DALLAS — A handyman called to troubleshoot a suspected case of faulty wiring at a suburban home received a different kind of shock this weekend after he unscrewed an electrical panel, only to come face-to-face with a perplexing maze of glass tubes and a blue liquid steadily advancing, sources report.
“I’ve seen an awful lot— Hell, before this I thought I’d seen everything,” said Ken Veline, a handyman operating in Wilshire Heights, who thought he was responding to a routine call. “Fuses with crazy high amperage, wires with their insulation melted clean off, mice nesting in junction boxes. I’ve seen a gaming PC filled with beans. BEANS. But nothing like this.”
“See these glass tubes made up of straight and elbow pieces? Yeah, none of that’s supposed to be there. That’s supposed to be wires. You know, standard circuitry you’d see in a house. And what’s the glowing blue liquid slowly progressing toward a fixed end point? It’s almost like that’s supposed to be what’s powering the lights in here. Almost like a visual representation of electricity, you know? But that’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.”
“And what in Christ’s name are these?” continued Veline, pointing angrily at several tubes of wildly different shapes and widths, located on the fringes of the 6-by-6 tile square. “This tube piece is super narrow, see, like it’s designed to accelerate the liquid. I guess that makes sense, taken as a whole. But look at this! This tube is a dense spiral shape, which slows down the liquid. Who would build that? Why would you intentionally add slowdown to the system? And this one, why is this one alarmed? There’s a goddamn bonafide bell in here. If the glowing blue liquid reaches it— oh, oh shit, it’s almost there, can I—? HOLY SHIT. And the pieces move!”
The homeowner, 34 year-old Elizabeth Witker, said she’d made no modifications to the house or its curious electrical panels since moving in two years ago.
“At first I didn’t think it was anything unusual,” said Witker. “I asked the handyman, is it really that different from the stuff you usually see? He said yes, very different. Honestly, I felt kind of embarrassed having to explain to him how to do his job. It was like teaching my kids how to flip the breaker when the power went out, or how to fish the combination for the microwave out of the toilet with a shoelace and a fishhook. It’s simple: as soon as you unscrew the panel, the tasty-looking liquid will start advancing through the pipe. Before it runs out of pipe or hits an overload tile, you have to flip over the hidden pipe pieces, then move and rotate them around to form a path to the end. My two year-old can do it.”
“Not only that, he kept asking what the blue liquid was. The blue liquid is not important. What is important is that it flows steadily through the tube to remind you to hurry up and not take life too seriously, otherwise it passes you by! It also powers every single thing in our house, much like electricity, except easier to visualize.”
When asked to comment on the unique tube systems found in Witker’s house, the electric company behind the installation staunchly defended their designs.
“This is what every system on the market looks like,” spoke a representative. “Tubes. Translucent tubes with liquid slowly advancing through them, built incomplete so many pieces must be moved around to make it work at all. It may not be intuitive, yes, but we didn’t invent it, and we aren’t about to go around changing it. If you’re experiencing issues, please contact customer services and we’ll trade in your current system for something more to your liking. Our sliding puzzles are currently on sale.”
At press time, Witker’s lights had reportedly been fixed, and she was last seen calling a locksmith to open the front door after accidentally leaving her three colored medallions inside, along with the necessary hand crank.
