Fred had a happy life. He was perfectly content at his job making food for the hungry customers waiting for nothing less than perfection, and he took a certain pride in his work. Anyone could just slap together a burger, pour soft serve into a cup or a cone until they were "full", or get you your fries covered in salt and oil and either overcooked or undercooked. It took someone with a bit of care to take just an extra second to make sure that burger looked marginally similar to the one the ad agencies cooked up, to make sure the cup of ice cream was full, and that the fries were a nice crispy brown with just enough salt. His senior co-worker Samantha was noting his work... That was what Fred had told himself.
"Stop loligagging! We need those fries NOW!" Samantha yapped not caring that the fries weren't going to be ready for 20 seconds... But technically good enough for customers... The burger that Fred had prepped all nice was quickly dismantled as a dog got the patty and the rest was thrown in the garbage... and the ice cream... I mean the kid was happy eating it, but making sure the ice cream was completely full was a thankless accomplishment when the customers weren't being snippy about "Finally it's actually working".
Work Faster! Deny the laws of physics! Quick stock those sauces! Quick we need a refill on the sweet tea! Actually we need you to refill the fry dispenser! Why isn't the sweet tea filled yet, they're using sugar packets and unsweet tea now so you need to... and Why isn't the FRY DISPENSER FILLED TO THE BRIM YET!?!?! A flat dumb bitch yelled... Samantha wasn't even the manager, and yet she acted as if she was the owners of this chain... Fred was near the end of the shift, mentally exhausted from dealing with customers and skipping a system untracked and state mandated break and...
Fred was parked behind his apartment complex... he swore he could still feel a tingle in his right hand... A whole lot of power in just a single action. A single sound reverberating through the restaurant with more emotion than any curse word could... Fred locked his car door and checked his mail and found an unexpected box amid some junk and a bill or two. He entered his apartment and looked at the box seeing it had no mail address... If it was a bomb Fred really didn't care, if it blew up at least he left a girl speechless before he died. The apartment itself basically had no redeeming quality. A few cushions for a "sofa", a table he rescued from being thrown away from a bar with way too many engravings and damages to it, and a random plastic chair that still wasn't broken... yet. random garbage was littered around, the sofa was also his bed... the bathroom was down the hall... he had one plate to his name and he rarely ever used it... and he just felt tired...
*Crack* went a flat palm against soft flesh, the recipient experiencing a sharp feeling of pain for an instant and a dull ache for about an hour, and presumably the aggressor would lose his job and be blacklisted from the surrounding businesses. His bloodshot eyes stared at the box and thought about his options... His parents had long since abandoned him... His older brother was dead, his little sister was pretty successful and maybe crashing on her couch could have been an option... Just would end up in a different kind of hell being yelled at by another flat bitch...
It was a bomb. It wasn't a UPS, Amazon, FedEx, or whatever else... It was just a plain box, unmarked, completely sealed, and would probably detonate as soon as some trigger saw light or was exposed to... Fred closed his eyes and opened the box. He waited a second and heard nothing and instead just looked inside. It was a crazy remote of some kind that had too many buttons, a number of lights that were off, and nothing was in english. To be fair as far as he could tell it wasn't using the english alphabet or anything asian or sandscript or whatever. It just looked like... gibberish with practically no cohesion. Holding the remote a few lights lit up... So Fred guessed it had some sort of pressure sensor? Fred was getting too tired and could feel his eyes closing a bit, but he guessed he could press something?