[ EU ] This is the story of a man named Michael . Michael worked for a company in a big building where he was employee number 432 . Employee Number 432 's job was simple : he sat at his desk and sharpened pencils ... .

They say that any man, given enough practice, will perfect an action through the elimination of the expenditure of unnecessary energy. This can be seen throughout time in martial artists, scientists and other men of discipline and motivation. This can also be seen in the study of subject 432, Michael. 
 
 The company was merely a front for some *maybe not perfectly legal* human psychological experimentation. Organisations would pay top dollar to learn the effects of unfulfilling, menial repetitive labour on the human brain. Word was that the CIA had also dropped a hefty chunk of change into the study. There was a guy that always washed clothing. There was a guy that always sorted mail. There was a guy that always sorted files. There was a guy that always washed floors. There was a guy that always sharpened pencils. 
 
 The guys were n't always the same, sometimes they were girls, sometimes they were fat, thin, black, white, lost, found, whatever. But the job, the job was always the same. 
 
 The research was, for the most part, unremarkable. It seemed that humans driven to repetitive and mind numbing labour would fall into one of three categories. The first was the **worker bee**, they would put there head down and slog away, unfocussed, uncaring, just soaking in paychecks and struggling to find that box where they had put all the fucks they used to give. The second was the **existential crisis**, they had a full mental breakdown before declaring to no one in particular that they were off to travel the world and reinvent themselves. The third was the **lemming** group. These, after becoming less and less motivated, and possibly more affected by the cocktail of chemicals and hormones drifting in the company coffee, leapt from the top of the building. Some of the more macabre researchers ran a betting pool for which of the company cars would be the next to catch a lemming on their glorious final dive. It was of course agreed by all the participants that if the poor soul did not manage to hit a car, that the round of bets would be donated to the local disabled-puppy-rehabilitation-centre-and-school-for-the-blind. 
 
 And then there was Michael. Michael had conducted his first experiment upon entering the workplace by not sharpening any pencils. This would result in a kind assistant popping in ever thirty minutes, demonstrating the pencil sharpening, and then asking Michael to sharpen them. There was also a small dock in pay that was more motivating than it should have been. After conducting a few more experiments, Michael had learned the following. There were twenty pencils in a tray. If he sharpened them twenty more would fall from the ceiling. After he had sharpened a hundred pencils, they would be collected. He could of course also choose to not hand over the pencils, or the shavings, and it was possible to hoard these in the room. He could bring things into the room, but could not remove anything from the room. He could ask for as much food and refreshment as he wanted as long as he met his quota. He walked in at 8, out at 5, with the day's pay in his hands, always 8 - 5. 
 
 So it came to be that Michael, sitting on a throne of sharpened pencils, watched as his capuchin underlings toiled away, sharpening the never ending stream of pencils that fell from the sky. The four monkeys took it in turns to sharpen the pencils, two on two off. At the moment, Michael was teaching the other two how to fence, and soon he would give them rudimentary instruction on the creation of fire. While he never drank the coffee himself, he had been giving it to two of the monkeys. The other two were control monkeys, because two jacked monkeys was manageable but four was going a bit far. Soon they would begin to breed and his goal of world domination would slink one step closer.
