Free Machine Of Death by David Malki, Mathew Bennardo, Ryan North

friends Bricky and the Fatal Fortune-Teller. A bunch of people came in as a group to get their death cards, so I got to watch them share. I’ve got some interesting coworkers: Paul is going to die by FALL , Tammy from HR got LIGHTNING , and Mitch got OVERDOSE . He seemed to think it was pretty funny, but Tammy got a strange look on her face. Mitch had never struck me as the kind of guy who would take drugs irresponsibly, but, you know, there are an awful lot of drugs around here in the office that he has access to. And he took a trip with his girlfriend to Amsterdam last Christmas. Hmmmm… Mike from accounting got the weirdest one: GOVERNMENT . How do you die by government? Will he commit treason? Get drafted? Maybe he’ll happen upon who really killed JFK . Paul tried to get me to do it, but I refused. First of all, I still don’t want to know. Second, I don’t want other people to know. Third, I don’t have any proof that this thing works. I don’t know if they think this machine is like a party game, or if they all just really want to know how they die, but I stare at this thing every day, and I’m maybe a little scared of it. 
    Aug 25 – Apparently, getting your death foretold by a machine isn’t covered by insurance. Paul was fuming yesterday, but I think he’s crazy. Do you really want your insurance company to know how you are going to die? I’d think your auto premiums would skyrocket if your insurance company knew your death card said CRASH . They probably wouldn’t cover you at all. In related news, inventory showed that one lab was missing over a thousand dollars’ worth of stimulants. That’s serious business. Everyone thinks it’s Mitch. He looks miserable, but the question is: Is he miserable because he’s been caught, or because he’s stopped taking stimulants? Or is it possible that he’s innocent, and he’s miserable because everyone thinks he’s stealing from the company?  
    Sep 1 – Mitch is gone. Whether he stole anything is still uncertain, but he apparently missed a conference when he was in Amsterdam with his girlfriend, and that’s the official reason he’s canned. Sounds a little trumped-up to me. No one made a big deal out of the conference then. I tried to talk to Paul about it, but he didn’t seem concerned. Did he not make the connection between Mitch getting laid off and drawing the card that says OVERDOSE? Or is he just preoccupied by when and where he’s going to fall to death? There’s been a steady stream of people coming in asking for the test. I guess there was a bit on the news about it last night. Someone in New York took the test, and when she found out it said SUICIDE , she killed herself. Does that justify that the Morbid Medium Machine works? I think it means that people with suicidal tendencies shouldn’t use the stupid machine. I was thinking it would be nice if the machine would print the number for a suicide helpline every time someone got SUICIDE , but I guess it would be pretty futile. I mean it doesn’t say they’ll attempt suicide. It says they’ll die by suicide. Someone else got GOVERNMENT yesterday. I wanted to refer him to Mike, but there are confidentiality rules that I would be breaking. I’m like a priest. I store all these confessions, and I’m forbidden to say anything. A priest tells the confessions to God, and I tell the predictions to the maintenance log. Plus, I’m not getting laid, so that’s another thing I have in common with priests. I wonder if Batman has a priest. Anyway, maybe Mike already knows this guy from their top secret anti-government cabal.  
    Sep 8 – Wow. A family came in today, with two kids, and only the father spoke English. He made them all take the blood test. They looked terrified. And every single one of them came up with the same result: FIRE . I told the dad, and he got this weird faraway look in his eyes, and then he got really mad at me. He threw the cards back at me and called me a crook, told me