NationStates Jolt Archive

You're taking out the garbage one night. Suddenly, right there by the dumpster, a shimmering portal opens and a man dressed in weird futuristic clothing steps out. He's armed with a lasergun. He calls you by name and says, "I've come from fifty years in the future. It's a world wracked by war and death and famine and disease. A world collapsed in bloody anarchy with no end in sight and no hope for peace. ANd it's all because of something that you are going to do in twenty years. The only hope for the human race is for you to die. Unfortunately, due to laws against interfering in history, I can't kill you myself." He hands you the lasergun. "For the sake of billions of lives, you must end your life."

What do you do?

I'd flip him off, kick him where it hurts, and push him back through that portal.

Seriously, though, good post. Original and creative. :D

Personally, I'd stop doing shrooms right then and there.

Can I see some evidence that this is going to happen because of me first lol

i'd think i was seriously drunk.

You're taking out the garbage one night. Suddenly, right there by the dumpster, a shimmering portal opens and a man dressed in weird futuristic clothing steps out. He's armed with a lasergun. He calls you by name and says, "I've come from fifty years in the future. It's a world wracked by war and death and famine and disease. A world collapsed in bloody anarchy with no end in sight and no hope for peace. ANd it's all because of something that you are going to do in twenty years. The only hope for the human race is for you to die. Unfortunately, due to laws against interfering in history, I can't kill you myself." He hands you the lasergun. "For the sake of billions of lives, you must end your life."

What do you do?

Shoot him, he's probably a drug user anyway...

Easy.

Club him over the head with the laser gun, steal his clothes. Shoot him, then jump through the portal to a Eudaimonic (paradise is Eudaimonia, Utopia is a world that cannot exist) society where I never messed up and plunged the world into chaos. That way I save the world, get to kill someone and live in a Eudaimonic society.

Just shoot him. Screw that. I wouldn't believe him.

Easy.

Club him over the head with the laser gun, steal his clothes. Shoot him, then jump through the portal to a Eudaimonic (paradise is Eudaimonia, Utopia is a world that cannot exist) society where I never messed up and plunged the world into chaos. That way I save the world, get to kill someone and live in a Eudaimonic society.

Clever. Perhaps a bit too clever...

Clever. Perhaps a bit too clever...
I hope you're being sarcastic, if that's too clever I'd hate to see what you call stupid.

I hope you're being sarcastic, if that's too clever I'd hate to see what you call stupid.

One of my best friends tried to cross a mudpit by getting a good running start and sprinting over the surface. He figured that if mudracing vehicles could do it, so could he. He ended up doing a faceplant, getting completely covered in mud and losing both shoes. We never found them.

That's what I call stupid. :)

One of my best friends tried to cross a mudpit by getting a good running start and sprinting over the surface. He figured that if mudracing vehicles could do it, so could he. He ended up doing a faceplant, getting completely covered in mud and losing both shoes. We never found them.

That's what I call stupid. :)
Hahahaha that made me laugh. Now I understand why my comment was clever.

REALLY Stupid is thinking you can succeed where your best friend failed and doing your own faceplant. Fortunately, my shoes were tied on more securely.

REALLY Stupid is thinking you can succeed where your best friend failed and doing your own faceplant. Fortunately, my shoes were tied on more securely.
Like the light bulb of doom darwin award story.

For those who haven't read it:
Light Bulb of Doom

2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This story is probably an urban legend, and even if it is not I am fairly sure that it is quite impossible to get any references proving it. Also none of the participants have died or otherwise removed themselves from the gene pool, so I will leave it to the Darwin to file or reject this story as seen fit. This is just an account of a terminal case of human stupidity leading to a number of accidents. Here it goes.

The place is a small regional center town in Soviet Union. The time is early 1980s. A local conference of college teachers is in progress. A few dozens of teachers came into town for the event and a few of them were situated in the local hotel. The hotel is very poor, but so are the teachers and 3 of them take a single room. Since there is not much to do in a small town at night, certain amount of alchoholic beverages is obtained from a local store and consumed.

During the conversation among the newly found friends one of the teachers (lets call him Dmitriy Petrovich) mentiones that it is a medical fact, that it is impossible to take a light bulb out of ones mouth once it was inserted there. This meets active disbelief of his two opponents who start questioning him as to what kind of light bulb he means and how come you cannot take it out, if you can put it in. Dmitriy Petrovich replies, that he is talking about a standard 100 Watt light balbs such as the one lighting their room, but lacking medical education he doesn't know the reason for not being able to remove it. Discussion heats up, and at some point one of his opponents desides that an experiment is necessary.

