Better Off Ted fic: Let Them Eat Cake; PG-13
Title: Let Them Eat Cake
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Ensemble
Words: 2, 644
Disclaimer: Don't own Better Off Ted
Notes: au_bingo prompt-- Alternate History: someone never died
Author's Notes: Another conscious attempt at humour. I apologize for the mistakes. My bingo card
“For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellooooooow! Which nobody can deny!”
The song sounds tired and sad coming from this particular group of people but the look on Jenkin’s face when he presented the cake should give them a boost in morale.
“This is for me?” Jenkins asks in bleary wonderment as he stands up to see the cake, which is a marvelous thing of beauty with blue and yellow frosting.
Well, it looks slightly gaudy since the icing was sloppily slopped on and the congratulatory message seems to read as ‘Nice Wonk, Jonkins’ rather than ‘Nice Work, Jenkins’, but he hopes that everybody’s tired enough not to notice it-there’s only one bakeshop in the area that willing to make the cake at such short notice… and apparently, they’ve gotten used to Veridian Dynamics employees ordering pastries by bulk at the last minute.
“Yes, it is.” Ted answers with a smile, “The company recognizes everybody’s hard work on the Veridian Sleep System and they thought that they should give a reward to its hardest worker. Jenkins, you are that hardest worker. Congratulations.” He says in a celebratory tone.
But Jenkins visibly shirks away from them, “It’s from the company?” He might have seen a look of fear on his face, but he might be mistaken.
“Of course.” He answers with puzzlement, “Where else would it come from?”
Linda jostles him a bit, “What Ted meant is that the company doesn’t want to kill you because you're old; they’re rewarding you for being old and being extremely productive!” she announces chirpily.
He glances at Linda, “Why would the company want to kill Jenkins?” he asks in a low tone.
“There have been rumours going around that the company’s planning on a slashing the old people from the workforce.” She whispers, keeping the happy smile on her face
He might have heard about that rumour, but seeing that old people comprise about 25% of the employees, he doesn’t think the company would want to shell out money for severance pay.
“Okay, but why would he think the company’s out to kill him?” he whispers back.
“To avoid severance pay.”
He looks at her in disbelief. “That’s a horrible!” he exclaims, then adds for good measure, “And completely unfounded.” He says in a louder tone.
He looks back at Jenkins and stands straighter, “Linda is correct. The company wants to reward you for being very productive… despite your age.” He glances at the crowd behind him, “In fact, the company believes it should reward their hardest worker, no matter what age they are. This is the reason why Jenkins is getting this very delicious and amazing cake.”
The people starts clapping, albeit with lackluster.
Ted turns back to old, silver-haired Jenkins and smiles at him.
“So.” He starts, “Do you want a slice?”
He finds Veronica inside the break room, pouring a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker and holding a bag of bagels. Upon seeing him, she lifts her chin up and smiles the way only Veronica can.
“Hello, Ted.” She greets, “I had the most wonderful dream last night and it involved the Sleep System and the rousing ovation of a large crowd pulsating from it.”
“That’s…” not what the Sleep System does, but Veronica had mentioned wanting to be lulled to sleep by the sound of applause. “…encouraging.” He says and gets a company mug from the kitchen cabinet, “Maybe some of the employees dreamt of the same thing last night, especially since that’s all we’ve been thinking about.”
Veronica wrinkles her nose, “I doubt it, Ted. The only person who can dream about the things I dream is me, my doppelganger - which I certainly don’t have - and my clone, which I certainly will have. In the future. The drones can dream of anything they want, except for the dreams that I dream.”
He was going to say something in response, but she suddenly cuts him off,
“Speaking of drones, how did your morale-boosting experiment go?” she asks, “Did they appreciate the carrot that you put in front of them more than the carrot that you beat them with?”
Ted fills his cup with coffee before answering, “I don’t know yet, but they seem to like the idea of getting cake.”
“Of course they like the idea of getting cake, Ted. Everybody loves cake.” She replies in a matter-of-fact tone. She waits for him to get a pack of sugar and cream before heading out of the break room. He follows her.
“Hey, Ted.” Alvin pops his head from his cubicle, “Is the cake-for-the-hardest-worker-day an everyday thing now?”
Both he and Veronica stops walking, “Only until we finish the Sleep System.” He almost wishes to add, ‘and maybe when you stop getting sent to Anti-Sexual Harassment Therapy’.
Alvin’s face falls, “Oh.”
A very interested expression appears on Veronica’s face. The expression is what a lioness would give to a prey.
