Jim and The Bomb.

A homeless man wins the lotto. What does he buy? A house? A car? No...an old Russian nuclear bomb.

 

(Jimbo)

 

 

“01, 33, 41, 16, 55, 07 those were the numbers that changed Jim’s life”. Jim was a normal man. A powerless man, who had always dreamed of power. Those were the numbers on his ticket….. that ticket was a lotto ticket.

                

                You see. Jim was a rather poor fellow. At this point in his life he was now living in his small 20 year old pick-up. This beat hunk had a shell which contained everything he needed for day to day living. In it lay a futon , a camping stove, a sleeping bag, canned goods, bottled water and canned beer, a few wackoff mags and one copy of “The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli. Jim was not homeless. The truck was his home. He was however jobless but with an income. His income amounted to $800 dollars a month that came every month to his PO Box from the disability gods. Some doc had said he was nuts (bi-polar was the term he used).Jim had insisted that he was just on drugs. However once the doc told him about a disability  stipend from the great state of California. Funny thing….. Jim now insist he’s Bi-Polar! Eight hundred dollars. FREE!!!...Plenty enough for life on the cheap…..and to Jim….life was cheap.

                

              Years of working as a low paid a*****e had taught Jim that his life was cheap. His life as viewed from others was worth nary a dime. Oh! boy did the s**t jobs he’s done throughout his life reinforce this notion! Over and over again he toiled and plodded through some of the most mind numbing, mind dumbing, mind INSULTING!!! Jobs on God’s s**t filled earth…..and because of this Jim’s lesson was learned. That life, his and others….. was cheap.

                  

                In Jim’s mind he was a BIG man. Why did a big man have to take orders? Why did a big man have to be polite? Humble? Furthermore. Why did HE!... have to be polite, humble and grovel to lesser beings? And they we’re always lesser beings! The lesser. The more orders on how to do things supposedly better. The lesser. The more constantly annoying and on his back. Lesser beings. Individuals(or robots rather) with the I.Qs of 70, 80, 90, but never seemingly more then 100. Retards with authority. They always take managerial positions. When they should just f**k off… and leave poor Ol’ Jim  alone.

                    ********

 

                Jim was feeling nice and alone when he pulled up to the gas station one fine afternoon (though it was blazing hot that day. With dry superheated air capriciously buffeting everything with sand and up rooted tumble weeds. The sand went everywhere! Up ones nose, into the mouth, ears, eyes and all nether holes! That was the normal high desert weather that suited Jim’s sand pitted truck and face very well. Good weather for a day of winning. Weather like that makes one fancy the idea of lotto ticket purchasing on a whim. On a whim maybe he could change the weather. Whim being maybe his life. Whim being maybe change the value others placed on him. Whim being. Maybe he could become a hum-whim-being. So Jim bought one ticket.

                

                     Jim let the machine pick out the numbers for him. You know “Really leave it up to fate this time” he thought. He always despised those b******s in front of him in line that always took forever dealing with lotto gambling at a gas station. When he usually bet on the “sure things” of gas, beer, smokes and Gatorade. He always seemed to be in a big rush to get to the beer (and the desert on the edge of town where he always parked to drink and scream obscenities at the moon about how “THIS IS MY EARTH AND UNIVERSE and that I!!! AM!!! The one being benevolent and piteous enough to others whom I let “share” MY world with. IT WAS NOT GOD!!! MOTHER FUCKERS!!!BUT ME!!!” And yada, yada, yada until the wee hours of the morning when he passed out.) Yup, our boy Jim was always in a hurry. In fact it seemed every line he’d ever been que’d up in put him in a instant hurry. A silent frenzy within  to finish.     

              

                *********

 

             “ 01, 33, 41, 16, 55, 07” The newspaper had said. Jim looked at his ticket. Jim looked again at the paper. Then finally he put the ticket right up to the numbers in the paper. He repeated this for the next ten minutes. He did win. Now what? He had to call in immediately to claim that at least he thought he had won. A prize that by itself would be the biggest in lotto history. It had gone on with no winners for nearly a year. The sum of which was nearly one billion dollars. Nine hundred fifty six million dollars in all, in fact.

 

 

               Once one has won the lottery a lot of questions surface. A lot of them greedy and selfish which Jim did not deny being… he was. After all Jim thought  “It is in man’s nature to be selfish. It’s a survival trait and a good one. If one does anything no matter how small it was almost always to benefit that one person. Whether it be a smile or simple greeting of “hello”. These small acts meant that a person wanted whomever to think of them for the time being as at the very least a pleasant person. A self gratifying act indeed. Greed was just a simple matter of degree and perspective. Big or small it was all the same. Human nature.”

 

                And so the questions came. How much would ‘Ol Jim get? Would ‘Ol Jimbo have to share? How many would Jim have to share with? How much taxes would the b******s take? How much was ‘Ol Jim’s take? How much could he take in one lump sum? How many vultures would come after him with “business partnerships”? Would the vultures have anything to offer other then fund deletion? What did Jim want? A house? A car? A business of some kind? A harem of one hundred 35 year old virgins? (At least they’d be fifteen years younger.) Did he want knew looks? A larger phallus? To be charitable? Or did he want unbridled, unequivocal, power? “Hmmmm” Jim thought. That last question made him smile. Made him feel all warm and fuzzy. Made his spirit rise with ebullient gusto. “YES!!!...POWER!!!”......“EUREKA!!!”……He had found it.

