"I said, 'Me too,'" the mouth declared again, pausing then to retract a wandering left eye, which had developed a fondness for a repetition of the pattern a foot or two down the wall.
"Where I come from there is nothing but boredom, too," it went on. "All day, every day, I run test checks on various gadgets, finding flaws, and lacking the materials to put them in proper order, even if I had the knowledge, and even if anybody cared whether I did or not."
It pursed itself, as if remembering the pall of it all, and continued. "I had hoped to find a Time when people were lively; when there was zip and a dash to just getting up in the morning; when somebody would care what you did every day. Oh, not that they don't care if I should miss a day," it quickly qualified. "They care very much about that. Laws, you know, but just that and no more.
"Why, if I never succeeded in repairing a single machine my whole life long, no one would say a word. I only try out of boredom, and even that gets dull after a few years."
"I'm afraid I don't understand," Mr. Harbinger said, sitting back in his chair when he realized that it was silly to hang on the words of an hallucination from the depths of one's own mind. "Really!" he thought, "One should already know every word it said." But then he puzzled again over the content of the mouth's words.
"It's very simple," the mouth went on. "Should we really get a machine in absolutely perfect working order, it is immediately carted away to a warehouse and stored, all snug in an indestructible cocoon ... so it will never wear out again, you know." It sighed. "Really doesn't pay to get interested, or try to be a perfectionist, any more."
Mr. Harbinger felt an unaccountable twinge of sympathy at the truly apathetic tone of the mouth, which appeared to droop a bit at the corners, as though it could never again think of a thing to smile at. The eyes drooped too, if such a thing can be conceived, though he had an extraordinary disinclination to look at them, being continually unnerved by the way they insisted on drifting about.
"Cup of tea?" he asked nervously, offering this small irrelevancy as a means of changing a subject which so clearly depressed his parturated companion ... nor did the subtle development of his concept of the apparition on the wall escape his notice.
He now seemed to be of two minds over the whole thing. Either he was succumbing to the reality of his hallucination—and his sketchy remembrance of college Psych told him that meant he was either very sane or very insane; he couldn't recollect which—either that or he was having the scientific, or para-scientific, adventure of the age.