The Couple

FADE IN.

INT. CAR-NIGHT

A HUSBAND and WIFE sit in a running car outside of a white house. Snow falls gently outside. The wife in her early thirties, warms her hands with her mouth and pushes down her winter hat over her ears.

WIFE

            You going to turn the car off?

The husband turns off the car. He fidgets with his gloved hands and scratches his scruffy beard.

WIFE

            You ever shot a gun before?

He shakes his head. She glances into the backseat. A six shot revolver rest on the seat.

HUSBAND

            I don't want to look at it.

WIFE

            You want me to cock it for you?

HUSBAND

            Sure.

She reaches back, grabs the gun, and sitting straight in her seat pulls back the hammer. She hands it to him.

HUSBAND

            Bob put the bullets in there before we left, right?

She nods. The husband looks out the windshield at the white house.

HUSBAND

            And we're sure he's home?

WIFE

            Quit stalling and go kill the guy.

The Adventures of T1M

        

T1M

Tim was a robot, but didn't know it. In fact everyone in New York was a robot, they just didn't know it. If they did they certainly didn't show it. If they knew that New York wasn't the real New York they didn't show that either. So even though Tim was a robot and that should've been an odd fact, it wasn't because everyone was and that made all of them odd. So Tim wasn't odd at all.

What was odd was the relationships Tim had with other robots. He didn't have parents. He didn't know he was supposed to have any. Actually, Tim did have parents. Build Station 1 and Build Station 2. 1 built his body while 2 built his brain. They were rather bad parents, who never sent birthday cards, because if they sent them to Tim they'd have to send ones to their 7 trillion other children. Alas, Tim didn't have any parents. What Tim did have were friends, two of them. Kim and Jim.

Quality Control

8:00 am

Park car. Swipe security card. Put on gloves, mask, suit. Time on line 8:00. Watch the parade.

Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Goldenrod. Yellow.

Wait, Pete thought. That's not right.

He quickly pulled the off-colored Twonkie from the conveyor belt and added it to his report. 

REASON FOR SCRAP: Discolored snack cake. SOLUTION: Maintenance check on Oven

He sighed and threw it away. To anyone else being a Quality Assurance Technician at a snack food manufacturer would be a dream job. It paid decent. You got free samples. There was no union. Supervisors left you alone for the most part.

But to Pete it was hell. 9 long months of hell. Pete didn't want to watch snack cakes one after another. He wanted to play guitar. He'd always wanted to play guitar. Instead he made excuses.

No time. No money. No venue.

It didn't help that Pete's “office” was small. Secluded with white sterile walls, his room stood apart from the rest of the plant and best of all had no windows and only one door. It was the perfect place for people to come, hide out, and complain about their jobs. Pete inevitably became their sounding board, their psychiatrist, their Quality Control.

When word spread there was a good guy in QA who listened, folks came out of the wood work to see the guru.

There was Ralph from Packaging with his incessant need to talk about his rash. Darlene from Logistics and the tales of her dating just about man in the place. Jim Dean from Maintenance and his drug binges.

No topic was taboo.