Comedy
“Come on, come on...” Jack Allison pleaded breathless as he gripped the sides of what looked to be an ordinary air conditioner. It was mounted to one of the windows in the large room that was his but unfamiliar. Various expensive gadgets and high-tech tools lined the walls, most of whose functions he could only guess at. Just then a loud bang came from the reinforced steel door at the other end of the room and Jack jumped. His pulse quickened and he could hear harsh Germanic shouts and the robotic clomp and whirr of something massive from beyond the door. He didn’t have much time. “Why won’t you, work!” As he shouted this two things happened: The first being that the air conditioner suddenly blinked to life it’s simplistic LED display vibrant in green numerals. The second thing to happen concerned that of the thing on the opposite side of the door, the thing appeared to have adopted a new strategy to gain entry, evident by the slow moving molten line that began to form on the door tracing a large circle. Acrid black smoke began to writhe into the room. Quickly Jack used the soft plastic embedded arrows on the front of the air conditioner to manipulate a setting that had once been labeled by the manufacturer as “temp”, but had since been duct taped over with a new label that read: “time”. Jack frantically tapped the down arrow on the time setting, until the readout flashed: 07/28/20. He then slammed his finger down on the power button, just as a loud crash went off behind him resulting in a large circular cut of hissing steel on the floor outlined in bubbling orange. Through the smoke Jack could see the silhouette of something huge and misshapen looming in the circular opening. It barked something at him in German. Jack snapped back to the air conditioner console and could hear it starting up, the high pitched whine and the whirr of the fan coalesced to sound something akin to a fighter jet gearing up, and after a few seconds one-hundred fighter jets, a thousand. Jack’s skin was covered with frost now, looking as if he were rolled in flour. Just then a gun went off, hardly heard over the noise of the air conditioner and a bullet struck nearby nearly hitting the AC. —Ten-thousand jets. Jack had to hold onto the floor-mounted craftsman table nearby, his frozen fingers burning in numbness. The force of the AC lifted his body and his legs dangled in the cool rushing air like a windsock. The German shouts and the whirring-clomp behind him didn’t cease, in fact it sounded close, too close. Jack didn’t scream when he felt the metal claw of the German thing grip his ankle, nor could he as the force from the AC was too great. With all of his strength he twisted and kicked and flailed until finally —finally he felt the grip loosen and fall away, just as the AC reached the sound of one-million fighter jets. Just then there was a bright flash of light and suddenly Jack found himself in some place familiar. The shades to his office were pulled back and sunlight filled the room. Frostless and calm he picked himself up off the floor, and spent the rest of the day unmounting the AC, dismantling it and, dumping the parts in recycling bins all across the county. When he arrived home he reluctantly deleted and purged the only harddrive which had ever held the encrypted folder titled: “1,000,000 BTU Project Files” Topics Discussed On Today’s Episode Include: BTU’s, Have Fun Out There!, DNC Platform, Ellen, and The Knife! Today’s Episode Aired on 07/28/20 — VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/693217667 Read The Bugzine! www.thebugzine.com