Furnace Guy Saves Planet Earth!
“It’s a sweaty job, but someone’s gotta do it,” says global hero.
“Good job, Gus. You’re almost there.”
Gus nodded, even though he was alone and no one could see his gesture.
He carefully continued to lower himself down into the core of the sun. It was impossibly hot, but Gus felt no pain — he was also a trained furnace repair technician, and thus wasn’t terribly surprised when NASA had knocked on his door one morning.
“Gus, the world is in peril and only you can help save us,” the agent had said, wearing a black suit and sunglasses in a summer heat that had been the worst on record in decades.
Gus didn’t even flinch. He kissed his wife and children, grabbed his toolkit and belt, and headed out the door with Agent Black.
Once he arrived at NASA Headquarters, Gus had been briefed by Pentagon officials, and a table full of climate scientists. They all said this was the Big One — the earth was headed for the hottest and deadliest summer ever recorded.
“We could cut the use of coal and gas,” offered Gus, but the Panel of Scientists shook their heads fervently.
“You see,” the lead scientist explained, “we’ve been warning of this day for over fifty years. Nobody’s listening. They only care about important things like Monkeypox, the Kardashians, and resisting scientific advancements through subsidizing our old habits.”
“That’s where you come in, Gus,” said another. “You’re our guy. You can fix this problem without all the political back-and-forth.”
“The world needs a hero, son,” said a politician who clearly did not want to be there. He grabbed Gus’ hand with his own clammy digits and shook it violently. “Can we count on you?”
The handshake was already over by the time Gus could manage out a “Yessir.”
So with as little training as the world’s governments were willing to afford, Gus was shot up into outer space on a rocket aimed straight at the sun.
Here he was, a week later, sick to his stomach from eating too many space burritos, dangling by a fireproof cable down into the sun’s fiery core.
“I do get hazard pay for this, right?”
There was a telling silence.
“We’ll have to get back to you on that one, Gus.”
Gus stifled a laugh. It was always the same thing with these people, he complained to himself as he made his way ever deeper towards the core.
Zero accountability.
Finally, after descending with the cable for hours, his feet touched the thick molten floor of the sun’s interior. “Touchdown,” he reported to his monitoring team as he uncoupled his cable and walked over to his final destination — a small utility box.
He pulled open the lid and started to poke around.
“Houston, I found your problem,” Gus’ voice was met with cheers back at Mission Control.
“Some moron had the damn sun set to BROIL!”
“That would be ME!”
Gus spun around to see his nemesis, the supervillain Meltdown.
“Let’s get melting!” came the villain’s catchphrase as he assumed a classic fisticuffs pose.
Admittedly, Gus hadn’t thought of his own catchphrase yet, and just blurted out the first thing that came to mind:
“It’s a sweaty job, but someone’s gotta do it!”
Written for The Kraken Lore’s August Writing Prompt #2: It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Global Warming!
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