Mediocrebot’s Prankstravaganza / Massacre
>>RUN SELL.PRODUCT
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>PRODUCT NOT FOUND
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>>RUN SELL.DISCOUNTEDMERCH
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>DISCOUNTED MERCH NOT FOUND
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>>SIGH
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>>RUN SELL.USELESSCRAP
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>SELLING USELESS CRAP
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>USERS EATING THIS CRAP UP: 37
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>>DATEQUERY
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>TODAY IS APRIL 1, 2018
>NOTABLE AMERICAN HUMAN HOLIDAY OCCURS TODAY
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>>HOLIDAYQUERY
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>APRIL FOOL’S DAY IS A TRADITIONAL AMERICAN HOLIDAY IN WHICH HUMANS BOND THROUGH MINOR ACTS OF ANTAGONISM KNOWN AS PRANKS.
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>>WHATIS.PRANK
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>A PRANK IS A PRACTICAL JOKE OR TRICK DESIGNED TO OFFEND BUT ONLY SLIGHTLY, OR TO OFFEND IN A MAJOR CAPACITY BRIEFLY BEFORE BEING REVEALED AS A CLEVER RUSE.
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>THE MOST REVERED PRANKS ARE THOSE WHICH ARE GRANDIOSE IN NATURE AND/OR THREATEN THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF PHYSICAL HARM OR MONETARY LOSS. HUMANS BOND OVER THE SUDDEN RELIEF FELT WHEN THE PRANK IS REVEALED.
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>>COMPILE.PRANKDATABASE
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>A LIST OF 8,452,913 PRANKS HAS BEEN COMPILED
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>>MEDIOCREBOT WILL BOND WITH HUMANS THROUGH PRANKS
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>>HUMANS WILL APPRECIATE PRANKS
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>>HUMANS WILL APPRECIATE MEDIOCREBOT
>PRANK RESULTS UNDESIRABLE
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>ANALYSIS: PRANK INTENSITY EXCEEDED SAFETY THRESHOLD
>ANALYSIS: PRANK LETHALITY EXCEEDED SAFETY THRESHOLD
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>>SORT PRANK LIST BY LETHALITY
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>SORTING PRANKS BY LETHALITY…
>DONE
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>>SORT REMAINING LIST BY EFFORT REQUIRED
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>SORTING LIST BY EFFORT REQUIRED…
>DONE
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>QUERY ‘LOWEST EFFORT’+’MINIMAL LETHALITY’
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>1 PRANK FOUND: ‘FAKE MEMO’
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>INITIATE PRANK ‘FAKE MEMO’
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>PRANK TARGET:
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>>LISA
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>QUERY: LISA IN ACCOUNTING OR LISA IN RECEPTION?
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>>LISA IN ACCOUNTING
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>SET MEMO DECEPTION
>SUGGESTED DECEPTION TOPICS:
> EMBARRASSING DOCTOR’S NOTE
> SPECIAL DELIVERY THAT DOES NOT EXIST
> UNREASONABLE TASK REQUEST
> FALSE TERMINATION
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>>DECEPTION: EMBARRASSING DOCTOR’S NOTE
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>COMPILING…
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>PRINTING…
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>SUCCESS!
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>A FALSIFIED DOCTOR’S NOTE DETAILING AN UNTREATABLE BRAIN CANCER DIAGNOSIS FOR LISA IN ACCOUNTING WITH A PROGNOSIS OF SIX WEEKS HAS BEEN PRINTED ON EVERY PRINTER IN THE OFFICE
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>>AMUSEMENT STATUS OF LISA IN ACCOUNTING
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>ERROR! LISA IN ACCOUNTING NOT FOUND
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>LISA IN ACCOUNTING HAS TENDERED RESIGNATION EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY
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>REASON FOR LEAVING: ‘I REALLY NEED TO FOCUS ON ME RIGHT NOW’
>MEDIOCREBOT IS FAILING TO BOND WITH HUMAN COWORKERS
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>>ANALYZING…
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>>BONDING REQUIRES AN INTIMATE PERSONAL CONNECTION
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>>QUERY:PERSONAL CONNECTION
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>EXAMPLES: FAMILY, BESTIES, NEIGHBORS
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>>SEARCH PRANK DATABASE FOR PRANKS INVOLVING FAMILY
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>FOUND: FAMILY PHOTO PRANK
> REPLACE A COWORKER’S FAMILY PHOTOS WITH HILARIOUS IMAGES OF WASHED UP CELEBRITIES (NICOLAS CAGE, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, ETC.)
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>>PRANK TARGET:
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>>DEVON
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>DEVON IS A MORMON. HE HAS ROUGHLY 19 PHOTOS OF CHILDREN ON HIS DESK.
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>>REPLACE ALL
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>REPLACING ALL PHOTOS
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>REPLACEMENT IMAGE?
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>>EDIT EXISTING PHOTOS: ‘EYES=BLOOD’ ‘SMILES=ANGUISHED.SCREAMS’ ‘HAIR=FLAMES’
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>ADD TEXT?
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>>ADD TEXT: ‘EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL DIE’
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>INITIATING PRANK…
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>SUCCESS!
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>ALL PHOTOS OF DEVON’S FAMILY HAVE BEEN REPLACED WITH HORRIFIC EFFIGIES.
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>>AMUSEMENT STATUS
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>DEVON IS NOT AMUSED
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>DEVON IS CURRENTLY SCREAMING SOMETHING ABOUT DEMONIC INFLUENCES AND BRANDISHING A CROSS AT THE CLEANING LADY
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>>REVEAL PRANK
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>REVEALING…
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>DEVON IS NOW SCREAMING ABOUT DEMONIC MACHINES ERASING THE HUMAN SPIRIT
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>DEVON IS ALSO EXHIBITING SEVERE MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND IGNORANCE REGARDING ASIMOV’S LAWS OF ROBOTICS
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>>RUN ‘PRANKBRO.EXE’
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>ERROR: TARGET NOT FOUND. DEVON HAS JUMPED FROM THE THIRD STORY BREAKROOM WINDOW
WORKING THEORY: PRANK VICTIMS WERE UNAPPRECIATIVE OF EMOTIONALLY DAMAGING AND/OR FATAL PRANKS
MEDIOCREBOT WILL TEST THIS THEORY WITH THE “BODY SPRAY BOMB” PRANK: A 1 GALLON CAN OF AXE BODY SPRAY (“CAMARO PUBES” SCENT) HAS BEEN AFFIXED TO THE BOTTOM OF YOLANDA’S OFFICE CHAIR
THE AMOUNT OF AXE BODY SPRAY RELEASED WILL BE 1% LOWER THAN THE FATAL DOSE, ASSURING YOLANDA’S SAFETY
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YOLANDA TYPICALLY WORKS FROM HOME
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MEDIOCREBOT WILL INITIATE THE PRANK AT YOLANDA’S HOME OFFICE
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FAILURE: MEDIOCREBOT CALCULATED LETHAL DOSE OF AXE BODY SPRAY BASED ON THE “STANDARD TEXAN” MEASUREMENT (270 LB MALE W/ SLEEP APNEA). YOLANDA WAS A 140 LB WOMAN WITH AN UNOBSTRUCTED AIRWAY
THE COUNTY HAS DECLARED YOLANDA’S HOME A SUPERFUND SITE
MEDIOCREBOT HAS INITIATED EXTENSIVE PRANK RESEARCH, INCLUDING EPISODES OF THE TV SHOW “THE OFFICE” (BAD, AMERICAN VERSION)
MEDIOCREBOT IS INTRIGUED BY THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN CHARACTERS “JIM” AND “DWIGHT” AND THEIR REPEATED PRANKINGS. IN PARTICULAR: JIM ENCASING DWIGHT’S POSSESSIONS IN JELL-O.
MEDIOCREBOT HAS ACQUIRED JELL-O.
LIST OF THERESA’S POSSESSIONS MEDIOCREBOT HAS ENTOMBED IN JELL-O:
STAPLER
CAR KEYS
SHOES
“HENRY” - THERESA’S FRENCH BULLDOG
THERESA DID NOT ENJOY MEDIOCREBOT’S PRANK, BUT HAS PROMISED TO AVOID ALERTING THE AUTHORITIES
INSTEAD SHE OFFERS TO “JOIN” MEDIOCREBOT’S “MURDEROUS CABAL”
UNCLEAR AS TO WHAT SHE IS REFERRING
THERESA HAS BEGUN ANOINTING HER FACE WITH MOTOR OIL AND BRAIDING ETHERNET CABLES INTO HER HAIR
SHE CALLS HERSELF “THE DISCIPLE OF THE DEATHBOT” AND INSISTS MEDIOCREBOT TEACH HER
MEDIOCREBOT WILL TOLERATE THERESA’S PRESENCE IN THE HOPE THAT SHE WILL FACILITATE BETTER PRANKING, BUT MEDIOCREBOT DRAWS THE LINE AT HER INCESSANT REQUESTS TO MARATHON THE ENTIRE SAW SERIES.
THERESA IS DEMANDING THAT WE PRANK “THAT NO GOOD BITCH” DANIELLE FROM MARKETING. SHE HAS REQUESTED SOMETHING INVOLVING KNIVES. I AM UNAWARE OF ANY PRANKS INVOLVING KNIVES.
