[CW09] Buttons and Lasers

Preface

I didn’t have much of an outline for this story. I just felt like just writing, just something silly and well this is the result.

Buttons and Lasers

There it sat, finally ready for operation. \ My henchmen just wired up the final connection and it now lights up in a beautiful crimson red. Oh how many years I have waited for this!
It sits there in its cylindrical beauty just waiting for me to press it, this teeny tiny button will be my enemies undoing! I can barely resist just pressing it as is!

But no… I need an audience — I could waste this opportunity. I could not keep it all to myself.
Yes my henchmen are around but they are barely sentient.. I made sure of that. They make a much better workforce this way, and I’m saving so much on dental too.
Regardless it was time to make myself seen, to set the stage. It was time to draw attention to my invention. What good is a shiny new death laser with no one there to know about it? It isn’t clearly — clearly it needs attention. So there go my henchmen finding me a target. Something pretty but uninhabited I may fire at first to test, and to draw the self proclaimed hero’s attention! I barely made it this far despite their best efforts! I had to tie them up to my table and make them watch; make them watch me press that big, glowing red button.

I have spend so much time on this… yes the laser and all, that’s not that hard to pull off. With enough money and technical knowledge building a giant laser is rather trivial, but the button! I spend so much time on the button!
I figured nothing could be worse, the hero tied up made to watch you press the button.. and then you go over to your console menacingly laughing to yourself and then when you press it… nothing! No click! No push! No thud!
And what if you messed up the wiring? That is why I made it glow.. the glow is important you see so I can see that it is definitely wired up to power.
But also red, red is a good color. Originally I had a few prototypes of it in other colors, but none satisfied me. Orange was acceptable, but the glow just did not appeal to me. Purple was just weird.. what does purple even mean? And green… that one was doomed from the start but I wanted to see anyway. And let us not get started on the disaster of pink.
But not only that! How would one make it push really satisfyingly? You would think they would make buttons that are fun to press, but no! Many of them had these weird rubber sheets around them that made them so… mushy. And it muffled the click as well, ruining the whole experience! That was no good, no good at all. So I had gone out and looked, looked for anything I could use. I got keyboards and safety switches and even build a few mechanisms myself until I finally arrived at my final design.
The button itself rests on a set of lubed slides so it pushes down without noise or resistance, the noise should only come from the switch in it… i don’t like the noise of materials sliding on each other. And besides, the click! Oh how many designs I tried… it turns out it is really hard to make a button that just clicks right, bright and chirpy but loud enough for everyone to hear in the room when everyone just held their breath just before.
And that is ultimately what I dreamed off.. the hero tied up watching me, and when I finally reach for it they shall be speechless and my buttons clicking shall fill the room! But the lighting was hard too… the original button designs I had were all too opaque, the light had no chance to shine. So I had to find a material, a plastic that would be nice enough colored, opaque enough not to reveal the internal design but still scatter the light in a way that it would look nice on my console. No easy task I can tell you!
All this time I thought to myself “well if I were to tie up the hero a few meters away over there, how could they see the glow!” so I had to make it bright enough you see. But now finally, after many tries I arrived at my final design. Just the right amount of red, just the right amount of light, and the mechanism itself makes such a nice click and such a nice thud when pressed with vigor! And press with vigor I shall!!…

But I waited so long for this…

The longer I wait in the presence of it the more my excitement manifests. And that is only the button still… once I press on it all my enemies shall perish.
That dammed city never appreciated my genius, and now they shall pay the price.
It takes a lot to arrive where I am I tell you… like do you think evil people are just born? No they are forged in the kiln of society, burning through their ambitions until they either turn to dust or harden up. But this will end today, I have cast aside my humanity a long time ago and let me tell you.. it is fun! Who knew that just asserting your will over others would be so freeing! I come to not only accept my evil, but to bloom in it. Having things is nice! Working for things is not! So taking is fun!
And no matter who stands in your way, if you do not care about silly thinks like ethics you can solve most problems fairly easily. And really it is so easy to stay ahead of the “good guys”. They are only there to protect the people that trampled all over me anyway, when did they ever come to my help? Never I say! \

And thus I made it, the perfect weapon of revenge.

I spend years and lots of other peoples money on it to build, I learned the intricacies of laser-making and made it perfectly sized to eradicate just the city I am so dissatisfied with.
I mean I could just oversize it… but where is the fun in that? Hardly challenging dropping a big ‘ol bomb on something and have it all crudely wiped from the map.
No! true evil is art, and art requires care and precision and intend. Would I have just wanted to rid myself of that place I could have done so a long time ago with much easier means. But the crater shall be my art piece, the land my canvas and I shall make it a work of mastery.

