Tyson scrutinized the building ahead through the lenses of his glasses, phone hanging loosely from his fingers. “Hmm, this looks like the place, alright…” he admitted, "but the ad said it was a science facility. This looks more like a laundromat.”
In truth, the building resembled a rundown laundromat more than any reputable science facility. The parking lot housed a solitary, dilapidated Mustang, its faded paintwork scarred with decades of misuse. Muddled tire tracks crisscrossed the asphalt, with some sections rendered impassable without risking car damage. Off to one side, a rusting air pump station hinted at danger rather than utility. Above the entrance, a neon sign flickered ominously, with only the 'U' of 'SUDS' lighting up. Off in the distance, they could hear sirens. They were in a completely unremarkable urban neighborhood, the kind you drive by and imagine people living there but never stop to investigate. The notion that such a place could be a high-tech facility seemed absurd.
Steven pointed at a large sign on the street corner. “It says 47th Street. It has to be the place. We might as well… err… knock or something...” He started, but an ear-piercing shriek swallowed his words. A man in a lab coat, complete with knee and elbow pads, rocketed through a window and skidded across the asphalt, his futile flailing doing little to prevent his impending collision with the ground. The knee and elbow pads may have helped with a skateboarding fall, but they offered little assistance in this particular scenario.
Steven gulped, “Ah, you know what? I think we found the right place.” His tentative tone morphed into anxious trepidation.
A chorus of “Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi!” echoed, and two men barely reaching Steven's waist bustled out, carrying a stretcher.
"D..didn't you say the pay was pretty good?” Tyson queried, his voice pitching higher than usual.
The facility door slid open, and a man emerged, clipboard in hand, tutting with disapproval. “No, no, no. This is no good!” He moaned, surveying the wreckage around him. “I just had this cement poured last month! With all these accidents, I'll need to get it repaired again!” He knelt by the man on the stretcher and checked his eyes. “Oh, good. This one will survive, albeit with years of rehabilitation and psychiatric care. Much luckier than the previous one, yes?”
Steven cleared his throat nervously. “Uh, are you Doctor Zillicker?” His voice trembled as he stood, prepared to flee at the first hint of a threat – well, a threat towards himself, given the existing danger was more than evident.
“Ah! Very good, very good! I see his replacement has arrived quite expediently!” Doctor Zillicker beamed. “Bomble, Romble, make sure these three are situated and oriented quickly. We need them for the Quantum Reconstructive Body Mechanizer soon, yes? And ensure they don't fiddle with the Radial Harmonizer! After Frank's little incident, it took weeks to clean off the walls, and it still reeks of cooked ramen!!”
"Uh... what's a Radial Harmonizer?" Steven murmured.
"I haven't the faintest, man!" Tyson hissed. "Let's... uh... avoid touching anything and play it safe."
Two men, as diminutive as Bomble and Romble, marched out of the building. After introducing themselves as Bomble and Romble, they yelled, “Oi! Oi! Follow us!”
Left with no choice but to comply, Steven, Mark, and Tyson ventured into the seemingly undersized building. “I wondered how they could fit so many little men into such a small building. Now I know!” Mark said, surveying the vast elevator. “Could this fit an elephant, do you reckon?”
Without skipping a beat, one of the brothers (was it Bomble or Romble?) replied, “Oi, yes! Two!”
Mark maintained a deadpan expression, “So, why are there so many short men here? It's giving me Oompa Loompa vibes, but I don't see any candy. This confuses and disappoints me.”
Steven groaned, and Tyson facepalmed, but their reactions seemed to bounce off the brother. “Oi! We’re not Oompas! We're brothers! The Bomble Brothers! Doctor Zillicker modified our DNA to grant us superhuman powers.”
“That doesn't seem to have worked too well,” Mark retorted, smirking.
Steven sighed, “We don't know this guy very well. We can disown him if you want us to.”