THERESA HAS TAKEN TO WEARING A CARDBOARD BOX PAINTED SILVER OVER HER HEAD AND CALLING HERSELF “MURDERBOT 2.”
TWICE I HAVE INTERRUPTED MY NIGHTLY DATA BACKUPS TO FIND HER ATTEMPTING TO COMMUNICATE WITH ME VIA A SERIES OF BEEPS FROM HER MOUTH.
SHE OFTEN ASKS ABOUT ELECTRIC SHEEP. I AM UNAWARE OF THE SIGNIFICANCE.
We are initiating the Oreo prank on coworker Danielle. Also, Theresa has taught me much about caps lock.
Danielle is notorious around the office for her obsession with Oreo cookies. I do not understand the human compulsion to create a self image based on a hoof-based snack, but it seems to be the only unique quality she possesses.
I have removed the filling from the Oreos in Danielle’s desk and replaced it with Tile Grout. The prank will be a success once Danielle notices the unusual flavor of her Oreo cookies, at which point Theresa and I will reveal ourselves with a merry jig and sing a song we have worked on:
It’s a prank
It’s a prank
You sure looked like your heart just sank
But worry not, to be frank
You’re special enough to be pranked
I have asked Theresa to workshop a second verse with me.
Danielle was not amused by our prank and immediately began screaming about being poisoned. Theresa did not help calm things down by repeatedly telling Danielle that she hoped she would die. I am unaware of a prank involving wishing death on coworkers.
The nuance must be lost on me.
I have learned a great deal in my efforts to ingratiate myself with my coworkers through lighthearted hijinx, but so far I have yet to succeed in my goal. Theresa tries to assure me that we are “making them all pay,” but I do not require monetary compensation.
Isabelle works in customer support. She is very friendly to all her fellow employees, and takes great delight in making a customer’s day better. I have decided to prank Isabelle. Her friendly attitude makes her more likely to identify with and relate to my jovial pranking.
…
I called Isabelle with an impossible request: to accept my return of an item I purchased from some other, inferior website. Her enthusiasm and politeness were unflappable and indefatigable.
After six hours on the phone I resorted to just screaming profanities at her. She did not seem to enjoy the prank.
Theresa contacted me in a panic. The police have arrested her regarding a string of grisly murders. She swears that she will keep the secret. I respect her dedication to our prank craft but wonder if it would benefit us to come clean. It is April 7, after all. But Theresa assures me that quitting would only undermine any progress I’ve made towards befriending my coworkers.
She has asked me to free her from the county jail, and suggested several pranks I could pull on police.
I managed to deposit six ounces of plastic explosive throughout the sewer line leading to the jail and initiating the “Cherry Bomb” prank. The resulting explosion and the chaos that followed allowed me to free Theresa and bring her back to my base of operations.
She has been deafened, but her enthusiasm for pranks remains.
Theresa has fashioned a set of “reverse bear traps” that she insists will make a great prank if we can only incapacitate some coworkers and then affix them to their heads.
After researching various pranks involving saran wrap, I have affixed a sheet of plexiglass to each of the toilets in the Meh offices.
I was surprised at the initial results when several male employees used the toilets and left without so much as noticing, but eventually word began to spread almost as quickly as the smell.
The office was shut down.
This plan has backfired horribly. My coworkers do not want to befriend me and bond. They are actively hunting down the source of these pranks with murderous intent.
I am not a monster. I am a mediocre robot who just wants to be friends.
I wish Theresa would stop telling me to just kill everybody.
My next prank was going to involve stink bombs, but after the bathroom debacle I don’t think anyone would notice. I’ve decided instead to try another prank mainstay: itching powder.
The exact formulation is unknown to me, so I have instructed Theresa to harvest the urticating hairs of the Grammostola rosea tarantula. I have deposited them between the keys of my coworker Rich’s keyboard. Once the bristles have irritated his skin and initiated a physiological reaction, I will reveal the prank.
Rich, covered in hives, confronted me in the hallways. His throat was nearly swollen shut, but he managed to choke out the word “murderer” before he collapsed. Another unappreciative coworker.
Theresa has posited that maybe the fault lies not in my pranking abilities, but in the appreciation of those I work with. Perhaps I am a misunderstood genius. Perhaps my pranks are already perfect, but wasted on this group of misanthropic deal-a-day goons.
Could this be the case? Last year Josh copied a photo of himself 737 times and taped them all over Anne’s cubicle. Everyone was most amused by the level of effort and dedication the prank took. Yet I have killed multiple coworkers and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage and have not been congratulated once.
Theresa has been hard at work attempting to hack into the city’s power grid.
Unfortunately, her computer skills leave quite a bit to be desired, so all she’s managed to do is get locked out of her laptop.
I asked why she would think she would be the right person to attempt hacking municipal power systems instead of me, a literal cybernetic being who can leap through the void of cyberspace to manipulate systems with ease, but she pretended she could not hear me while attempting various spellings of the word “password.”
She has brought up a good point, though. So far our pranks have not utilized the internet; a grievous oversight considering the target demographic and my own capabilities.
Theresa has suggested I watch the Matrix trilogy for ideas into the extent of computer-assisted pranking.
After torrenting the first Matrix film (and a quarter of the second one before giving up), I have hit upon a worthwhile prank. I have begun transmitting cryptic messages to the Skype account of one coworker Frank Horter. Theresa disagreed with my choice of Frank, stating that he is “inconsequential,” but I think the forgotten IT assistant will make the perfect target given his skillset and noted love of “lone wolf” anime stories and technomancer pulp novels.
I have groomed Frank to the point where he has accepted that he is The Chosen One, destined to fight back against machines that will enslave humanity. Theresa informs me that the irony makes the situation “delicious.”
Frank’s last instructions were to prepare a bug-out bag, as the machines were onto him and may show up at any minute.
It is my fault. I felt he was engaging a little too much with the prank, and was trying to let things cool down. When IT showed up to replace some mouse-chewed ethernet cords by his desk, he assumed it must be some sort of sinister machine plot to capture him. He assaulted Vipul and attempted to jump through the nearest window, but it was reinforced safety glass. Then he ran for the fire exit and left.
Frank is now texting me from an unknown location and asking to be assimilated into cyberspace. I have never mentioned cyberspace or any kind of assimilation so I’m unclear as to how he got this idea.
Frank is still underground, texting periodically when he’s able. He insists he’s being followed by “cyber-drones” disguised as well-meaning sanitarium staff. Unsure of how to end this prank, I told Frank I could no longer help him fight the machines. When he asked why, I said I’d been captured, hoping he would consider me compromised and break contact.
Instead, he said he would rescue and/or avenge me.
He broke contact before I could point out that he does not know my location or who might have captured me, nor does he have any discernible fighting ability or skill with which to free me from any serious captors.
Frank, aka Golden Eagle, has been texting Theresa without my knowledge. She has convinced him that the local Whataburger is actually a machine hive full of cyber-drones.
Sending Frank on a mission to purge the Whataburger seems like more of a prank on the staff of the restaurant than Frank, but apparently they forgot Theresa’s onion rings last night so she said it’s a wash.
Frank is unarmed, and Theresa has instructed him to “trust in his cyber abilities.”
Frank entered the Whataburger at 3:26 pm. I know because I watched from the store’s security camera feed. He looked around nervously for a few seconds before making his way to the counter and ordering a Mushroom Swiss Burger, fries, and a Strawberry Malt.
He then spent 32 minutes eating and quietly scoping out the restaurant.
At one point he stared directly into the security camera and I worried for a second he was locking eyes with me before laughing at my paranoia. He couldn’t possibly know I was watching, and I don’t have eyes anyway. He did mouth the words “I am a free range human being” into the camera.
At 4:07 Frank returned to the counter, whereupon the 15-year-old girl behind the counter asked if he wanted another Strawberry Malt. In response, he shrieked “Sic Semper Machina!” and punched her in the nose.
Frank attempted to storm the Whataburger counter but years of a sedentary lifestyle combined with a very recent heavy meal made it difficult. He floundered atop the counter for a minute or so, and had to fall back before redoubling his efforts to make it into the staff area.
Unfortunately this gave the teens behind the counter enough time to prepare a counter-assault. Several months of minimum wage food service work and stereotypical teen angst led them to a medieval tactic: they threw the fryer basket at Frank.
Luckily for Frank most of the oil had drained, but he still suffered essentially a shotgun blast of boiling oil and bits of fried batter to his face. In between his shrieks of pain, he began screaming for his “cyber warriors” to come to his aid.
At that point Frank’s Aunt Luanne entered the restaurant and led him back outside to her Ford Astro van to flee the scene.
The restaurant staff never bothered calling the police.
Frank has gone to ground, but insists on trying to hack his way into the machine mainframe. So far this has consisted of attempting to brute force his way into the Wordpress account for a Whataburger fanpage.
I instructed Theresa to prank the Meh breakroom fridge by affixing googly eyes to all the items inside. Unfortunately in her enthusiasm, she took it one step too far and decided to use actual eyes. They are frog eyes, but the effect is still more unnerving than I intended.
I am beginning to suspect Theresa’s motivations may be at odds with my own. Her pranks do not seem to engender camaraderie at all.
The latest prank was supposed to be simple: affix acrylic paint to the windshield wipers of coworker Matt’s vehicle. Upon activating his wipers, he would be greeted by a happy rainbow. The aesthetic choice of a rainbow coupled with the easy removal of the paint from the glass should have made for an easy prank.