“Why?” He asks, slowly.
Alvin shakes his head, “No reason.”
“Hm.” He hears Veronica intonate.
“Okay.” Ted replies, “Go back to work. You never know if you’re going to get a cake and a song tomorrow.”
Alvin’s face lights up and ducks back inside his workspace and disappearing from view.
“Ah, cubicles.” Veronica says as they started walking back in the office. “They’re like little pods for little pod people.”
“Right.” He replies.
“I can see your morale booster working, Ted. Soon, a lot of employees would be working very hard to get themselves free cake and an inspiring song about how hard-working they are, which then makes them work even harder so that they can get more cake.” Veronica suddenly stops walking and whirls around to face him, “What you’re doing is what Chairman Mao did for China. You got the peasants working in the fields, willingly, and without scaring them.”
His brows furrowed, “Veronica, I don’t think-”
“-Chairman Ted. It has a nice ring to it.” She pauses, savoring the moment, “Now, Ted. I have work to do. And even if I don’t get that cake tomorrow, I’m going to buy myself one and make all of you sing about how hard working I am.” She pronounces and walks back to her office.
He watches as Veronica moves farther away from him, strutting like the boss that she is. When she finally disappears, he lets out a deep, resigned sigh.
This company always manages to exploit great, helpful ideas. But then, thinking about it, this company wouldn’t get to the state it’s in if they don’t exploit every great, helpful idea.
Ted sighs again and goes back to his office at the other side of the hall.
“We’ve been working on this for three days straight and we still haven’t gotten a cake from Ted, or from Linda, or from anybody upstairs.” Phil says as they stare at the little black box they have on top of their desk.
“Maybe it’s because we don’t have a working prototype yet.” Lem offers, “Hard work is only rewarded when there’s a finished product.”
They're both exhausted, having been up for more than three days. Ever since they saw how fun it was to be given cake and be sung to by their co-workers like they’re some big damn heroes, Phil and Lem decided that they’re going to get a cake and a song too.
So far, they haven’t gotten a cake (no one in the lab has) and they’ve yet to find a way to make the system quieter.
“We’ve gotten the noise down to fifty percent. My mother would have fallen asleep hearing that noise. But only after her tenth glass of brandy,” Phil adds with a sigh, “Maybe we shouldn’t stop trying.”
They stare at the box a little more, hoping that it would somehow speak and tell them the secrets of the universe and probably how to fix the annoying, grating sound it emits.
“This is ridiculous.” Lem exclaims after a while, “It’s just cake. We can get cake ourselves.”
“But it’s not going to have ‘Nice Wonk, Lem’ or ‘Nice Wonk, Phil’ written on them.” Phil reasons, “Plus, we don’t know if it’s regular chocolate or regular mocha. We just know it tastes a mixture of both and that it’s quite possibly the most addicting thing since the Los Hombres Nachos during Nachos Day in the cafeteria.”
Lem hearkens back to the day when the Los Hombres Nachos craze reached its climax. They had a massive food riot and the cafeteria had to call in the fire department, the police department and the coast guard. Nachos Day was cancelled forever from that point forward.
“I miss Nachos Day.” Lem says.
“You, me, and everybody else, Lem.” Phil wistfully sighs. He has a battle scar in his hand from where the hot cheese seared his flesh, “It was the best day of the week aside from Saturday.”
They stare at the box some more.
All of the sudden, an idea sneaks into Phil’s sleepy mind, sneaking through the tangled web of exhaustion and loopyness and hits the inspiration button right on the nose.
“Oh, my god. Why haven’t I thought of it before?” he exclaims and begins to take off the box that holds the innards of the Veridian Sleep System, “I used to do this with the clocks inside our house when I was boy. My mother never got woken up by single clock in our house!”
Lem watches him, confusedly, “What exactly are you doing?”
“Watch and learn, my friend. The next cake and song Ted’s going to give out will have our names on it.”
After a few minutes of rewiring and adding in several parts, Phil screws the box back together.
“Well.” Lem starts and Phil puts his hands tentatively on top of the switch. The two friends look at each other before turning back to the box.
“Here goes nothing.” Phil says and switches on the Veridian Sleep System.
At first there was nothing, but then, they start hearing a slow, rhythmic ticking sound-the sound that they’ve been trying to invoke ever since Ted gave them their note about the sound being too loud. This is the sound that would emit alpha waves to the brain. This is the sound that would make anyone sleep after three minutes. This is the sound that’s going to send them to Relax-a-Con.