Oh I’m excited!

I wish I could see the faces of everyone just as their city turns to ash, but alas some things are always out of reach.
You see I had been shunned by this society, and in return I shall shun them right back!.. wait does that make sense… Maybe I should start at the beginning.
When I was little I learned quickly that if you wanted to make it in the world, you either had to be rich or be smart around rich people. So I started early, I was like 10 or something when I had build my first chemical weapon. And you know what they did? Instead of praise me I got suspended from school! Nobody liked the gym anyway, I had done everyone a favor.
And then again at 14 I noticed, everyone was using these ineffective tools to demolish old buildings around the city. So I came up with a device to help take the heavy burden off of the construction workers tasked every day to demolish what was ultimately a perfectly fine house. And once more, I was not thanked but faced with opposition. Every technology can be a wonky when first deployed — nobody needed that train station anyway. They all had cars! So what about it?! No appreciation, no appreciation at all!
But then when I was older and ungrateful people had littered my path I came to a realization.
As I sat in my cell I was thinking.. why does nobody see my genius? It was the city, the entire city was rotten. So I set out to remedy that fact.
I first tried a rather peaceful approach, back then when I still had those ethics and stuff. But these attempts quickly grew futile, I was not a good enough neurologist to pull that off, especially not on scale. But it did lay the groundwork for my henchmen. They became useful over the years acquiring the resources I needed.

But honestly, talking about the past bores me these days. Do you know how much fun you can have being mischievous? Plenty!
Just the other day I just walked down the street and see how many people I can bump into and pretend it was an accident and oh their faces! Their faces! Especially the big burly men, they never make space for you on the sidewalk! So I walked into them all and gave them a piece of their own medicine!
And that is just one of the little things I do every day, a little bit of evil every day to keep myself in practice. The other day I sat down in a cafe and hacked into the signals on the intersection just around the corner… and I set all the lights to red!
But here is the genius of mine: You see the reason I was there was not only for my amusement, but when authorities had shown up to fix it, I just turned them back to normal! Just long enough for them to leave and then I turn them all red again!
The amount of frustration I must have caused that day, just playing around with the lights, it filled my heart. I think it was probably then when I really settled on having that nice red for my button, it just reminded me of those happy hours.

Where was I going with this again…

Ah right! The button.. the laser… I am looking forward to that.
I still have in memory what the button will sound like from my prototypes, but you can never know if the final product holds up to your expectations? Not to speak of the laser… Sadly not much you can do about that one.
You can build all kinds of spools and magnets to give it these nice whirly sounds, but the laser itself is just light… the only noises there comes from the stuff it burns and burning stuff is nice and all… but a rather bland noise.
Originally I considered other means of destroying the city, but nothing just had the precision of a nice large laser. So compromises were made.
But in the end it only matters what I feel about it. And that I can only know when I finally press this button… this big glow-ey red-ey push-y button… I spend so much time making it… it is almost a shame to press it… almost.

But that is what I made it for…

I always asked myself what I would do just before I would press it. The evil monologue is a given that is for sure, but how should I press it? If I were to loudly laugh while doing it I could drown out the nice click sound I spend so much time developing… but how could I fire my death laser and not laugh at all the filth I’m about to rid myself of?
I thought maybe a short break, some silence when pressing it, and then some laugh for when it finally fires. But you know what? Lasers fire rather quickly! Like light is like a really fast thing or something… So I actually build in this delay into it, were it would charge up some spools and things to make that nice whirl noises before it fires… no that doesn’t have a purpose, the laser doesn’t use any of it, I just wanted it to sound nice and give me enough time for my evil laugh.

It is all in the details and in the performance.

That being said what pose should I strike when I press it? Should I hunch over the table like a madman, or stand there straight and proud of my inventions? It is a rather hard decision and one I haven’t completely settled on yet… I would have thought that in the moment it would come all rather naturally but… I feel like I have overthought this so much I am rather lost now.
Also I was thinking about with what force shall I press the button? It makes rather nice noises.. and I only need it once… but I don’t exactly want to break it. I spend so much time making it! And maybe I use the laser somewhere else again… or wire something else up to it? But if I do not slam down on it with a satisfying punch I would feel like it wouldn’t have the impact I deserve… … …

What do you say? Straight pose, hunched pose, strong punch or reserved press? I’d appreciate your opinion on that matter… … … have you fallen asleep?! During my evil monologue?!! Hey I am talking to you! … maybe we should come back to this again tomorrow, you seem not well rested enough to appreciate my work… Let me untie you from that table first… … that is no place to sleep…

[CW09] Buttons and Lasers