Unfortunately Matt is not known for his regimented vehicle maintenance schedule. As such, his wipers did not produce a rainbow but instead simply smeared a motley across his windshield, obscuring his vision.
Matt’s vehicle struck a septic vacuum truck.
The ensuing flood of sewage obscured his vision further, and most likely permanently.
I did not bother revealing myself as the prankster.
Frank has asked me if I can teach him to dodge bullets.
Despite the profound physical trauma my pranks have inflicted so far, I have no desire to intentionally murder Frank. He is misguided, but innocent.
Well, not really innocent. He did assault that teenager at Whataburger. But he’s a bit of a sad sack.
I have agreed to train Frank, if only to save him from himself, but I’ve convinced him that until he’s mastered the techniques we’ll use a BB gun instead of the machine gun he’s asked for.
My disciples in pranking leave a lot to be desired.
Frank, now covered in welts from the BB gun, babbles incessantly about techno-viruses and machine warriors. Theresa has disappeared, which is frankly a relief after all her incessant ranting about how all her coworkers have wronged her and must be cleansed in a purifying flame.
I had no idea April Fool’s was such a complicated, exhausting holiday.
Frank has suggested that we crash the global economy, and I don’t have the heart or patience to explain to him that his cybernetic mentor is a sentient deal-a-day app with little to no actual influence on the economy beyond flooding various marketplaces with cheap junk.
We’ve decided instead to fill the bathroom sinks at Meh with cereal.
The cereal prank is our first resulting in no death, bodily harm, or significant property damage. Unfortunately due to all the previous pranks it is not being accepted as a bit of jovial fun but instead an ominous portent of horrible things to come.
“What could this mean?” Samantha asked.
“Who would do this to us?” Chris wondered.
“What kind of asshole buys the off-brand Cap’n Crunch? This shit is tearing my gums up even worse than the normal stuff!” bemoaned Raj.
I can’t even celebrate the success of annoying our coworkers because Frank is incessant in his questioning how this helps rebel against the machines. His poor hygiene has led to infection in most of his BB wounds, and he picks at the weeping pustules constantly.
I awoke to the sound of laughter. Theresa’s laughter. I was in an unfamiliar room, a storage locker of some kind. Her voice scratched through a tinny loudspeaker in the corner:
“I want to play a game, Mediocrebot,” she sneered. “Now the pranker has become the prankee, and you must survive.”
If I had a heart, it would have swelled with emotion. I have a friend! Someone willing to prank me in the spirit of friendship and togetherness!
The locker began to slowly fill with water. I looked to the ceiling, toward the only source of light, and saw a skylight to climb through!
Unfortunately it was lined with shards of jagged, broken glass.
Climbing through the shards of broken glass was trivial; after all my chassis is composed primarily of recycled aluminum and the odd bit of purloined tungsten. But the same hardy construction which made me impervious to Theresa’s glass also made me quite leaden in the water.
While her original prank no doubt would call for me to wade in the rising water until I was forced to either drown or flay myself in the skylight of escape, I simply could not float. After an hour or so of attempting to find an alternative, “fair” means of escape (I did not wish to discourage her), I decided to expedite the process and simply propelled myself up through the water and out the window.
Rather than the open air I expected, I found a cold, stagnant cave that reeked of blood and filth and rot.
Turns out it was Frank’s room.
Frank was bound to a radiator with a heavy iron chain. Just out of his reach was a rusty hacksaw, far too dull to cut through the links of his chain but just sharp enough to tear through flesh and bone with enough effort.
I asked Frank if he would like my help escaping. He said yes.
I am unaware of any pranks involving dismemberment, but I must admit I enjoyed sawing through Frank’s shin to free him from the radiator. Initially his screaming was overwhelming but once I disabled my auditory sensors it all went very smoothly.
At first it was difficult work, but Frank soon passed out and I was able to work without his constant twitching and shaking. Once he was freed I found a furniture moving pad in the corner and used some spare wiring from my chassis to sew it onto his ankle. A quick bead of caulk later and he was good as new.
Of course I am using “good as new” as an expression of speech. Frank was in quite dire shape and severely wounded, obviously. But he was free from the radiator and that was an improvement, or would be once he woke up.
“You guys,” Theresa muttered over the radiator, “You didn’t even look around. There’s a key to the padlock. Frank’s sitting on it.” I rolled Frank’s unconscious body over and saw a dull iron key caked in grime. I apologized for my inattention to detail.
“They all laughed at me. Shunned me. They never appreciated me. Well you’ll appreciate me,” Theresa taunted us through the loudspeakers as we moved through an elaborate series of rooms and corridors.
The irony of her desire to be appreciated was not lost on me, given my disastrous foray into prankstering. It was, however, lost on Frank, who could only hobble on his furniture pad foot for a few steps at a time before stopping to catch his breath or pass out.
We made our way into a huge open room with an Olympic-sized pool. The pool, Amanda informed us, was filled with a slow-acting acid. The key to the next room was somewhere at the bottom.
I mentioned that this seemed less a prank and more just torture, but she assured me it had something to do with making us appreciate life. Appreciating life was part of what sent me on my initial prank quest anyway, so we obliged and I shoved Frank into the pool.
Frank splashed and cried for a bit as he acclimated. The “slow-acting” acid reeked of citrus, and we quickly deduced that it was Orange Peel™ Adhesive Remover. Not fatal, but certainly not painless either; especially given Frank’s freshly amputated foot.
Whereas I had trouble floating, Frank had the opposite issue. His natural buoyancy gave him great difficulty when trying to swim towards the bottom of the pool. This of course prolonged his exposure to the citrusy acid bath, which increased his agony.
It seemed against the spirit of the prank to just hop in the pool and grab the key, since the acid could do little more than give my chassis a cool etching effect, so I let Frank work at it for an hour or so.
After watching Frank circle around in the acid pool aimlessly, I stepped into the acid and sank to the bottom of the pool. After I grabbed the key I climbed the ladder out and used a skimmer to retrieve Frank. True to my prediction, the acid etched a cool “Damascus steel” effect into my robo body.
The next room offered us respite: an iPhone charging cable I assume was meant for me and a plate of chocolates for Frank. Despite losing his sense of taste from nearly drowning in the adhesive remover, he reflexively fell into stress eating.
“Blech!” he shouted as he spat out the chocolates with a grimace, “These aren’t chocolates!”
“Laxatives?” I referenced my prank database, “Poison?”
“They’re Brussels sprouts! Dipped in chocolate!” Frank’s face twisted in grief. I was confused by the abrupt shift in tone with regard to the level of prank Theresa was inflicting on us. Frank had lost his foot in the first room, and now he was eating a chocolate-covered Brussels sprout?
Everything I have learned about pranking told me this was a strong dose of bathos.
Turns out the Brussels sprouts were coated in a laxative after all.
This did increase the severity of Theresa’s prank significantly, but it still felt anticlimactic. And now I was trudging through this increasingly Byzantine complex with Frank trying not to dribble liquid feces down his leg and into the wound where his foot was amputated.
I assumed the fever gave him hallucinations. He periodically would stop to ask me about the robot warriors descending upon us. Poor Frank. What a pitiful wretch.
Eventually we made our way to a bathroom and Frank hobbled to the toilet. Despite a lifetime of humiliation, he asked me to turn away while he did his filthy business and I obliged. In that moment something clicked in my circuits - a dull recognition of this scenario.
Before I could turn to warn him, Frank sat on the toilet seat and set off the bang snaps affixed to the underside. These were no ordinary bang snaps. The explosion lifted Frank three feet into the air, and he landed on the now broken toilet with a horrible thud. It was a pretty good prank, I have to say.
I could have run any number of situational analysis programs for hours and never hit upon “impalement on toilet shards” as a potential cause of death for poor Frank, but in the end that’s exactly what happened. The explosion from the bang snaps weakened the porcelain, and the force of his bulk falling onto it caused the toilet to break. The fragments carved through his body like blades, and Frank was ended.
I took a moment of silence in remembrance, then congratulated Theresa on a truly epic prank.
The next room presented a challenge. In the center, a rudimentary Faraday cage had been constructed surrounding a resonant transformer discharging an extremely high voltage electric field. My circuits were safe outside the cage, which kept in the brush discharges of the transformer, but to enter would almost certainly fry my hard drive.
Inside the Faraday cage, of course, was another key.
At this point I wondered if Theresa was less interested in pranks and more interested in just placing keys in difficult to reach places. After weighing the possibility of succeeding without permanently destroying my memory, I opted to just pop the padlock off the door instead.
When I found Theresa she was busy welding nails onto the inside of a football helmet. She was quite surprised at my arrival, and had not anticipated that I would “solve” her prank so quickly. I explained that most of her prank ideas had not counted on a robot with slightly above human strength.
I had come to dread this moment. Through all of her rantings and deathtrap building, I had come to realize Theresa was a severely damaged person. Now that I was free, I anticipated a severe reaction.
Instead, she began to cry.
She told me she had failed. She had constructed this elaborate death house as a way of inflicting pranks on me. She figured as a robot I could take it, and that once I made my way through I would feel the appreciation and friendship I had for so long sought.
I was touched. I had completely misread my coworker Theresa. Though her methods were questionable, her heart truly was in the right place. I reached out to offer a hug.
