Cut the Red Wire

He hated his job.Ever since the asteroid and comet hit the planet and slowed the earth’s rotation to a 25 hour day, the colors had shifted. Gone were the vibrant shades of the rainbow. The only one Steve could see was red. Everything else was boring shades of gray. Blue or brown? Looked like gray now. Yellow or green? Nope. It’s gray.

The only one that stood out for him was red. He’d been a bomb squad technician for 11 years when the colors vanished. Since then, he’d lost three fingers and hearing in one ear when he cut the wrong wire.

Stupid amateur bomb makers. Didn’t they watch television or movies? They were always supposed to use red or blue wires for the trigger circuit. It must have been in a book somewhere to do that. At least then he’d had a 50/50 chance of getting it right. Now with all the colors gone but red, they were making bombs with unknown wiring colors. All gray.

Cut the gray wire. Not that one! The other gray one. Careful now, if you make a mistake, there goes your whole hand. Occasionally, he’d come across a bomb made before the color loss. He clearly recognized the red wire and presumed the dark gray one next to it to be blue. 50/50 chance today. He could do this.