They’ve finally (finally) solved sleeplessness and it only took them three sleepless nights to figure it out.
“We did it!” Lem says and jumps up from his chair.
“We did it!” Phil cries out in victory and also jumping up from his chair.
They begin to dance in celebration. However, their celebration is cut after three minutes when both men fall on the floor in deep slumber.
Ted glances at his watch, the third time he had done so in the past couple of minutes, before tapping his foot on the floor in a rather impatient manner. He looks at his watch again before deciding to call the lab downstairs and ask - no, demand - Phil and Lem to come upstairs and show him the modifications they’ve done to the Veridian Sleep System. Relax-a-Con is coming to town in less than two days.
The phone at the other line keeps on ringing. And ringing. And ringing.
Ted grunts (in a manly and in-charge fashion) and stands up. If they don’t want to go to him, then fine, he’s going to go to them.
He buttons his coat and goes out of his office. Halfway through the elevator, he meets Veronica, who has a bright, sunny smile on her face.
“Ted.” She greets.
“Veronica.” He greets back.
“Who’s going to be crowned hardest worker of the day today, Ted?” she asks and shifts her position so that they’ll walk to the way he’s walking.
“If Phil and Lem doesn’t have a good excuse to why they aren’t answering my calls, then it wouldn’t be Phil and Lem.” He answers.
“Quite frankly, when the company heard the news that you’ve been rewarding hard-workers with cake, they were disappointed. After all, they’re the ones giving you money, and you’re giving your money to a bake shop, which in turn, gives you cake to give the hard workers that you could have, more or less, fired to scare the peasants into running in their little wheels without resting or drinking water.”
“But…?”
“But they realized that cake is a better alternative to frivolous lawsuits involving illegal dismissal and whatnot.”
“That’s good to know.” He replies dryly and stops in front of the elevator.
“Where are we going?” Veronica asks, mystified.
“Down the lab.” He answers, shrugging, “Phil and Lem were supposed to meet me an hour ago. I haven’t heard a peep from them. According to Mark from the garage, neither of the two left the building last night. Or any part of the mor-night.” He adds, noting that none of the employees have left the office during the night ever since they started on the project.
“I’ve forgotten what the natural habitat of the lab rats look like.” She muses, “I’ll go with you, only to sate my curiosity. And to see the look on Phil and Lem’s faces when I tell them that we’ve brought them cake before you tell them that the cake is a lie.”
“Oh, come on, Veronica. If anyone needs cake, it’s those two. They were able to make a prototype, after all. It was just a noisy one. A very noisy one.”
“Ted, look at you. You’re too nice. You won’t be a very good Chairman Ted in the long run if you keep it up.”
They ride the elevator fifteen floors down to the lab. By the time they reach the fourth floor, there wasn’t anyone the elevator with them, which was very weird considering that the last four floors have the most traffic.
When they reach the lab, it was eerily quiet. Kevin isn’t present behind his desk, which is an oddity and a relief.
“So this is where they live.”
“You’ve been here before, Veronica.” He reminds her.
“I don’t remember.”
Ted goes straight to the door and had the scanner scan his ID. The doors open and they’re suddenly greeted by the sight of people in lab coats sprawled everywhere. It looks like the opening scene from an end-of-the-world movie, where a deadly virus with no known cure have been accidentally released from the labs and is poised to kill millions around the world… and turn them into zombies.
“It looks like someone killed them without spilling any blood.” Veronica states, looking at all the unconscious (he hopes they’re merely unconscious and not dead) people.
He hurries to the nearest person, Dr. Bhamba (who’s curled under the whiteboard), and checks his pulse. It’s still there, thank god.
“No, they’re not dead.”
His reply is punctuated by someone snoring very loudly.
“They’re asleep?!” Veronica asks, scandalized, “Drones can’t fall asleep during the middle of the day, Ted. They aren’t lemurs!”
Ted hears a steady beat of… something. Like a machine being forcedly cranked in a clockwise direction.
“Do you hear that?” he asks and waits for several seconds. A smile forms on his face, “It’s… I think it’s the Sleep System.”
“Or maybe it’s really a contagious case of sleepiness. We should get out of here, Ted and leave this to CDC.”
“No, we should go and find-”
The Sleep System would go on and claim thirty-five more victims before it’s discovered and shut down by a brave deaf janitor, who found the pile-up of bodies by the doors very peculiar.