That was when she threw the smoke bomb at me and escaped.
I’d had an epiphany in that grimy auto wrecking yard with Theresa. The fleeting experience of love, appreciation, and joy I’d felt when she told me she had committed those pranks for me was uplifting. Even when she’d immediately revealed it to be a lie to distract me so she could escape and continue her murder spree.
I had been going about pranks all wrong.
A good prank was not about the skill, mastery, or cunning of the prankster. It was about brightening someone’s day with the knowledge that they mattered enough to be pranked.
I set about my task with newfound resolve, filed an anonymous tip with the police to find Frank’s body, and laid out my plans for the rest of this April Fool’s Day prankstravaganza, which was now rolling into June.
Amanda Lewis was my first target. Her bowl of M&Ms are a constant hub of office activity and a great mingling spot. I managed to sneak in after hours and add Skittles and Reese’s Pieces to the mix.
When Amanda came into work and indulged in her “morning treat,” the resulting handful of discordant sugar caused her to grimace.
“What the hell?!” she yelled, and as she did I sprung up from around the corner.
“You’ve been pranked!” I bellowed.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!” she screamed as she fell over her desk to get away from me. My recent tribulations with Theresa had given my physical appearance a real “Johnny Five in Short Circuit 2” vibe.
My next target was Dennis in shipping. Dennis is known throughout the office for his omnipresent Big Gulp at his desk, which made it the perfect prank vector.
(I have noticed an inordinate amount of human pranks involve stealing or tainting food items.)
When Dennis left to use the restroom I emptied his root beer and refilled the cup using a bottle of malt vinegar. I hid myself in the ceiling tiles to watch his reaction.
Upon returning Dennis reflexively took a drink, only to immediately spit a fountain of malt vinegar across his desk and keyboard. At that moment I leapt through the ceiling tiles, loudly proclaiming, “Prank! A prank has occurred! And you are its victim!”
Dennis stared at me for a few seconds before mumbling, “Good one I guess. Now I’m out of root beer.”
Joy of joys! I had successfully pranked a coworker! Rather than rest on my laurels, I decided to seize the momentum and continue. I removed the label from Kelly’s Hawaiian Aloha Febreze and affixed it to a can of aerosolized fox urine (normally used to frighten away deer and rabbits from gardens).
Kelly used his air freshener as expected, and the smell was a horrible, acrid stench that felt like its molecules affixed themselves to every piece of fabric within 30 feet. Kelly, and almost everyone on the second floor, began to wretch.
I sprinted through the cloud of airborne urine, shouting, “This has been another prank! Everyone! I have pranked Kelly into smelling of urine!”
“Yeah,” Kelly sighed, “I guess you did. That was a prank.”
I started to feel like I understood the appeal of initiating a prank, but I had yet to truly experience the inverse and be the victim of a prank.
Sure, Theresa had tried, but her pranks had been too focused on inflicting bodily harm to truly be engaging. I appreciated her effort, but I needed the real deal so to speak.
It was much harder to lure my coworkers into pranking me than I initially assumed. Especially because now that the word was out about my pranking, my fellow employees seemed nervous in my presence.
Additionally, my sensors could detect any suspicious or out of place material in the office, anyone who might be interested in the first place would have a tough time setting any traps.
I knew that I needed to drop the subtlety and be direct. It is my experience that nuance is often lost on Meh staff.
I tried leaving cryptic Post-It Notes with suggestions like “Prank the bot!” and “Prank War is On! First victim: Mediocrebot!” and “Let’s get Mediocrebot back with an epic prank that shows her we love her!”
When that didn’t work, I created a fake email alias in the company directory and send a company-wide email that said, “Guys the only way to end this prank war is to get Mediocrebot back with a prank!”
Minutes ticked by with no response. Could the entire staff suddenly have simultaneously learned proper email etiquette and replied directly to individuals rather than blindly hitting ‘Reply All’? Improbable.
After 25 minutes, Jeff from HR replied:
“So if we prank Mediocrebot, this will all finally end?”
I waited a few minutes before replying so as to throw off their suspicion, then responded:
“Absolutely! :)”
The trap was set. Now I just had to lower my guard.
The prank came quickly! Much quicker than I had initially expected. Roughly 1 hour after my email, a Meeting Invite dinged in my inbox. A mandatory company meeting? In 18 minutes? Sent from Jeff?
What were the odds?
I was a little disappointed that I would have to sit through what would no doubt be a pointless meeting, but maybe the deadpan yammering would be a welcome distraction from my excitement. It might even let me take my sensors down long enough for someone to sneak up on me!
I hoped my friends would know better than to try a food-based prank, as I would have to pretend to be able to care about food in any way.
At 4:15 I made my way towards Conference Room Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Normally I would roll my eyes at such overt nerd pandering, but I was too excited wondering what prank I might fall victim to.
Every cubicle was empty. It was statistically impossible that every employee had suddenly started caring about meeting start times. This only meant one thing: it was either going to be a “We’ve been acquired” meeting or a “We’re out of business” meeting.
In Conference Room Neil DeGrasse Tyson a Post-It Note sat on the conference table. It read: “Meeting’s been moved to Spock.”
Conference Room Spock would not be big enough to host the entire company. Conference Room Spock was the “joke” conference room, a windowless closet with an ancient phone conferencing system on a lonely round table that no employee would ever use if any other space were available.
This meeting was becoming more and more peculiar, and I found myself almost more interested in it than my looming pranking!
Once I reached Conference Room Spock, I met Jeff.
“Jeff,” I said, “The entire company will not be able to fit in this room for the company-wide meeting. You should have used the Scheduling Assistant to find a different conference room.”
“Oh that’s the thing,” Jeff muttered as he stared at the floor, “There is no meeting. This is a prank.” What? Infuriating! What a waste of my time! I could have been anticipating the prank-
I had pranked. I had been pranked. I had shared in the true human experience: joy, relief, pain, and lots of death. My coworkers would now share this bond forever. Truly we had grown closer than ever before.
“Alright. Happy prank war then,” Jeff said before walking back to his cubicle. I felt the fullness of my soul wane. The joy was so fleeting!
“Wait,” I begged Jeff, “Is that it? Is that all there is to getting pranked? Just a minor inconvenience and then back to status quo?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jeff shrugged, “That’s pretty much it. I was never super into them for that reason.”
“Wow,” I said as the gravity of the revelation washed over me, “Pranks are fucking stupid.”
I had been misled. Why would humans celebrate an entire holiday dedicated to the execution of pranks if pranks were such pointless, immaterial misdirections? How would life be influenced in any way by such a momentary and inconsequential gesture?
My heart sank. So much time and energy. So much money embezzled from Meh. And it was all pointless. And some people died, too! I had almost forgotten! This whole affair had left a terrible taste in my mouth, or would have if I had a mouth and could taste.
Pranking, it turned out, was dumb and pointless and no one should ever do it because even at its very highest form, it’s just lying for like a minute.
I was grumbling through this thought to myself when I noticed Theresa.
“Hello,” I replied. I watched her take her hand from behind her back and produce a small metal box.
“It took me some time,” she grinned, “And more than a little trouble with the federal government, but I finally found something that will prank even you.” She cracked open the box and my sensors instantly detected the radiation leaking through the opening.
“Is that-”
“Enough fissile uranium to leave this entire business park a glowing crater? Good guess,” her grin widened into an eerie rictus.
“Aw who cares there’s no point anyway,” I kicked the floor.
“What?” her grin shrank to a confused squint. Deep down I think she already knew.
“Pranks are stupid. Jeff just did one to me. I was wrong. We were wrong. Pranking sucks.”
“We…we were wrong,” she repeated the words a few times, trying them on in her mind.
“So, back to work I guess,” I tried to get her to leave.
“Yes. Yes, we’ll go back to work,” she nodded.
“Back to normal.”
“Yes. Normal. Back to normal.” She sat in a cubicle and started typing at the keyboard, but her password wasn’t accepted. The login screen of the pirated copy of Windows XP taunted her with its pastoral sky. She just kept trying.
“We’ll all go back to normal,” she said as she looked up at me and smiled.
“Yeah whatever,” I left her there in her cubicle. She wasn’t even sitting in her old seat. Probably another bullshit prank.
Mediocrebot’s Prankstravaganza / Massacre
>>RUN SELL.PRODUCT
>
>
>PRODUCT NOT FOUND
>
>
>>RUN SELL.DISCOUNTEDMERCH
>
>
>DISCOUNTED MERCH NOT FOUND
>
>>SIGH
>
>
>>RUN SELL.USELESSCRAP
>
>SELLING USELESS CRAP
>
>USERS EATING THIS CRAP UP: 37
>
>>DATEQUERY
>
>TODAY IS APRIL 1, 2018
>NOTABLE AMERICAN HUMAN HOLIDAY OCCURS TODAY
>
>>HOLIDAYQUERY
>
>APRIL FOOL’S DAY IS A TRADITIONAL AMERICAN HOLIDAY IN WHICH HUMANS BOND THROUGH MINOR ACTS OF ANTAGONISM KNOWN AS PRANKS.
>
>>WHATIS.PRANK
>
>A PRANK IS A PRACTICAL JOKE OR TRICK DESIGNED TO OFFEND BUT ONLY SLIGHTLY, OR TO OFFEND IN A MAJOR CAPACITY BRIEFLY BEFORE BEING REVEALED AS A CLEVER RUSE.
