Assembly

Assembly

“Stop!”

“What?”

“This isn’t going to work. Did you put this together?”

“Yeah, But I followed these directions...” Jay held up a few crumped sheets.

“What’s this wire?” Bob held up a blue wire sticking out the top.

“Uh, I couldn’t find it in the instructions... I thought maybe it goes with a different model.”

Bob lifted the top and looked in. There were colored wires everywhere with no semblance of order. Jay had them crisscrossed and stretched here and there, all were connected somewhere except the one sticking out of the top. He picked up the instructions and started checking them. All the wires seemed to be attached at each end to the correct spot, heedless of the mess in the middle. There was no mention of the errant blue wire even though one end was obviously pre-attached inside.

“I don’t know...” he said, suspiciously.

“Well, let’s just try it,” said Jay happily pushing the plug into the wall socket before Bob could stop him.

There was a bright spark and everything went dark. As the boys watched, they could see through the window as the entire neighborhood went black, houses, streetlights, everything, and then they could even see lights going off two miles away on the hills out to the west. It was like a tidal wave of darkness covering the land.

In the pitch black of the quiet room, a tiny, tinny sound began... music.

Jay jumped up excitedly, “It works!!!”