Karma

By Draconias Galactica

2002 Draconias Galactica

His name was Rob. If you asked me now why I picked him up, I couldn't tell you. There was no real reason. It was a dark night (yeah, as opposed to a _bright_ night), and it was chilly. I was driving home from work. I worked in a building. I pressed buttons. I was a slavemaster for my printer. I fiddled with a mouse, moving it back and forth. Back and forth. Now click. And for a challenge, double right click. Not many people couldn't do what I do.

I had just had what was one of the worst days in my life for a while. I broke up with my girlfriend because she had torn my favorite shirt, which I had lent her, after _I_ broke up with her. I nearly smashed something (it probably would have been my fist) through my monitor when my piece-of-shit operating system broke down for the tenth time that day. Also, I'm pretty sure I killed a squirrel on the way home. What that squirrel did to me, I don't know. Why squirrels still think it's safe to run through roads is beyond me. Squirrels will be extinct eventually. Their natural predator is the jeep, the SUV, the minivan, the motorcycle. Anything with wheels and humans in a hurry to get from point A to point B.

But I'm getting off track. I was driving home, and I saw Rob standing on the side of the road, trying to thumb down a ride. Why did I pick him up? I was trying to score some karma points. I figured with all the shit I did that day, my karma rating was starting to lean towards the negative end of the spectrum. I can't have that. Not with what I intend to do with my life. When you plan your life out around karma deposits and withdrawals, you tend to be nicer to people if you plan on making a big-ass withdrawal one day.

Need a lift, I asked him. Rob nodded, pulled open the door to my truck and hopped in. The only thing he had with him was a briefcase. I asked him where he was headed.

"Don't know. Where you headed?"

Home, I said.

"Sounds like a good a place as any." He wasn't a normal person. He didn't sound like a gay person, or a serial killer. He was just an unusual guy who, for some reason, needed a ride.

If he was anything else, I wouldn't have tried to make interesting conversation. I would have talked about the weather. I would have talked about sports. I might have even talked about how it's a shame that this road, which used to be a tunnel of tree branches, is now surrounded by cheap houses and billboards. I would have talked like every other idiot I've seen trying to kill time until they die. I defiantly wouldn't have mentioned my glove compartment. But he wasn't anything else. He was Rob the weird hitchhiker. Maybe even the reincarnated spirit of Adams, though probably not.

I asked him what was in his briefcase. "Huh?"

What's in your briefcase, I repeated. Anything interesting?

"Not much. Some gum. This is where I keep my gum so I won't loose it. I need something this big to keep my gum in because I love gum more than life itself." At first I had thought he said "gun". Gum was more interesting. Further conversation was warranted.

I asked him, seriously, what's in there?

"You sure you want to know? It's kinda unusual."

Yeah, sure, I said. What do you have in there? He shrugged his shoulders and opened his briefcase.

The way I see it, Rob was one of those guys who didn't give a damn what other people thought about him. He was also one of those guys who likes freaking people out, who likes scaring the shit out of them in some way. He was also a weird guy. Rob would be that guy who goes to a party, stands in the corner, and gives everybody a death glare. If you talked to him, you'd see he was an interesting guy, but if you didn't he would probably be one of the scariest things you could possibly see.

Inside was a device I didn't quite recognize, though it did look kind of firmiliar. Is that some sort of homemade radio?

"Nah. It's a nuke."

Ah, I said. A nuke. A nuclear powered radio?

"There's some radio parts in there. There's some computer parts, there's some remote control parts, there's even some dildo parts in there. You take what you can get when you're trying to make something like this."

No kidding, I said.

"And there's my gum." Rob pointed to his three packs of gum tucked in beside his nuke.

Cool, I said. Can I get a piece? He nodded and gave me a stick. It tasted pretty bland. Not that I'm an expert in gum, that is.

Meanwhile, he seemed disappointed. Maybe it was the fact that I wasn't fazed by any of the nuke stuff. "This is a nuclear bomb," he announced, as if I hadn't heard him before. "It's about 100 kilotons worth. That's enough to wipe out a good portion of a city."

I know, I said. I can guess some damage figures off the top of my head if you want. He still seemed disappointed. Rob must have wanted fear, must have wanted interest, must have wanted surprise. He defiantly didn't want acceptance, indifference, casualness. I could have tried and faked the rest of the stuff, but that would have been insulting the intelligence of a weird man. Treating a non-idiot like an idiot would defiantly lower one's karma.

