I don't have much time to explain, it'll cut through here any moment and I don't want to be around when it happens!

After the recent rash of office supply theft our psychotic department manager rigged up the games software archive so that people would stop ganking Photoshop or game CDs from it.

See, he installed these spring-loaded steel cables to each CD. Then, when you take a CD, it's still attached to the cabinet, and it'll slip back into place as soon as you let it go, like the starter cord of a lawnmower engine. It's only got enough cable to stretch about 200 feet away from the building, so nobody could take it.

Well, I wanted to re-install Half-Life so I could play the new Counter-Strike patch. Yeah, I took the Half-Life CD. On the way back to my desk I stopped by the water cooler. Then I buzzed down through tech support to talk to one of the guys, stopped by the bowl of candy up in accounting, wandered outside to the smoking patio, then grabbed a coke from the machine in the basement, dragging the CD the whole way.

Of course, by the time I got to my desk, I had to dig both heels into the carpet and PULL on that sucker just to move it along, the cord was stretched so tight. I finally managed to shove it into my CD-Rom drive and force it closed. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying any attention after I was done with the re-install -- I hit the "eject" button and the CD shot out as though fired from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

In a brief instant I saw a silvery flash of light streak down the hall, take a grapefruit-sized chunk out of the corner of Dobson's cubicle, and then it was gone. I heard the steel cable crack in the air like thunder.

Foolishly I tried to follow it, but saw only the devastation it reaped from its passage on its horrifying death arc back toward the software cabinet. It left six-foot long gashes along the walls by the break room. The water cooler was split cleanly in two, throwing liquid in a twelve-foot arc.

It swept clean through accounting and downsized Jacobs by removing her right arm. She didn't even see it coming -- one second she was on the phone negotiating the IDCG deal, the next thing you know she's missing her right ear and shooting blood from a stump.

The CD probably has some really rough edges now, after it cut the mahogany conference room table in half.

If you're smart, you'll clear out -- I passed through this hall on my way from the software closet. See that cable? Nobody over four-foot tall standing in this room will have their heads in just another moment!

FOR GOD'S SAKE RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!