Welcome! You are on earth, in the year of 3098! Nice vacation choice—water, rolling green hills, cool modern cities, even air—you can take that space helmet off. What a beautiful planet!

Unfortunately, we have a problem. Crazy robots have figured out how to alter climate change into a physical manifestation. They are multiplying them by the thousands in their secret lair and soon will unleash them on the earth, spreading snowstorms of -60 degrees (Fahrenheit) in Mexico and +1678 degrees (also Fahrenheit) in Antarctica. Maybe not so great for the atmosphere.

With the doomsday clock counting down to one day, we zoom in on our hero, JOE ASSBURY. He is currently sitting in his living room.

Hello, Joe? That’s your cue to jump up, turn off that dumb wheel of fortune show, and show your muscles in a heroic pose!

No?

Sigh…

Anyway, Joe is sixteen. He is like, Albert Einstein, if Einstein struggled with procrastination and tv binge watching. He could solve the whole problem thing if he wasn’t so lazy. Shoulda been named tv-lover, if he didn’t have a girlfriend already.

In fact, Shelly is probably why he moves at all. She gets him off that couch and doing stuff. And sometimes he has fun, besides the kissing.

Anyhow, it’s 24 hours to the end of the world, and Shelly barges in to get her genius couch potato. She knows that he can figure it out if he tears himself away from that tv.

“Ok,” she announces. “You are going to solve this problem, and save the world.”

He blinks. “And what if I don’t?”

“Then we all die.”

He considers this for a moment. “Will there be tv in death?”

She thinks. “Uh… I don’t know.”

“Then no.”

“Please?” she begs. “Save the world and I’ll kiss you!”

“Maybe next week.”

“If you do it now I’ll take you to Burger King!”

He shakes his head.

“And I’ll pay for it!”

He considers. Nods slowly. “Sold.”

She sighs with relief. “Good. Let’s get started.”

“Sure. Soon.” He looks at her with those cute blue eyes. “But…can I finish my show first?”

She sighs. It’s hard to say no when he gets like that. “Sure.”

She hands him the remote. “Can’t believe I’m bribing my boyfriend to save the world.”

———————

An hour later, Shelly snatched the remote out of Joe’s hand.

“Hey!” he protested.

She looked at him, brown eyes blazing, hands on her hips. “23 hours, Joe. Now move your potato of a butt and tell me how to save the world.”

He looked at her in confusion. “What’s the situation, again?”

She sighed. “These robots went crazy and figured out how to make physical manifestations of climate change. They took them out of the air, leaving the atmosphere perfect, but they are planning to release them as big bozos to mess up the climate so much that the planet’s population will be destroyed.”

He thought about it, then snapped his fingers. “Easy. Disable the robots, find out how they made the ‘big bozos’. Reverse the process and destroy it. Add some other calculations and I could make it vanish completely. But where is this base located?”

Shelly’s eyes glinted. “No one else would know this, but the location is so obvious. We need to get to Antarctica.”

Grinning, Joe hopped of the couch. “Lemme change. I’ll meet you outside. We’ve got some stuff to do.”

Shelly smiled. “And then—Burger King. Kisses.”

“Not necessarily in that order.”

She playfully whacked him. “Are you asking for a kiss right away?”

He grinned. “Sure.”

She kissed him. “It’s agreed. When you save the world, I will kiss you.”

A few minutes later, they were out the door to Antarctica—just two normal teens on a date.