Mind you, that all of the teachers in the room are PhDs in various fields of exact science. Obviously not one of them is a medic. The light bulb is then removed and the most loud opponent (lets call him Vladimir) puts it into his mouth. In a few seconds it becomes clear that Dmitriy Petrovich was right, and it is quite impossible for Vladimir to remove the light balb due to peculiar clenching of jaw muscles.

After a short discussion the three friends decide to get Vladmir to a doctor. They get out of the hotel, and stop a cab. They drive to the hospital where they have to relate the story of the accident to the night nurse, who, after almost choking herself with giggles, calls the ER doctor. The doctor carefully examines Vladimir, and unexpectedly hits him with his fist in the back of the jaw. Vladimirs jaw falls open and the doctor returns the light bulb to Dmitriy Petrovich, explaining that Vladimir is not going to be able to use his mouth for a couple of hours due to the over stressed jaw muscles.

The three teachers get back into a cab and start driving home, when the third teacher starts complaining that the other two are playing him for a fool, that this is medicaly impossible for such phenomenon to exist and that he is about to prove it. He puts the light bulb into his mouth, the cab makes a U-turn and speeds back to the hospital. At the hospital, the nurse starts giggling when the three men enter the emergency room, and after hearing their new story falls of her chair laughing. After a little while she calls the surgeon, who chuckles, hits the 3rd teacher in the back of the jaw and removes the light balb.

The cab has left, so the three friends catch another one. Dmitriy Petrovich gets noto the front seat and puts his mute friends with their jaws hanging open in the back. Cab driver is mildly surprised by the unusual company of an obviously drunk giggling man and two others looking ilke village idiots, and asks about it. Dmitriy Petrovich asures teh driver that the other two are not idiots, but most educated people and the problem is their small argument about a light balb. After carefully listening to the whole story the driver asks what kind of light bulb is he talking about, and Dmitriy shows the hotel light bulb saying "this one". "Impossible" says the cab driver and in a few seconds the cab turns around and goes to the hospital.

When the nurse sees these guys the 3rd time inside 2 hours, she starts having rather serious breathing difficulties trying to laugh much harder then mother nature designed. After getting her in shape Dmitriy Petrovich makes her call the surgeon who, promptly hitting the cab driver in the jaw takes the light bulb and smashes it on the table saying that this should put an end to the story. The four men get back into the cab and drive to the hotel.

On the way they are stopped by the road patrol police unit. The policeman (militianer) is very surprized to find that the only person able to speak in a car full of people is a rather drunk man who tells him a wierd story about light balbs. "I will be right back" replies the policeman, goes back to the road side station, Dmitriy and companions whatch the ligh go off inside the station, and in a few seconds the policeman appears again. Using gestures he asks people on the back seat to move over. A metal end of a light bulb is sticking out of his mouth.

The cab goes back to the hospital. The nurse becomes hysterical with joy. After a few minutes of recuperation she goes to the cabinet of the surgeon to call him. She opens the door and falls to the floor unconscious. In the doorway appears the surgeon with his jaw hanging wide open.

Submitted on 05/19/2003

REALLY Stupid is thinking you can succeed where your best friend failed and doing your own faceplant.

Is it not traditional in these kind of situations to use the bodies of the fallen as a rudimentary pontoon bridge?

Is it not traditional in these kind of situations to use the bodies of the fallen as a rudimentary pontoon bridge?

Perhaps I should've brought more friends with me.

Shoot the fool. Who's he to stop my dreams?

see sig :D

I love the Darwin Awards. :)

What would I do? I'd find out what I would have done to cause destruction, and then not do it.

You're taking out the garbage one night. Suddenly, right there by the dumpster, a shimmering portal opens and a man dressed in weird futuristic clothing steps out. He's armed with a lasergun. He calls you by name and says, "I've come from fifty years in the future. It's a world wracked by war and death and famine and disease. A world collapsed in bloody anarchy with no end in sight and no hope for peace. ANd it's all because of something that you are going to do in twenty years. The only hope for the human race is for you to die. Unfortunately, due to laws against interfering in history, I can't kill you myself." He hands you the lasergun. "For the sake of billions of lives, you must end your life."

What do you do?

This is like the other one, but in this case the answer is easier. I don't know this time traveler, and I have no reason to trust him. However, his lasgun should be quite useful if they try to get someone else to kill me after this attempt fails. Shoot the bastard (he would do the same to you if he could) and hope that they don't/can't send more. Plus, I've always wanted a lasgun. If I figure out how it works I'll have jumped Earth's technology base ahead 50 years in certain areas. If that doesn't change the timeline I don't know what would.