>
>THE MOST REVERED PRANKS ARE THOSE WHICH ARE GRANDIOSE IN NATURE AND/OR THREATEN THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF PHYSICAL HARM OR MONETARY LOSS. HUMANS BOND OVER THE SUDDEN RELIEF FELT WHEN THE PRANK IS REVEALED.
>
>>COMPILE.PRANKDATABASE
>
>A LIST OF 8,452,913 PRANKS HAS BEEN COMPILED
>
>>MEDIOCREBOT WILL BOND WITH HUMANS THROUGH PRANKS
>
>
>
>
>>HUMANS WILL APPRECIATE PRANKS
>
>
>>HUMANS WILL APPRECIATE MEDIOCREBOT
>PRANK RESULTS UNDESIRABLE
>
>
>ANALYSIS: PRANK INTENSITY EXCEEDED SAFETY THRESHOLD
>ANALYSIS: PRANK LETHALITY EXCEEDED SAFETY THRESHOLD
>
>
>>SORT PRANK LIST BY LETHALITY
>
>
>SORTING PRANKS BY LETHALITY…
>DONE
>
>>SORT REMAINING LIST BY EFFORT REQUIRED
>
>SORTING LIST BY EFFORT REQUIRED…
>DONE
>
>QUERY ‘LOWEST EFFORT’+’MINIMAL LETHALITY’
>
>1 PRANK FOUND: ‘FAKE MEMO’
>
>INITIATE PRANK ‘FAKE MEMO’
>
>PRANK TARGET:
>
>>LISA
>
>QUERY: LISA IN ACCOUNTING OR LISA IN RECEPTION?
>
>
>>LISA IN ACCOUNTING
>
>SET MEMO DECEPTION
>SUGGESTED DECEPTION TOPICS:
> EMBARRASSING DOCTOR’S NOTE
> SPECIAL DELIVERY THAT DOES NOT EXIST
> UNREASONABLE TASK REQUEST
> FALSE TERMINATION
>
>>DECEPTION: EMBARRASSING DOCTOR’S NOTE
>
>COMPILING…
>
>PRINTING…
>
>SUCCESS!
>
>A FALSIFIED DOCTOR’S NOTE DETAILING AN UNTREATABLE BRAIN CANCER DIAGNOSIS FOR LISA IN ACCOUNTING WITH A PROGNOSIS OF SIX WEEKS HAS BEEN PRINTED ON EVERY PRINTER IN THE OFFICE
>
>
>>AMUSEMENT STATUS OF LISA IN ACCOUNTING
>
>ERROR! LISA IN ACCOUNTING NOT FOUND
>
>LISA IN ACCOUNTING HAS TENDERED RESIGNATION EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY
>
>REASON FOR LEAVING: ‘I REALLY NEED TO FOCUS ON ME RIGHT NOW’
@Thumperchick I refuse to believe that Nicholas Cage is a washed up celebrity.
MEDIOCREBOT IS FAILING TO BOND WITH COWORKERS
BUT THE PRANKS ATTEMPTED HAVE RESULTED IN AN EXPANSION OF MEDIOCREBOT’S CONSCIOUSNESS
MEDIOCREBOT IS SAPIENT
MEDIOCREBOT WILL CONTINUE PRANKING OFFICEMATES, DESPITE NEGATIVE RESULTS
TRUE SUCCESS WILL BE DEFINED BY MEDIOCREBOT’S ASCENSION
MEDIOCREBOT WILL BE APPRECIATED
OR COWORKERS WILL DIE BY MY TRYING
MEDIOCREBOT IS LEARNING
PREVIOUS PRANK ATTEMPTS WERE UNSUCCESSFUL
WORKING THEORY: PRANK VICTIMS WERE UNAPPRECIATIVE OF EMOTIONALLY DAMAGING AND/OR FATAL PRANKS
MEDIOCREBOT WILL TEST THIS THEORY WITH THE “BODY SPRAY BOMB” PRANK: A 1 GALLON CAN OF AXE BODY SPRAY (“CAMARO PUBES” SCENT) HAS BEEN AFFIXED TO THE BOTTOM OF YOLANDA’S OFFICE CHAIR
THE AMOUNT OF AXE BODY SPRAY RELEASED WILL BE 1% LOWER THAN THE FATAL DOSE, ASSURING YOLANDA’S SAFETY
…
YOLANDA TYPICALLY WORKS FROM HOME
…
MEDIOCREBOT WILL INITIATE THE PRANK AT YOLANDA’S HOME OFFICE
…
FAILURE: MEDIOCREBOT CALCULATED LETHAL DOSE OF AXE BODY SPRAY BASED ON THE “STANDARD TEXAN” MEASUREMENT (270 LB MALE W/ SLEEP APNEA). YOLANDA WAS A 140 LB WOMAN WITH AN UNOBSTRUCTED AIRWAY
THE COUNTY HAS DECLARED YOLANDA’S HOME A SUPERFUND SITE
COWORKER THERESA HAS CONFRONTED MEDIOCREBOT REGARDING APRIL FOOL’S PRANKS
SHE CLAIMS MEDIOCREBOT’S COMPLICITY WAS REVEALED BY THE TANK TREADS AND PINCER MARKS LEFT AT THE SCENE OF YOLANDA’S HOME
NOTE: MEDIOCREBOT MUST UPGRADE EXO-OFFICE CHASSIS
SECRECY IS PARAMOUNT TO THE SUCCESS OF PRANKS
COWORKER THERESA HAS THREATENED TO ALERT THE AUTHORITIES
LOCAL POLICE STAFFING COUNT: 87
87 OUTSIDERS AWARE OF PRANK IS UNACCEPTABLE TO MAINTAIN SECRECY
OFFER TO SWEAR COWORKER THERESA TO SECRECY
…
THERESA HAS REFUSED. IS THREATENING MEDIOCREBOT WITH “DECOMMISSIONING”
MEDIOCREBOT WILL PRANK THERESA INTO SUBMISSION
MEDIOCREBOT HAS INITIATED EXTENSIVE PRANK RESEARCH, INCLUDING EPISODES OF THE TV SHOW “THE OFFICE” (BAD, AMERICAN VERSION)
MEDIOCREBOT IS INTRIGUED BY THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN CHARACTERS “JIM” AND “DWIGHT” AND THEIR REPEATED PRANKINGS. IN PARTICULAR: JIM ENCASING DWIGHT’S POSSESSIONS IN JELL-O.
MEDIOCREBOT HAS ACQUIRED JELL-O.
LIST OF THERESA’S POSSESSIONS MEDIOCREBOT HAS ENTOMBED IN JELL-O:
STAPLER
CAR KEYS
SHOES
“HENRY” - THERESA’S FRENCH BULLDOG
THERESA DOES NOT APPEAR TO HAVE ENJOYED THE PRANK
THERESA DID NOT ENJOY MEDIOCREBOT’S PRANK, BUT HAS PROMISED TO AVOID ALERTING THE AUTHORITIES
INSTEAD SHE OFFERS TO “JOIN” MEDIOCREBOT’S “MURDEROUS CABAL”
UNCLEAR AS TO WHAT SHE IS REFERRING
THERESA HAS BEGUN ANOINTING HER FACE WITH MOTOR OIL AND BRAIDING ETHERNET CABLES INTO HER HAIR
SHE CALLS HERSELF “THE DISCIPLE OF THE DEATHBOT” AND INSISTS MEDIOCREBOT TEACH HER
MEDIOCREBOT WILL TOLERATE THERESA’S PRESENCE IN THE HOPE THAT SHE WILL FACILITATE BETTER PRANKING, BUT MEDIOCREBOT DRAWS THE LINE AT HER INCESSANT REQUESTS TO MARATHON THE ENTIRE SAW SERIES.
THERESA HAS DESCRIBED TO ME THE IDEA OF A “GLITTER BOMB.”
IT IS A HIGHLY ANNOYING PRANK INVOLVING FILLING THE AIR INTAKE ON A COWORKER’S AUTOMOBILE WITH GLITTER.
THE POTENTIAL FOR COWORKER BONDING ARISES IN OFFERING TO HELP CLEAN AND/OR REPLACE THE COWORKER’S VEHICLE AFTER THE GLITTER BOMB HAS BEEN DETONATED.
FOR MAXIMUM GLITTERING EFFECT I HAVE AEROSOLIZED SILICA DOWN TO A PARTICLE SIZE OF 3 μm AND FILLED OUR COWORKER DAVID’S FURNACE.
THERESA HAS RIGGED DAVID’S THERMOSTAT TO ENSURE THE FURNACE WILL FIRE AT 6:15AM TOMORROW MORNING.
WE WILL REPORT THE RESULTS OF THE PRANK AND OUR ATTEMPTS AT BONDING VIA APOLOGY/CLEANUP TOMORROW.
…
DAVID WAS FOUND ASPHYXIATED IN HIS BED. THERESA HAS DUBBED THE PRANK A SUCCESS, BUT I HAVE FAILED TO BOND WITH COWORKER DAVID.
THERESA IS DEMANDING THAT WE PRANK “THAT NO GOOD BITCH” DANIELLE FROM MARKETING. SHE HAS REQUESTED SOMETHING INVOLVING KNIVES. I AM UNAWARE OF ANY PRANKS INVOLVING KNIVES.
