Keep It Running

How to use your five-pack of MyCharge 4500mAh 12W Portable Chargers

1. Charge your MyCharge 4500mAh 12W Portable Chargers at the start of the week, so you have one ready to go for each workday.

2. Put one in your bag, along with the included cable, and stash the other four away.

3. Rest assured that you have enough power to keep your phone alive while you’re away from an outlet. Sure, 4500mAh won’t fully recharge most devices, but it just might keep you out of the red on a long commute!

4. Use it one day on your bus ride home when you get the low battery warning.

5. Enjoy the trip, playing a new game called Gem Hunter. You don’t remember downloading it, but wow, is it fun!

6. Get really into it. Like, really really into it.

7. Look up.

8. See the darkened night sky and realize you’ve long since missed your stop.

9. Study the passing landscape (what you can see of it in the dark, at least) and recognize nothing.

10. Proceed to the front of the bus.

11. Inform your bus driver that there’s been a mistake and ask them how you might get home.

12. Experience a mild sense of disquiet when the bus driver merely chuckles and says, “Don’t worry. You’ll get to where you’re needed.”

13. When the bus enters a large hangar of sorts, ask if this is the bus depot.

14. Feel an even stronger sense of disquiet when the bus driver says, “It is certainly a depot where buses converge to deal with important matters.”

15. See that the interior is filled entirely with buses aside from a narrow passageway into an open circle, where other drivers have assembled. They part ways for you. None of them says a word. They are all silent.

16. Step out of the bus in a daze when your driver says, “Your stop,” and opens the door.

17. Notice that the assembled bus drivers look hungry.

18. Listen to the man who steps forward, identifying himself as only ‘The Lead Driver.’ He tells you that this is the natural way of things. Your sacrifice will allow them to go on driving. “You see,” he says, “this is how we’re able to deal with so many difficult passengers. By choosing one to be our banquet.”

19. Ask why you.

20. Feel sick to your stomach when the Lead Driver explains that it is totally random. They’ve built a system that works via an undetectable wi-fi, planting a game called ‘Gem Hunter’ on an arbitrary device. It is so addictive that the passenger will not be able to stop playing until it is too late.

21. Curse your MyCharge 4500mAh 12W Portable Charger. If you hadn’t had it, your phone would’ve died, freeing you from all this.

22. Resign yourself and be led to a boiling cauldron you hadn’t noticed before.

23. Snap out of it when one of the bus drivers says, “How did this bird get in here?” The other bus drivers look around. “What bird?” one asks. “This one!” And with a burst of smoke, the initial bus driver releases a white dove.

24. Stand there a moment in awe along with everyone else until the bus driver who did the trick locks eyes with you and mouths, ‘run.’

25. Slip out while the other bus drivers are distracted by a series of illusions, each one more impressive than the last.

26. Wander along the desolate road for almost two hours, unsure of where you are, until finally a car pulls up next to you.

27. See the bus driver who did the magic tricks sitting behind the wheel.

28. Get in the car.

29. Listen as they explain their story. They were born into this life. Their parents had been bus drivers, and each set of their grandparents as well. They’d always thought this was the way it had to be, but they’d begun to feel guilty. Furthermore, they never wanted to drive a bus. They wanted to be a magician.

30. Flee with the bus driver to Mackinac Island, where there are not only no buses, but no cars at all.

31. Run a fudge shop together that has a back room for weekend magic shows.

32. Experience week after week of indescribable joy punctuated occasionally by thoughts of fear so sharp they hurt: What if, one day, the buses find you?

Steps 4 through 32 are optional.