Easy.

Club him over the head with the laser gun, steal his clothes. Shoot him, then jump through the portal to a Eudaimonic (paradise is Eudaimonia, Utopia is a world that cannot exist) society where I never messed up and plunged the world into chaos. That way I save the world, get to kill someone and live in a Eudaimonic society.

I doubt you could use that portal, because unless someone in the future where you didn't mess anything up sends back a portal to that exact same time, you are stepping into the portal but then deleting the world that it connected to. Pop, you disappear from reality. ON the plus side, if the time traveller was right you just saved the world.

He calls you by name and says, "...Unfortunately, due to laws against interfering in history, I can't kill you myself." He hands you the lasergun.

Explain to me how handing a lasergun isn't interfering in history? - unless they have records that a mysterious stranger handed me a lasergun.

I think we can safely assume that the line about 'laws against interfering in history' is bunk then - if they wanted to kill me they would just send back a nail-bomb.

Take the gun, pocket it and have a long talk with the alleged traveller.

NEVER DO WHAT THE VOICES TELL YOU TO DO

and the answer to the redsox question would be "no"

Explain to me how handing a lasergun isn't interfering in history? - unless they have records that a mysterious stranger handed me a lasergun.

I think we can safely assume that the line about 'laws against interfering in history' is bunk then - if they wanted to kill me they would just send back a nail-bomb.

Take the gun, pocket it and have a long talk with the alleged traveller.

Sounds like the kind of paradox that can only be resolved through a parallel universe theory (in which case it won't help the traveller to stop you, because he'll still be trapped in his parallel universe in which everything has gone wrong... but maybe he's just a good samaritan and is trying to help out the rest of the universes in the multiverse) or if you are destined to survive but lose the lasgun at some point (maybe someone comes back in time and takes it back b/c you failed to kill yourself). Either way, you are right that it doesn't make sense that he can't kill you himself. Organic matter (the traveller) and inorganic matter (the lasgun plus all of the particles that the traveller brought with him from his time) ought to both have an adverse affect on the space-time continuum assuming that this is a one-timeline theory, and if not then both types of matter would have the same effect, which would be none (aside from interfering with a parallel universe).

I doubt you could use that portal, because unless someone in the future where you didn't mess anything up sends back a portal to that exact same time, you are stepping into the portal but then deleting the world that it connected to. Pop, you disappear from reality. ON the plus side, if the time traveller was right you just saved the world.
That's true, I hate paradoxes... But one must admit it would be cool to no longer exist in physical reality.
There is the theory of parallel universes, but that's way too complex for me to think about at 10:30, I've tried. Now my brain is fried :confused:

That's true, I hate paradoxes... But one must admit it would be cool to no longer exist in physical reality.
There is the theory of parallel universes, but that's way too complex for me to think about at 10:30, I've tried. Now my brain is fried :confused:

This is only true under the assumption that time follows a single path as opposed to many.

I'd shoot him and know to think twice before making big decisions. This is kinda like terminator...only not...

Time travel backwards is impossible, however I would choose option 3. I've always wanted to rule the world......

Actually...now that I think about it...

I'd give the gun back to him and tell him that you just saved the world so he can go back now. Obviously, in his future, he or someone else had already come back in time and handed you a pistol. Somehow the government, or a terrorist organization wound up with it and attacked, causing World War 3.

Also, like someone said, he already polluted the timeline, why wouldn't he just shoot you himself? Like anyone would kill themselves over a chance like that...

Time travel backwards is impossible, however I would choose option 3. I've always wanted to rule the world......

How is it impossible? Electricity was impossible a few hundred years ago...

It is interesting to note that so far, 95% of the people here have voted that their life is more important than the future of the world.

Interesting to say the least.

This is only true under the assumption that time follows a single path as opposed to many.
That's true. If a partially parallel universe(s) does exist and one person from that universe comes to our's to warn us of a tragedy that will happen and how to stop it, they would still have it happen in their's but not in our's. I could still get to my Eudaimonic society if the universes were run seperately by universe skipping after escaping to a universe with those kind of abilities.

Time travel is in that way theoretically possible. It's just that you couldn't change your own time, all the events would still occur in your universe, but you could alter the events of a different universe.

If you believe most laws of quantum physics and the space-time continum, then time is a constant thing and cannot be reversed. You can go forward in time, just not back.