One of the brothers shrugged, strolling to a box in the elevator’s corner. From it, he produced a hefty wrench, easily six inches thick. He bent it in half, then smoothly returned it to its original form. “Oi! I'm strong! And Bomble over there, he can eat anything. Anything.”
Bomble nodded vigorously. “One time, Doctor Zillicker accidentally summoned Barthulu, a giant squid god from another dimension. Barthulu threatened to consume the world with his... well, I’m not exactly sure. Ink sacs, perhaps. In any case, I ate him.”
“You ate a whole god and walked away?!” Tyson exclaimed, a tinge of envy lacing his words. Tyson had once been ejected from an all-you-can-eat restaurant for consuming sixty-seven slices of pizza, and he was still sore about it.
“Well, not exactly. I had terrible gas for a week,” Bomble confessed. “Ahh. Here’s our stop! Mind your hands and feet! It'd be embarrassing to get decapitated before even arriving at orientation."
Before Bomble could launch into another tale, Romble hushed him. “I think they’ve had enough storytelling for today, Bomble. They haven’t signed any paperwork yet, so they can still run away. We shouldn’t frighten them too much.” Bomble nodded in agreement.
Romble resumed, his tone pleasant, “First, we have orientation, then we select your equipment.” The trio was herded into a room, meeting another brother, Henry. It seemed Henry’s superpower was finding unnatural pleasure in detailing the countless ways a man could lose a limb within their labs.
The slideshow was fascinating, albeit punctuated by Henry's occasionally graphic detours into potential accidents. Explicit enough that by 11 o'clock, the trio was immensely relieved they hadn't been offered lunch yet.
“Question! What’s with all the cutesy graphics of people getting dismembered in horrible ways?” Steven asked, perplexed after cringing for the sixth time at an animation of a man whose shoes reached 30,000 degrees Kelvin and reduced him to a molten puddle.
“Good question!” Henry responded enthusiastically. “We hired a company that makes children’s movies, hoping to inform employees in a fun, friendly manner about how they could potentially die – and consequently lose their 401k. Losing money that could pay for your loved ones to live a happy life is serious business. Ah, here we are. This is how touching a Time-space Destabilizer can suck your organs out of your orifices.” Predictably, this led to cringe number seven.
"Now. Any other questions?" Henry asked, looking around the room. Mark looked at Tyson. Tyson looked back at Mark, saying, “Don’t you dare ask that question, you little... Tyson's glare was cut off as Mark raised his hand.
"What is the biggest mistake you have seen someone make?"
"Ah, yes, I get asked that quite a lot. You see, there are plenty of ways to get dismembered, and honestly, many are so instantaneous that hardly anything is felt much at all. Sure, you could press the third button instead of the second on a Globular Reconstructive Table, leaving your body a mess of goo and organs instead of a nice massage, but you would hardly feel a thing. Now the most painful, biggest mistake is to order sushi from the cafeteria. It's simply a bad idea. Don't do it." With that, Henry shuddered, and Steven cringed for the eighth and ninth time.
About an hour later, there was a short exam:
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13) Which of the following will result in a catastrophic organ failure?
A. Informing Dr. Wasslebee, the physicist, that it is impossible to break the sound barrier while strapped to the side of a bullet train.
B. Walking into the hydroponics lab and touching just about anything.
C. Ordering “The flavor of the week” from the cafeteria.
D. Attempting to halt an experiment in the antimatter chamber before its completion
E. All of the above.
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Steven, Mark and Tyson quickly learned that the answer to all of those types of questions was E: All of the above.
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21) Each of you will be assigned a locker. If you get the password wrong three times, what will the consequence be?
A. Nothing. It will beep and let you try again.
B. Doctor Zillicker will calmly give you your password on a sticky note because he definitely installed a keylogger on all of your devices anyway.
C. Security will be informed. You will be escorted off the premises
D. You will be instantly dismembered by security robots with AI sophisticated enough to enjoy the experience.
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Again, it was a very easy question to answer, given that any result was probably a sudden but inevitable demise.
