‘The Magic Shuffling Machine’ by Derek Salinas Lazarski

My sister Kelsey moved in with me the day before the project was assigned. Initially I thought living with her was going to be fun. Pizza and beer and movies every night. Then, a week later, I had no control of the television and the fridge was filled with vegan cheese.

What could I do? Her super-successful pompous cellist husband back in that big philharmonic dumped her second-chair flute for the first-chair clarinet. Couldn’t let her move back with Mom and Dad. Mom was still seasoning the cast-iron skillet every day out of calcified routine, and Dad would have her sanding cabinets in the garage. Better she move from the city to a big Midwestern suburb than to a boring rural one.

Also, I had no excuse. For the four or so years before Kelsey moved in, my days had been spent analyzing budgets for Carnetica while at night I was parked at the computer escaping in fantasy RPGs and falling down message board rabbit holes. And, when I could kickstart my motivation, ploughing ahead on the murder mystery library.

That’s when Research Project 916-00-3871 landed in my department queue.

All I wanted was a slow Monday. To leave the cube as little as possible.

But, first thing in the morning, there it sat, a new budget line lurking there beneath my other departments like a whitehead pimple: Plastics. Domestics. Auxiliary. And, gods be damned, Research Project 916-00-3871.

Clicking it didn’t expand into any detail. The Explanation field held only two words. That’s it. No lengthy abstract full of molecules and polymers. No citation list. No inscrutable description.

The two words in the explanation field were this: Occurriential Interdeterminism.