Nick Knight and Amanda Cohen were created by James Parriott and Barney Cohen and belong to Sony/Tristar. I'm just having fun with them.
by Nancy Braman
January 1999
With exaggerated patience, Nick replaced the papers in their original order--again, placed them in the feeder--again, and pressed the start button--again. It had taken 3 paper jams so far to produce 5 pages of a 10-page report, his exasperation was growing, and he did not like this machine at all.
The copier shuffled through the first several pages, picking up where it had left off. Page 6, fine. Page 7, fine. Page 8--
Silence.
Nick's comments to the hapless machine consisted of various expressions in a dialect unheard among mortals for many generations. He knew without looking what the message in the window read: Remove jammed paper.
He opened the front door and glared at the diagram. Light number 2--paper jammed while feeding from paper tray.
Muttering repeatedly to himself, "Don't bite it, it's a machine," Nick opened the door to the paper stack. As the tray descended, he could see the edge of a sheet of paper sticking out. He removed it gently, remembering the first jam, when he had torn the paper by yanking on it.
Nick closed the paper tray door and the copier door, reshuffled the papers for the fourth time, and pressed the start button.
Page 8, fine. Page 9--
Silence.
Nick felt his fangs descend; he snarled at the photocopier. Then he felt rather foolish. After all, it was only a stupid machine.
He repeated the procedure he had already done four times and started the machine again.
Page 9, fine. Page 10--
"Aaaarrrggh!"
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"I'm afraid it's a total loss, ma'am," said the technician.
"I thought so," replied Captain Amanda Cohen. "Are the maintenance people here yet?"
"Yes, ma'am. They'll take care of the building repairs. But what I'd like to know is, how the heck did a machine like that get shoved out the window?"
