Energy Weapons in the Workplace

I'm not a gun person. I don't go hunting, and I never had a BB gun as a child, not that I can remember, anyway. It's possible I'm blocking out some horrible BB accident involving mass eye-putting-out, but, like I said, I don't remember.

But I've always wanted a ray gun. A laser pistol, phaser, blaster, disruptor, whatever. A hand-held weapon that spits out a concentrated beam of energy. I'll accept any kind of energy. Plasma, light, electricity...anything that's shiny and burns or vaporizes its target.

And I don't want it for the Great Power it would certainly give me over my fellow man. That would be a bonus, but I really want it as a fashion accessory. I mean, at a glance, what makes Buck Rogers Buck Rogers? You know, rather than just any other guy? Sure, he might have a jetpack and a finned helmet (both highly desirable), but what really makes the man is the ray gun. All the heroes of my childhood had ray guns. Captain Kirk, Han Solo, Starbuck, Flash Gordon, and the aforementioned Buck Rogers.

I bring this up to explain my obsession with the remote control in one of our conference rooms. It turns the ceiling mounted projector on and off, changes its video inputs and settings, basically everything you would expect such a remote to do. But it also shoots laser beams. Sure, it's supposed to be used to point out items on the projected screen during a presentation, but still. It's a laser beam.

So, obviously, whenever I'm in there, I play with it. It isn't powerful enough for my liking, in that it doesn't cut through metal or flesh, but that just means I can target more objects without fear of disintegrating them. Yesterday I trained the weapon on the ceiling, randomly targeting different tiles. Without thinking, I zapped one of the little fire extinguisher prongs, and immediately heard some kind of industrial "THUNK." The entire building was then treated to two beats of the fire alarm claxon.

Now, I don't know if my ray gun was really the cause, but that's a pretty big coincidence. I'm guessing the sprinklers didn't go off because the flash was so brief. Maybe. Like I said, I can't be sure that it was me at all. So now I'm tempted to try again, just to find out. But I won't. I'll be sitting as far away from the laser pistol as possible from now on.

I want to keep my job, after all. I'll need the money if I'm going to get that jetpack I want.