[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#d8d35b” color=”#FFFFFF”] “WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN GARY, INDIANA” [/edgtf_highlight]
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[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#1c1c1c” color=”#FFFFFF”] “CHAPTER I [/edgtf_highlight]
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#d8d35b” color=”#FFFFFF”] “DON’T PUSH THIS FUCKING BUTTON” [/edgtf_highlight]
Bright light. Blinkingly, his vision starts to clear. Where he is… He’s not sure. He doesn’t recognise this place. It’s quiet, and doesn’t smell like gunpowder. He doesn’t like that in a place. How he got here… He’s even less sure.
But none of that matters, really. Not when his entire attention becomes solely stolen away by a single, driving presence. Something that cannot possibly be ignored.
A big, flashing red button.
Below the button, crudely taped to the control panel that the button sits on is a hastily written sign. A sign written in green crayon on a yellowing piece of paper, strangely enough in his own writing. The message of the sign is simple enough:
‘Don’t push this fuckin buttern.’
But that only makes the button all the more enticing.
Junkrat pulls himself to his feet and licks his lips as he looks upon the button. Each flash seems to invite him even more, winking at him as if to say…
“Come on, press me. You know you want to see what I do.”
Junkrat looks around, trying to work out what the button might be connected to. Right across the road, he can see an official looking building, with its small-town painted sign that reads ‘City Hall: Gary, Indiana’.
Atop the roof sits the town’s clock, but atop the clock Junkrat spies a small red box. The kind that he would set up himself just for fun. He instinctively knows what’s inside.
“That’s a big boomer.”
Junkrat’s finger hovers over the button, desperately seeking to find out if his hunch is right. The consequences might be spectacular, or deadly. But there’s only one way to know for sure. His finger graces the red button as a familiar voice calls out to him.
“Oi! Fuckface! Can’t you fucking read?”
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#1c1c1c” color=”#FFFFFF”] “CHAPTER II [/edgtf_highlight]
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#d8d35b” color=”#FFFFFF”] “WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO?” [/edgtf_highlight]
Junkrat stares into his own face and his own face stares back at him, three times over. A trio of his own clones look upon him, watching his finger hovering over the button.
The original Junkrat retracts his finger with a somewhat sheepish look on his face.
“Er…”
All three Junkrats staring back at him look unimpressed, the central one goes so far as to prod him with his finger, a look of thunder on his face.
“I said, fuckface, can’t you fucking read? You were going to push the button…”
Junkrat pushes back, prodding his assailant clone with his own finger.
“I was not. I was… um, cleaning it. The button looked dirty.”
The clone prods him again, not one to be outdone.
“Bullshit. Do you even know what that button does?”
“I have a hunch, but no. Not really.”
It is at this point that the trio of Junkrat clones burst out into raucous laughter. The trio of Junkrats all drop trousers, flop out their tackle and give the newcomer a right ol’ Junkrat salute in welcome.
“Neither. We’ve been wondering what it does all day. So many wires connected to one red button. I left the note there because I didn’t want any of the other fucking Junkrats sneaking in here and stealing my fun.”
The original Junkrat isn’t quite sure what to make of the sudden change in the trio, but he slowly starts to lighten up.
“You left the note here?”
The clone nods heartily, like a daft puppy.
“You spelt button wrong. It’s B-U-T- T- I –N.”
Now, all four Junkrats eye up the button. All attention has moved on from spelling to more pressing matters. One of the clones, after watching the blinking button for a while, says the words everyone is wondering.
“What do you think it does?”
The speculation flies thick and fast among the scheming Junkrat quartet.
“Maybe its for Christmas lights, for the parade?”
“Fireworks. Sky boomers!”
“No. It’s to launch the spaceship!”
“What fucking spaceship?”
“Isn’t this where NASA tests their spaceships?”
All Junkrats look around, out windows and along the deserted street of Gary, Indiana.
“You know what, I don’t think so. This place is such a shithole, I don’t think even NASA would touch this crap with a bargepole.”
But it is the voice of the original Junkrat that causes the biggest stir.
“It’s for the big boomer that Sigil gave me. It was in a little vial, but now it’s missing.”
“Oooh. A big boomer? How big.”
“Bigger than your mamma.”
The quartet of Junkrats all giggle like schoolgirls at this, before the revelation dawns on them.
“Wait, we’re your clones right? Does that mean your mamma is our mamma? Or are you our mamma?”
Junkrat thinks for a moment.
“It means I’m your daddy. Now who wants daddy to push the button?”
Four Junkrat hands fly into the air.
“Push the fucking button!”
A finger hovers over the button again, as the trio of Junkrat clones eagerly watch. They shout words of tempting encouragement to their leader-daddy-Junkrat.
But the finger merely hovers.
“I … Can’t … Push … It.”
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#1c1c1c” color=”#FFFFFF”] “CHAPTER III [/edgtf_highlight]
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#d8d35b” color=”#FFFFFF”] “TEMPATION” [/edgtf_highlight]
Junkrat tears himself away from the button, which now blinks mockingly at him enough to avert his gaze. The trio of Junkrats wait with bated breath, each one knowing exactly what the other one is thinking.
