Ahhh... life is good
isn't it? Of course it is! After all, you're Hort Derkins,
regional manager for a chain of Pizza Lodge restaurants in the
Northeast! Sure, it's not the job you dreamed you'd be doing when you
were younger, but you've got a nice house, a peach of a wife and some
damned fine kids who you think might actually have a shot at getting
into an Ivy League school some day.
So it's a lazy Sunday
afternoon and you're enjoying the day off from work as you conduct some
research on a local dial-up computer BBS with your speedy 300 baud
modem. People on there are getting all hot and bothered about this new
thing called the "Internet", and you must admit, it sure does sound
exciting!
Yeah, that's you being
excited.
As you read on about
this "Internet" you notice that your computer monitor is starting to
grow dim. All of a sudden your dot matrix printer shuts itself off and
your computer powers down. What, no warning? Not even a blue screen of
death? This is madness!
You get up to tell the
wife about the problem, but she's already made her way downstairs to
complain to you about how the lights in the bathroom aren't working and
now she can't use the curling iron on her hair. Good god, it's almost as
if all the power in the house has been drained in an instant! Oh no!
Could your house be infested with those pesky electro-leeches you were
reading about the other week on yet another highly reputable dial-up
computer BBS run by some 15-year-old kid? Maybe, just maybe! But wait...
let's not jump to conclusions here. First thing's first, you gotta check
the fuse box.
As you make your way
down the stairs to your basement, you notice a strange glow. How can
anything be glowing without there being any power on in the house!? You
make your way down and in the middle of the basement floor is a giant
arcade cabinet:
The game is apparently
called "FUN TIME" and it has a pixelated green smiley face
flashing on the screen. It also has the most absurd control boards
you've ever seen, with more buttons, joysticks and doohickeys than you
could possibly know what to do with. But forget about that... WHERE
THE HELL DID THIS GAME COME FROM!?
You ask everybody in
the family about it and none of them have ever seen it before, so it's
as if it just magically appeared in your basement. While the wife
'n kids don't seem to give it a second thought as they decide to go out
for ice cream until the power comes back on, you stay behind because
you're absolutely bewildered by this machine. It's the only thing in the
house that has any power on, so perhaps "FUN TIME" is the source of your
electrical problems. You go to unplug the machine to see if it helps and
that's when you see it...
THE GAME ISN'T
EVEN PLUGGED IN!!! AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
Ok, so it wasn't really
that scary to you, but still, the fact that this thing is turned on yet
not plugged in is pretty friggin' weird. Well, there's only one thing to
do...
