The Vending Machine - 3

Ashton didn’t drink the “solve global warming” Coke for three days. He knew that procrastination was probably not the best approach, but he just couldn’t bring himself to drink it and set off another calamity. In his head, he was running all possible scenarios of what could go wrong with this option, as he now knew that the machine would somehow pervert everything. So he held off. In these three days, the world was engulfed in an unprecedented heat wave bringing the wildfires, drought killing all the crops, and torturing people with heat exhaustion. Ashton had the dreams of flying Coke again, telling him “You must drink it.”

On the fourth day, his charges complained about the rumbling noise again. He waited for Alice after she finished her classes and asked her to go to the basement with him. She was a good sport and saw that Ashton was agonizing, so she wanted to support him as much as she could. When they reached the vending machine, it was jumping and trembling like on the first day Ashton saw it.

“Didn’t you unplug it?” Alice asked.

“I thought I did, but now I’m not sure,” Ashton said, pointing at the plugged cord. “Perhaps someone else plugged it in?”

“That’s a scary idea,” Alice said. “What if the machine can serve several masters at a time?”

“That’s scary indeed,” Ashton confirmed.

When they approached closer, they saw that the tag with “solve global warming” Coke changed to, “You’ve made your selection. You must drink it.”

“Well, I guess that’s our answer as it’s still talking to me,” Ashton said, unplugging the machine. It stopped rumbling. “It’s almost like it has a mind of its own. I guess I will have to drink that Coke.”

They went back to the dorm and Ashton downed the entire can of Coke in one take. They both thought that the temperature started to come down instantly. In about five minutes, global news reported the heat subsiding everywhere.

“Maybe this one is not going to be that bad, after all. What could go wrong with solving global warming by decreasing the temperature?” Ashton thought out loud. “The planet needs to cool off.”

Alice stayed in Ashton’s room for the night. She could see how daunting the task of saving the world was for him and wanted to stay by his side. They both wished he’d never discovered that vending machine.

***

Early in the morning, they woke up at the same time from freezing cold. They looked out the window and saw at least three feet of snow on the ground. There were no people or cars, no movement outside whatsoever. The campus seemed dead.

“What the hell?” they both exclaimed. Trembling from the cold, Ashton dug out the warmest clothes he kept in his “winter” bag and gave Alice his thermal underwear, a sweatshirt and long pants. He was 6’0”, she – 5’6” so she looked ridiculous but still cute, he thought.

Ashton tried to power up his computer to find out what was going on, but the power was out. He tried to turn the water on, and nothing came out from any of the taps.

“Nothing works!” Ashton said, completely shocked.

“What do we do now?” Alice asked, trying to stay calm.

“Well, we still have some food, juice and water in the fridge, so we should be OK for a couple of days.”

“But how do we use the toilet or take a shower?” Alice asked.

“That might be a problem,” Ashton said, thinking. Suddenly, he remembered something and pulled out a box labeled “emergency supplies” his mother made him take to the dorm. It had an old emergency radio, probably from the late 1990s, that had to be manually cranked. Ashton started to furiously rotate the crank while Alice was moving the tuner. They stumbled upon a weak radio signal that was trying to break through the static:

“The Earth sharply tilted overnight… The South Pole is now in Ecuador and the North Pole – in Sumatra, Indonesia… Most of the land mass is now under a thick layer of snow… while the former Arctic and Antarctica are shedding the ice which is cooling the oceans and rising the sea levels. People are freezing everywhere… Unknown how many are dead… Most of the man-made infrastructure is either destroyed or disabled… I guess that is one way to solve the global warming… Surprisingly, the only unaffected piece of land is the Atlantis… If you are alive and can find your way there, you’ll have a chance to survive…”

“What’s up with the fucking Atlantis???” Ashton exclaimed in disbelief.

“It seems like it’s an essential element in all the vending machine’s solutions, babe,” Alice said.

“Do you think we can get there somehow?”

“Are you kidding me? How? Walking through the snow all the way to the shore and catching a drifting iceberg? You heard the radio report, nothing works! Where would you get a transport to the Atlantis?”

“So, what do we do now?” Ashton asked, dreading the answer.

“I think you know, babe… you have to undo it. I’ve collected some dimes,” Alice said, taking out coins from the summer shorts she was wearing yesterday.

They took a flashlight from the emergency box and went down to the basement. When they reached the vending machine, it was covered in a thin sheet of ice.

“How are we going to plug it in? Power’s out!” Alice said, only now realizing the problem.

“Wait a second, as an RA I do have the key to this maintenance room with the emergency generator,” Ashton said, going through his keys. He finally found the right one and opened the maintenance room. With confidence, he came up to the generator and flipped the switch. It started and the lights in the basement came on.

“It won’t last long,” Ashton said, “so we have to be quick.”

They went down to the machine and Ashton plugged it back in. It started to thaw right away and they stared at the tags intensely. “No more pandemics?” they both said at the same time, nodding at each other. Ashton made the selection. When the Coke rolled out, he unplugged the machine and they went back up to his room.

At the door, all three of his charges were waiting, freezing. They started talking all the same time when they saw Ashton and Alice, “What happened? Where did all this snow come from in the middle of the summer? We can’t get out of the building, it’s blocked by the snow! There’s no power! Are the classes cancelled? No phone is working! My parents must be freaking out trying to reach me!”

Ashton let them all into his room. He pulled out a couple of blankets, and all the girls sat on his bed, cuddling to each other. He sat in his office chair and told them everything they learned from the radio. They tried to get on the Internet while the power from the emergency generator was on, but the system was clearly down. They couldn’t find any more updates on the radio. While they still had the power, they warmed up some leftover food from the fridge and had a quick meal together.

The girls were scared to go to their rooms, so Ashton and Alice said they could stay. They tried to do their course assignments and play board games to keep their minds off what was going on outside. At some point, Ashton went into the bathroom and drank the “no more pandemics” Coke. He could have been paranoid, of course, but he thought he felt the temperature in the room going up almost immediately, but not by a lot. When the power from the generator went out, they forced themselves to go to sleep: the girls slept on the two sofas in the shared area of the apartment while Ashton and Alice slept in his bed.

***

In the morning, they all woke up sweating from the heat. Ashton and Alice looked out the window and everything was just the way it was the day before. Ashton’s charges were shocked to find themselves in his room under warm blankets. They obviously didn’t remember anything, and Alice quickly came up with the idea of a party that they had where the girls got so drunk they didn’t remember what happened. Perplexed (none of them ever drank so much they couldn’t remember anything), the girls went back to their rooms.

“Let’s see what the pandemic solution is all about,” Ashton said powering up his computer.

“You know, babe, you can do that by yourself. I have a class to go to,” Alice said. She looked tired and weary. She took a quick shower and left without saying a word. Ashton had a heavy feeling she was mad at him for something.

Credit: This story is inspired by a 1972 short comedy film “The Vending Machine” written and directed by John Ewing, a long-time director of Cinematheque of the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Part 2 is here: