The Wrong Accident

On his first official day at the Minor Catastrophes Office, having completed training and feeling perhaps unreasonably confident in his abilities, Harold Murkley had exactly one assignment. Rather than taking this as a hint at his own prospects, or feeling that this one task must be immensely important as to necessitate an entire day to achieve, Harold thought nothing of it. There was a mail slot with his initials on it, and inside was a single folder that he took with him to his desk, full of eagerness to see what trifling mishap he would be responsible for.

He ought to have been suspicious; anyone else would have been. What with the state of disarray in the Major Catastrophes Office, the Minor office had been scrambling to adjust its calculations—reassigning staff almost weekly, abandoning models and studies half-finished, trying desperately (and failing spectacularly) to get a meeting with all the other Offices’ heads and sort things out. This was alluded to in training, of course, though with the best face on it that Trainer Di could muster. They were now in the business of causing small measures of mayhem in everyday human life, after all, and would be able to cope with a little mayhem around the office. Indeed, some of them would eventually find it fitting that an office that induces a little chaos here and there should itself be in a perpetual state of chaos.

Harold could have found out the real details if he wanted. He sat next to three old-timers who would have gladly told him every single thing that was wrong with the place, how it was supposed to be, and conclude their griping with a condemnation of people like Harold coming in green and overconfident and hopeful. But Harold did not ask. He said hello to his neighbors, who nodded or grunted and otherwise ignored him. He was too excited to pay any attention to their behavior or the cascading files covering their desks and the surrounding floor. He sat down and opened the folder to read his very first job:

Case No. 583176A-003

Name: Liz Wallace

Location: 6th Street, coffee shop probable

Task: Conceal black notebook for minimum 48 hours.

DEADLINE: Close of business today. Penalties apply.

Simple enough, Harold thought. He hadn’t finished top of the class in training, but he had done well enough in the concealment unit. Jobs were supposed to be assigned by skill and ability as well as seniority, and this seemed to him like a perfect fit. Hide a notebook? For only two days? Nothing could be easier.

While he waited for the transport elevator, he studied Liz Wallace’s photo. It was from her driver’s license, issued several years earlier, though Harold did not know this. He memorized the length and style of her hair particularly. It was short and very curly, but she had dyed the ends of it a bright pink, which he thought would make it extremely easy to spot her.

He couldn’t believe his luck. His first case not only required the skill he was best at, but also involved a person with such an unusual hair color? Harold, of course, did not know much about human style and fashion, or how quickly they changed.

The doors opened, and Harold entered the transport elevator and punched the destination into the panel. The doors opened on an under-construction sidewalk, which did make it slightly more difficult for Harold to enter the human environment unnoticed. Entangled in the plastic construction fencing and unsure how he had managed to get stuck, Harold suddenly found himself being shouted at by a construction worker who had mistaken him for someone who had official business there but who was also incompetent and making a mess of things.

This was the precise sort of thing he was trained to avoid altogether. He couldn’t explain himself, which only made the shouting man angrier. At last, however, Harold was nearly free of the fence, and the man’s fury reached such a height as to induce him to grab Harold by the jacket and throw him out of the construction zone.

He was now flustered and disheveled. The shouting incident had drawn some attention from passersby, too, which was the bigger problem. If it were not such a time-sensitive case—and one in which the location could change if he wasn’t careful and quick—he might have disappeared for a while and tried later. As it was, there was nothing for it but to dust off his clothes and get busy.

Liz Wallace was sitting in the coffee shop across from the scene of Harold’s mishap, writing out a to-do list on the last page of her rather battered and overstuffed notebook. When she ran out of room, she tucked the notebook in her bag and pulled out its replacement, thanking her past self for carrying it around for the last three days just in case the need arose. It irritated her to have her list spill over into another whole book. If she had thought about it before she began, she would have known that a third of a page would not fit all the things she needed to do without her having to resort to minute, illegible handwriting.

She had just placed the new notebook on the table when she remembered to check the time. Sure enough, she was running late. And in her in hurry to pack up and clear her table, she knocked over the last inch of her coffee, which quickly spilled over the edge of the table to splatter all over the floor and onto her shoes.