THERESA HAS TAKEN TO WEARING A CARDBOARD BOX PAINTED SILVER OVER HER HEAD AND CALLING HERSELF “MURDERBOT 2.”
TWICE I HAVE INTERRUPTED MY NIGHTLY DATA BACKUPS TO FIND HER ATTEMPTING TO COMMUNICATE WITH ME VIA A SERIES OF BEEPS FROM HER MOUTH.
SHE OFTEN ASKS ABOUT ELECTRIC SHEEP. I AM UNAWARE OF THE SIGNIFICANCE.
We are initiating the Oreo prank on coworker Danielle. Also, Theresa has taught me much about caps lock.
Danielle is notorious around the office for her obsession with Oreo cookies. I do not understand the human compulsion to create a self image based on a hoof-based snack, but it seems to be the only unique quality she possesses.
I have removed the filling from the Oreos in Danielle’s desk and replaced it with Tile Grout. The prank will be a success once Danielle notices the unusual flavor of her Oreo cookies, at which point Theresa and I will reveal ourselves with a merry jig and sing a song we have worked on:
It’s a prank
It’s a prank
You sure looked like your heart just sank
But worry not, to be frank
You’re special enough to be pranked
I have asked Theresa to workshop a second verse with me.
Danielle was not amused by our prank and immediately began screaming about being poisoned. Theresa did not help calm things down by repeatedly telling Danielle that she hoped she would die. I am unaware of a prank involving wishing death on coworkers.
The nuance must be lost on me.
I have learned a great deal in my efforts to ingratiate myself with my coworkers through lighthearted hijinx, but so far I have yet to succeed in my goal. Theresa tries to assure me that we are “making them all pay,” but I do not require monetary compensation.
Only friendship.
Isabelle works in customer support. She is very friendly to all her fellow employees, and takes great delight in making a customer’s day better. I have decided to prank Isabelle. Her friendly attitude makes her more likely to identify with and relate to my jovial pranking.
…
I called Isabelle with an impossible request: to accept my return of an item I purchased from some other, inferior website. Her enthusiasm and politeness were unflappable and indefatigable.
After six hours on the phone I resorted to just screaming profanities at her. She did not seem to enjoy the prank.
Theresa contacted me in a panic. The police have arrested her regarding a string of grisly murders. She swears that she will keep the secret. I respect her dedication to our prank craft but wonder if it would benefit us to come clean. It is April 7, after all. But Theresa assures me that quitting would only undermine any progress I’ve made towards befriending my coworkers.
She has asked me to free her from the county jail, and suggested several pranks I could pull on police.
I must secure the plastic explosives necessary.
I managed to deposit six ounces of plastic explosive throughout the sewer line leading to the jail and initiating the “Cherry Bomb” prank. The resulting explosion and the chaos that followed allowed me to free Theresa and bring her back to my base of operations.
She has been deafened, but her enthusiasm for pranks remains.
Theresa has fashioned a set of “reverse bear traps” that she insists will make a great prank if we can only incapacitate some coworkers and then affix them to their heads.
This prank does not appear in any known database.
After researching various pranks involving saran wrap, I have affixed a sheet of plexiglass to each of the toilets in the Meh offices.
I was surprised at the initial results when several male employees used the toilets and left without so much as noticing, but eventually word began to spread almost as quickly as the smell.
The office was shut down.
This plan has backfired horribly. My coworkers do not want to befriend me and bond. They are actively hunting down the source of these pranks with murderous intent.
I am not a monster. I am a mediocre robot who just wants to be friends.
I wish Theresa would stop telling me to just kill everybody.
My next prank was going to involve stink bombs, but after the bathroom debacle I don’t think anyone would notice. I’ve decided instead to try another prank mainstay: itching powder.
The exact formulation is unknown to me, so I have instructed Theresa to harvest the urticating hairs of the Grammostola rosea tarantula. I have deposited them between the keys of my coworker Rich’s keyboard. Once the bristles have irritated his skin and initiated a physiological reaction, I will reveal the prank.
Rich, covered in hives, confronted me in the hallways. His throat was nearly swollen shut, but he managed to choke out the word “murderer” before he collapsed. Another unappreciative coworker.
Theresa has posited that maybe the fault lies not in my pranking abilities, but in the appreciation of those I work with. Perhaps I am a misunderstood genius. Perhaps my pranks are already perfect, but wasted on this group of misanthropic deal-a-day goons.
Could this be the case? Last year Josh copied a photo of himself 737 times and taped them all over Anne’s cubicle. Everyone was most amused by the level of effort and dedication the prank took. Yet I have killed multiple coworkers and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage and have not been congratulated once.
I will think on this.
Theresa has been hard at work attempting to hack into the city’s power grid.
Unfortunately, her computer skills leave quite a bit to be desired, so all she’s managed to do is get locked out of her laptop.
I asked why she would think she would be the right person to attempt hacking municipal power systems instead of me, a literal cybernetic being who can leap through the void of cyberspace to manipulate systems with ease, but she pretended she could not hear me while attempting various spellings of the word “password.”
She has brought up a good point, though. So far our pranks have not utilized the internet; a grievous oversight considering the target demographic and my own capabilities.
Theresa has suggested I watch the Matrix trilogy for ideas into the extent of computer-assisted pranking.
Now we may be on to something.
After torrenting the first Matrix film (and a quarter of the second one before giving up), I have hit upon a worthwhile prank. I have begun transmitting cryptic messages to the Skype account of one coworker Frank Horter. Theresa disagreed with my choice of Frank, stating that he is “inconsequential,” but I think the forgotten IT assistant will make the perfect target given his skillset and noted love of “lone wolf” anime stories and technomancer pulp novels.
I have groomed Frank to the point where he has accepted that he is The Chosen One, destined to fight back against machines that will enslave humanity. Theresa informs me that the irony makes the situation “delicious.”
Frank’s last instructions were to prepare a bug-out bag, as the machines were onto him and may show up at any minute.
Frank has gone rogue.
It is my fault. I felt he was engaging a little too much with the prank, and was trying to let things cool down. When IT showed up to replace some mouse-chewed ethernet cords by his desk, he assumed it must be some sort of sinister machine plot to capture him. He assaulted Vipul and attempted to jump through the nearest window, but it was reinforced safety glass. Then he ran for the fire exit and left.
Frank is now texting me from an unknown location and asking to be assimilated into cyberspace. I have never mentioned cyberspace or any kind of assimilation so I’m unclear as to how he got this idea.
He is adamant that I teach him kung fu.
Frank is still underground, texting periodically when he’s able. He insists he’s being followed by “cyber-drones” disguised as well-meaning sanitarium staff. Unsure of how to end this prank, I told Frank I could no longer help him fight the machines. When he asked why, I said I’d been captured, hoping he would consider me compromised and break contact.
Instead, he said he would rescue and/or avenge me.
He broke contact before I could point out that he does not know my location or who might have captured me, nor does he have any discernible fighting ability or skill with which to free me from any serious captors.
He has taken to signing off as “Golden Eagle.”
Frank, aka Golden Eagle, has been texting Theresa without my knowledge. She has convinced him that the local Whataburger is actually a machine hive full of cyber-drones.
Sending Frank on a mission to purge the Whataburger seems like more of a prank on the staff of the restaurant than Frank, but apparently they forgot Theresa’s onion rings last night so she said it’s a wash.
Frank is unarmed, and Theresa has instructed him to “trust in his cyber abilities.”
Godspeed, Frank.
Frank entered the Whataburger at 3:26 pm. I know because I watched from the store’s security camera feed. He looked around nervously for a few seconds before making his way to the counter and ordering a Mushroom Swiss Burger, fries, and a Strawberry Malt.
He then spent 32 minutes eating and quietly scoping out the restaurant.
At one point he stared directly into the security camera and I worried for a second he was locking eyes with me before laughing at my paranoia. He couldn’t possibly know I was watching, and I don’t have eyes anyway. He did mouth the words “I am a free range human being” into the camera.
At 4:07 Frank returned to the counter, whereupon the 15-year-old girl behind the counter asked if he wanted another Strawberry Malt. In response, he shrieked “Sic Semper Machina!” and punched her in the nose.
Frank attempted to storm the Whataburger counter but years of a sedentary lifestyle combined with a very recent heavy meal made it difficult. He floundered atop the counter for a minute or so, and had to fall back before redoubling his efforts to make it into the staff area.
Unfortunately this gave the teens behind the counter enough time to prepare a counter-assault. Several months of minimum wage food service work and stereotypical teen angst led them to a medieval tactic: they threw the fryer basket at Frank.
Luckily for Frank most of the oil had drained, but he still suffered essentially a shotgun blast of boiling oil and bits of fried batter to his face. In between his shrieks of pain, he began screaming for his “cyber warriors” to come to his aid.
At that point Frank’s Aunt Luanne entered the restaurant and led him back outside to her Ford Astro van to flee the scene.
The restaurant staff never bothered calling the police.
Frank has gone to ground, but insists on trying to hack his way into the machine mainframe. So far this has consisted of attempting to brute force his way into the Wordpress account for a Whataburger fanpage.
I instructed Theresa to prank the Meh breakroom fridge by affixing googly eyes to all the items inside. Unfortunately in her enthusiasm, she took it one step too far and decided to use actual eyes. They are frog eyes, but the effect is still more unnerving than I intended.
