By Alexander Shulman

Bleap, ding beep! “Fire in the hall!” I mumbled as my alarm clock went off. Oops, it’s six already? Ugh. I get ready to go on a seemingly 2 hour drive. Mr. Mozzarella got to the wheel while Mrs. Mozzarella was busy loading Baby Gouda and giving my friend Parmesan a book.  We drive through a bumpy, snowy road that snaked through the mountains and wound over lakes. A long time later, we stopped at a bakery that had a lot of lights on. It was still kind of dark. We ate breakfast and left. Suddenly, the radio station is interrupted by a road closure warning. The robotic voice proclaimed, “Notice to all people headed and leaving Kirkwood, highway 88 is currently on snow hold. Please take Ridge Road to go to our secondary resort. 

The GPS immediately stated, [Changing route to Kirkstone on Ridge Road] Mr. Mozzarella made a very sharp turn and got onto a bumpier icy road.

It’s almost seven when we arrive at the mountain, which was covered with fake snow. It was ice. Before I knew it, I was carrying my “heavy” skis which were really quite light at sea level. 8000 feet was quite high.

 I walked into a blood red building labeled “Doomsday Skiing” Inside, it looked like nobody had bothered to sweep the floor for years. There were dust bunnies, which I later learned was actually old artificial snow. There was a pile of old looking, yet brand new, bright red jackets. There was a sign that said: “there’s only one size – 14/16.” I was nervous about the adults and baby that I had carpooled with, but I got 5 jackets and ran out.

There was only one tag on the jacket which proclaimed: “14/16 is the only size that this jacket has – which is a fact that I just made up.” The tag was hanging over a pocket, which promptly ripped open after I tried to remove the tag. It exposed a set of buttons that had numbers on it. Below, it said: “Warning! Only works 3 times before needing to be recharged, so don’t waste 5 hours.”

“What the heck is going on?” I proclaimed. 

Since 14/16 fit me, I brought the strange jackets that seemed to be changing color to the car, to find nothing but a note: “Too cold. Find shed. Hair drier.” There was a buzzing sound coming out of a nearby ramshackled hovel. I walked in to see four people hovering over a rusty hair dryer plugged into a rusty outlet. I delivered the now white jackets.

I told everyone that something was not right. “The ticket office was a pile of jackets, and they were red a minute ago. There were no passes, and there was a large sign that said, ‘Pass the cheese’”

Mr. Mozzarella said that the jackets were too small, and then saw the sign. When the buttons were pressed, the jackets seemed to magically get bigger. (P.S, I don’t believe in magic!) “After that early start this morning, I need a nap before there isn’t a bed. We’ll figure this place out when I get up.” said Mr Mozzarella. He put on the jacket, and fell asleep on the gross pad in the hovel while Parmasean and I used the cesspool in the corner.

Ten minutes later, he woke up, and the jacket was buzzing and saying, “Stay awake, stay awake. There is no sleeping allowed in avalanches!” 

There was an air strike alarm and we heard an explosion outside. I looked out the window and saw a large avalanche with avalanche control planes bombing it. Below it, people with the now green and yellow, flashing and beeping jackets (What was going on with these crazy jackets?) were skiing straight down the hill. No wonder it’s called “doomsday skiing”.  All of the people seemed to be skiing right into the Doomsday Skiing building, and their jackets seemed to silence and become red. Mrs. Mozzarella told me to hurry up and finish eating, and to find them at the top of the lift. I was just finishing my cookie when an alarm went off. I thought the hair dryer was on fire, but the door was locked and the jacket said, “do not exit, danger outside.” I left the building a little bit later, apparently the hovel had electronic locks. When I got to the base area, the lift was empty. I looked around and saw nobody. 

I felt the static electricity building in my body. My hair began to stick out. Had something happened to the Mozzarellas? 

I walked into the Doomsday Skiing building, which on the outside looked small but on the inside looked like a warehouse. I asked a bunch of people who were doing random things on holograms (holograms? What next!) if they had seen the Mozzarellas, and a very nice person pressed the red circle I always thought was the dot for the “i” in doomsday, but it was actually a GPS tracker app. The jacket immediately turned red, and buzzed. It said, [Welcome to doomsday skiing. I believe you are looking for someone.] 

I said, “Locate the Mozzarellas,” half expecting it to take me to a pizza place. It dropped four pins that announced, “Mr. Mozzarella, Mrs. Mozzarella, Baby Gouda, and Parmesan.” Then I realized that I was staring at a hologram. I punched navigate, and fell through the hologram.

Instantly, it moved forward. A scratchy robotic voice said, “follow the laser to your destination.” Then, a laser started rapidly moving, like someone was making me their cat. It seemed to be telling me to take a hike. I resorted to taking a lift. Halfway up the lift, the laser pointed at one spot, and the jacket buzzed, saying “you have passed your destination.” At the top, I skied all the way down, to the point the laser was insisting I go to. And that’s when I fell off the lift and died.      [THE END]      

WAIT! Please read on.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:

I got very nervous that my friends may have been caught in the avalanche. I didn’t fall off the lift. But skied back to where the jacket indicated.

It then announced, [You must go down about ten feet. Would you like to activate heat dig?] Then, without even asking, it unzipped and turned bright red, proclaiming, “WARNING! Hot Surface, DO NOT TOUCH!” 

The snow somehow melted. Creating a stairway. A guy with a yellow and green beeping jacket came out. It was Parmesan. “Seriously? Only one? I thought you were together on the lift.” 

Then the jacket buzzed and said, “navigating to the nearest supercharger.” A laser appeared again, and it was heading towards the hovel. I got in, and saw that the interior had changed. There were ten chargers that looked like coat racks. They were labeled, “Charging bank 1.” I looked around for some instructions, but there were none. The jacket was no help either. It was red again, but when I yelled instructions, it did nothing.

“Hey jacket,” Parmesan said urgently. “Charging instructions.”

Parmesan opened up his hologram, and we watched a strange demo where a short guy with white crazy hair and round glasses wearing a white lab suit was talking. He said, “Hello, I am Jeffery Tweeterson. The founder of Tweeter’s magical buildings and clothing. I have detected that you have a doomsday ski jacket. In order to charge this, you can use USB C, which takes 5 hours, or you could go to a supercharger, which takes 5 seconds. In order to use the supercharger, hang the coat on a coat rack, then take all of the cables, and plug them into the right bottom pocket. I wish you luck!” And then the hologram disappeared. 

“Very helpful.” I replied sarcastically. 

“We don’t have any other options,” said Parmesan, “without the jacket, we’ll never find my family.”

I hung the coat up, and the jacket lit up. Then I pushed all of the cables, which looked like plastic hair, into the pocket. In exactly five seconds, the entire jacket stiffened up and fell off the rack, dropping all the wires. I was quite alarmed, picking the jacket up. Now it seemed to be acting normal. It was doing a strange boot sequence.

Parmesan and I walked out of the room and the navigation system started playing cat and mouse again. This time, it also was projecting a 3 minute timer. “What do you think this timer means?” I asked, nervously. It took us to a lake which was frozen all the way through. There were yellow and green splotches visible through the ice. Parmesan and I were trying to use heat digging, but the jackets kept saying, “Cannot dig on ice.”

Then, it said, “Heat assisted ice pick activated.” The jackets shook off and turned into pickaxes that glowed red hot. There was a wooden handle that had a label that said, “hold here, not on the blade. 

I began hacking away at the ice, which vaporized on hit. The timer, now at 2:21, was clicking strangely. Parmesan found some salt in his pack, which was semi helpful but also a huge nuisance since it flew everywhere when hit.

Then, the pickaxe disappeared and a chisel and hammer came out of nowhere. The chisel was also flaming hot. After tons of hacking, the timer was now screaming, “Hurry up!”

Seconds later, the chisel and hammer turned into a jacket. “GAAAAH!” Parmesan screamed. The jacket proclaimed, “Please use salt, dangerously close. If you have no salt, open the battery compartment and remove electrolyte.” I opened up the pocket labeled, “Type 10d83ej1 battery ONLY!!!” It had a metal cover, which I removed and there was a chunk of stinky salt, probably epsom salt. When it touched the ice, it melted fairly quickly. The timer was quite upset. I decided to take Parmesan’s electrolyte too. I didn’t need a buzzing timer that was panicking. I kept a 30 second countdown in my head. Parmesan was busy kicking at the ice, but he wasn’t getting very far. “I’m going to get some more electrolyte and ‘Quik melt.’”

After putting an electrolyte into my battery and closing it, it instantly pushed me down the mountain to the hovel, using the zipper like a tank track to carry me over the snow. I grabbed the supplies and the jacket pulled me up back to the pond. I dumped the sack of quik melt into the pond and it vaporized. After giving Parmasean an electrolyte, I started pulling the people out. The timer hit zero right after the last person was pulled out. There were three blue faces wearing buzzing beeping warm jackets. 

“Please Find a second jacket to combine into XL sled.” A robotic voice said. I zipped my jacket onto Parmasean’s jacket. The jackets fuzed into a single sled. I pulled the sled back down to the base area, following the red laser which seemed to be in a hurry. I pulled the sled into the hovel again, it was now a fancy hospital.

 A robotic doctor told me to bring the patients in, and before I could, took the sled. Then, the robotic doctor’s wheels became anchors, and 20 arms came out of a hidden compartment. Out came the blankets, out came the breathing tubes, and out came the IV solutions. The robot then retracted the 20 arms and grew wheels again. It announced, please use this ladder to access supercharger. Puzzled, I looked up. The ceiling was 8 feet high.

At that very moment, Mr and Mrs. Mozzarella woke up and ripped out the breathing tubes and IV solution. The IV splattered onto the ground and the breathing tubes sputtered air everywhere while the breathing monitors started shrieking loudly. Baby Gouda woke up and threw a fit, causing the IV and breather to come out. 

The robot doctor turned off the IV and air, and kicked everyone out, quite literally, and that was the end of doomsday skiing… or was it? 

Alexander Shulman is a professional E-waste dumpster diver. He is writing this on a Dell Latitude 2007.