New day, new job, new donuts, first mission. Thaught was so excited to finally start her new job, she almost took the stairs on the way out. She went to the city centre as per usual to get even more hyped up for her first shift and finally went to the office building and found the door with a not-too-unusual amount of trouble.

“I. AM. READY!” Thaught yelled the moment she stepped into the office. Only Paul was there this time. He was standing next to the water fountain and talking to himself.

“Hey, Paul, what's up? Why are you talking to yourself?” Thaught asked.

Paul turned to Thaught with sorrow in his eyes. Not too much sorrow, but it was definitely there. Like when you get a piece of chocolate from the box, only to realize it has cherry inside.

“I love chit chatting so much, but there is no one here to talk to.”

“What about Margaret? Where is she?” Thaught looked around. She could not see her anywhere nor hear her sobbing or forceful typing. “Did she take the day off?”

“She took the life off!”

“She's dead? Oh my God!”

“No, she is not dead, she just quit. She could not handle the pressure of being a secretary. She told me she was starting to grow into it, but yesterday's donut incident was the last straw.”

“I am so sorry, this is all my fault...” Thaught answered.

“Don't worry about it. We convinced her to leave us a clone of hers to stay here instead. We named her Margareth. With an 'H'.” Paul explained and patted Thaught on the back.

“Will there be a clone here forever, then? Don't they have an expiration date? I would prefer to not come into the office and see a Margareth with unidentified flora on her face.”

“We have thought about it,” Paul said and his eyes started glowing with excitement as he was explaining. “She signed a contract. We will check the expiration date on the back of Margareth's neck and every time we are a week away from expiration, Margaret is contractually obligated to send us a new clone. That way we will also keep the information fresh, which means more, better, and spicier chit chatting! This was a blessing in disguise!” Paul lifted his hands in the air and rotated around himself, perfectly mimicking the earth's movement.

“Okay, this is getting too disturbing for me to talk about, so I'll be at Caterpillar's office waiting for him. It's my first shift today and I'll make sure to turn it into a Caps Lock.” Thaught said.

She opened the door and entered Caterpillar's office, where she found Caterpillar sitting on his desk and playing Gluedo, a fascinating detective board game where players are trying to find who was the middle-schooler that glued the teacher onto her chair.

“Here? Again? Do you ever leave your office?” said Thaught who, before she entered the office, was sure she had arrived earlier than everyone else, but apparently, no one there had a life outside the agency.

“Do you now realize why they call me 'Caterpillar'?” He replied.

“Because it's your name?” Thaught said as if she was explaining to a child why it should not touch the stovetop when it's turned on.

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“No. My name is Arthur.”

Thaught stood there, thinking very hard, trying to connect the dots. You could tell this was what she was doing because she was connecting imaginary dots with imaginary lines using her fingers. It took a while and Caterpillar started getting worried that she was stuck in some kind of boot loop, but right before he slapped her to wake her up, Thaught snapped out of it.

“It all makes sense now! That's so mean! Why wou-” she said but did not manage to complete her sentence, as Caterpillar's palm landed right on her right cheek, giving her a slap loud enough to be heard in the whole office.

“wai... wha... why...?” Thaught mumbled in complete confusion as she was trying to put her misplaced jaw back in the right place.

Caterpillar placed his thumb and index finger on his chin, squeezing slightly. It was not much, but it was enough to make his chin look like it had a tiny butt at the end. He thought to himself that Thaught had not yet recovered from her slumber, based on her nonsensical mumbling, so he took a step back, then a step forward, while lifting his arm in the air as if he was waving goodbye at a friend who was leaving on a ship. With all that force, he gave Thaught a second slap, much harder than the first. “This is sure to wake her up,” he thought.

It didn't.

Instead, it made her fall to the side, hit her head on the floor and lose consciousness for a couple of minutes. The exact opposite of waking up, one would say. Caterpillar promptly picked her up and placed her on his chair to have her rest until he found a way to bring her back to her senses before lunchtime. Today the lunch lady was going to prepare reverse lasagna. Instead of layers of pasta with ragu and cheese in between, it was layers of steaks with cheese and tortellini between them — you wouldn't want to miss it.

Thankfully, Caterpillar did not have to do much to wake Thaught up. Yesterday, after his shift was over, he forgot to take his office trash bin out and place its contents inside the main trash bin. This meant his vegan donut was still there. Its smell growing stronger and worse by the minute.

It was bad enough to make Thaught instantly wake back up and jump from her seat. She looked at the donut, then she looked at where she was standing and she looked at Caterpillar, unable to figure out what was going on.

“Why am I here?” she asked and pointed at Caterpillar's chair. “I don't remember standing here. And more importantly, why is that still here?” She pointed with disgust towards the vegan and now slowly rotting donut.

“You were trying so hard to understand why they call me 'Caterpillar' that you collapsed from the effort and hit your cheek and head on the floor.” Caterpillar said with so much certainty in his voice that even if you were there, you would start doubting yourself about whether the slaps actually occurred or not.

“That's weird, because I feel my right side of the head hurting but my left cheek,” Thaught said while touching the aching spots and mildly massaging them.

Caterpillar stood for a second. He had not thought about this. “Well, that is because you hit your head on the floor and then bounced back up and hit your cheek the chair's handle,” he finally said.

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Thaught responded, not questioning anything. “But this doesn't!” She pointed at the donut again. She could not bear looking at it. It was almost offensive to create such a thing and have the guts to call it a donut. This was an abomination.

“I will have it removed by the end of the day, don't worry about it,” said Caterpillar, trying to calm Thaught down. This was not that important in his own opinion.

“I will have it removed by the end of the minute!” Thaught responded. She grabbed the whole bin, opened Caterpillar's window and yelled at the top of her lungs while with a perfect, squeaky clean form that even professional discus throwers would envy, she threw the whole can away, only for it to fall down in the building's entrance, around five meters away from the window. She was still lacking a bit on the strength department.

Thaught closed the window and turned around. She put her left hand on her forehead to wipe her sweat. While she was passionately throwing the bin away and creating damages for the agency, Thaught accidentally touched the donut for a split second and some of the filling ended up staying on her hand. This filling was then transferred to her forehead once she wiped her sweat and stayed there. Caterpillar decided that both for his physical and Thaught's mental health, it would be best to not say anything, so he continued like nothing happened.

“So, let's talk about your first shift,” he said and switched places with Thaught once more, he moved towards his chair walking clockwise while Thaught moved towards where Caterpillar previously was, walking counter-clockwise, like they were doing some weird kind of corporate dance.