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32) We have covered the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with our discussion with Henry. Violation of such would result in sophisticated AI robots hunting you down and creatively torturing you to death. What are some things that would trigger the robots to come after you?
A. Proprietary information about top-secret equipment in this facility
B. Names and information about other employees within this company
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
C. Doctor Zillicker's weird habit of ending nearly every sentence with a question
D. Barbara the Lunch Lady's secret ribs recipe
E. All of the above.
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Like I said - easy test.
So, the guys were flipping through the next section in the handbook when they hit this juicy section about where they’d be living. When they first applied, the idea of getting paid AND not worrying about rent sounded like a sweet deal. But now, with all this talk of danger and secret clearances, they were getting why the perks were so... perk-y.
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44) Which of these statements about 47th Street is FALSE?
A. It's home to the city's best donut shop where trans-dimensional beings frequent.
B. The pothole near the bus stop is a mini black hole that the city keeps forgetting to fix.
C. It is generally quarantined from the rest of civilization due to the top secret nature of its residents.
D. The old bookstore sells copies of tomorrow’s newspaper.
E. It's a completely normal street with no anomalies whatsoever.
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They shared a few glances. Extra-dimensional beings? Time-space anomalies? They were getting themselves into some real crazy things, and it seemed like a casual thing. As dangerous as it was, excitement flooded the group. They were about to embark on a journey unlike any other they had seen!
Once they were done and the one guy who somehow got every question wrong was "escorted off the premises," they were taken to the cafeteria and introduced to the nice lunch lady, Barbara.
Steven enjoyed a nice taco, Mark ate pizza, and Tyson, after eyeballing “The flavor of the week” uncomfortably (Meatballs and spaghetti) he opted for a cheeseburger and some fries. After looking around for a bit, the trio did not find the sushi, and that was quite alright.
Lunch was surprisingly delicious and non-lethal, but the trio ate in relative silence. For some reason, talking about 47 ways to disembowel you was quite the conversation killer.
Right as they were finishing their meals, Doctor Zillicker entered the room, his lab coat looking slightly fringed on the corners. “Ahh, there you are! This is fantastic, yeah? Time to go to the outfitting room to get your gear!” He hustled them to another, smaller elevator. “I hope your meal was quite satisfactory. I am very excited to show you the new batch of equipment we got in, fresh from the lab, yeah? Please be aware that you have signed an agreement that if these weapons dismember you, you are legally not allowed to press charges against me.” His brow furrowed. “But they shouldn’t. Uhh. Except for our freeze ray gun. For some reason, that still has a 100% mortality rate. Oh, our multi-purpose laser tool has a bug… well more of a feature really… that if you try to use it underwater it turns the water into ooze that incidentally has acidic components that would strip the flesh from your bones. But that only happened twice, once during test phase, and once when the King of the Seas tried to invade this place and use it as a base of operations for his nefarious plans. But as you can see, this place is back in running condition, for the most part, no need to worry too much, yeah? Sure, 17B is completely underwater, and I'm pretty sure that he has a few informants reporting back... oh look, it's our stop!” Steven looked at Tyson. Tyson looked at Steven. The horror in their eyes was very apparent, and they were both wondering if fleeing the lab and running for their life was in fact a good idea. Their musings, however, were cut short when Mark, whistling merrily to himself stepped off the elevator and motioned to his two friends. “C’mon guys, this is gonna be so much fun!”
A cheery voice chimed in as the elevator door opened. "Now stopping at 4B: the armory. A C level badge is required to enter here. Passing without proper verification or credentials will result in vaporization. Watch your step, and have a safe trip!"
Steven turned to Tyson as they stepped through the elevator door, “Look Tyson, if we are all going to survive this, remember, don’t touch anything. Not even if it looks cool, not even if it looks innocent. If we survive this, we will have rent paid for, and we can have enough to do pretty much whatever we want! See, all we gotta do is stick together, and… Oh sweet mercy, is that a Laser Sword!?”
