Pete pulled up to the familiar sight of
cooling towers overshadowing his car as he parked his car next to the multitude
of his coworkers. His day began just
like the others. If there was any
plutonium to be expected, he was damn sure he would be the one to inspect
it. He walked past George the security
guard, asked him how he was doing even though he didn't really give a rat's ass
how he was, he was just a friendly person.
As he strolled down the corridor to the area in which he worked, he
noticed something strange. There was not
as many people buzzing around the hallways, hitting on the women workers, or
even hanging around the coffee maker.
"Must be another layoff meeting," he thought to himself as he
slid his access card into the slot and the door opened.
"Thank god you're here!" his
boss, Jarvis explained. Pete checked his
watch. "Am I late?" he
queried. "No time for that, no time
for that damnit!" Jarvis seemed very upset about something to say the least. "Well, what is it?" Pete asked with
a look of haste swimming across his face.
Jarvis lead Pete over to the main testing
area. "We discovered this late last
night. Seems one of the plutonium pieces
is...," he paused with a gulp, "changing."
"Changing?!?!"
"You better believe it because it
took me an hour to comprehend what is going on."
"What exactly IS going on?"
Jarvis explained in his own special
slightly whiny voice that he chose to break out only in large meetings but
decided to give Pete the thrill of hearing now.
One of the experimental pieces of plutonium had become so unstable that
it had actually began changing form. It
had undergone it's daily blast of gamma radiation when something went
wrong. Like the incredible hulk, it was
growing larger at, what would seem not that bad to the person uneducated in
nuclear physics, but to the trained mind, it was preposterous. Pete stepped closer to the pulsing hulk of
plutonium which was encased behind radioactive-proof glass. He was speechless, dumbfounded, and yes, a
little shocked.
"Where on earth did you get
that?" Pete questioned Jarvis, his voice reaching out and grabbing him by
the throat, leaving him speechless.
Jarvis took a deep breath, let out a sigh and interjected, "That's
the whole thing, Pete, we don't know where it came from."
"What, was it a prize in a fuckin'
cracker jack box?!"
"No, you don't see..."
"Did you save up enough Marlboro
miles?"
Just then the door to the lab
slammed. Eight men in white lab coats
proceeded to march throughout the laboratory, inspecting the glowing hulk. As Jarvis was walking over to the men, Pete
closely looked at the hunk of plutonium that had 'just appeared'. He started to motion over to Jarvis, who
seemed to be consumed in his ass-kissing second self with what Pete assumed to
be government scientists. He slowly
strode backwards, taking the full 20 feet high and 10 feet wide mass into full
view. He knew there was something very
peculiar about it, but he couldn't quite place it. All he knew was that he was going to be
leaving work early today, he would not be one of those deranged scientists that
risked his life for the sake of science.
Pete walked over to Jarvis, ready to hand
in his resignation, when something happened.
What that something is, though, will not be revealed at this time. OK, you got me, I'll tell you. As Pete was about to tell Jarvis that his
time with the company was up, there was an ear-popping crack which came from
the center of the lab.
"Holy Jesus Christ!" Jarvis was
the first to see the hole which had developed in the center of the mass of
plutonium. There was a faint glow coming
from the hole. As the crowd of
government scientists, Jarvis, and the lab workers looked on, Pete snuck out of
the lab with great haste. As soon as he
was past the door, he bolted down the hall toward the door. Just then there was a loud screaming
explosion coming from the way he had just came.
He whirled around to see his boss' upper torso plastered against the wall. It just slumped down with a loud squishing
sound. He didn't turn around again. As he passed the guard at the front door, he
just yelled "Get out while you still can!" and took off for his car
parked somewhere in the humongus parking
lot. Every day he spent at least 10
minutes wandering through the multitude of cars, searching for his. Many times he had found a car that looked
like his, tried to get in, sometimes setting off annoying car alarms, and one
time the key even worked, but he didn't realize that he was in the wrong car
until he had noticed how clean it was.
He darted past opening in the barbed wire
fence which had loomed too long over his workplace. In his glasses he could see the reflection of
explosions and felt the earth shake every few seconds with the force of what he
thought was a major earthquake.
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