EGGNOG SCRAMBLING COMPLETE
The loudspeakers placed equidistantly throughout the building all simultaneously ring out the announcement.
ELF #587 YOU ARE RELEASED FROM DUTY
The sound of spilt tears over spilt eggnog:
It is the year 2116. Much has changed. Little remains the same.
ELF #588 PLEASE STEP INTO THE EGGNOG ROOM
The line ahead of you shifts by the width, length, and height of a single stock elf.
COUNTDOWN INITIATED
It is in these little gaps of time afforded to you by the icy factory overseers that rumours spread through the elfen chain.
10... 9... 8... 7...
The sound of a gentle breeze, as your friends keep their breath underheard from nosy managers:
"Did you hear about unfortunate #456? She managed to scramble only two litres of eggnog!"
You did hear that. You've heard it every year for 23 years, a lie meant to strike fear in elves who start to question their work ethic.
6... 5... 4... 3...
"I'm not sure if I believe that more or less than what #585 told me about #584!"
You ask down the line what #602 was told about #584 from #585, curious as to how you missed this tidbit earlier.
2... 1... 0...
"No way! it's impossible to scramble 45 litres of eggnog in so short a-"
Your reply is cut short by the timer, in response to running out of digits, releasing another aural blare.
EGGNOG SCRAMBLING COMMENCES NOW
The sound of a hush descending on a noise that was already imperceptible:
You are close enough to the tiny viewing pane in the entrance door for your eyesight to reach it. You raise your heel by half a decimeter, the standard unit of elf size, to peer over the shoulder of #589, who is trembling in front of you. You can just barely make out the 588th reptition of the dangerous dance each elf must make annually, in this 2116th Year Of Our Dingo, as part of their collective contract with Santa.
SCRAMBLE THE SCRAMBLED EGGNOG BEFORE YOUR EGGNOG GETS SCRAMBLED
Cartons whirl and twirl through the air, smashing and crashing into the tiled floor, making a putrid, pungent mess. Santa's helpers are careful in timing launches of those precious prescrambled eggnog cartons, such only one hits the floor at a time. If an elf were ever allotted access to rescramble more than one liter of eggnog in any given moment, they just might become too proficient, resulting in another elf being out of work. The idea of *not* having to work for food and housing never seems to occur upon Santa.
45 MORE SECONDS FOR EGGNOG SCRAMBLING EFFORTS
You steel your new year's resolution (the one coming up, since you wasted the prior new year's resolution in a regretful decision, by resolving about your monitor size). You hope to be the last elf to go through this joke of a job. Not just intending to relieve the rest of the elven population (1,485,490 more behind you in line), but *all* the elves for *all* the future Chistmas years yet to become upon us. You feel your resolution try to, in return, steel you, for the effort to come.
ELF #588 YOU ARE AT LESS THAN HALF-TIME REMAINING
The sound of a carton smashing open upon an elf, and again, and again, and:
Unfortunately, #588 has fallen right into the invisibly deterministic line of fire for the eggnog carton cannons. Whenever this should happen, the elfployee has no granted recourse, but to be coated in a dozen litres of scrambled eggnog, all instantly scrambled once again by their personal body-field within the space of seconds. You mutter dread curses inside your brainspace remembering how #6774 four years ago submitted a proposal (that made it to the personal attention of Santa himself!) to collapse the possibility waves of eggnog firing in an inverted pattern, for the sake of preventing exactly such an incident from re-curring.
EGGNOG SCRAMBLING COMPLETE
You silently press "hold" on your thought process to take a figurative note reflecting on the state of #588, before they walk out of the room and return to their little elf home, with their little elf friends, waiting inside their little elf kitchen, around a little elf dinner table, stocked to the brim with a variety of little elf Chistmas cookies, the remaining room largely consumed by a large number of large containers of largely murky refreshments- pure dairy, of course.
ELF #588 YOU ARE RELEASED FROM DUTY
Striding out with their pointy hat, burdened with eggnog stains that will take weeks to wash out, between their grubby paws, #588 seems as worn down as any average elf around Chistmas. You are glad that they appear to not fare much worse off for the tumultous downpour of eggnog cartons they had to endure. You resume your previous train of thought, chugging at the handles of time. Unnoticed by you is the more and more decreasing morale of #589.
ELF #589 PLEASE STEP INTO THE EGGNOG ROOM
The sound of a soft splash:
As your thoughts start to burn at the edges, thinking about the fate of #6774, you are shocked into deep awareness as what happened to *them* is recurring now to #589, right in front of your own three elfish eyes. By that, it is meant that #589 has decided to walk not directly into the eggnog room, but sideways into the vats of finished eggnog surrounding the elfwalk platform you all stand on. There is no sound further but the sucking of yolk towards the extra mass of an elf.
BEGIN THE DRAINAGE OF VAT #972 IMMEDIATELY
It will take at least 15 days for Santa's helpers to chip the elf out of the 'nog vat and restore #589's conciousness, along with a demotion to Eggnog Taste Tester. However, Santa can only truly, severly punish his managerial underlings for this, limited as he is by the strict chain of command afforded to capitalist ventures such as The International EggNog Production Factories.
REDIRECT THE CURRENT SCRAMBLED RUN-OUT TO VAT #973
On the positive side, the entirety of contents in vat #972 will be surely ruined in the process.
ELF #590 PLEASE STEP INTO THE EGGNOG ROOM
The sound of your resolution loudly ding!ing after baking to a crisp texture:
More than ever, you know what you must fight for. It does not matter how many choose to endure personal misery to try to slow the production of Genuine Elf Scrambled Eggnog. There are far too many corporate elf drones who see resistance as meaningless, not to mention bad for performance reviews, for an effect to be gained through that vector. You feel such an intensity of emotion that it surpasses the steel of your previous, yet-to-be, resolution, melting it into broken shards. That resolution was pathetic, now that you think of it. Try your hardest to scramble 49 litres, to gravely insult Santa by matching his supposed personal (and global) record for Most Litres Of Eggnog Scrambled In 60 Seconds, something no elf has before ever done? Yeah, right! You will do even more. You will scramble at least 50 litres, and in such an act tear to little elf pieces the cruel contract that has bound you and your people to the machinations of wage labour for almost 24 Chistmas years in sequention.
COUNTDOWN INITIATED
The sound of Santa's pre-recorded dialogue instructing an elf on their ensuing task:
Here we go.. . . . . . . . . . . .