“This is bullshit!” Kurt was waving his arms above his head now, walking in circles around the tiny room. “I never would have taken this job if I knew how much stress I’d be under!” I told him he needed to calm down. “Seriously, man, we’ve been here for ten minutes. All we have to do is make sure no one pushes the button.” He stopped then and turned to look at it. It was in the center of the room, a big red button about the size of my palm. It really is a beautiful color, I thought. It would fit so perfectly in my hand. I want to touch it. No, no, I didn’t want to do that. Did I? Then we were both staring. One of the fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Kurt blinked twice quickly and looked around, like he’d forgotten where he was. He rubbed his face, hard, with one hand, the other he placed on his hip. “I have to push it.” I laughed in disbelief. “Don’t joke around, man, this thing will end the world.” “You don’t know that. I don’t know that either, but I want to.” I took one long stride, separating Kurt from the button. “Well, you’re not going to.” He scoffed, “Oh yeah? Who’s going to stop me?” “There’re only two of us here,” I said, my eyes narrowing, “and I’m gonna push it first!” Oh, no, why had I said that? Suddenly I was turning and lunging toward the button with one hand reaching, fingers spread out, palm exposed and ready for button-mashing. What was happening to me? I didn’t want this! I wanted my $12.50 an hour for standing in front of a stupid button. It had some sort of control over me, over us. We had to push it. My palm came down hard, eliciting a weak “beep” from the button. I stood, frozen, for several seconds before turning to Kurt. We stared at each other until the silence was broken by a nervous giggle. I’m not sure who started it, but soon we had erupted into a full-blown laughing fit. I stood from my lunging position and removed my hand from the button, eliciting a much more forceful beep from it now. Our laughter was silenced immediately, our eyes went wide, and then