Page 25 of G8
“Sorry to disturb you. A couple of the boxes that Ricks brought us has canned and packaged goods in it. We’re picking out stuff to fix for supper. Oh…” He looked directly at Ingrid. “There’s also a couple of things we don’t recognize. We’re hoping you can identify them.”
“Sure thing.” She gave G8 a brief smile and extricated herself from his arms to follow N8 back inside the kitchen area.
When he entered, he found her crouched over a cardboard box.
“This is great! It’s a microwave!”
“A what?” P8 asked.
She looked up at them. “It’s a microwave oven. You don’t know what a microwave oven is?”
T8 bent down and picked up the object. Ingrid pointed toward the kitchen counter. “Place it over there, near an outlet.” She tossed G8 a questioning eye. “How is it you’ve never heard of microwaves?”
“Because, according to the scientists, the world ended in 1991,” F8 explained. “Everything we learned about the world pre-dated that time, including all the TV shows and movies we were allowed to watch.”
Ingrid’s eyes widened. “The world ended in 1991?”
“The reason we were in an underground bunker was because there had been a nuclear war. It caused a perpetual winter on the planet’s surface, forcing all the survivors to live underground,” G8 informed her.
“Holy shit! How long did they expect you to stay there?”
P8 snorted. “They kept feeding us daily rad counts, telling us the concentration of radiation was coming down, but was still too high for us to go up to ground level. We had no idea that it was all an elaborate hoax. Not until Cydney revealed the truth to us.”
Ingrid stared at them in shock as she tried to digest it all. “No wonder you don’t know anything about anything.”
N8 let out a bark of laughter. “That’s putting it mildly.”
T8 carried it over to the counter. Plugging it in, he and the others stared at the flashing 12:00 on the side panel of buttons. “How does this thing work?”
She gave them a quick lesson by emptying the contents of a can of soup into a bowl and placing it inside. “It saves time,” she informed them. “Just be sure you never ever stick something metallic inside.” She proceeded to punch a couple of buttons, replacing the flashing 12:00 with a 1:00, and hit START. The oven began humming.
“Ack!”P8 covered his ears with his hands and quickly backed away.
“What’s wrong?” K8 went over to him. “P8?” She looked up at the others. “Stop it! He’s in pain!”
“Turn it off!” G8 ordered.
Ingrid hit the STOP button, and the humming ceased.
P8 dropped his hands, but the paleness on his face remained.
“What happened?” N8 asked.
“It was like needles going into my brain,” he admitted, pointing to the microwave. “That thing… It had to have come from that thing.”
“Guess that means we can’t ever use it,” T8 remarked.
“Not necessarily.” Ingrid turned to P8. “What’s your ability? Is it electrical related?”
The man nodded.
“He can detect electrical fields, and sometimes he can manipulate them,” F8 added.
“When you backed away, did it lessen any?” Ingrid inquired.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.”
G8 saw her nose squinch up as she pondered the problem.
