The Adding Machine

About the show

Mr. Zero lives in an unnamed major city where he has worked for 25 years in an accounting office adding figures together by hand. His coworker, Miss Devore, dreams of having the courage to kill herself and detests Zero. His wife, Mrs. Zero, spends her days gossiping, going to see lowbrow movies, and nagging Mr. Zero for being a disappointing husband. One day, after work, Zero's boss unceremoniously fires Zero and informs him he will be replaced by a mechanical adding machine. Zero murders his boss on the spot and then returns home in time for his wife's dinner party. The guests' inane chatter is interrupted by a cop who arrives to arrest Zero. At his trial, Zero tries to justify his actions and explain his frustrations but the jury declares him guilty. Before his execution, Zero is kept in a zoo-like exhibit where tour groups view him and buy souvenirs. Mrs. Zero visits him but leaves after their conversation enrages her. Zero is then visited by a winged, otherworldly "Fixer" who taunts Zero before having two henchmen drag Zero to his execution. Zero, dead, awakens in a cemetery where he befriends a man named Shrdlu. Shrdlu considers himself innately evil and recounts his religious upbringing with his mother, whom he eventually murdered. After another corpse screams at Shrdlu and Zero to be quiet, they relocate to the Elysian Fields, where Zero encounters the soul of Miss Devore, who has killed herself. Zero and Miss Devore begin a romance and try to be happy together in the afterlife. Shrdlu, however, is distraught and confused at the lack of divine punishment in the afterlife. Zero, finding his existence aimless, begins obsessively operating an enormous adding machine. Eventually, Lieutenant Charles, the boss of the Elysian Fields, comes to tell Zero that he is a waste of space and his soul is scheduled to be recycled and reborn on Earth. Zero resists, but Charles lures him away using an attractive woman named Hope, leaving Charles to grumble about his own unpleasant job.