The Veridian Sleep System: The only sleep system in the world that can lead you to dreamland in three minutes or less. And that’s a guarantee.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Ensemble
Words: 2, 644
Disclaimer: Don't own Better Off Ted
Notes: au_bingo prompt-- Alternate History: someone never died
Author's Notes: Another conscious attempt at humour. I apologize for the mistakes. My bingo card
“For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellooooooow! Which nobody can deny!”
The song sounds tired and sad coming from this particular group of people but the look on Jenkin’s face when he presented the cake should give them a boost in morale.
“This is for me?” Jenkins asks in bleary wonderment as he stands up to see the cake, which is a marvelous thing of beauty with blue and yellow frosting.
Well, it looks slightly gaudy since the icing was sloppily slopped on and the congratulatory message seems to read as ‘Nice Wonk, Jonkins’ rather than ‘Nice Work, Jenkins’, but he hopes that everybody’s tired enough not to notice it-there’s only one bakeshop in the area that willing to make the cake at such short notice… and apparently, they’ve gotten used to Veridian Dynamics employees ordering pastries by bulk at the last minute.
“Yes, it is.” Ted answers with a smile, “The company recognizes everybody’s hard work on the Veridian Sleep System and they thought that they should give a reward to its hardest worker. Jenkins, you are that hardest worker. Congratulations.” He says in a celebratory tone.
But Jenkins visibly shirks away from them, “It’s from the company?” He might have seen a look of fear on his face, but he might be mistaken.
“Of course.” He answers with puzzlement, “Where else would it come from?”
Linda jostles him a bit, “What Ted meant is that the company doesn’t want to kill you because you're old; they’re rewarding you for being old and being extremely productive!” she announces chirpily.
He glances at Linda, “Why would the company want to kill Jenkins?” he asks in a low tone.
“There have been rumours going around that the company’s planning on a slashing the old people from the workforce.” She whispers, keeping the happy smile on her face
He might have heard about that rumour, but seeing that old people comprise about 25% of the employees, he doesn’t think the company would want to shell out money for severance pay.
“Okay, but why would he think the company’s out to kill him?” he whispers back.
“To avoid severance pay.”
He looks at her in disbelief. “That’s a horrible!” he exclaims, then adds for good measure, “And completely unfounded.” He says in a louder tone.
He looks back at Jenkins and stands straighter, “Linda is correct. The company wants to reward you for being very productive… despite your age.” He glances at the crowd behind him, “In fact, the company believes it should reward their hardest worker, no matter what age they are. This is the reason why Jenkins is getting this very delicious and amazing cake.”
The people starts clapping, albeit with lackluster.
Ted turns back to old, silver-haired Jenkins and smiles at him.
“So.” He starts, “Do you want a slice?”
He finds Veronica inside the break room, pouring a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker and holding a bag of bagels. Upon seeing him, she lifts her chin up and smiles the way only Veronica can.
“Hello, Ted.” She greets, “I had the most wonderful dream last night and it involved the Sleep System and the rousing ovation of a large crowd pulsating from it.”
“That’s…” not what the Sleep System does, but Veronica had mentioned wanting to be lulled to sleep by the sound of applause. “…encouraging.” He says and gets a company mug from the kitchen cabinet, “Maybe some of the employees dreamt of the same thing last night, especially since that’s all we’ve been thinking about.”
Veronica wrinkles her nose, “I doubt it, Ted. The only person who can dream about the things I dream is me, my doppelganger - which I certainly don’t have - and my clone, which I certainly will have. In the future. The drones can dream of anything they want, except for the dreams that I dream.”
He was going to say something in response, but she suddenly cuts him off,
“Speaking of drones, how did your morale-boosting experiment go?” she asks, “Did they appreciate the carrot that you put in front of them more than the carrot that you beat them with?”
Ted fills his cup with coffee before answering, “I don’t know yet, but they seem to like the idea of getting cake.”
“Of course they like the idea of getting cake, Ted. Everybody loves cake.” She replies in a matter-of-fact tone. She waits for him to get a pack of sugar and cream before heading out of the break room. He follows her.
“Hey, Ted.” Alvin pops his head from his cubicle, “Is the cake-for-the-hardest-worker-day an everyday thing now?”
Both he and Veronica stops walking, “Only until we finish the Sleep System.” He almost wishes to add, ‘and maybe when you stop getting sent to Anti-Sexual Harassment Therapy’.
Alvin’s face falls, “Oh.”
A very interested expression appears on Veronica’s face. The expression is what a lioness would give to a prey.