Finally, he said it. "You don't seem to get it. This is a fully functional nuclear bomb."

I know, I said. I've seen some before. After that, he was just pissed. He must have thought I was humoring him, I could tell. I'm serious, I said. Why'd you build one anyways? Because it's there?

"Nah. I just...did. It makes me feel a bit better. It's sorta like my therapist."

How do you figure?

"I put up with assholes in my job. I work at a fast food joint."

Why don't you just piss in the food?

"The place isn't big enough to get that sort of privacy. Every three feet, there's somebody else. Do you know how annoying people can be when they don't get their heart-clog burgers in under 10 seconds?"

Is that what you call them?

"Not officially. But it's more accurate than 'hamburger'. I just like having a nuke around so I know I don't have to put up with this shit forever. Anytime I want, I can just go to the bathroom, flip a few switches, and nuke those asses into hell. It's not like I have much to loose."

I guess that works. I've heard of better reasons, though.

"Yeah, like what? Terrorism? Killing the Japanese?"

Nah. Open my glove compartment.

"What?"

Open my glove compartment. It's unlocked, see what's inside. He did. Inside was a big bundle of wires, green boards, and a cheap LED display. That's my nuke, I said.

"What!?"

You can find instructions for this stuff all over the web, and I needed a hobby.

"You're kidding. It's in your glove compartment?"

I needed parts from my truck and I didn't want to take apart my truck. So the whole truck turned into my nuke actually. It helps me to be a better driver, knowing any crash I'm in is gonna be grounds for redrawing some maps.

"That's your reason? Mine's better."

No, that's not my reason. That's just why I'm such a good driver. My reason's that I'm sick of having a gun to my head. Some bureaucrat can just hit a button anytime he wants and bam, I'm gone. The world'll nuke itself over. The little red button, the one that sends us to Defcon 1? That's the gun to everybody's head in the world. Problem is the idiot holding the gun doesn't realize he's pointing another one at himself.

"Tuh, no kidding," he spat out.

So I decided to stick a gun to the world's head. They can keep me up at night worrying about them destroying the world. The way I see it, I should be able to make them loose sleep too.

We were both quiet for a minute. "I wonder if anybody else does this?" Rob asked a moment later.

I laughed a bit. Maybe every third guy we see, who knows?

"Are you going to do something with yours?"

Maybe not. Nuke's aren't meant to be used. You only test and stockpile. Test and stockpile. But the more nukes you build, the more likely you're gonna crash into another car soon. I like that metaphor, I said, but it seems a bit heavy handed. Rob nodded. Besides, I'd need a good reason to use mine. I love this truck.

We were both quiet again for a while. My gum lost its bland flavor. Then, Rob spoke up. "Hey, I got an idea."

What?

"How about we change things? How about we actually use these?"

You're kidding.

"No, I'm serious. I head up to some frozen part of Canada, you head to some desert out in Nevada, and we set these babies off. You know how women hate to be kept waiting," he added, with a sick grin on his face.

That's...hmmm.

"We just wake people up a bit. People need to have the shit scared out of them every now and then. Hell, they'd probably forget what nukes do and use them as piatas if nothing happens soon."

I think about it. I think about my girlfr, er, _ex_-girlfriend. I think about my adventures in double clicking. I think about how people are idiots, and about how this might actually put the fear of God back into them. I think about how good a gun to somebody's head is if they don't know it's there. I think about the resale value of my truck now that it's a nuke, and whether it would go up or down.

Sure, I said after a bit. It's not like I have anything better to do besides work. Okay, sure, I said (again). Why not? You got a car?

"Yeah. It's out of gas, though. I left it back at my shitty fast food job."

Right. But I'm not going out to Nevada. It's too far away for people to be afraid.

"So where do you want to go then?"

I thought for a moment. I remembered this one Calvin & Hobbes strip about how people go to Pittsburgh when they die, though it never said if it was because they were good or bad. I call dibs on Pittsburgh, I said. How about you?

"Green Bay. I hate the Packers." Works for me. I did a quick U-turn and headed towards where Rob told me his job was.

On the way there, I thought about karma for a bit. You do good things when you want to build up your karma reserves. You have to balance your karma budget. I must have known for a while, subconsciously at least, that I was planning to do this. If I just stockpiled, I'd be no better than all those idiots in the world I'm sick of. So I had been building up a karma "buffer", so I could absorb this sort of "withdrawal". I hope my karma's pretty damn high right now - it's about to take a huge nosedive.