Author: S. Douglas Hall

Doctor Hibberd’s shoulders slumped and he laid his clipboard on the table. The buzzing at his lab door overshadowed the normal beeps, clicks, and whirls from the lab around him.

He ran his hands through his graying brown hair and adjusted his sturdy black rimmed glasses before reaching for the latch on the door.

“What is it now?” Hibberd forced open the door to find a man in a suit. The fluorescent lighting from the hallway outside his lab hurt his eyes at first.

“Doctor Hibberd,” the man’s mouth quivered, “I’m from…the accounting department.”

Hibberd took a deep breath and let it out with a sign. “I didn’t ask who you were. I asked, “What is it now?””

“Cost…overruns.”

“What do you mean…cost overruns?” For a moment, the irony of needing something explained to him, the lead scientist at ValueMax Enterprises, crossed Hibberd’s mind before the anger of being interrupted returned.

“You are over budget…way over budget… on…” the rep from accounting referenced the paperwork in their shaking hands, “ammunition?”

“Show me.”

The man in the suit stepped inside the lab door and handed Hibberd a printed spreadsheet of the costs from his lab.

A mix of bleach and formaldehyde assaulted his nose before he got two steps into the lab. Red and green lights from the displays on various machines contrasted with the otherwise dark room.

A loud thumping erupted momentarily from somewhere nearby.

Hibberd’s eyes grew large and round, “It’s nothing. Nothing to worry about.”

Both men looked back at the budget spreadsheet and the large red numbers at its bottom.

“It’s not my fault,” Hibberd motioned toward a heavy door with thick ballistic glass labeled Irradiator. “Sometimes they die in the machine and sometimes I have to shoot them…repeatedly.”

“You have to do what?” The man in the suit stared at the irradiator’s door.

Hibbered picked up his clipboard and flipped through several of the attached pages. He quickly circled something on one page and looked to the irradiator door while nodding. After pausing for a moment, Hibberd looked back to the man in the suit. “Oh, you’re still here. If you need paperwork for the…

“Cost overrun…”

“Yes, cost…overrun…I can provide you with a print out…”

A pair of thuds rang out from the irradiator’s door.

“That one’s going to need a lot of shooting,” Hibberd looked toward a door on the other side of the lab labeled Weapons Locker.

“What?” The man in the suit’s jaw fell open.

“What?” Hibberd looked back to the man in the suit. “I thought I already explained this to you.”

The man in the suit took a deep breath, “Look, you need to get your ammunition costs down or corporate is going to audit your lab and maybe close it down.”

“Yes, Yes…” Hibberd looked around the room, “invent a death ray. Got it.”