Two people are standing in front of [Large, technical, dangerous-but-necessary item]. They are discussing how to do something highly dangerous with it that is their best hope at this point.
Person #1: [Name], walk us through this.
Person #2: First, you’ll want to [BAD IDEA]. Then [ANOTHER BAD IDEA]. After that, [NO]. Then [DON’T DO THIS] and [SERIOUSLY, DON’T].
Person #3: So…basically everything written here, in order, right after ‘WARNING: DO NOT’…
Person #2: Essentially.
The night before the Big Day.
Kevin could tell that this was
bad news. Hackmeyer had promised him, Dave-o and Steve some extra credit
if they helped the Professor with his ‘little adjustments’ to Katie’s
“dimensional pinhole” instrument array.
“Okay,” said Steve. “What are we doing to this thing?”
Hackmeyer
cracked his knuckles. “First, we disengage the safety alarm. Then we
increase all the inputs in the first array three marks past the red
line. After that, we move on to the secondary and tertiary arrays,
moving them comfortably into the red zones. If not further.”
Kev
picked up the very detailed operations manual that he had helped Katie
put together. “So… just about everything in this manual, under the
title, ‘This Will Kill You and Most of California if You Try It’, right
sir?”
Hackmeyer glared at him. “Need I remind you, mister Polson,
that you have extra credit and I have significant grant money riding on
this display being one that the military can appreciate? The last thing any of us need is some little girl playing it safe so that her dollies can have a tea party in the reactor!”
Dave-o
and Steve agreed with Hackmeyer. None of those three men had read the
explicit details of exactly what could go wrong with Katie’s dimensional
pinhole. And, after all, this was America. Bigger was better. Why have a
pinhole when one could have a sinkhole?
Therefore, he tried
desperately to covertly unfuck everything that the others fucked up. And
he left Katie’s dummy ‘safety switch’ in the covert ‘alert’ position.
He just had to hope that Katie could fix everything in time.
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