Oh, and electricity wasn't "impossible" 100 years ago. First, the correct assessment would be 200 years, and it just wasn't harnessed yet. It clearly existed. (Lightning existed 300 years ago, didn't it?)

Edit: I'm refering to Steel Butterfly's post, but two others poped up in the time it took me to reply. Damn fast reply speeds....haha!

First, I'd panic and accidentally shoot the traveller with the Laser gun.
Then, I'd take the laser gun to some "friends" who could figure out how to make som kind of replica of it.
I would then use these replica LazerPhazer (That would be the name of the company I would establish to rpoduce these guns for me and my allies) guns to seize control of the world and force everyone to bow my whims.
However, after I accidentally kill my best friend with the original gun, I would become wracked with guilt and be unable to go on. Unfortunately, I know I would never have the guts to kill myself.
So, I would then use the time machine that LazerPhazer Industries had developed to go back and time, hand my past self the original gun and explain that the world is in ruins, that it is all my (Or should I say his. Or maybe our, whatever.) fault and that he should kill himself with that laser gun.
And you know what, that bastard will panic and shoot me.

It is interesting to note that so far, 95% of the people here have voted that their life is more important than the future of the world.

Interesting to say the least.

Hey, I still have 20 years to live to make my "mistake"! I'm going to live as long as I can! Though the problem is it doesn't get into specifics as to what you do. If I were to take over the world, I'd like that!

If you believe most laws of quantum physics and the space-time continum, then time is a constant thing and cannot be reversed. You can go forward in time, just not back.

Oh, and electricity wasn't "impossible" 100 years ago. First, the correct assessment would be 200 years, and it just wasn't harnessed yet. It clearly existed. (Lightning existed 300 years ago, didn't it?)

Edit: I'm refering to Steel Butterfly's post, but two others poped up in the time it took me to reply. Damn fast reply speeds....haha!

Well you're obviously not referring to my post because I said a few hundred, not one hundred.

...and I'm not sure if I completely believe that time is a constant. I try to keep an open mind. Science isn't a constant...it changes a lot over time. Who's to say that sometime discoveries won't be made to disprove our "theories" now?

I'd take the laser gun to some "friends" who could figure out how to make som kind of replica of it.
I would then use these replica LazerPhazer (That would be the name of the company I would establish to rpoduce these guns for me and my allies) guns to seize control of the world and force everyone to bow my whims.
However, after I accidentally kill my best friend with the original gun, I would become wracked with guilt and be unable to go on. Unfortunately, I know I would never have the guts to kill myself.
So, I would then use the time machine that LazerPhazer Industries had developed to go back and time, hand my past self the original gun and explain that the world is in ruins, that it is all my (Or should I say his. Or maybe our, whatever.) fault and that he should kill himself with that laser gun.

The implications make my brain hurt..... You go back in time to tell yourself in the past to kill yourself, however that's the reason your in the state your in. It's an infinite vicious loop with no exit.

That's why some people say that time travel would have implications far beyond what most people could ever know.

First, I'd panic and accidentally shoot the traveller with the Laser gun.
Then, I'd take the laser gun to some "friends" who could figure out how to make som kind of replica of it.
I would then use these replica LazerPhazer (That would be the name of the company I would establish to rpoduce these guns for me and my allies) guns to seize control of the world and force everyone to bow my whims.
However, after I accidentally kill my best friend with the original gun, I would become wracked with guilt and be unable to go on. Unfortunately, I know I would never have the guts to kill myself.
So, I would then use the time machine that LazerPhazer Industries had developed to go back and time, hand my past self the original gun and explain that the world is in ruins, that it is all my (Or should I say his. Or maybe our, whatever.) fault and that he should kill himself with that laser gun.
And you know what, that bastard will panic and shoot me.

But that would make a time loop. Your company would never exist if you killed yourself...

Well you're obviously not referring to my post because I said a few hundred, not one hundred.

That doesn't matter. Give me any date, and I'll tell you that lightning and electricity existed. They just wern't harnesed until about two years ago. Big difference between learning to harness a force and it not existing!

But that would make a time loop. Your company would never exist if you killed yourself...

However, you didn't kill yourself because the company was created and you sent yourself back.... As I said earlier, that's why many people feel if it were possible, it should never be used.

P.S. Sorry for the exorbant number of posts, but it changes to constantly to just keep editing an old one.

I'd quietly go back inside and call a psychiatrist. Hallucinations are not a good sign.