It’s not hard.
They all just want a turn to push the button.
“What the fuck happened? Is it stuck? Give it the herbs, whack it mate. That’ll free it roight up. ”
Junkrat shakes his head.
“It’s not stuck, dipshit. I just… Can’t bring myself to push the button. Something inside me is stopping me.”
The other three Junkrats all blankly look at him, blinking idiotically.
“Did you stick a pipebomb up your ass? Because that’ll stop a man dead in his tracks.”
Again, a shake of the head from the original Junkrat.
“Not like that. My mind wants me to push the button… But another part of me says it might be a bad idea. I think it’s my heart, maybe my guts.”
“If you stuck a pipebomb up your ass and it goes off, we’ll be able to see both before too long.”
Junkrat turns away, shocked with the revelation dawning upon himself.
“I think I’m developing… a conscience.”
He looks back at the button but makes no move to push it. The first Junkrat clone slinks up to him, placing his arm around his shoulder.
“You’ll never truly know the truth if you don’t give in to your curiosity. It’s just one little push of one little button, how bad could it be?”
Junkrat takes the clone’s arm off from around him, shaking his head and pulling at his hair slightly.
“Don’t tempt me, mistress. It’s naughty. I’m trying to be good here.”
As slick as the first clone, the second Junkrat sidles up and whispers into his hear.
“But being baaad is so much more fun than being good. Nobody ever got a lovely little spanking for being a good boy. Come on, push the button.”
The clone’s sweet nothings bring a devious little grin onto Junkrat’s face for a second. His finger twitches towards the button. But he shakes his head.
“No. I must resist the temptation. Junkrat is a good boy.”
The third clone steps up to the plate with a little less tact, having seen the fates of his counterparts so far.
“Don’t be a fucking pussy, bitchface. Push the button, or I’m going to push it with your face.”
Junkrat the Original turns at this, the devious smile replaced with a red-faced look of frustration.
“I said no button, now fuck off! All of you! Leave me be! Nobody pushes the fucking button!”
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#1c1c1c” color=”#FFFFFF”] “CHAPTER IV [/edgtf_highlight]
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#d8d35b” color=”#FFFFFF”] “A NEW LEAF” [/edgtf_highlight]
Junkrat’s final word hangs in the air like a judge’s gavel, but it falls on deaf ears. The draw of the blinking button is too great for the clones to simply resist like their original.
What ensues can only be described best as a playground scrap. Hands slapping each other like wet fish, not even balled into fists. The foursome look somewhat like a cartoon as the trio of Junkrats try to get to the button, but the Original Junkrat holds them at bay.
Fingers come dancingly close, but a mixture of slapping, scratching and biting winds up with the trio of Junkrats soon licking their wounds as they back off slightly. Only for an army of clones to appear behind them, chanting.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!”
The mob mentality is beginning to take over, and Junkrat looks like there’s no way he’s going to be able to hold off a mob of his own eager counterparts from pushing the button. But he stands in between it and them.
Then, he climbs up upon the console housing the button, and speaks out over the crowd.
“Who are we really, if we just give in to our base desires. Sure, the button looks inviting, and we want to push it. But at what cost, I ask you?”
The crowd fall silent. A leader within them has finally been found.
“No. We are Junkrats. We could be so much more than button pushing, boomer exploding fuckwits. It is time to turn over a new leaf, to walk in a new direction. To be part of the solution and not part of the problem.”
By now, the crowd are starting to rally behind him and his stirring words.
“How can we, Junkrats, make the most change? Why… Politics, of course. You want to change the world, change it from the top. I’m going to run for president, who wants to be in on my campaign?”
A roaring approval follows, as a thousand Junkrats carry their original off on a sea of adoring clones. First stop, across the road to the Town Hall of Gary, Indiana. Then… The world!
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#1c1c1c” color=”#FFFFFF”] “CHAPTER V [/edgtf_highlight]
[edgtf_highlight background_color=”#d8d35b” color=”#FFFFFF”] “PUSSY” [/edgtf_highlight]
The red button still blinks, slowly but surely.
Isolated and alone, with nobody to press it.
Outside, the rally of Junkrat’s presidential campaign can be heard, with cheering and chanting filling the streets. But within these walls, by this particular button, silence.
The only sound, the pitter-pattering of pawprints on a marble floor.
A lone cat, ginger, slinks its way into the room and sees the button.
It does what cats do, and investigates its own curiosity.
It sees the button, climbs up onto the console, reaches out a paw.
And presses it.
BA-BOOM!
Instantly, the entire town of Gary, Indiana seems to explode. An explosion the likes of which the world has never seen before.
With one push of a red button, the entire town has been reduced to rubble.
The army of Junkrats buried underneath the rubble. The inhabitants of the town, decimated.
And the ginger cat, at the center of it all… Its curiosity satisfied, it slinks off as if nothing had fucking happened.
Which leads us to the moral of the story.
‘All of man’s fuckups, no matter how big or how small, can be traced back to a fucking pussy.’