Heat Sink

Wendy S. Delmater

What a boring job. Every stinking day, day in, day out. Watch the gauges. Adjust the entropy feed for minor fluctuations. Fill out my daily checklist. Read girlie mags. Take a nap. Grab a cup of Joe. Or Mike. Or Lizzie. Whatever soul's on tap today in the Wormhole Cafeteria.

This has got to be the job from Hell.

Still, when we got some excitement last month, I wanted the stinking routine back. What a mess that was. You heard about it? No? Oh, you're new here.

So, were you out there on the receiving end of the pulse? Then you should be glad you missed our brown out. What a nightmare.

Okay, okay—back off! I'm sure it was no picnic on your end either. Calm down. Have a cup of Joe. Listen. You wanna hear what it was like here or not? Then you can tell me about your troubles. I'd love to hear how they took it at your old place. Lemme go first, okay?

It was like this. I'd gotten careless and skipped the checklist. Well, my boss never looked at the checklist and they just burn it afterwards, so I thought, why should I even bother? I suppose I'd been skipping it for a while. The place practically runs itself, you know? Boy, did I get that wrong. You gotta keep on top of things—I learned that the hard way.

So anyhow, the old number three Energy Shaver was acting up and I was adjusting it, as usual. Number seventeen was down for periodic maintenance. (They told you how we steal energy to run this place, right?) Number 47 was off-line until we got a new coil. The usual stuff. Number 14 never gave us a day of trouble, the whole time I was working here. Never broke down, never caught fire, never tested bad for tachyon fatigue. Old Reliable, that's what I called Fourteen. Never say never, that's what I shoulda said.

Yeah. Where the hole in the floor and the wall is now—they showed you that on the tour, right?

It sure was spectacular. No controlled influx. No event horizon. Just poof! And it was gone. Only, the plant output was off by that much for a millisec until the compensator kicked in. Just a micromillisecond, really. But that was enough.

No flames. Everybody had to restart their burners. You might say it was a cold day in Hell.

You were a boiler room attendant in a New York City school? Union, too? How about that! What did my pulse do up there? I know you folks were used to a certain amount of entropy. . . . Equipment failures? Solar flares? I heard about the pulsars going off, yeah. Electrical problems, too? No kidding? The boilers exploded, really? That's how you ended up here, then.

How many other people died? That many? Wow. Not that the bosses care here, either. Nah, I'm not bitter that they're gonna transfer me to someplace where I can't cause trouble. I've been at this job too long anyhow. Couple of hundred years, at the least. I lost track after a while.

Sure, if they were about to find out how much you were stealing, you'd've been out of a job anyhow. Maybe it's just as well you landed here.

No kidding—I get to train you? You'll do good here, kid. You've got the right attitude to work in Entropy.

Whoa. Where ya going? We have five more minutes left on break. Sit down. Relax.

Have another cup of Joe.