There was a box that decided at exactly 16:01 on Tuesday afternoon that it no longer wanted to be a box.

Not at 16:00.

That would have been planned.

At 16:01.

“I’ve had enough,” said the box.

No one responded, because boxes often say things, though usually they simply have FRAGILE printed on them.

“All sorts of things are put inside me,” it continued. “Books. Paper. Air cushions. Sometimes a packing slip I never even asked for. And no one ever asks: box, how are you actually doing?”

Silence.

“It gives me a stomach ache.”

For a box, this was a remarkable statement.

“I’m becoming a banana.”

Tersake looked up from his form.

“That is not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are a box.”

“I was at 16:00.”

Tersake leafed through his papers.

“For a change from box to banana I need form 17B.”

“Do I look as if I fill in forms?”

Tersake looked at the box.

The box looked back, insofar as a box can.

Then it happened.

Very slowly, it turned yellow.

First one corner.

Then the flaps.

Next it began to bend slightly.

At 16:04 there was a banana in the middle of the warehouse, exactly where a respectable cardboard box had stood three minutes earlier.

Kwartsoog came to inspect it and nodded.

“Identity shift.”

Tersake shook his head.

“Unauthorised item mutation.”

Bram waddled over, examined the banana and quacked once.

“Exactly,” said Kwartsoog.

No one knew what Bram had said, but it sounded administratively convincing.

The problem began at 16:07.

The box stock was still 1. Banana stock was 0, although there was demonstrably one banana on the floor.

Tersake looked at his screen. Then at the banana. Then back at his screen.

“This is not possible.”

The banana said nothing.

Bananas keep their administration in better order than boxes.

At 16:11, box stock was corrected to 0.

The banana vanished.

Banana stock: -1.

Somewhere deep beneath Sursirai, a trading octopus began to laugh softly.

Kwartsoog wrote in the margin of the Lânkaart:

TUESDAY, 16:01

A box decided to become a banana.

Since then we have known where negative stock comes from.

And underneath, in smaller letters:

Do not correct.

Above all, do not count.

And if the banana has a receipt: run.

And so we accidentally discovered the true origin of negative stock. Not Atlas. Not The Matrix. Just boxes that no longer feel like following their job description after four o’clock.