Random writing from a café.
All of the wires were yellow. Yellow!
They said to cut the grey wire and definitely not the blue, yellow, or green wires, or there would be dire consequences. Dire, as in he’d be instantly vaporized kind of dire.
Ted leaned back against the cold, damp wall, feeling the confinement of the concrete access tube. His only source of light — a light-emitting tube — flickered its sickly yellow light for a heart-stopping moment. In its tired glow, all colours were yellow.
“Well, fuck,” Ted observed. He glanced at his wrist clock. The countdown showed 126 seconds. Time enough. He could wait. In the last seconds, a random guess and a cut wire would either end it or not. Eight wires. 12.5 percent chance of surviving to be a hero.
And an 87.5 percent chance of instantly turning himself and half the city into a ball of searing plasma.
Ted exhaled heavily, his pressure suit creaking around his ribs.
“Cass,” he said into his radio. “Cass.”
“What is it, Ted?” Her silky contralto voice touched caressed his ear. Maybe for the last time, he suddenly knew. His throat closed up with emotion, as he forced the next words out.
“Cass. Cass, I’m sorry.” Ted couldn’t hold it back. A flood of words screamed to be said. All the things he’d never get to say to Cass. “Cass, I love you. I love you and I’m sorry.”
A silence stretched out for seconds on his countdown timer. Finally, “What’s going on, Ted?”
97 seconds. 96, 95, 94.
What words were there? Apologize for failing? Explain why he was about to fail? Explain how he couldn’t prevent her death and thousands of others?
Or maybe say the words he couldn’t say for years. He inhaled the metallic air of his pressure suit and gave into fate.
“Cass, I read your manuscript. And it was awful.”
85, 84, 83. In the cold silence, he heard static.
82, 81.
“Asshole,” she whispered.
Ted chose a yellow wire at random and cut it.