Each paper is given a special slot on a machine that grinds between the walls. When it emerges, higher up, it may be a bit confused about why it is there, where it came from, and what's going to happen next. It is the job of the next machine to keep things in gear, get the message out... the paper has no will, and less concentration. What happens if a worker plucks the message off the line, and instead of passing it on to the next channel, stuffs it in her pocket (easy to do, the supervisor is out for lunch). Will the message, when it wakes under her eye, still act as confused, and perhaps pass that confusion on to the thieving reader, who then will make the mistake of thinking that this purloined message was meant for her, and make efforts to deliver it back to the person who sent it?     Ironically, Spiralum was herself an electrical inventor, who dreamed of developing the means to transmit moving pictures through the telephone.