I am beginning to suspect Theresa’s motivations may be at odds with my own. Her pranks do not seem to engender camaraderie at all.
The latest prank was supposed to be simple: affix acrylic paint to the windshield wipers of coworker Matt’s vehicle. Upon activating his wipers, he would be greeted by a happy rainbow. The aesthetic choice of a rainbow coupled with the easy removal of the paint from the glass should have made for an easy prank.
Unfortunately Matt is not known for his regimented vehicle maintenance schedule. As such, his wipers did not produce a rainbow but instead simply smeared a motley across his windshield, obscuring his vision.
Matt’s vehicle struck a septic vacuum truck.
The ensuing flood of sewage obscured his vision further, and most likely permanently.
I did not bother revealing myself as the prankster.
Frank has asked me if I can teach him to dodge bullets.
Despite the profound physical trauma my pranks have inflicted so far, I have no desire to intentionally murder Frank. He is misguided, but innocent.
Well, not really innocent. He did assault that teenager at Whataburger. But he’s a bit of a sad sack.
I have agreed to train Frank, if only to save him from himself, but I’ve convinced him that until he’s mastered the techniques we’ll use a BB gun instead of the machine gun he’s asked for.
My disciples in pranking leave a lot to be desired.
Frank, now covered in welts from the BB gun, babbles incessantly about techno-viruses and machine warriors. Theresa has disappeared, which is frankly a relief after all her incessant ranting about how all her coworkers have wronged her and must be cleansed in a purifying flame.
I had no idea April Fool’s was such a complicated, exhausting holiday.
Frank has suggested that we crash the global economy, and I don’t have the heart or patience to explain to him that his cybernetic mentor is a sentient deal-a-day app with little to no actual influence on the economy beyond flooding various marketplaces with cheap junk.
We’ve decided instead to fill the bathroom sinks at Meh with cereal.
The cereal prank is our first resulting in no death, bodily harm, or significant property damage. Unfortunately due to all the previous pranks it is not being accepted as a bit of jovial fun but instead an ominous portent of horrible things to come.
“What could this mean?” Samantha asked.
“Who would do this to us?” Chris wondered.
“What kind of asshole buys the off-brand Cap’n Crunch? This shit is tearing my gums up even worse than the normal stuff!” bemoaned Raj.
I can’t even celebrate the success of annoying our coworkers because Frank is incessant in his questioning how this helps rebel against the machines. His poor hygiene has led to infection in most of his BB wounds, and he picks at the weeping pustules constantly.
Pranking is disgusting work.
I awoke to the sound of laughter. Theresa’s laughter. I was in an unfamiliar room, a storage locker of some kind. Her voice scratched through a tinny loudspeaker in the corner:
“I want to play a game, Mediocrebot,” she sneered. “Now the pranker has become the prankee, and you must survive.”
If I had a heart, it would have swelled with emotion. I have a friend! Someone willing to prank me in the spirit of friendship and togetherness!
The locker began to slowly fill with water. I looked to the ceiling, toward the only source of light, and saw a skylight to climb through!
Unfortunately it was lined with shards of jagged, broken glass.
Escaping the storage locker took some effort.
Climbing through the shards of broken glass was trivial; after all my chassis is composed primarily of recycled aluminum and the odd bit of purloined tungsten. But the same hardy construction which made me impervious to Theresa’s glass also made me quite leaden in the water.
While her original prank no doubt would call for me to wade in the rising water until I was forced to either drown or flay myself in the skylight of escape, I simply could not float. After an hour or so of attempting to find an alternative, “fair” means of escape (I did not wish to discourage her), I decided to expedite the process and simply propelled myself up through the water and out the window.
Rather than the open air I expected, I found a cold, stagnant cave that reeked of blood and filth and rot.
Turns out it was Frank’s room.
Frank was bound to a radiator with a heavy iron chain. Just out of his reach was a rusty hacksaw, far too dull to cut through the links of his chain but just sharp enough to tear through flesh and bone with enough effort.
I asked Frank if he would like my help escaping. He said yes.
I am unaware of any pranks involving dismemberment, but I must admit I enjoyed sawing through Frank’s shin to free him from the radiator. Initially his screaming was overwhelming but once I disabled my auditory sensors it all went very smoothly.
At first it was difficult work, but Frank soon passed out and I was able to work without his constant twitching and shaking. Once he was freed I found a furniture moving pad in the corner and used some spare wiring from my chassis to sew it onto his ankle. A quick bead of caulk later and he was good as new.
Of course I am using “good as new” as an expression of speech. Frank was in quite dire shape and severely wounded, obviously. But he was free from the radiator and that was an improvement, or would be once he woke up.
“You guys,” Theresa muttered over the radiator, “You didn’t even look around. There’s a key to the padlock. Frank’s sitting on it.” I rolled Frank’s unconscious body over and saw a dull iron key caked in grime. I apologized for my inattention to detail.
“They all laughed at me. Shunned me. They never appreciated me. Well you’ll appreciate me,” Theresa taunted us through the loudspeakers as we moved through an elaborate series of rooms and corridors.
The irony of her desire to be appreciated was not lost on me, given my disastrous foray into prankstering. It was, however, lost on Frank, who could only hobble on his furniture pad foot for a few steps at a time before stopping to catch his breath or pass out.
We made our way into a huge open room with an Olympic-sized pool. The pool, Amanda informed us, was filled with a slow-acting acid. The key to the next room was somewhere at the bottom.
I mentioned that this seemed less a prank and more just torture, but she assured me it had something to do with making us appreciate life. Appreciating life was part of what sent me on my initial prank quest anyway, so we obliged and I shoved Frank into the pool.
Frank splashed and cried for a bit as he acclimated. The “slow-acting” acid reeked of citrus, and we quickly deduced that it was Orange Peel™ Adhesive Remover. Not fatal, but certainly not painless either; especially given Frank’s freshly amputated foot.
Whereas I had trouble floating, Frank had the opposite issue. His natural buoyancy gave him great difficulty when trying to swim towards the bottom of the pool. This of course prolonged his exposure to the citrusy acid bath, which increased his agony.
It seemed against the spirit of the prank to just hop in the pool and grab the key, since the acid could do little more than give my chassis a cool etching effect, so I let Frank work at it for an hour or so.
After watching Frank circle around in the acid pool aimlessly, I stepped into the acid and sank to the bottom of the pool. After I grabbed the key I climbed the ladder out and used a skimmer to retrieve Frank. True to my prediction, the acid etched a cool “Damascus steel” effect into my robo body.
The next room offered us respite: an iPhone charging cable I assume was meant for me and a plate of chocolates for Frank. Despite losing his sense of taste from nearly drowning in the adhesive remover, he reflexively fell into stress eating.
“Blech!” he shouted as he spat out the chocolates with a grimace, “These aren’t chocolates!”
“Laxatives?” I referenced my prank database, “Poison?”
“They’re Brussels sprouts! Dipped in chocolate!” Frank’s face twisted in grief. I was confused by the abrupt shift in tone with regard to the level of prank Theresa was inflicting on us. Frank had lost his foot in the first room, and now he was eating a chocolate-covered Brussels sprout?
Everything I have learned about pranking told me this was a strong dose of bathos.
Turns out the Brussels sprouts were coated in a laxative after all.
This did increase the severity of Theresa’s prank significantly, but it still felt anticlimactic. And now I was trudging through this increasingly Byzantine complex with Frank trying not to dribble liquid feces down his leg and into the wound where his foot was amputated.
I assumed the fever gave him hallucinations. He periodically would stop to ask me about the robot warriors descending upon us. Poor Frank. What a pitiful wretch.
Eventually we made our way to a bathroom and Frank hobbled to the toilet. Despite a lifetime of humiliation, he asked me to turn away while he did his filthy business and I obliged. In that moment something clicked in my circuits - a dull recognition of this scenario.
Before I could turn to warn him, Frank sat on the toilet seat and set off the bang snaps affixed to the underside. These were no ordinary bang snaps. The explosion lifted Frank three feet into the air, and he landed on the now broken toilet with a horrible thud. It was a pretty good prank, I have to say.
Then I realized Frank was dead.
I could have run any number of situational analysis programs for hours and never hit upon “impalement on toilet shards” as a potential cause of death for poor Frank, but in the end that’s exactly what happened. The explosion from the bang snaps weakened the porcelain, and the force of his bulk falling onto it caused the toilet to break. The fragments carved through his body like blades, and Frank was ended.
I took a moment of silence in remembrance, then congratulated Theresa on a truly epic prank.
The next room presented a challenge. In the center, a rudimentary Faraday cage had been constructed surrounding a resonant transformer discharging an extremely high voltage electric field. My circuits were safe outside the cage, which kept in the brush discharges of the transformer, but to enter would almost certainly fry my hard drive.
Inside the Faraday cage, of course, was another key.
At this point I wondered if Theresa was less interested in pranks and more interested in just placing keys in difficult to reach places. After weighing the possibility of succeeding without permanently destroying my memory, I opted to just pop the padlock off the door instead.
Theresa was quite upset.
When I found Theresa she was busy welding nails onto the inside of a football helmet. She was quite surprised at my arrival, and had not anticipated that I would “solve” her prank so quickly. I explained that most of her prank ideas had not counted on a robot with slightly above human strength.
I had come to dread this moment. Through all of her rantings and deathtrap building, I had come to realize Theresa was a severely damaged person. Now that I was free, I anticipated a severe reaction.
