Tech Support

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the phrase: "It's worse than I thought."

Tech Support

The room was filled with white shirts, black ties and crew-cut heads. Thick glasses appeared to be optional attire; pocket protectors - mandatory.

“Okay, let’s see where we’re at,” said Butch, the lead rocket scientist.

“The video elements check out just fine,” said Phil. His statement was the problem solving equivalent of “It’s not my fault so don’t look at me.”

“Art, what about the robotics? Have you been able to figure out what’s going on there?”

The small balding man stood up and cleared his throat.

“I’m afraid it’s worse than I thought,” he said as he wiped a handkerchief across the top of his glistening head.

“What do you mean?” asked Butch impatiently. “I thought you said that all you needed to do was reboot the system and everything would be back online.”

“Well you see . . . we seem to have run into a bit of a design flaw,” murmured Phil, avoiding direct eye contact with his boss.

“Design flaw! What the hell does that even mean?” Butch shouted.

Everyone backed up half a step. It was not a good idea to be too close to Butch when he exploded.

“Are you trying to tell me the Mars rover isn’t working because we painted it the wrong color?”

“Not exactly,” said Phil. “You see,” he continued, “the design flaw is with the reboot button itself.”

“Phil, what exactly is the reboot button’s problem.”

Phil pointed to the live video transmission from the Mars rover.

“You see that red button near the robotic arm in the lower left?”

“Yes,” said Butch.

“That’s the reboot button. It’s currently about 55 million miles out of reach.”

Butch’s head began to explode.

Unnoticed, a thin green finger on the screen reached over and pushed the red button.

Word Count 300