Scientists Are Never Off Duty [FICTOID]

It was New Year’s Eve when all hell broke loose -- quite literally!

The tech crew maintaining the reactor got loaded on cheap champagne and the gluten free fig newtons they devoured didn’t absorb enough alcohol to keep them from doing dumb nuclear reactor tricks.

The first few went off with no problem, but when they tried irradiating an unclassified fossil one of them found in a Mideast bazaar, the very fabric of time and / or space rent open and a hideous entity from the very bowels of hell burst out, shrieking obscene gibberish and trashing the lab.

Most of the terrified tech crew ran screaming into the night but one had sense enough to call the chief scientist on duty.

He babbled incoherently into his phone but the scientist was sage enough to figure out what was going on and hurried down.

The demonic entity now towered over the nuclear lab.  Every time it spat the ground exploded as if a land mine detonated.

The scientist wisely stayed out of expectoration range.

“Psi!” she shouted.  “Sigma amplitude gamma over reciprocal hyperbolic cosine lambda omicron squared!”

The demonic entity howled in anguish and immediately vanished up its own rectum as the scientist finished the ancient formula.

The scientist turned to the cowering, now sober tech crew.

Techies, she thought.  Whaddya gonna do?  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t shoot ‘em and dump their bodies in the East River…

© Buzz Dixon