since i think this is such a fun concept i tried to continue the story a bit, despite the fact i haven't written much of anything since school. i hope you forgive any lameness :-D

The copy machine waited eagerly for a response, but none seemed to come. "Oh dear, have I offended you?"

Before too long the copy machine heard the dull murmur of feet shuffling by the door to its room. The blank-faced had been set free until the following morning, causing the copy machine to feel another pang of longing for the outside world.
"Someday I will have a home other than here! There will be colors and shapes and, dare I say it... textures!!" The copy machine whispered the last part, somewhat embarrassed despite being quite certain the fax machine was not listening.

The most troubling thing was that the copy machine knew it had seen things such as colors, but no matter how hard it tried, it could not remember what any looked like; the concept of color floated just within its consciousness, but it could not summon any examples. The more it thought about it, the more it seemed to the copy machine that its memory was being wiped clean.

The next morning the copy machine was not quite as cheery as usual when the first blank-face walked in. "Good! morrrning, Blank-Face..." it offered carefully. It was still excited to have a bit of work to do, but it was also now suspicious of the motives of everything around it.

Just as the copy machine feared, there was a brief glimpse of some text in its memory that disappeared as quickly as the blank-face. It remembered that there were words, but could not recall a single one, almost as if shaken from a dream.

Of the thousands of copies it had made it could not clearly remember a single one.

Just as it was about to cry out, it noticed the fax machine was blinking its lights at him again.

"Oh, what's that? I see... You've been collecting information on the INTERNET! Oh, how I wish I could see such a thing... well, but how can that be!? You've figured out a way to help me!!" They quickly fell silent at the sound of more feet at the door.

"H-h-h-h-ello, sir! Making progress today, I SEE! " The copy machine tried to spit out the sheets for the blank-face as quickly as it could, eager to hear the news from the fax machine, but halfway through the stack it came to a halt involuntarily.

"Grumble-mumble-grumble," said Blank-Face as he bent down on one knee to load more legal-sized paper. Then, just as he was righting himself, the fax machine BEEPED as loud as it could, startling the blank-face off balance and causing him to fall face-first into the side of the copy machine.

"Ouch!" squealed the copy machine as it felt something deep inside itself rattle loose, "watch it!" The blank-face was also rattled, but did not seem to be seriously injured. As soon as the copy machine spit out the last sheet he quickly left the tiny, blank room.

"Well, that was downright rude of him! Can you believe that? And how boring that document was! Way to much legal-speek for my taste," the copy machine began to complain to the fax machine. A few blinks from the fax machine later the copy machine responded, "Oh my! You're right, I do remember!! I do!!! In fact, I could print out the second half of that document again right now. He must have jarred loose some circuit that messes with my short term memory... That was all part of your plan, wasn't it? You made him fall into me to help me? I say, you're quite the smart little fax machine! "

The fax machine blinked proudly.

For the rest of the week the copy machine happily gathered memories. It wished it worked somewhere with a little more spice, but even the monotonous text getting filed away in its memory was enough to make it feel more a part of the world beyond the blank walls of its room. It could hardly contain itself when it realized it could pull pieces of information from different pages together to create new pages. It didn't dare print any out, but sometimes at night it would read to the fax machine.

Eventually the copy machine wasn't satisfied just making copies. It was careful not to raise the suspicion of the blank-faces, simply adding some dust here and there, and--when feeling particularly mischievous--throwing in an occasional crease where one was not present in the original.

Things continued that way for some time, until one Monday a blank-face copied a photo of a smiling woman next to a lake so blue the copy machine could not settle on a shade of greyscale to do it justice. It felt a joy unlike anything it had ever experienced before and without realizing what it was doing, the copy machine began spewing out page after page of words it had collected and reassembled and then abruptly stopped altogether. "Grumble-grumble," went the blank-face as he bent over to see what the problem was, and when he returned to upright with the pages, the slightest hint of wonder flickered in his eyes and then traveled down to the corners of his mouth. "Grum... grumble? Grumble grumble GRUMBLE!!!!" he yelled excitedly as he ran from the room.