Strange Love Game - Prologue
You're Invited to Play
The 8-pound socket, fastened to the end of a massive 3-foot-long ratchet wrench, wasn’t meant to be a weapon of mass destruction. It was supposed to be nothing more than what it was—a simple socket, living its uneventful, utilitarian life.
But as it broke free from the hefty 25-pound wrench and began a terrifying seventy-foot plummet, it was entering uncharted territory—boldly going where no socket had gone before.
In its two-second descent, those eight pounds of metal would test more than just the limits of safety systems and protocols—it would, perhaps, test the fragility of humanity itself.
Like Dante Hicks at the Quick Stop in Clerks, I wonder if the socket thought, “I’m not even supposed to be here today!”
It would have been right. It wasn’t supposed to be there that day.
The technician should have been using a torque wrench, not a ratchet. A detail he would’ve realized after descending into the thermonuclear missile silo on September 18th, 1980—but in his exhaustion, he pushed ahead. At 21 years old, barely out of high school, and after a gruelling 12-hour shift in a dangerous, physically demanding job, he was running on fumes. His superiors, of course, were safely stationed far from the missile site.
His partner that day? Just 19 years old. It was an enormous responsibility for such young men.
Meanwhile, the socket was gaining speed, hurtling toward the volatile fuel and oxidizer tanks of the Titan II missile nestled deep within the silo in Damascus, Arkansas.
How many safety checks and procedures stood between this eight-pound missile of its own and disaster?
Together, let’s find out.
Thank you for this and how you write.