Bump: it fell back fast! Plus, this is a good discussion.

If you believe most laws of quantum physics and the space-time continum, then time is a constant thing and cannot be reversed. You can go forward in time, just not back.

Oh, and electricity wasn't "impossible" 100 years ago. First, the correct assessment would be 200 years, and it just wasn't harnessed yet. It clearly existed. (Lightning existed 300 years ago, didn't it?)

Edit: I'm refering to Steel Butterfly's post, but two others poped up in the time it took me to reply. Damn fast reply speeds....haha!

I have a degree in physics and I'm not entirely certain that time travel backwards is impossible. Of course, it isn't as easy as time travel into the future is.

And who says time is constant?

The implications make my brain hurt..... You go back in time to tell yourself in the past to kill yourself, however that's the reason your in the state your in. It's an infinite vicious loop with no exit.
But that would make a time loop. Your company would never exist if you killed yourself...
The current future self would keep forgetting the time when they (as the past present self) killed the past future self. So we would never realize just how screwed up our plans were.
Anyway, this would only work for someone with my knack for forgetting the important parts of life (I can tell you, off the top of my head, the exact methods required to work in binary, the mana cost for just about any spell in Sacrifice, Desecration costs 1000 mana and the THAC0 tables from 2 ed. AD&D, but I can't remember my sister's age or what year I was born in), an extreme level of ruthlessness, very little impulse control and an inability to kill slef-terminate.

It is interesting to note that so far, 95% of the people here have voted that their life is more important than the future of the world.

Interesting to say the least.

Yeah, but I only shot him cause I rationalized that it was better that way, since it would end up with me saving the world just because of timeline interference. So I suppose you could say that I halfway altruistically murdered someone, although the other half of the reason would have to be self-preservation, since I also reasoned that this time traveller ought to be able to kill me (even if he himself doesn't realize it yet).

That depends...

If hes naked, and says "I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.."


RUN!

That depends...

If hes naked, and says "I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.."


RUN!

Or help him in return for becoming Lt. Governor.

For all I know, I indirectly cause world peace, and this person has come back to stop it. I'm not going to kill myself just because of a baseless claim that I bring about the end of civilization. :rolleyes:

Easy.

Club him over the head with the laser gun, steal his clothes. Shoot him, then jump through the portal to a Eudaimonic (paradise is Eudaimonia, Utopia is a world that cannot exist) society where I never messed up and plunged the world into chaos. That way I save the world, get to kill someone and live in a Eudaimonic society.


ah, but what if you were actually destined to do something great in this world (lets just assume for the sake of argument) and the people from the future fucked up... you leaving this timeline for another one because they interfered is what causes the world to degenerate into chaos?

Wow, that'd be great!
It's like having someone from the future coming and saying, "You've acheived your purpose in life, congratulations!"
I'd hug the guy, then get the laseergun and shoot him, and then start conquering the world.
Dude, that would rock.

That would mean that everything was going according as planned. So that would only help motivate me to make it happen.

This is absurd. If you kill yourself, then the circumstances which caused the time traveller to come back in time would no longer exist, so he couldn't come back and try to get you to kill yourself, so the circumstances would exist. So you wouldn't kill yourself, and history would continue as normal, etc etc etc. A time paradox.

Also, I don't know that the fact that someone is a timetraveller makes them any more likely to tell the truth. It could be that you ushered in a new era of peace for humanity and this traveller is an evil genius trying to stop that.

If you believe most laws of quantum physics and the space-time continum, then time is a constant thing and cannot be reversed. You can go forward in time, just not back.
If you believe even one of the laws of relativity, then time is a perspective and we happen to be moving in one direction.

This is absurd. If you kill yourself, then the circumstances which caused the time traveller to come back in time would no longer exist, so he couldn't come back and try to get you to kill yourself, so the circumstances would exist. So you wouldn't kill yourself, and history would continue as normal, etc etc etc. A time paradox.

Also, I don't know that the fact that someone is a timetraveller makes them any more likely to tell the truth. It could be that you ushered in a new era of peace for humanity and this traveller is an evil genius trying to stop that.Either this or the whole of history fits together like a jigsaw, so time travel is an essential component of history, but that leads to whole new paradoxes.

I'd ask what I would do, and try to change the path. Killing someone pre-emptively just isn't right, regardless of the path.

Id do that.....

Is it not traditional in these kind of situations to use the bodies of the fallen as a rudimentary pontoon bridge?

Or indeed to take a picture and then walk AROUND said obstacle.

bump

Like the light bulb of doom darwin award story.

