My Coworker Thought a Stapler Was a Communication Device

I work in a small, quiet library where the most exciting event of the day is usually the arrival of the interlibrary loan crate or a particularly stubborn paper jam in the printer. It is the kind of place where dust motes dance in the shafts of afternoon sunlight and the silence is so profound you can hear the settling of the building’s foundation. My coworker, Gary, is a staple of this environment, though he is, to put it mildly, quite unique. Gary has been with the library for over a decade, and he tends to inhabit his own internal reality, a space populated by eccentric theories and long-winded monologues that usually trail off into non-sequiturs. On a particularly stagnant Tuesday afternoon, the air was thick with the scent of old paper and ozone from the laminator. I was in the back stacks, methodically shelving a collection of oversized art history books, when a strange, rhythmic sound began to punctuate the silence. It was a dull, heavy thump-thump-thump, like a heartbeat echoed in mahogany. Curiosity, often the enemy of productivity in a library, got the better of me. I slid silently around the corner of the biography section, expecting to see a patron banging their head against the desk or perhaps a misplaced piece of equipment. Instead, I found Gary. He was sitting at his station, his posture unnervingly upright, his focus entirely on the notepad before him. In his right hand, he held our standard-issue industrial stapler like a conductor’s baton. He was bringing it down against the paper with deliberate, rhythmic force. Thump-thump-thump. He didn't seem to notice me at first. His eyes were glazed over, staring at the ceiling tiles as if waiting for a signal. I cleared my throat, a sound that seemed to shatter the stillness like glass. Gary didn't jump. He simply slowed his rhythmic assault and turned his head toward me, a look of profound patience etched onto his face. 'Just sending a message,' he said, his voice barely rising above a whisper. I stood there, holding a heavy volume on the Impressionists, completely baffled. 'A message? To who, Gary? The head librarian? The supply closet?' I asked, trying to keep my voice light, as if this were a normal, daily occurrence. He looked back at his notepad, then flicked his gaze toward the sky, or at least the beige ceiling. 'To the universe,' he replied with the casual confidence of someone checking the weather. 'It is a Morse code thing. The vibration carries, you see. Thump-thump means send coffee.' I looked at the desk. There were no indentations on the paper, just a series of black, heavy ink marks where the stapler had repeatedly struck the surface. He genuinely believed that the physical force of his desk-mounted percussion was vibrating through the floorboards, across the parking lot, and into the cosmic ether to summon a caffeinated beverage. There was no irony in his eyes, only a serene expectation. Most people might have tried to explain the mechanics of the universe or the limitations of office supplies, but we don't get many customers in the late afternoon, and the silence had already been broken. I didn't have the heart—or perhaps the energy—to dismantle his logic. 'And is the universe responding?' I asked, moving back to my shelving cart. Gary resumed his thumping, a faint, rhythmic cadence that seemed to blend with the hum of the air conditioner. 'Not yet,' he said, his voice trailing off as he focused on his rhythmic transmission. 'But the connection is steady. It takes time for the request to travel.' I walked away, leaving him to his cosmic telegraphy. Sometimes, as I walk past his desk in the quiet, empty hours of the afternoon, I still hear that faint, persistent thumping. I never do see a cup of coffee materialize on his desk, but in the vast, indifferent expanse of the library, I sometimes wonder if the universe actually is listening, and if it just finds the request for coffee a bit too trivial to fulfill.