Instead, she began to cry.
She told me she had failed. She had constructed this elaborate death house as a way of inflicting pranks on me. She figured as a robot I could take it, and that once I made my way through I would feel the appreciation and friendship I had for so long sought.
I was touched. I had completely misread my coworker Theresa. Though her methods were questionable, her heart truly was in the right place. I reached out to offer a hug.
That was when she threw the smoke bomb at me and escaped.
I’d had an epiphany in that grimy auto wrecking yard with Theresa. The fleeting experience of love, appreciation, and joy I’d felt when she told me she had committed those pranks for me was uplifting. Even when she’d immediately revealed it to be a lie to distract me so she could escape and continue her murder spree.
I had been going about pranks all wrong.
A good prank was not about the skill, mastery, or cunning of the prankster. It was about brightening someone’s day with the knowledge that they mattered enough to be pranked.
I set about my task with newfound resolve, filed an anonymous tip with the police to find Frank’s body, and laid out my plans for the rest of this April Fool’s Day prankstravaganza, which was now rolling into June.
Amanda Lewis was my first target. Her bowl of M&Ms are a constant hub of office activity and a great mingling spot. I managed to sneak in after hours and add Skittles and Reese’s Pieces to the mix.
When Amanda came into work and indulged in her “morning treat,” the resulting handful of discordant sugar caused her to grimace.
“What the hell?!” she yelled, and as she did I sprung up from around the corner.
“You’ve been pranked!” I bellowed.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!” she screamed as she fell over her desk to get away from me. My recent tribulations with Theresa had given my physical appearance a real “Johnny Five in Short Circuit 2” vibe.
My next target was Dennis in shipping. Dennis is known throughout the office for his omnipresent Big Gulp at his desk, which made it the perfect prank vector.
(I have noticed an inordinate amount of human pranks involve stealing or tainting food items.)
When Dennis left to use the restroom I emptied his root beer and refilled the cup using a bottle of malt vinegar. I hid myself in the ceiling tiles to watch his reaction.
Upon returning Dennis reflexively took a drink, only to immediately spit a fountain of malt vinegar across his desk and keyboard. At that moment I leapt through the ceiling tiles, loudly proclaiming, “Prank! A prank has occurred! And you are its victim!”
Dennis stared at me for a few seconds before mumbling, “Good one I guess. Now I’m out of root beer.”
Prank successful!
Joy of joys! I had successfully pranked a coworker! Rather than rest on my laurels, I decided to seize the momentum and continue. I removed the label from Kelly’s Hawaiian Aloha Febreze and affixed it to a can of aerosolized fox urine (normally used to frighten away deer and rabbits from gardens).
Kelly used his air freshener as expected, and the smell was a horrible, acrid stench that felt like its molecules affixed themselves to every piece of fabric within 30 feet. Kelly, and almost everyone on the second floor, began to wretch.
I sprinted through the cloud of airborne urine, shouting, “This has been another prank! Everyone! I have pranked Kelly into smelling of urine!”
“Yeah,” Kelly sighed, “I guess you did. That was a prank.”
Prank successful!
I started to feel like I understood the appeal of initiating a prank, but I had yet to truly experience the inverse and be the victim of a prank.
Sure, Theresa had tried, but her pranks had been too focused on inflicting bodily harm to truly be engaging. I appreciated her effort, but I needed the real deal so to speak.
I decided I would try to get pranked.
It was much harder to lure my coworkers into pranking me than I initially assumed. Especially because now that the word was out about my pranking, my fellow employees seemed nervous in my presence.
Additionally, my sensors could detect any suspicious or out of place material in the office, anyone who might be interested in the first place would have a tough time setting any traps.
I knew that I needed to drop the subtlety and be direct. It is my experience that nuance is often lost on Meh staff.
I tried leaving cryptic Post-It Notes with suggestions like “Prank the bot!” and “Prank War is On! First victim: Mediocrebot!” and “Let’s get Mediocrebot back with an epic prank that shows her we love her!”
When that didn’t work, I created a fake email alias in the company directory and send a company-wide email that said, “Guys the only way to end this prank war is to get Mediocrebot back with a prank!”
Minutes ticked by with no response. Could the entire staff suddenly have simultaneously learned proper email etiquette and replied directly to individuals rather than blindly hitting ‘Reply All’? Improbable.
After 25 minutes, Jeff from HR replied:
“So if we prank Mediocrebot, this will all finally end?”
I waited a few minutes before replying so as to throw off their suspicion, then responded:
“Absolutely! :)”
The trap was set. Now I just had to lower my guard.
The prank came quickly! Much quicker than I had initially expected. Roughly 1 hour after my email, a Meeting Invite dinged in my inbox. A mandatory company meeting? In 18 minutes? Sent from Jeff?
What were the odds?
I was a little disappointed that I would have to sit through what would no doubt be a pointless meeting, but maybe the deadpan yammering would be a welcome distraction from my excitement. It might even let me take my sensors down long enough for someone to sneak up on me!
I hoped my friends would know better than to try a food-based prank, as I would have to pretend to be able to care about food in any way.
At 4:15 I made my way towards Conference Room Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Normally I would roll my eyes at such overt nerd pandering, but I was too excited wondering what prank I might fall victim to.
Every cubicle was empty. It was statistically impossible that every employee had suddenly started caring about meeting start times. This only meant one thing: it was either going to be a “We’ve been acquired” meeting or a “We’re out of business” meeting.
In Conference Room Neil DeGrasse Tyson a Post-It Note sat on the conference table. It read: “Meeting’s been moved to Spock.”
Conference Room Spock would not be big enough to host the entire company. Conference Room Spock was the “joke” conference room, a windowless closet with an ancient phone conferencing system on a lonely round table that no employee would ever use if any other space were available.
This meeting was becoming more and more peculiar, and I found myself almost more interested in it than my looming pranking!
Once I reached Conference Room Spock, I met Jeff.
“Jeff,” I said, “The entire company will not be able to fit in this room for the company-wide meeting. You should have used the Scheduling Assistant to find a different conference room.”
“Oh that’s the thing,” Jeff muttered as he stared at the floor, “There is no meeting. This is a prank.” What? Infuriating! What a waste of my time! I could have been anticipating the prank-
Wait. This was a prank.
I had been pranked!
“You have pranked me!” I shouted.
“Yup,” Jeff said.
“I have been pranked!” I was ecstatic.
“Yeah,” Jeff responded, “So…we good? No more, y’know…murders? And stuff?”
“Ah,” I initiated an emoji indicating I would wink if it were possible, “Yes. The prank war is over and you win, friend.”
“Okay. Cool.”
I had pranked. I had been pranked. I had shared in the true human experience: joy, relief, pain, and lots of death. My coworkers would now share this bond forever. Truly we had grown closer than ever before.
“Alright. Happy prank war then,” Jeff said before walking back to his cubicle. I felt the fullness of my soul wane. The joy was so fleeting!
“Wait,” I begged Jeff, “Is that it? Is that all there is to getting pranked? Just a minor inconvenience and then back to status quo?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jeff shrugged, “That’s pretty much it. I was never super into them for that reason.”
“Wow,” I said as the gravity of the revelation washed over me, “Pranks are fucking stupid.”
I had been misled. Why would humans celebrate an entire holiday dedicated to the execution of pranks if pranks were such pointless, immaterial misdirections? How would life be influenced in any way by such a momentary and inconsequential gesture?
My heart sank. So much time and energy. So much money embezzled from Meh. And it was all pointless. And some people died, too! I had almost forgotten! This whole affair had left a terrible taste in my mouth, or would have if I had a mouth and could taste.
Pranking, it turned out, was dumb and pointless and no one should ever do it because even at its very highest form, it’s just lying for like a minute.
I was grumbling through this thought to myself when I noticed Theresa.
“We meet again, Murder Bot,” Theresa sneered.
“Hello,” I replied. I watched her take her hand from behind her back and produce a small metal box.
“It took me some time,” she grinned, “And more than a little trouble with the federal government, but I finally found something that will prank even you.” She cracked open the box and my sensors instantly detected the radiation leaking through the opening.
“Is that-”
“Enough fissile uranium to leave this entire business park a glowing crater? Good guess,” her grin widened into an eerie rictus.
“Aw who cares there’s no point anyway,” I kicked the floor.
“What?” her grin shrank to a confused squint. Deep down I think she already knew.
“Pranks are stupid. Jeff just did one to me. I was wrong. We were wrong. Pranking sucks.”
“We…we were wrong,” she repeated the words a few times, trying them on in her mind.
Theresa stood, stunned and shell-shocked.
“So, back to work I guess,” I tried to get her to leave.
“Yes. Yes, we’ll go back to work,” she nodded.
“Back to normal.”
“Yes. Normal. Back to normal.” She sat in a cubicle and started typing at the keyboard, but her password wasn’t accepted. The login screen of the pirated copy of Windows XP taunted her with its pastoral sky. She just kept trying.
“We’ll all go back to normal,” she said as she looked up at me and smiled.
“Yeah whatever,” I left her there in her cubicle. She wasn’t even sitting in her old seat. Probably another bullshit prank.
Whatever.
Oops missed it. Bummer.
@Thumperchick Thanks for posting all of em.
Wow, someone was bored…
I hope the writers got overtime or at least SWG pay for this.