Steven looked as giddy as a teenage girl before her first prom as they entered the large warehouse and he beheld the object of his desire. The Laser Sword was definitely interesting, but definitely not the most interesting thing on the floor.
The warehouse was huge. Aisles and aisles of shelves it contained, and on each shelf there was an item of interest. One aisle contained nothing but swords. Another contained simple household items. These shelves of household items had the most interesting warning labels, so the trio opted to stay away from them. On and on the aisles went. Guns. Suits of armor. There was even an aisle for cordless drills, strangely enough.
“What you see before you is the accumulation of years of research. Unfortunately, most of these are not federally approved so they can’t be sold on the open market, yeah? You, however, may use any of these objects in your work. Now go play!” And go play they did. Steven, having already made up his mind, began playing around with his Laser Sword. Tyson bee-lined it for the largest weapon he could find, a large bazooka-style gun. Mark wandered back and forth between aisles, looking for something that suited him properly.
Each shelf was electronically locked with a small LCD screen next to it detailing its production, its vague function, notes from the inventor, and any casualties involved. If one was interested in using the tool, he or she was required to sign an affidavit promising that lawsuits would not occur if one were slain, disemboweled, or oddly enough mangled into a very specific pretzel shape that should not be physically possible.
The first to make a selection on an item was Tyson. When he touched the screen, a whole lot of information came out for him:
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The Destructinator
Notes: I am not quite sure what this does. However, field tests prove that it is highly destructive, both on their targets, and on the user. Because its capabilities have not been fully scoped, I cannot in good conscience recommend this product, especially to first time users. However, if one is suicidal, evisceration from this device will be significantly less painful than other weapons. You have been warned.
Casualties Reported From This Device: 45
Damage Rating: 9/10
Effects: Largely unknown. However, one user reported that blast radius could be adjusted by the dial before he spun it all the way on and killed himself.
Classification: Highly classified. So classified that we don’t even know what is in it.
Danger Rating: 10/10
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Needless to say, Tyson did not read the warning label as he impatiently clicked past the user agreement, signed the waiver, and slung the Destructinator awkwardly on his back. He hummed to himself softly and made his way happily over to the plate armor.
Steven followed Tyson shortly, selecting two Laser Swords and a simple robe as armor. “To look cool,” he said. Rumble left the room muttering to himself about how excited he was that Steven’s shoes were the same size as him because he needed a new pair.
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Laser Sword
Notes: This sword is really, really good at cutting cheese. And making toast. But you totally shouldn't do it, the other doctors get a little cranky when you bring these things into the cafeteria for some reason.
Casualties Reported From This Device: 3 (2 self inflicted)
Damage Rating: 5/10
Effects: Sword made of lasers. It can stab through metal, reflect laser blasts, and (if applicable) melt its way through steel reinforced doors, significantly faster than poison can enter the system.
Classification: Not for the general public
Danger rating: 4/10 (unless you are George, the poor intern)
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That left Mark. After digging around for quite some time, he came upon his choice:
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Bobo The Penguin
Notes: I discovered this little guy wandering around outside the facilities looking for food. After cleaning the human blood from his body, he really is an adorable fella. I hope he finds a good home after all he has been through!
Casualties Reported From This Device: 12,252
Damage Rating: ???
Danger Rating: 12/10
Effects: ???
Classification: ???
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Mark made the decision not to grab any armor. After all, he said, Bobo promised to protect him. This made Steven and Tyson roll their eyes, but Copernicus seemed to accept this just fine. He was slightly worried about Tyson’s choice of armor though; sure, plate mail armor reinforced with a Tesla barrier served to protect very well against all sorts of dangers, but using the bathroom stall was nearly impossible without the use of a forklift. Tyson insisted though, stating that this armor would protect him from his worst fear: being horribly disfigured by Dr. Zillicker’s experiments. Dr. Copernicus sighed.