“Why?” He asks, slowly.
Alvin shakes his head, “No reason.”
“Hm.” He hears Veronica intonate.
“Okay.” Ted replies, “Go back to work. You never know if you’re going to get a cake and a song tomorrow.”
Alvin’s face lights up and ducks back inside his workspace and disappearing from view.
“Ah, cubicles.” Veronica says as they started walking back in the office. “They’re like little pods for little pod people.”
“Right.” He replies.
“I can see your morale booster working, Ted. Soon, a lot of employees would be working very hard to get themselves free cake and an inspiring song about how hard-working they are, which then makes them work even harder so that they can get more cake.” Veronica suddenly stops walking and whirls around to face him, “What you’re doing is what Chairman Mao did for China. You got the peasants working in the fields, willingly, and without scaring them.”
His brows furrowed, “Veronica, I don’t think-”
“-Chairman Ted. It has a nice ring to it.” She pauses, savoring the moment, “Now, Ted. I have work to do. And even if I don’t get that cake tomorrow, I’m going to buy myself one and make all of you sing about how hard working I am.” She pronounces and walks back to her office.
He watches as Veronica moves farther away from him, strutting like the boss that she is. When she finally disappears, he lets out a deep, resigned sigh.
This company always manages to exploit great, helpful ideas. But then, thinking about it, this company wouldn’t get to the state it’s in if they don’t exploit every great, helpful idea.
Ted sighs again and goes back to his office at the other side of the hall.
“We’ve been working on this for three days straight and we still haven’t gotten a cake from Ted, or from Linda, or from anybody upstairs.” Phil says as they stare at the little black box they have on top of their desk.
“Maybe it’s because we don’t have a working prototype yet.” Lem offers, “Hard work is only rewarded when there’s a finished product.”
They're both exhausted, having been up for more than three days. Ever since they saw how fun it was to be given cake and be sung to by their co-workers like they’re some big damn heroes, Phil and Lem decided that they’re going to get a cake and a song too.
So far, they haven’t gotten a cake (no one in the lab has) and they’ve yet to find a way to make the system quieter.
“We’ve gotten the noise down to fifty percent. My mother would have fallen asleep hearing that noise. But only after her tenth glass of brandy,” Phil adds with a sigh, “Maybe we shouldn’t stop trying.”
They stare at the box a little more, hoping that it would somehow speak and tell them the secrets of the universe and probably how to fix the annoying, grating sound it emits.
“This is ridiculous.” Lem exclaims after a while, “It’s just cake. We can get cake ourselves.”
“But it’s not going to have ‘Nice Wonk, Lem’ or ‘Nice Wonk, Phil’ written on them.” Phil reasons, “Plus, we don’t know if it’s regular chocolate or regular mocha. We just know it tastes a mixture of both and that it’s quite possibly the most addicting thing since the Los Hombres Nachos during Nachos Day in the cafeteria.”
Lem hearkens back to the day when the Los Hombres Nachos craze reached its climax. They had a massive food riot and the cafeteria had to call in the fire department, the police department and the coast guard. Nachos Day was cancelled forever from that point forward.
“I miss Nachos Day.” Lem says.
“You, me, and everybody else, Lem.” Phil wistfully sighs. He has a battle scar in his hand from where the hot cheese seared his flesh, “It was the best day of the week aside from Saturday.”
They stare at the box some more.
All of the sudden, an idea sneaks into Phil’s sleepy mind, sneaking through the tangled web of exhaustion and loopyness and hits the inspiration button right on the nose.
“Oh, my god. Why haven’t I thought of it before?” he exclaims and begins to take off the box that holds the innards of the Veridian Sleep System, “I used to do this with the clocks inside our house when I was boy. My mother never got woken up by single clock in our house!”
Lem watches him, confusedly, “What exactly are you doing?”
“Watch and learn, my friend. The next cake and song Ted’s going to give out will have our names on it.”
After a few minutes of rewiring and adding in several parts, Phil screws the box back together.
“Well.” Lem starts and Phil puts his hands tentatively on top of the switch. The two friends look at each other before turning back to the box.
“Here goes nothing.” Phil says and switches on the Veridian Sleep System.
At first there was nothing, but then, they start hearing a slow, rhythmic ticking sound-the sound that they’ve been trying to invoke ever since Ted gave them their note about the sound being too loud. This is the sound that would emit alpha waves to the brain. This is the sound that would make anyone sleep after three minutes. This is the sound that’s going to send them to Relax-a-Con.
