Everyone Died+My iPhone Stopped Working: An Oral History of The Robot Apocalypse

The Strongest Fly

Kenny Lee, Bartender

Things did not end well at the luxury bunker.

You know that book, Lord of the Flies?

Well, I don't.

Ms. Dakelman assigned it to us in tenth grade, but I didn't read it. And she totally busted me on it, too. "Kenny, what do you think is the theme of Lord of the Flies?" From the way she asked the question, it was pretty obvious that she knew I had no idea. So instead of trying bullshit my way out of it, I answered in a deep, dramatic voice.

"Only the strongest fly can be Lord of the Flies!"

Huge laugh from the class. Totally worth the F. Which, let's be honest, I was going to get no matter what. Because I sure as hell wasn't going to waste my teenage years fucking reading.

Anyway, people who did read the book tell me it was like that.

It all started with chocolate. Specifically, those little chocolate squares that the Housekeeping put on peoples' pillows every night at turndown. Why that's even a thing, I don't know. But one day, out of the blue, Housekeeping announced that they would no longer be giving out regular chocolate anymore; instead, they'd be giving out white chocolate.

Dun dun duuuunnnnnn!

No, really. Dun dun dun. A lot of people were seriously pissed off. Because, according to the self-declared experts on chocolate in our midst (and believe me, we had self-declared experts on pretty much everything in our midst) — white chocolate isn't actually chocolate at all!

You should have heard everybody bitching and moaning.

"What is this: a luxury bunker or Treblinka?"

"They shouldn't call it white chocolate! They should call it white lie!"

"Jesus Christ! Why not just take a shit on my pillow?"

Jean Stein, the head of Housekeeping, tried to calm everybody down. She explained that due to a pre-Apocalypse requisition error, not enough chocolate was ordered, and they had simply run out. Then she pointed out that white chocolate's main ingredient is cocoa butter, which comes from the cocoa bean, so it's pretty much the same thing.

Right?

Fuck to the no! That just made everybody even madder!

"Quit trying to put milk chocolate lipstick on a white chocolate pig!"

"The road to hell is paved with cocoa butter!"

"That's like saying that Eminem is the same thing as a Chrysler Sebring because they both come from Detroit!"

That last one was my favorite because it made everybody shut up for a few seconds while they tried to make sense out of the analogy. Cocoa bean is to Detroit as Chocolate is to Eminem. Or something.

Like I said, I failed English.

But yeah, the whole thing was nuts. In fairness, though, they were going kind of stir-crazy. They'd been there for who-knows-how-many months, out of touch with the world, bored, restless and sick of each other. They were especially sick of that "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" song that DJ Epiq-1 kept playing, even though the irony had worn pretty fucking thin.

So I guess it wasn't that surprising that they overreacted.

Ultimately, though, there was nothing they could do. If they're out of chocolate, they're out of chocolate. The whole thing would have blown over, but then a rumor started going around and it swept through our little underground community faster than HPV.