper introduction. So I introduce to you now a printer that was more than a basic unit, who also functioned as a copier. A duality of creation named WORKiO, a name derived from a career that no longer applies. No more work for WORKiO.  Headed to the scrap yard, the printer/copier won’t be operating in the traditional manner any longer. But WORKiO was creative to his plastic core and found a method to tell one last story. The last story to be cast, not in toner and ink, this story would be told in mud. And if WORKiO waited, was patient, he knew that soon THEY would be here…  The writers come back every summer.

The Appalachian Writers’ Workshop was held in Hindman, KY every summer during the quiet days of school-out and light long.  Every year the storytellers showed up, poured words onto the paper held in WORKiO’s center; paper made of slices of fallen tree, fibers of wood that were ground into pulp and woven, transformed became white sheets—that were stacked and waiting in his lower tray. Then these pages of empty canvas that WORKiO inked and warmed became thoughts that poured out through rollers to land in an upper tray.  Where they sat waiting to be picked up and read by another. Stories told in pixels were birthed on these pages. WORKiO, the silent partner, was proud to be a collaborator, a sorter, a duplexer, a sharer of worlds.

The day came that a laptop bag softly thumped down next to the copier. WORKiO sat encrusted on the causeway outside the still shuttered library, though entombed in mud he still felt the memory of that long ago whirl of energy at the touch of a finger on his buttons. Finally seen, no longer neglected, WORKiO was ready. He had been hidden in plain sight for one year. Now outside, he knew he was in their path, a direct line between buildings and the classroom. The writers would walk by him every day.  WORKiO had manifested his intention to be deposited here. A small grace was given by the creator of all the chaos, and WORKiO was placed in the best spot to be discovered by a curiosity seeker. He knew his time was short now and was thrilled someone had come and now he could tell his final story. An account that was written in mud, he told (it so happened) to another that had been there. Someone who spoke in pixels and ink that might be able to translate and carry his story of the stormy night he lifted, spun and floated; the crash of many other lifted forms; the shudder of the collapse of surroundings; the broken and ground wheels; the acoustic lightning hammer of Thor; the smother of encapsulated sediment that concreted over everything; the slow to recede waters; the detritus—the flotsam and jetsam of town down yonder; the destruction of local history; the overwhelming loss of function; the silence in the rubble pierced with an occasional shift and creak of sound; the heavy absence of life in a tomb; the stench of growing mold and spilt fuel; the taint of flood soup spiced with toppled chemical drums; the loss of morning and evening routine; A never-ending grief; A long mourning; The loss of words.

A way of life was over. A it-never-will-be-the-same-again, knowing set in.

She remembered her own experience as WORKiO shared more. 

The storyteller had paused at the sight of the copier. She felt drawn to it. For reasons that see rarely understands herself, she looked at the seemingly dead object. She often stops to pay homage to the life that was. The storyteller has been known to photograph roadkill, bury dead seabirds after a storm above the tide line, to place broken birds that fly into windows on a mirror outside and photograph their last image, releasing the struck birds image back into the sky.  For these reasons the storyteller set to autopsy the copier/printer she found in her path. She opened the top and discovered an image on the scanner. The mud had imprinted a Rorschach blot. The horizontal looked like a map of the world. But the lid of the scanner told the story of a large mythical bird that came from a dark wood that night one year ago. A Thunderbird perhaps? imprinted in dry mud, she felt a warning in the image. The storyteller wondered, “Is this an omen or foreshadowing of dangerous days ahead?

The creator of chaos listened.

WORKiO silently waited. Insects sang accompaniment in the background.

The storyteller deep in thought, wondered aloud, “How many historic climate events will it take to get their attention?”

The storyteller makes one last investigation before leaving. She opens WORKiO’s lower tray bin to examine the top sheet of paper that had been waiting. The next page that would have been inked in story. Surprisingly she finds the lower tray intact and full of paper. The mud has lain down only one sheet of untelling. The paper underneath still intact. Moved by this last account, the “if only” and “almost got to say it,” the storyteller lifts the muddy sheet from the bin and places it on top of the copier. The story of the flood is waiting, ready to be picked up.