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“Ignore the giant octopus, kid. That’s somebody else’s problem. We’ve got a volcano with a broken AC to fix.”
From this angle, looking past the ring of burners and smoke generators, it was obvious that the volcano was both fake and hollow. A translucent fiberglass roof covered the opening, and a large panel in the center of the roof was rolled back to reveal a huge silo in the middle.
Rudy tore himself away from the view and turned to look down into the open hatchway, which was probably big enough to fly a small helicopter through. Or launch a missile, which, judging from the rounded nose cone visible just below, was more likely its purpose.
Rudy’s eyes widened. “Dude, is that a-”
I nodded. “Yeah, kid, it is.”
“A water heater!”
I cringed. “No, doofus, it is not a water heater. Don’t you know a missile when you see one?”
“Not really.”
“Nor a water heater either, I guess. You’ve got a lot to learn, apprentice.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He stared at the missile with growing concern. “Dude, I was happier when it was a water heater. Should we be worried about this?”
“About what?”
“It’s a missile, dude!”
I looked up. “Is it aimed at you? Looks like it’s aimed at the sky to me. Probably another evil plot to destroy the moon. We had three last year in L.A. County that I know of.”
“The moon? Seriously? What happened?”
I shrugged. “Moon’s still there, isn’t it? Somebody stopped them, I guess.”
“Who?”
I shrugged. “You’re not an apprentice to NASA, Rudy, you’re an apprentice to BOSSE.” I was careful to pronounce it “boss,” the e is silent. Rudy kept calling the union “Bossy,” and the shop stewards didn’t take kindly to that.
I spotted a roof stair and a line of heavy-duty compressor units twenty yards around the crater to our right. “Come on, we’ve got a noisy blower to fix.” We reached the stairs and I tried the knob. I’d been secretly hoping it was locked, as we’d then have to wait, with the meter ru
He looked at me. “Dude, we’re going into a fake volcano with a missile in the middle, and you say it’s not quite right? Are you like having a Homer moment or something?”
“Homer moment?”
“You know: D’oh!”
I frowned at him as I headed down the stairwell. “Do not ever say ‘D’oh’ to your designated union journeyperson. There’s almost certainly a regulation against it, and if not, I just made one up.”
I turned my attention to a series of heavily insulated coolant pipes ru
I located the access hatch on the side, but found it padlocked. I held the lock in my hand and sighed. Unlike a locked roof door, this was no real excuse on this kind of system. “We’ll go in through the ducts,” I said.
Rudy looked surprised. “Dude?”
I nodded up toward the metal tentacles spreading out in all directions. “The ducts. Look at the size of them. We’ll find a grate, climb in, and walk back to the central unit. Look at the size of those things! We’ll hardly have to duck.”
By now, it was becoming clear to me that we were in some kind of lair. Though I hadn’t done much myself, mechanicals guys-HVAC, plumbing, electricians-they love lair work. Lots of mechanicals on a big scale, and price is usually no object. Where these guys get their money, I’ll never know, but they aren’t afraid to spend it. And for HVAC guys, a special treat: big ducts. Really big ducts. With great big registers over every secret filing cabinet, master strategy table, supercomputer, and self-destruct console.
Or so I’m told. Me, mostly I do industrial parks, big-box retail, and office buildings, so this was kind of new to me. Mostly I was going on union-picnic shop talk and secondhand info. But I couldn’t let on to the apprentice. I kept my chin up and acted like I did this every day.
We walked down a stark corridor lined with numbered doors. Maybe it was an evil lair of some kind, but except for some roof support girders and other architectural details seemingly borrowed from Forbidden Planet (1965, Walter Pidgeon, A
Never mind that. I quickly found what I was looking for-a large, conveniently accessible air register. I hooked my fingers around the edge, and it easily popped open without the need to remove any screws. From what I’d heard around the union hall, conveniently opening registers were popular lair-specific features. I tossed my tools inside and climbed up, noticing as I did that it was far easier to see out through the register than in from the outside.
Rudy climbed in behind me, dragging the heavy tank of refrigerant, and closed the register after us.
I considered unclipping the flashlight that I carried on my belt, but it was surprisingly well lit inside the ducts. I stuck my index finger in my mouth to wet it, and held it up into the air flow. “This way,” I said, heading “upstream.” I noticed, as we walked, that these were top-quality ducts, heavy metal. We were able to move silently. None of that thin, galvanized sheet metal that thumps like a kid’s tin drum every time you shift your weight. “Quality all the way,” I said.
We followed a series of twists and turns past many other registers. Occasionally I would stop to look out into empty control rooms bristling with blinking lights, workshops equipped with menacing looking industrial robots, labs filled with colorful, bubbling beakers, and a room with the biggest damned hot tub I’ve ever seen (and when you’re from L.A., that’s saying something).
“Dude!” Rudy was really impressed with the hot tub.
Finally the rumbling of the blower started to get louder, and it felt as though we were walking into a stiff wind. Ahead, I could see the filter housing. We were quite close to the condenser coils and the blower, but we needed to get past the filter first.
I found the latches and opened the housing. As I did, a number of oddly shaped white objects clattered out onto the heavy metal floor of the duct.
Rudy bent down and picked up what looked to be a long, white bone. He gri
I frowned at him. “Planet of the Apes was a ‘space-monkey’ movie. You’re thinking of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I liked Dr. Strangelove better.” I frowned again, and leaned closer to examine the bone, nearly getting my head conked in the process. “I think that’s a human femur,” I said.
Rudy went white as the bone, and dropped it like it had suddenly burned his hand. “Dude!”
I bent down and picked up the bone. The surface was bleached white and slightly pitted, but it didn’t look old. “I’ve seen this before,” I said. “Back in ’99, some guy in North Hollywood tried to soup up his window AC, and accidentally turned it into a death ray.”
“Dude, a death ray?”
“There are some things non-union man was not meant to meddle with.”
“So, you’re saying this air conditioner is a death ray?” The implications suddenly hit him, and he quickly backed away from the filter housing.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Just that a death ray could be involved.” I kneeled down and examined the other bones: scattered vertebra, a shoulder blade, several ribs, a disarticulated jaw, and a wristwatch. I reached down and picked it up. Rolex. Top of the line.