Monday began at Nina's house with a minor uncertainty sticking to her morning tea. There was a string of wooden clothespins hanging over the kettle, and a row of receipts like flags. Nina liked order and receipts, so she checked the last lines, seemingly for discounts. For a week there had been sentences that no one should print there: "Don't rush to the stairs", "Take an umbrella despite the sun". Today something new came out of the bakery: "Don't correct the clock in the vestibule today". She snorted, but pinned the paper to the string and left the flat. She worked in the minor faults reporting desk, so the day had a rhythm of squeals and phone calls. At noon she stopped by the building clock, which had been stubbornly two minutes late since the morning. She reached out for the hand, but remembered the risky order on the receipt. Instead she called out to the usher, and a moment later a boy stood under the clock on a chair to tie his shoe. The leg of the furniture snapped like a twig and would have fallen straight onto her shoulder had she been standing there. Nina sat down at her desk and thought for the first time that someone must have warned her. After work, she did a little shopping at the vegetable shop and the receipt popped out of the printer with an extra line. "Look under the letterbox at 6.17pm" - proclaimed in the usual font, like a message about carrots on promotion. The block smelled of dust and tomato, the green boxes had scratched numbers, and the clock on the phone ticked mercilessly. At the appointed time, she knelt in the corridor, sliding her hand under the lowest box where paper clips and crumbs always accumulated. She found a tightly rolled piece of thermal paper, tied with a rubber band, with her name scrawled in capital letters on the back. She rolled the treasure under her jacket and took the lift to the fourth floor in a silence more dense than usual. At home, she immediately started rummaging in the cupboard as she remembered her grandfather's counting machine with its narrow paper slot. It stood there dusty and heavy, smelling of oil and old offices, and the cable ended in a cracked plug. Nina plugged it into the extension cord, pressed the fresh roll of paper, tapped the key, although she no longer remembered the layout of the buttons. The machine purred, unplugged to anything but the socket, yet the roll began to turn slowly. Marks printed on the white: "Nino, don't ask who. Hurry up. At 19:40 someone will knock. Don't say your name." Her heart beat faster and her fingers wiped at her kitchen apron, as if that might help. She set the kettle on, though she felt no thirst, and sat facing the door, counting the minutes. The machine hummed once more and added: "If it says: neighbour from third - don't open. If it says: messenger - open". The living room clock tapped thirty-nine, and the corridor gave off the murmur of a lift and soft footsteps. Someone knocked quietly once, then three times faster, as if agreeing on a rhythm, and the air in the flat swelled. "Good morning, messenger," came a voice on the other side, polite, a little tired, completely unfamiliar. Nina put her hand on the chain, and at the same moment the machine snorted and printed a single word: "NOW".