Sisyphus breathed heavily and settled the weight of his body against his chore. He had been pushing for several hours already and needed to rest for a few moments before starting up the hill again. But before he could catch his breath, a voice shouted down to him from the top of the hill. Sisyphus sighed and looked upwards at his site supervisor, Jimmy.

"Come on, get that rock up here!" Jimmy yelled. "Don't be lazy, Sisyphus, I have fourteen other hills to visit and I can't be standing around waiting for you."

Sisyphus had never actually bothered to look at the fourteen other hills, nor the rock-rollers who worked on them--save one time, the day before, which affected his attitude and morale greatly. Other than this single occasion, he knew of their existence only because Jimmy had the grueling, terrible task of running up and down every hill as the laborer who occupied each neared the top, at which time Jimmy would allow them a brief feeling of accomplishment before nudging the boulder back down to the base of the hill and starting the job all over again. This happened six or seven times per day, depending on the weather, and by the time Jimmy reached Hill Twelve, where Sisyphus worked, he was exhausted and not in the best of moods. So often Sisyphus' pushing was accompanied by the chorus of complaints and gripes by his supervisor about the failings of the Hill workers, or more often of Sisyphus' failings in comparison to them.

"Just give me five minutes, Jimmy. I need a break."

"Don't give me that, Sisyphus. The guy at Hill Eight, now HE needs a break. He convinced Hades' wife to buy a bunch of plastic dishware and now he's only got one arm. And even he can get his rock to the top of the hill before you can. You can take a rest when you get that boulder up here."

"But you're just going to push it down again!"

"What? What did you say?"

"I said what's the point of pushing the boulder up the hill if you're just going to push it back down again?"

"Don't tell me how to do my job, Sisyphus! I get enough pressure when Zeus comes down here to do my quarterly evaulations. If I push your boulder down the hill it's for a reason. Did you ever stop and think, I wonder, when you're in the middle of slandering me, that perhaps I'm doing it for your benefit? Maybe I just see, with my expert eye, that you're not doing it properly. So why should I be the bad guy for shaping you into a better rock-roller? Eh? One day you could be like Jimmy, Sisyphus. But not with that attitude."

"Not doing it properly? How can you improperly push a boulder up a hill?"

"Well....you could... Get back to work! Hill Two is almost finished!"

"What's the point?"

"What's the point? It's punishment. You're being punished, that's the point."

"But certainly it serves some purpose."

"Yes, to punish you. That is the purpose of a punishment, Sisyphus. I mean, come on."

"No, what I mean is, surely there's a way to punish someone in a way that's actually serving another purpose. OK, for example, when I was King I used to enslave my enemy soldiers. That was their punishment for daring to be born in a country which at some point in their life invaded, or was invaded by, me. But they occupied meaningful positions in the economy of the kingdom. Some of the slaves served my court, some were sold to merchants, some became farmers, and so on. They were all being punished, that is, they didn't have their freedom, but at the same time they were doing something useful. What exactly is useful about pushing the same rock up a hill six or seven times a day for eternity? The least the gods could do is maybe harness the energy of the rock somehow and turn it into some sort of instrument of mass smiting."

"You need to do less thinking and more rolling. Get back to work, I'm warning you!"

"Warning me? What on earth could you do to punish me? I'm here for an eternity anyway."

"That's right, and if you don't get back to work: I'll double it. How would you like to be here for two eternities?"

"There's no such thing, Jimmy."

"How would you like it to rain fire and poison frogs, smart guy? Maybe that'd change your attitude."

"I've been here for ten thousand years. I don't even remember what fire or frogs looked like. It would be a welcome improvement to my eternity to have a little change."

"And that's exactly why you're not getting it. Now get back to work!"

"No."

"No? Shall I call the manager?"

"Go ahead."

At this point Jimmy began to sweat a little. He had threatened to call the manager, but to do so would indicate Jimmy's own inability to handle the situation. Such an embarrassing show of incompetence would surely lead to an absence of his winter solstice bonus.

"What do you want from me, Sisyphus?" Jimmy asked in an almost desperate tone.

"You know what I saw when I looked at Hill Eleven yesterday?"

"You looked at Hill Eleven? Don't you know to keep your eyes on your own work?"

"Yes, but after a few millennia one grows curious about such things. So I looked. And you know what I saw?"

Jimmy knew what Sisyphus had seen, but didn't answer. He was afraid of where this conversation was leading.

"I saw," Sisyphus continued, "a man pushing a boulder the same size as mine, the same approximate weight, same circumference, same rock type even. But his was blue. Blue, Jimmy! And it had a white stripe going down the middle with black borders to separate the white from the blue. And it got me thinking. I've been doing a pretty good job, how come my rock is rock-colored? How come my rock doesn't have stripes or those little lines on the sides of the stripe to make the stripe separate from the rock? Why, Jimmy? Why?"

"Hill Eleven and I have an agreement."

"What kind of agreement? You never offered me an agreement!"

"You always did your job and didn't look at the other hills. Oh, dear..." Jimmy fidgeted with his pocket-sundial and twitched his mouth as he thought about how he should proceed. After half a minute or so, he went on, "All right, Sisyphus. If you can get that rock up here in thirty minutes, I'll let you get one--ONE--crayon out of the supply tree and you can have an hour to decorate your boulder."

Sisyphus stood up straight, and without any further instruction began furiously groaning and heaving, straining to push the boulder to the top of his hill before the time ran out. Jimmy held the watch out so that he could look at both it and the struggling prisoner simultaneously from his vantage point at the top of Hill Twelve. With four seconds remaining, Sisyphus nudged the boulder into the perch at the summit of the hill, where it had been rolled so many times already that there was now a deep groove in the solid granite for the rock to rest in. He laid flat out on his back and breathed deeply, laughing and choking, even weeping a little in his happiness.

Jimmy crouched down and patted Sisyphus' soaked head, gently saying, "All right, Sisyphus, you may go to the supply tree and bring back a single crayon."

As the latter crawled on his knees back down the hill to where the dead tree was, Jimmy waited till he had gotten out of the way and then tapped the boulder with his foot a little to start it on its journey downwards. Sisyphus opened the tiny door to the tree, rummaged through the paper clips, staples, and rolls of thermal paper, and plucked a single, purple crayon from the innards of the trunk. Shutting the door, he went back to the boulder and began drawing pictures of a dinosaur eating Jimmy, himself as the crowned king of Hill Twelve, and various other illustrations to celebrate his newfound freedom and individuality.