For those who haven't read it:
Light Bulb of Doom

2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This story is probably an urban legend, and even if it is not I am fairly sure that it is quite impossible to get any references proving it. Also none of the participants have died or otherwise removed themselves from the gene pool, so I will leave it to the Darwin to file or reject this story as seen fit. This is just an account of a terminal case of human stupidity leading to a number of accidents. Here it goes.

The place is a small regional center town in Soviet Union. The time is early 1980s. A local conference of college teachers is in progress. A few dozens of teachers came into town for the event and a few of them were situated in the local hotel. The hotel is very poor, but so are the teachers and 3 of them take a single room. Since there is not much to do in a small town at night, certain amount of alchoholic beverages is obtained from a local store and consumed.

During the conversation among the newly found friends one of the teachers (lets call him Dmitriy Petrovich) mentiones that it is a medical fact, that it is impossible to take a light bulb out of ones mouth once it was inserted there. This meets active disbelief of his two opponents who start questioning him as to what kind of light bulb he means and how come you cannot take it out, if you can put it in. Dmitriy Petrovich replies, that he is talking about a standard 100 Watt light balbs such as the one lighting their room, but lacking medical education he doesn't know the reason for not being able to remove it. Discussion heats up, and at some point one of his opponents desides that an experiment is necessary.

Mind you, that all of the teachers in the room are PhDs in various fields of exact science. Obviously not one of them is a medic. The light bulb is then removed and the most loud opponent (lets call him Vladimir) puts it into his mouth. In a few seconds it becomes clear that Dmitriy Petrovich was right, and it is quite impossible for Vladimir to remove the light balb due to peculiar clenching of jaw muscles.

After a short discussion the three friends decide to get Vladmir to a doctor. They get out of the hotel, and stop a cab. They drive to the hospital where they have to relate the story of the accident to the night nurse, who, after almost choking herself with giggles, calls the ER doctor. The doctor carefully examines Vladimir, and unexpectedly hits him with his fist in the back of the jaw. Vladimirs jaw falls open and the doctor returns the light bulb to Dmitriy Petrovich, explaining that Vladimir is not going to be able to use his mouth for a couple of hours due to the over stressed jaw muscles.

The three teachers get back into a cab and start driving home, when the third teacher starts complaining that the other two are playing him for a fool, that this is medicaly impossible for such phenomenon to exist and that he is about to prove it. He puts the light bulb into his mouth, the cab makes a U-turn and speeds back to the hospital. At the hospital, the nurse starts giggling when the three men enter the emergency room, and after hearing their new story falls of her chair laughing. After a little while she calls the surgeon, who chuckles, hits the 3rd teacher in the back of the jaw and removes the light balb.

The cab has left, so the three friends catch another one. Dmitriy Petrovich gets noto the front seat and puts his mute friends with their jaws hanging open in the back. Cab driver is mildly surprised by the unusual company of an obviously drunk giggling man and two others looking ilke village idiots, and asks about it. Dmitriy Petrovich asures teh driver that the other two are not idiots, but most educated people and the problem is their small argument about a light balb. After carefully listening to the whole story the driver asks what kind of light bulb is he talking about, and Dmitriy shows the hotel light bulb saying "this one". "Impossible" says the cab driver and in a few seconds the cab turns around and goes to the hospital.

When the nurse sees these guys the 3rd time inside 2 hours, she starts having rather serious breathing difficulties trying to laugh much harder then mother nature designed. After getting her in shape Dmitriy Petrovich makes her call the surgeon who, promptly hitting the cab driver in the jaw takes the light bulb and smashes it on the table saying that this should put an end to the story. The four men get back into the cab and drive to the hotel.

On the way they are stopped by the road patrol police unit. The policeman (militianer) is very surprized to find that the only person able to speak in a car full of people is a rather drunk man who tells him a wierd story about light balbs. "I will be right back" replies the policeman, goes back to the road side station, Dmitriy and companions whatch the ligh go off inside the station, and in a few seconds the policeman appears again. Using gestures he asks people on the back seat to move over. A metal end of a light bulb is sticking out of his mouth.

The cab goes back to the hospital. The nurse becomes hysterical with joy. After a few minutes of recuperation she goes to the cabinet of the surgeon to call him. She opens the door and falls to the floor unconscious. In the doorway appears the surgeon with his jaw hanging wide open.

Submitted on 05/19/2003


Well, I'm off to the hospital.

Well, I'm off to the hospital.

Don't tell them you know me.