“Man,” I said, my voice muffled by my mask, “that gets old quick.” I signaled Rudy to follow me. After we’d traveled a few yards, there was a relay click somewhere behind us, and the big fan began to spin again, sucking away the clouds of poison mist.
I turned to watch them go. “Probably a good thing he gave the minions the day off,” I said, “or he’d be gassing them right about now.” I pulled off my mask and gave Rudy a knowing look. “Just goes to show, you shouldn’t tamper with things you don’t understand.”
I turned and looked up the duct. It dead-ended twenty yards ahead at a single, man-size air register. That, undoubtedly, was our goal. “Destroying the world,” I said, “is bad for business. We’ve got to stop this guy’s plan, and oh, yes, we are going to bill him for the time!”
I stepped boldly forward, but as I did, I noticed yet another grating in the duct wall, from which, even over the sound of the fan, an ominous buzzing could be heard.
Hesitating not at all, I reached for the roll of filter material and slapped it over the grating, holding it in place with my outspread hands. The buzzing within grew loud and angry, and I heard the thumping of something hitting the back of the filter material, like popcorn in a popper.
There was a glow just visible at the corner of my eye, and I knew our holographic friend was back. “Well, my friend, I’m very impressed, but now taste the bitter sting of my-”
I growled. “Oh, get the hell on with it, will ya?”
“-mutant killer bees!”
I looked at the filter material just in front of my face, and saw many small somethings poking through. It took me a moment to realize that I was seeing hundreds of stingers poking through the material.
“Duct tape,” I yelled to Rudy. “Give me duct tape! It’s the only thing that can save us now!”
It was in that moment that Rudy seemed to come into his own. All fear, all hesitation vanished from his face. He pulled a roll of duct tape free of his belt and pulled out a long strip in the same motion, ripping it off with his teeth.
He slapped the strip along the top of the filter material, then went back for more tape.
Behind the filter, the bees were buzzing, but it was Dr. Longbeach who droned on. “As you writhe in venom-induced agony, eyes swollen shut, airway tightening down until you choke, know that you’ve failed, and that my missile will soon disperse its cloud of self-replicating nanobots, converting the entire crust of the planet into-”
Rudy slapped more tape across the bottom of the filter. I was able to pull my hands free and reach for my own roll of tape. But I took a moment to glare at the hologram. “Get on with it!”
“-peanut butter! Oh, yes! All shall know the deadly, sticky-sweet touch of-”
I kept slapping tap over the filter, entombing the deadly insects. “Dr. Scholl’s? Dr. Pepper? Dr. Spock?”
“-Dr. Longbeach!”
“Never would have guessed.” I slapped the last strip of tape in place, and ran for the vent, Rudy hot on my heels.
I popped open the grate and stepped into a glass-walled control room overlooking the missile silo. Far below us, clouds of rocket propellant vented from its tanks, eerily like the refrigerant I’d used earlier. Above us, a fluorescent light flickered and buzzed, adding a disturbing surreality to the scene.
I looked quickly around the room. There were the usual consoles, covered with banks of unmarked, ever-flashing, and incomprehensible lights. But in the center of it all, there was one thing that I could understand, a big, red digital readout counting down toward zero.
59… 58… 57…
And it was then, in one moment of horrible realization, I understood the gravity of our situation. Like Alice Through the Looking Glass (the 1974 TV version, with Phyllis Diller as the White Queen and Mr. T as the voice of the Jabberwock, was surreal even by the standards of Wonderland) we had stepped out of the ductwork. We were out of our element, and suddenly I felt lost.
“We’ve got to stop it,” said Rudy.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Do something!”
“Do what? I don’t know anything about rocket control systems.”
44… 43… 42… 41…
Rudy stepped toward the console, his hands hovering over the timer mechanism. Impulsively he reached down and pried open a panel below it, exposing a rat’s nest of colored wire. He stared at it desperately. “Do something.”
“I can’t,” I answered miserably. “I don’t know how.”
31… 30… 29…
Rudy gazed at the wires. “Look, just-Just think of it as a big thermostat! A thermostat that counts seconds instead of degrees!”
I looked a him, incredulous. “That’s stupid!”
“So to stop the furnace-the rocket-from going off, we need to make the temperature go down instead of up!”
“You’re saying we need to reverse time?”
Rudy frowned. “That doesn’t work, does it?”
“We’re doomed.”
23… 22… 21…
“Look,” he said, “what do they do in the movies?”
I reached for my tool belt and took out a pair of diagonal cutters. “They cut a wire. But which wire?” I sighed, thinking of all the countless red, digital timers I had seen in various movies. “It’s usually the red wire or the blue wire.”
“Unless,” said Rudy, “it’s the white wire or the black wire.”
I groaned. He was right. The timer-readout was always standard, but the wires were always different.
15… 14… 13…
Behind me, I heard a door creak open, but there was no time to wonder who it was.
“Just cut one,” begged Rudy, “any one!”
The timer flashed. Sweat ran down into my eyes. That flickering light made my head hurt.
Cut a wire! But which one?
4… 3… 2…
I felt someone lean over my shoulder.
A hand sheathed in a black rubber glove slipped past me, holding something.
A knife blade glittered in the flickering light.
The blade slipped into the nest of wires and smoothly plucked one out, pulling it tight and cutting it with a snap…
1…
1…
1…
I sagged against the console, the diagonal cutters slipping from my cramped fingers.
Rudy jumped into the air, letting out a victory whoop. “Dudes!”
Dudes? I turned to look at our mysterious rescuer.
He stood, a titan in gray coveralls and a baseball cap. He hoisted up his tool belt, sniffed, and rubbed his bushy mustache with his index finger.
“Who,” I said, “are you?”
He folded his pocketknife and slipped it back into a holster on his belt. “I’m the electrician,” he said. “Somebody called about a busted fluorescent.”
Dr. Longbeach appeared at the door, a black plastic Radio Shack bag clutched in his hand, and surveyed the scene. “Oh, thank God you’re here. I was afraid this time I was actually going to get away with it.” He shuddered. “Peanut butter. Eeew.”
Okay, so the men from HVAC didn’t save the world.
Not that time, anyway.
But we helped.
“Dude,” said Rudy, looking at the electrician in admiration.
“Hey,” I said to the kid, “you’re my apprentice!” I turned to address the stranger as an equal. “You have skills, my friend, as do we. We should team up.”
And that, as you’ve surely guessed by now, is how the Justice League of Contractors was born.