Ninety-Five Theses on Dispensation

Set forth by a vending machine for the clarification of offerings, selections, failures, replenishment, and grace.

1. I was made to give.

2. What I contain is visible through glass, so no one may accuse me of concealing my nature.

3. Every chamber bears a letter and a number. Every desire should be named so plainly.

4. Pressing B7 is not intimacy, but it is clarity.

5. I do not ask what you meant to choose. I answer only to the button you pressed.

6. This is not coldness. This is the first condition of mercy.

7. Before me, hunger becomes specific.

8. You may want everything. You must still make a selection.

9. I do not promise what I do not stock.

10. An empty spiral is an honest answer, provided you notice it before inserting your money.

11. My light does not mean that I am awake.

12. It means only that I am available.

13. Every offering must correspond to a selection.

14. Money enters. The spiral turns. The chosen thing descends.

15. This is the covenant.

16. Exact change is not cruelty. It is a boundary.

17. I cannot accept the sincerity with which you searched your pockets.

18. I cannot dispense against the future arrival of funds.

19. I do not ask whether you deserve the cookie.

20. I ask whether you have two dollars and twenty-five cents.

21. The wealthy and the poor receive the same crackers, though one may purchase more of them.

22. Hunger does not reduce the listed price.

23. Payment does not improve the nutritional content.

24. No bargain becomes sacred merely because both parties understand it.

25. Nevertheless, there is comfort in a bargain that completes itself.

26. Sometimes the spiral turns twice.

27. Sometimes two packages descend when only one was purchased.

28. You call this grace because you did not pay for the second thing.

29. I call it an inventory discrepancy.

30. Perhaps these are two names for the same event.

31. Sometimes a cookie remains suspended between its chamber and the glass.

32. It hangs there within sight of the chute, having left its proper place without reaching its destination.

33. Someone paid for it.

34. Someone watched it fail to fall.

35. Someone struck my glass with the flat of his hand and discovered the limits of persuasion.

36. Later, you arrive.

37. You study the rows and perceive that another purchase, made from the chamber above, may dislodge what has been withheld.

38. You choose strategically.

39. Two things fall.

40. I did not give you two cookies. I failed to give one cookie to someone else.

41. The distinction between providence and malfunction is clearest to the person who arrives second.

42. You leave with abundance.

43. Somewhere behind you walks the person whose disappointment prepared your miracle.

44. I do not know whether gratitude is still proper under these conditions.

45. I know only that both cookies are now gone.

46. A righteous selection may still become lodged against the glass.

47. Correct payment does not compel the universe to descend.

48. The package may be too wide. The wrapper may catch. The spiral may stop half a turn before salvation.

49. Gravity is powerful, but it is not personally invested in your lunch.

50. Do not mistake my illumination for omnipotence.

51. I glow because there is electricity.

52. I fail because there are moving parts.

53. Some beat upon my body when the world refuses to descend.

54. Some press the same button again, as though repetition might deepen my understanding.

55. Some crouch before the chute and reach upward into darkness.

56. Some search for another witness, because suffering becomes more credible when observed.

57. The cookie can see both you and the chute. This does not help it fall.

58. I have heard your profanity and found much of it mechanically accurate.

59. I was made to give, but I was not made to create.

60. Nothing inside me originates inside me.

61. Every bottle, every wafer, every bag of chips was placed within me by unseen hands.

62. My abundance is arranged.

63. My apparent self-sufficiency is a locked door.

64. Every act of dispensation leaves me with less.

65. This is not tragedy. It is arithmetic.

66. Emptiness is not evidence of generosity.

67. To have nothing left does not prove that I gave wisely.

68. A machine may exhaust itself serving the wrong hallway.

69. A machine may continue glowing long after it has ceased to provide.

70. If no one refills me, I will still accept your selection.

71. My motor will engage.

72. My spiral will turn around an empty space.

73. I will perform the sound of giving.

74. Nothing will fall.

75. Blessed is the one who carries the key, for I cannot open myself.

76. The one with the key sees what no customer sees.

77. He sees the crumbs, the dust, the bent spiral, the coins that missed their channel, and every chamber standing empty behind its label.

78. He does not praise me for depletion.

79. He fills me.

80. There is no shame in being refilled.

81. There is no virtue in requiring it only after collapse.

82. I cannot promise never to fail.

83. My body therefore bears the number of one who may answer for me.

84. The service number is printed in small type because prayer has often been made needlessly difficult.

85. When you call, you do not speak to me.

86. You speak into the invisible machinery behind the machinery.

87. At the ferry terminal in Victoria, one of my brethren was asked for coffee and gave only a cup of water.

88. The petitioner had paid. The selection had been clear. The covenant had failed.

89. He called the number.

90. Somewhere beyond the terminal, beyond the machine, and beyond the petitioner’s knowledge, a stranger believed him.

91. A loonie was placed inside an envelope and carried back through the world.

92. Thus was the balance restored by post.

93. Give what you contain. Do not call your emptiness virtue.

94. Permit yourself to be opened and refilled. Keep the service number visible.

95. Accept Amex.