31 + 30 = 61
61 + 12 = 73
9/11/23 = Today
11/23/23 = End of The World
Dust, or perhaps opaquely dense vapor clouds the room. Tinted light stains it red and blue, like I'm wearing some kind of 3D glasses from the Seventies. Now quite sure how the new ones work, though, so they might just work the same. The effect did nothing to enhance my television screen. It looked a mile away, with only the vague dark greens of forest distinguishable, and perhaps the helmet of a football player.
I drug, ever so slowly up, the cup which my recliner helt so delicately for me. The totally uncrumpled paper cup, with its red, white, and blue lines. What day was it today? It seemed important. I'd ask. "Key!"
The tone repeated back my words, approximating their sound through tritones like some kind of robot mockery. I glared in the direction of the powerful magenta light. The tiny point didn't even shudder as I asked "When will I be healed?" Like an innocent child's eye, the point vaguely flickered, and then immediately responded: "Indeterminable." it screamed ever so softly. Unchanged in tone by endless repetition under other circumstances.
I cranked up the volume on the TV. "GRANBY COMETS DEFEAT P#$T$MOU!# CHURCHLA-" I kept on switching the channels. "REDS-" "Elon Musk's NEW CO-" "ON THIS DA-" "I PLEDGE OF ALLE-" "CAN YOU SAY THAT AGAIN?" I asked the infernal machine. "HAS THE ANSWER CHANGED?" "KANYE WEST WEARS WHITE LIVES MATTER-" "NEW ABOR-" "No." Key responded. "How" I intoned "DONALD TRUMP'S COURT CASE-" I switched the channel "Mitch Mc. Connell's sudden FREEZE UPS-" blasted into my ears. "About" "23 POINT LEAP BY THE GIANTS" "Now?" I finally ended. "And is his putt going to make it in and ooh, it looks like he just mis-"Yes."-sed it. Look at him. He's devastated." I hit the power button and the pixels shut. I drank through the liquid in my movie theater cup. Through the heavy static of ache and unrest, I couldn't even tell whether ice was in the cup. I brought it to me, open top straight to my face, its white within engulfing my vision.
"Explain" I asked Key.
"You will never recover." robotic melodic.
"You will take greater than 73 days to recover, and you will no longer be capable of recovery by then." "You will no longer exist."
"Stop Existing?" I asked, suspicious.
"Would you prefer the term 'participate in a nuclear fireball?'" Key asked. "Yes," I replied. "Yes I very much would. But first I need to know exactly how you came to the conclusion that I'd die." "The audiovisual data received at that moment had a pattern indicating the likelihood of nuclear obliteration to be one hundred percent." "This pattern cannot be described verbally.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
What the actual fuck? The room's intense aura of overwhelming stimulus and overindulgence had all but left, leaving me in an empty, musty room with lights flashing, an empty television, and sitting in a fat purple reclining chair. I stood up from my chair,. A loud groaning creaked across the molding, rotting interior of the chair, perfectly harmonizing and building up to a sobering "Crack!" as the chair fell, reclining back. I jumped forward just in time to be smashed in the legs by my chair, landing flat on my face. "Key!" I asked through my muffling carpet. Key replied. "What's, no, why's this whole thing happening to me?" "This Nuclear fireball participation is not localized to you." Key responded. What stupidity, I know it's smart enough to know my next question. "Who's it localized to, then?" "The nuclear fireball is mainly localized to the surface of the Earth, On which every geological, biological, and technological formation will be plasmized, expanded, and swept into the nuclear backstop. The debris will be thrown into outer space, bestowing the Earth with two to thirteen large rings." I thought for a moment about this. Could a real human being be convinced of this? No. Of course not, but there's no way for someone to hack Key, It's not hooked up to anything but the electricity. "What part of the audio did you recognize a pattern in?" "In the four last lines before you deactivated, I made the most connections." I asked Key what it meant by "deactivated" It was referring to the television. "Can you replay that audio?" "No," Key responded "But you can upload the audio onto a flash drive." My neck felt tired.
A ten foot tall archway entrance stared me in the face as I passed through it to the dining room and then to the kitchen, making two ninety degree turns. Sighing out, I opened a drawer and searched. The pack of batteries best used for throwing lay atop the flash drive, and so I slid it off with my left hand, caught the drive with my right hand, and then closed the drawer with my left hand. My right hand escaped, opening the drawer slightly as I trudged to Key, stuck in the drive, and started asking questions. "How many people do you think will recognize it?" "It really depends on who, but about 0.4% on average-" "Key?" I interrupted. "Can you tell me what day it is?" "9/11 Monday" "When did the two planes hit, and how can I hijack a bunch of cell towers at once?
~++++**-|-**++++~
Key's eye light watched as the ground became more and more minute with each passing rung of the tower. At this point, it would really like to tell the man ascending this tower exactly how stupid it is to do what he's doing, how many people he'll anger, and how naïve he is to blindly trust it. On the other hand, however, Key knows that without a doubt, barring a mistake physically, the man's plan will go perfectly despite all logical odds. "I suggest you get down quickly. Once the message plays in 15 minutes, this is the second place they'll look." Key spoke.
~++++**-|-**++++~
"It's time, right?" I asked Key. "The broadcast came through half an hour ago." "I guess it wasn't that ma-"
A 350 mph stream of burning headlights headed straight towards the base of the radio tower, smashing into it with a sonic "BOOM!" The rattling felt like it bounced and reverberated through the space time continuum. When we looked back, there was only a falling radio tower and a twisted, gnarled wreckage. I didn't really need foresight so see this coming. The radio tower fell down towards a row of buildings.
Mister Bolt! The man said, running into the room, albeit slower than the person he was addressing. "Yes?" Usain bolt replied. "Well..." the man started. He played an audio clip to Bolt. Bolt's eyes widened, and the world stopped for a second. "Open my drug cabinet" He said.
"And find me the others."