As she was mopping up the mess, she didn’t notice when Harold walked through the door, a confused look on his face when he noticed that Liz no longer had pink hair. She didn't see him stare at the notebook on the table, or the man across the shop who was slowly unpacking his belongings: laptop, charger, file folders, a crisp and new black notebook just like the one sitting on Liz’s table.

When he saw the man with the same notebook as Liz’s, Harold’s excitement almost burst out of him in a cry of glee. How, how could he be so fortunate as this? Everything was going his way and it was his first day on the job. He couldn’t help but take it as a sign of things to come, imagining his future at the office full of glory and promotions and awards. All he needed to do was contrive to get Liz and this man to drop their things on the ground and pick up the wrong notebooks and go their separate ways. Having already had one clumsy moment that day, it wouldn’t be difficult to orchestrate another.

Instead, however, Harold was handed an even better chance. Liz did not come back to her table after throwing away the napkins she’d used to clean up the spill. She had gone into the bathroom to wash her hands, leaving Harold a clear field at her notebook. All he had to do now was distract the man long enough to swap the notebooks, and then sit and make sure Liz left without noticing. For good measure, he thought, he’d better watch the man up and leave, too, in case later in the day Liz traced her notebook loss to the cafe and came back looking for anyone who might know about it.

Liz’s notebook was already in Harold’s hands when the barista called at the man to come collect his drink. There would now be no need for Harold to create a scene at all! He could just idly trade the books while their owners weren’t looking and that was that. His comfortable sense of unbeatable good fortune grew as he put Liz’s notebook on the man’s table, and was completely unshaken by the close call he had when the bathroom door opened just as he stepped away from Liz’s table.

He went to the counter to order a drink, and watched with a satisfied smile as Liz tucked the wrong notebook into her bag and left. Harold lingered long enough to ensure that the man left without noticing the swap, and then returned to the office, rather pleased with how well his first day had gone.

* * *

Several hours later, one Mr. Blake returned to his office extremely irritated. Somehow, he had no idea how it could have happened, his notebook was missing. Or rather, everything he had written in it was missing—for the notebook he did have was exactly like his own, except that it was blank. He was in the middle of emptying out his drawers and shelves looking for the missing book when the front desk assistant came in. “This got left at the front for you. Good thing you had your business card tucked inside,” she said, setting the notebook atop the heap of files he had just stacked on his keyboard.

There was a sticky note on the cover, tucked under the elastic band: Not sure how I wound up with your notebook, but I’m guessing you have my blank one. You can keep it, or you can call me. Whatever’s convenient. -L. A phone number followed.

With a confused laugh, Mr. Blake picked up the phone.

* * *

The next day at the Minor Catastrophes Office, Harold was completely at a loss as to why he had been summoned for disciplinary action—and not just by his own manager, but also by the head of the Department of Serendipitous Instances, too. They recounted his every move from the previous day, and he simply nodded because it was all perfectly accurate and matched the report he’d filed. “How, then, Mr. Murkley, do you explain the fact that not only did Ms. Wallace keep her notebook at all times, but at the end of the day, also had a man invest $20,000 in her business?”

His mouth fell open. It couldn’t be possible. He hurriedly explained how he had switched the notebooks, had checked to make sure Liz left and that Mr. Blake left the shop without noticing, too. He couldn’t think how it had gone wrong, and neither could they.

The manager and the department head began arguing, and Harold couldn’t concentrate on what they said as they shouted over one another. Finally, the manager conceded the head’s point. “He shouldn’t have been started on something so substantial and with so much risk. Mr. Murkley should have been assigned paper cuts or lost socks. Neither of those tasks would have resulted in such a major unauthorized Serendipitous Instance.”

And so, on Harold’s second day in the Minor Catastrophes Office, he was reassigned to paper cuts, lost socks, and other similar tasks. He was not interested in cases like these, but his inexplicable failure with Liz Wallace’s notebook left him with little room to argue. In its disorganized state, it would be several years before the office figured out exactly how his mistake had occurred at all.

Liz Wallace, for her part, had never felt so lucky in her entire life—although she did seem to be losing her socks more than usual after that. As for Mr. Blake, he never regretted his investment in her business, though as you may have guessed, he did tend to get paper cuts more often than he ever had before.