They’ve finally (finally) solved sleeplessness and it only took them three sleepless nights to figure it out.
“We did it!” Lem says and jumps up from his chair.
“We did it!” Phil cries out in victory and also jumping up from his chair.
They begin to dance in celebration. However, their celebration is cut after three minutes when both men fall on the floor in deep slumber.
Ted glances at his watch, the third time he had done so in the past couple of minutes, before tapping his foot on the floor in a rather impatient manner. He looks at his watch again before deciding to call the lab downstairs and ask - no, demand - Phil and Lem to come upstairs and show him the modifications they’ve done to the Veridian Sleep System. Relax-a-Con is coming to town in less than two days.
The phone at the other line keeps on ringing. And ringing. And ringing.
Ted grunts (in a manly and in-charge fashion) and stands up. If they don’t want to go to him, then fine, he’s going to go to them.
He buttons his coat and goes out of his office. Halfway through the elevator, he meets Veronica, who has a bright, sunny smile on her face.
“Ted.” She greets.
“Veronica.” He greets back.
“Who’s going to be crowned hardest worker of the day today, Ted?” she asks and shifts her position so that they’ll walk to the way he’s walking.
“If Phil and Lem doesn’t have a good excuse to why they aren’t answering my calls, then it wouldn’t be Phil and Lem.” He answers.
“Quite frankly, when the company heard the news that you’ve been rewarding hard-workers with cake, they were disappointed. After all, they’re the ones giving you money, and you’re giving your money to a bake shop, which in turn, gives you cake to give the hard workers that you could have, more or less, fired to scare the peasants into running in their little wheels without resting or drinking water.”
“But…?”
“But they realized that cake is a better alternative to frivolous lawsuits involving illegal dismissal and whatnot.”
“That’s good to know.” He replies dryly and stops in front of the elevator.
“Where are we going?” Veronica asks, mystified.
“Down the lab.” He answers, shrugging, “Phil and Lem were supposed to meet me an hour ago. I haven’t heard a peep from them. According to Mark from the garage, neither of the two left the building last night. Or any part of the mor-night.” He adds, noting that none of the employees have left the office during the night ever since they started on the project.
“I’ve forgotten what the natural habitat of the lab rats look like.” She muses, “I’ll go with you, only to sate my curiosity. And to see the look on Phil and Lem’s faces when I tell them that we’ve brought them cake before you tell them that the cake is a lie.”
“Oh, come on, Veronica. If anyone needs cake, it’s those two. They were able to make a prototype, after all. It was just a noisy one. A very noisy one.”
“Ted, look at you. You’re too nice. You won’t be a very good Chairman Ted in the long run if you keep it up.”
They ride the elevator fifteen floors down to the lab. By the time they reach the fourth floor, there wasn’t anyone the elevator with them, which was very weird considering that the last four floors have the most traffic.
When they reach the lab, it was eerily quiet. Kevin isn’t present behind his desk, which is an oddity and a relief.
“So this is where they live.”
“You’ve been here before, Veronica.” He reminds her.
“I don’t remember.”
Ted goes straight to the door and had the scanner scan his ID. The doors open and they’re suddenly greeted by the sight of people in lab coats sprawled everywhere. It looks like the opening scene from an end-of-the-world movie, where a deadly virus with no known cure have been accidentally released from the labs and is poised to kill millions around the world… and turn them into zombies.
“It looks like someone killed them without spilling any blood.” Veronica states, looking at all the unconscious (he hopes they’re merely unconscious and not dead) people.
He hurries to the nearest person, Dr. Bhamba (who’s curled under the whiteboard), and checks his pulse. It’s still there, thank god.
“No, they’re not dead.”
His reply is punctuated by someone snoring very loudly.
“They’re asleep?!” Veronica asks, scandalized, “Drones can’t fall asleep during the middle of the day, Ted. They aren’t lemurs!”
Ted hears a steady beat of… something. Like a machine being forcedly cranked in a clockwise direction.
“Do you hear that?” he asks and waits for several seconds. A smile forms on his face, “It’s… I think it’s the Sleep System.”
“Or maybe it’s really a contagious case of sleepiness. We should get out of here, Ted and leave this to CDC.”
“No, we should go and find-”
The Sleep System would go on and claim thirty-five more victims before it’s discovered and shut down by a brave deaf janitor, who found the pile-up of bodies by the doors very peculiar.
The Veridian Sleep System: The only sleep system in the world that can lead you to dreamland in three minutes or less. And that’s a guarantee.