Previous episode: Lord Bockenswipe & The Army of Hamsters
Your time-travel remote zaps you back into the sitting-room of my copywriting lab.
Hayley sits on a sofa in the corner, re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo … while Steven is visiting from Upwork Tower, playing PS5 on the lab’s plasma TV.
I’m on my laptop, writing another email.
Something bugs you about it all.
You ask:
“How can you all be so chill here with so many deadly monsters right outside?”
(As if to underline your question, the outline of what looks like … a giant … crocodile? … slowly passes outside one of the windows.)
But without even looking up…
Everyone answers you in unison, in a nonchalant tone:
“The Bunker.”
“The … Bunker?”
“The Inbox Detonator Bunker,” I explain. “The repository of all my private coaching videos … the ones other copywriters have paid literally tens of thousands of dollars to get.”
“Best value copywriting training on the Internet!” adds Steven.
“Six-inch-thick reinforced concrete walls, and enough copywriting training to last you the apocalypse,” I say proudly. “If anything ever got inside this lab, that’s where we’d go. Heck, I think it might even withstand an attack from your worst nightmare, the—”
BLAM!
Before I can finish…
The doors to the room suddenly burst open…
And Tom Burns runs in, panting.
“EVERYBODY TO THE BUNKER!” he screams. “THAT ‘WORST NIGHTMARE’ HAS COME SOONER THAN WE THOUGHT! IT’S THE—”
BOOOOOM!
The entire room shudders as an enormous explosion goes off outside the lab, cutting Tom short.
You stand up abruptly. “What was THAT—”
“GET DOWN!” I scream, and crash-tackle you to the ground.
And not a second too late, because—
THWAP-THWAP-THWAP-THWAP-THWAP
The windows of the lab shatter as bullets start whizzing through the air above our heads.
“What is going ON?!?” you scream.
You look over at me … and see me grimacing.
“I knew they would eventually come for us … but not so soon!” I curse.
“WHO is coming for us?!?” you ask, totally confused.
Bullets keep whizzing through the (now-shattered) windows and slamming into the wall of my lab.
Then for a moment…
there’s a brief pause.
Nobody loses a second.
Tom grabs his gun and sprints out the door…
While Steven and Hayley dash down the adjoining hallway toward the Bunker.
I grab you by the arm, and drag you after them, shouting:
“It’s not ‘who’ is coming for us … but ‘what’! It’s the thing copywriters fear the most …”
And at that moment, we pass an open window…