Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Broken in Brief: Scientist ominously says ‘oops’

MIDLAND—It was at 10:15 this morning when Dr. Gerald Jenkins, head of Research and Development at the Dow Chemical Corporation, turned abruptly and knocked a corked beaker full of an unnamed chemical substance off of his workstation and onto the floor, shatter the vial into thousands of pieces and exposing its contents to the world.

After surveying the damage, a shocked and bewildered Jenkins could only be heard to mutter a terse and ominous “…Oops.”

As word of the event and the substance itself spread through the facility, colleagues could only be heard to offer up deep worried gulps, long vacant stares into the distance, and glassy-eyed looks at family portraits.

“Jenkins, huh,” asked co-worker and fellow research chemist Dr. Ellen Dennet. “At 10:15 you say? And it’s 11 now? My, my, my. It wasn’t the blue liquid, was it?”

After being informed that it was, if fact, the blue liquid, Dennet could only use a nearby table to keep herself standing upright before gravely intoning “We never really had a chance then, did we?”

As reports spread that Jenkins had spilled the blue liquid, most seemed resigned to what would happen over the next few agonizing hours. Though some inside still held out hope that internal projections and tests on the liquid would prove to be too pessimistic, offering hope for those living, for now, on the continents closest to the heavily fortified research facility.

For his part, all Jenkins could do was nervously tug around his collar and say “Well…. that’s that. I bet I get blamed for this.”

As of press time, Dr. Jenkins isn’t even going to clean up the broken glass, reportedly stating “There’s no sense in doing things like that….. Not now, anyway.”

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