Tevun-Krus #32 - AtomPunk

BigRedButton™ - A Short Story by @AngusEcrivain

On Earth, because that's where he lived, more specifically in a small village in the High Peaks of Central England, Billy was making his way home from school.

It was a long journey. The closest secondary school to that small village in the High Peaks of Central England was in Manchester, thanks to the enforced closure of hundreds of other educational establishments that would otherwise have been closer.

Those closures were apparently due to 'government cuts.' Billy did not really care though. In fact there was no 'really,' about it; he simply did not care, mostly because he was eleven years old and generally, eleven year old boys don't care about things like that but also because it was his birthday and he finally had a NukeBord™.

True enough it wasn't a brand new, top of the line NukeBord™ but Billy did not care about that, either. He knew his dad was skint as hell. After all, pretty much every penny he earned at Nukes 'R' Us, was used to put food on the table or send Billy to school. That was far from being his dad's fault, of course... Even Billy at such a young, tender and impressionable age knew that it was his mother's fault or, to use the words of his father, "That fat, rancid slag."

The school bus pulled to the side of the road, emitting plumes of thick toxic smoke into the otherwise quite lovely, tranquil air as it did so, and Billy alighted. He was not alone in doing so, for the unofficial bus stop was the only one en route that served nine small villages, just like the one in which Billy lived, in the High Peaks of Central England.

Billy beamed as he slung his rucksack over his left shoulder and dropped the NukeBord™ in a groundward direction though he caught it deftly, preventing the NukeBord™ from actually hitting the ground with the use of nothing more but his own two feet.

Still beaming like an eleven year old boy who had just been given a NukeBord™ for his birthday, Billy engaged the 'bord's ignition sequence, the final part of which entailed flicking the BigRedButton™ towards the fore of the NukeBord™ at which time an atomic reaction would take place within the NukeBord™'s core and, at speeds approaching three hundred and fifty miles per hour, Billy would then make his way home.

That was what was supposed to happen, of course, but what actually happened was that due to a shoddy welding job the BigRedButton™ was not wired correctly...

Billy and his NukeBord™ started a chain reaction that eventually (eventually, in this case, meaning a grand total of thirty seven minutes) destroyed the British Isles; wiped the region clean off the map.

That's what having thirty-two thousand official (and several smaller, unofficial) fusion reactors on a small island archipelago in the North Atlantic will do though...

***

"...and in other news the United Kingdom of Great British Nuclear Powers has been effectively wiped off the map thanks to a faulty NukeBord™. NukeBord™ officials were unavailable to comment when our reporter arrived at their Adelaide offices at 0315 Earth Standard Time however their Twit-Atom feed has posted several comments since, pointing the blame firmly at BigRedButton™ rather than there having been an issue with the NukeBord™ itself."

***

"Now I know a lotta' you gots your minds elsewhere an' I respect that. What I respect an' what I expect though, well those are two very different things, indeed!"

"Sir, yes Sir!"

"Good. Now I expect you all to go through each and every damn thing and I do mean everything. Computers, both networked and otherwise; weapons, ships... Fuck, check the damn coffee machine! Anything that's got a BigRedButton™."