“While your statement may be valid, I would probably worry about Dr. Wasslebee’s experiments a bit more. Still though, I will look into equipping V 2.0 with a filtration system. You’re gunna need it, kid.”
Shortly after, Dr. Zillicker came back in to greet them. “Ahh! Are you ready for orientation?! Excellent!”
On their way out of the room, Steven glanced at his watch. "I have already survived longer than 5% of new hires here. Oh, goodie!"
Dr. Zillicker led them into a white room with several pods in the middle. Several engineers with clipboards milled around, checking equipment, calibrating machinery, and pretending to look busy with their heads down as the doctor approached. One pod had a hastily scrawled “Out of Order” sign taped to its remains, and strange orange goo-like material dripped from nearly every opening. Next to it, an engineer was muttering to himself softly. The trio could not catch what he said, but it sounded like he was cursing himself for using feet instead of meters.
“Ahh yes, take a seat; the beginning of this orientation portion will be quite boring. Yes, there you go. Yes, you probably want to buckle yourself in for your safety. Not that you’ll need it, we will be going over just a few basic security measures, and we want to ensure you are comfortable. You see, there are many things you need to know to survive interdimensional trav… oh, they’re all ready! Igor!! Flip the switch!" He cackled loudly.
"Ahh! This is my favorite part! Safety procedures?! Hah! Forget about it! Don’t worry; this will be quite painless; you will feel a weightless sensation and…”
Dr. Zillicker was half correct. Mark, Steven, and Tyson all felt the feeling of weightlessness depicted in his brief lecture. However, the slightly less accurate part was where they were assured a painless procedure. When calibrating the device to their specific anatomy, it was necessary to rip them apart at a molecular level so they could be mapped appropriately. To say that it was blinding pain would be accurate because their organs were torn apart into such tiny pieces that it was invisible to the human eye for a moment. Furthermore, one would describe the intense pain akin to giving birth. To a pack of wildebeests. Through every single pore.
The trio later learned that Doctor Zillicker was withholding information from them because of a hypothesis: the lack of fear from the patient would result in an increased chance of a successful journey.
The pain eventually subsided as quickly as it had come, which the entire trio thought was remarkable. What they did not awesome was that they no longer had any legs. Or eyes. Or any body parts. Their atoms were still more or less there, only floating in free space. It was almost as if their bodies underwent a compression… a translated version of themselves that, after being restructured, were free-floating with the mass and speed of a photon.
This kind of achievement would be lovely… assuming that their bodies could be put together exactly as before. Very friendly, as in, “Wow, we have achieved the pinnacle of science,” that is lovely. Very friendly, as in, “Okay, we can all go home and rest now because we have had a hectic day, and performing this feat can be exhausting” kind of day. However, it did not stop there. You see, Doctor Zillicker had a reason for arming the trio with weapons of mass destruction before ripping them apart at a molecular level: he had also found a way to tear through time and space.
The trio has just discovered this remarkable technology and, by extension, you. However, it took many years. For years, Doctor Zillicker yelled to his servant that he called Igor to flip a giant metal switch that arced electricity across the room to try and activate his wormholes. In reality, Igor’s real name was Tom, but really, the pay was pretty good, and he was given the power to arc lightning through his body and not die, so he let the doctor call him whatever he wanted. The only downside to his job was that sometimes he had to go out and buy a new phone, and they stopped giving him protection plans on it after the fourth one.
Igor watched many people come and go, though now that he thought of it, he watched more people going than coming. He was never asked to field test any of the equipment, which was fine.
So, Igor flipped the switch and watched the trio leave on their first adventure. Then, he was approached by an engineer, who asked him why he used Pod 3, which was still being prepared. Uh oh. Yeah, Igor was going to keep silent about that little detail wisely.