A week into his Intro to Fabrication course, Joel was already regretting his choice. The syllabus promised hands-on tech, but so far it had been tutorials, safety rules, and too many lectures about resin toxicity. The only thing keeping him awake was the humming of the 3D printers lined up at the back of the lab like little robotic gargoyles.

On Friday, Professor Krass finally let the class upload their first designs. Joel had sketched a simple chess pawn. Nothing fancy—just enough to prove he could handle CAD software.

He hit “print” on Machine #6. The screen blinked, then glitched. For a second, the interface turned static gray. Then something loaded. Not his pawn. It was…a figure. Thin, hunched, arms too long. The preview window showed a vaguely human shape wrapped in what looked like folds of dripping cloth.

He tried to cancel the print, but the button didn’t respond. The resin tank glowed sickly green as the print began.

Thirty minutes later, Joel lifted the figure from the platform. It wasn’t plastic. It was cold—stone cold. The surface shimmered like oil on water, and tiny glyphs spiraled up its back. The thing’s face—if you could call it that—was a blank oval, like a mask melted in fire.

Professor Krass passed by, glanced at the figure, and stopped.

“You didn’t make that.”

“Nope.”

“Delete the file. Throw that thing away. And never use Printer Six again.”

Joel nodded, but kept the figure.

That night, the lights in his dorm flickered. His laptop shut down by itself. At 3:06 AM, the resin smell returned, stronger than ever. Joel turned over—and the figure was standing on his desk.

He hadn’t brought it with him.

The next morning, he shoved it into a drawer and duct-taped it shut.

In class Monday, Printer Six was printing something again. No one had uploaded a file. Professor Krass stood in front of the machine, unmoving. Joel approached. The thing printing now wasn’t the same figure. It was…him.

A resin replica of Joel, eyes closed, mouth open in a silent scream.

That night, Joel dreamed in static. The hum of the printer echoed in his skull. He saw his double walk the halls, dripping ink-like slime, leaving black fingerprints on every doorknob.

On Tuesday, Printer Six was gone.

Professor Krass was gone too.

A substitute told the class that Krass had taken emergency leave. Nobody knew why.

Joel still hears the whirr of the printer some nights, from inside the walls. And sometimes, he wakes to find plastic shavings under his pillow, as if something has been carving him from the inside out.

Turns out college isn’t just about reinventing yourself.

Sometimes, it reinvents you.