 

 

 

                   *********

               

               Power. That was what Jim bought with his lotto money. As it was a lucky turn to win. He also came up lucky in another area…. He didn’t have to share his luck. There were no other winners. Taxes did come and take a large portion. Also Jim decided for what he wanted to buy he needed to take his money in one lump sum. That too would lessen the fun. Once it was all done pictures taken, interviews interviewed, pats on the back patted. Jim walked away with a measly four hundred ninety five million dollars (measly in his miserly mind anyway. Oh, yes there is always something to complain about! ).

 

             The power Jim bought came in the form of one old cold war relic nuclear bomb.  A slimmed downed and lighter weight replica dubbed by the U.S government as the “Tsar Bomba” . First detonated by Russia Oct 30^th 1961. Scientist conjectured it could send a town like Los Angeles to the moon and beyond. It had a potential of blasting miles of earth with 100 megatons of pure nuclear rapture.  But was reduce to 50 megatons for the test, due to weight concerns (It still was however the largest nuclear weapons test ever done by mankind (Even up to Jim’s own time. Sixty years later). Jim’s bomb was made smaller using the latest alloys and metals and even plastics to fit snugly in the back of his small pick-up.

 

 

                   *********

 

               December 6^th   2021’s edition of A.B.C’s , C.B.S’s and N.B.C’s Nightly world news broadcast, all had a new and strangely shocking report… That a fifty something year old man. Who had previously won the world’s largest lottery five months before. Had acquired a nuclear bomb from a rogue terrorist state in Africa. And the man was now driving around the Los Angeles area with the weapon tied down to the bed of an old dilapidated truck and that the driver was often drunk. The driver explained incoherently to news reporters and the public… that there was some “kind of switch” that he had some surgeon/witch doctor from the jungle put into his chest near his heart “kinda like a heart shocker”. In other words a pace maker that measured the electrical signals from the heart muscle and if the heart went into a spasm of fibulation the device would administer a series of shocks to restore the hearts proper rhythm. ‘Well’ as the man explained while slurring.

 

‘The switch was like that. But if my heart stops. Then ……KABOOWEEE!!!! TO THE MOON!!! HA HAW HA!!!’ .

 

 This last part put a victorious demon like smirk on Los Angeles’s new captors face. A face some would admire. Some would loath. But the captor would cherish.

 

 

             Scientist did in fact confirm Jimbo’s story… all of it.

 

                  So it came to be. That for a period of six months. Los Angeles and its surrounding area’s people were held hostage. By a man whose good fortune. Had been their bad.

 

                Jim thought this was fantastic!

 

               He went anywhere. Wore anything or nothing. Paid for nothing. Jim was a verifiable untouchable! He drank and drove. Speeded. Drove with reckless abandon on the 405 backwards for miles at a time in the wrong direction. Ate at the finest restaurants (Those that were still open). Slept in the biggest most lavished (now abandoned) mansions. Life now for Jim was good . He now was not just a big man in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of everyone. There was no authority now for him beyond his own. No laws. No rules. No nothing. No one to tell ‘Ol Jimbo what to do. Now he didn’t drive to the edge of town to yell at the moon while drunk. Now he would drive to the center of the cities he chose… and do so. Jim’s new and favorite saying to scream in his diatribes too the moon was…

 

‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely!’  Jim agreed with the old saying. The saying had been marvelously true of course and made ‘Ol Jimbo rejoice. But in all of Jim’s exaltation, jubilation, and revelry from power mongering. There was one thing he didn’t see coming with his power goggles…….and that was the end of his reign.

 

                                               *******

 

                                    The end that Jim didn’t see coming…came. Through the months of  Jim’s “L.A  reign”. He didn’t seem to notice the ever dwindling traffic. In a city filled with millions of cars and folks. He didn’t seem to notice the hordes of people leaving what people called the ‘Future Ground Zero’ or L.A’s ‘Real Big One’ to come. Actually the city through the last six months had become a real ghost town. So much so. That the U.S military was now willing to risk a nuclear explosion in the heart of a now heartless city. After all Los Angeles was hell on earth anyway. “Why not baptize it in fire?” The military generals rationalized .

 

‘We might as will push restart on it…. F**K IT!!!’

 

And that was what the world greatest military minds came up with. They came up with “F**k it”.

 

                      They decided they would use a sniper to snipe Ol’ Jim. One that was young and enjoyed the idea of becoming a legend in martyr-ism ….and so they did.

 

                          There was no bang. No boom. No mushroom cloud. No “just desserts” for Los Angeles. No nuclear winter. No dooms day. The crack reported from a lone soldier’s rifle and the screeching and crashing of a lone jalopy on a lone freeway….that is all there was… Jim was dead… Jim was duped… The world had been duped. Jim died with no knowledge of being swindled… Jim died a “BIG” man.

 

 

                     You see. The terrorist state that sold Jim his nuclear dream. Had a “Nuclear Dream” all of their own. In order to secure funding for they’re nuclear “rights” and become a new member of the “Nuclear Club”. They sold fakes to reclusive millionaires and billionaires. All for whatever price was right for the social elitist that came their way.

 

         After all. With today’s prices…. it’s hard to find a good nuclear bomb under one billion. Rest in peace Jim.

 

       ~Bob Page~

Reviews

[T]

first this, next movie scripts...keep it up!

[J-Rod]

You have a very inventive mind. Keep writing, man!

[Nick Erickson]

Jim rocks! and so does the terrorist organization who sold him the bomb!

Jim lived his life just how he wanted, without any doubt or reservations, he was a GOD for his time in LA.

This is an excellent story with a great character.

I can't say anything else but - Well done!!