The Story of Ed's Torch from VODT
After thinking about it, I decided to rescue some improv stories I wrote as comical posts in other threads. I made a few changes, but here is the first one.
The following story was told to me by this Best Buy Salesperson who was pushing me to purchase their Black Tie Extended Warranty the day I bought my plasma TV. I was resisting him and told him that it doesn’t make sense to buy extended warranty on TV’s because they last a long time. Usually one replaces them only when new models or new technology replaces them. They rarely break down. He disagreed vehemently, and said he would tell me a story to illustrate his point. I think he knew (I don’t know how) that I am a Narnia fan but this is what he told me:
Story of Torch, Version 1.0
"The Torch that King Edmund found in Narnia when he returned in VODT is the replacement he got because he DID buy extended warranty when he got the first one," the salesman said.
(Pleeeeeeezzeeee look from me here).
"No seriously! Let me tell you, let me tell you.
I heard that the original torch Edmund left in Narnia was found by a couple of black dwarf brothers whose names were Trippletaunter and Slink.
Now, these were not ordinary black dwarfs. These guys were actually well... sort of self-taught engineers and master craftsmen who owned an underground forge where they made all kinds of home appliances and stuff. They sold their products at their local home improvement warehouse called The Castle Depot. In order to produce quality products, they provided employment to the most skilled of Narnian creatures. That is, until the local union took over and forced them to hire unskilled workers and pay them exorbitant salaries and retirement benefits for 8 daily hours of work with a couple of lunches and several breaks in between. This kind of arrangement pushed the small forge to the edge of bankruptcy so the dwarf brothers knew that they needed a good project in order to stay afloat financially, and they needed it fast.
To get back to the story of the torch, it goes that it was first found in some bushes by two lowly Telmarine privates. The privates, being humans and all, could not make heads and tails of the contraption when they found it for two reasons: The batteries were dead, and they were too chicken to press the obvious switch. The short conversation of the two soldiers who found it goes something like this:
"Whatchee found there Leroy?"
"Iono know, Bobby Joe, but it's shinny."
"What's it do?"
"How should I know, Bobby Joe! Do I look like a professur to ya?"
"Ow! Why ye smack me in the head with that thing for?"
"I want to see if it's as hard as it looks. But no, look, yer stupid head bent it. It's no good no more."
"Just toss it will ya? Let's go see what this new King Caspian wants, maybe there's free corn dogs."
"Ok, but I'm not getting near that leyon, aright?"
And so Leroy and Bobby Joe, not the brightest light bulbs in the Telmarine Army as you can see, tossed the torch back into the bushes just moments before Trippletaunter and Slink walked by. The dwarfs, having always a keen eye for shinny things, found it and took it back to their forge where they, for several weeks, made innumerable attempts to reverse-engineer the darn thing. They knew that this could be the sort of project that could rescue them so they tried to convert the torch into many useful things. Needless to say, they didn't succeed. However, their attempts were not a total failure.
The dwarfs did not get the torch to work again or made a useful home appliance out of it, but they succeeded in creating a little contraption that would take them a few days into the future, and a few days into the past. They called this contraption "The Escape From Today Shinny Thingy" otherwise known to most contemporary humans as a time machine. The silly dwarfs of course had this in theory only. They still needed to test "Shinny Thingy."
Test day arrived after many delays and calculations. But here is where a new problem arose. You see, Trippletaunter wanted to go to the future and Slink to the past, and they had a hard time agreeing where to go first. A few fistfights erupted due to this disagreement which caused even more delays. Finally, after many bruises and black eyes, they decided to put an extra button and label it "BOTH." They figured that this would enable them to go to the two time frames at the same time (this of course was the idea of another, not so bright, human technician that the union had forced them to employ at their forge).
Anyway, to make a very long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, story short, they tested the thing by pressing the BOTH button together.
POOF!!
They disappeared in a flash!
As soon as they were gone, the aforementioned human technician looked on his desk and there, for everyone to see, was the button labeled "RETURN", which of course the crazy employees had forgotten to install into Shinny Thingy because they were all out on their 4th break, per union rules.
After waiting for several weeks and eating all the supplies stored at the forge, all the hungry employees of Trippletaunter and Slink decided it was time to do something drastic: go to Cair Paravel and see if there were any more free Corn Dogs!"
“So as you can see," finished the Best Buy guy, "this Torch that Ed got from Caspian in the new movie is a replacement that was sent to him. So it does make sense to get extended warranty in many cases. Sign here and here.”
Me: "Ok."
Stay tuned for the story of why Peter's sword glows blue, coming up soon.
I shall greatly anticipate more.