16-Pack: Popular Mechanics Battery Converter Shells + Bonus Screen Shine
- You don’t need D and C batteries all that often, but it sure does suck when you do need one and all you have AAs
- This solves that problem!
- Also comes with a spray and cloth for cleaning your phone (which is gross)
- Their favorite store: Columbia House, because of all the CDs (We’re sorry, this is terrible)
With Our Power Combined
Maude hated these visits to the lab. But it was time to check the progress of their latest innovation, and she was the member of the executive team who’d drawn the short straw, in a manner of speaking. So she found herself in the sprawling, dim basement room, careful not to touch anything, fearful not just of breaking the various pieces of equipment all around her but also that one might break her.
“Hello?” she called.
“Just a minute,” came a voice from somewhere in the clutter. When Doctor Davis stepped out from behind a shelf, he looked more disheveled than usual. Stains and burn marks bloomed across his lab coat, a field of thick gray stubble coated his face, his glasses sat crooked upon his nose, and he walked with a limp.
“You’re here to check in on the batteries, I presume,” said the old man. “Please, follow me.”
Maude accompanied the doctor to a far corner of the lab, where he showed her a series of strange, mechanical boxes. He pointed to the first one.
“This is the analysis chamber.” He opened the lid and deposited a C battery. “In just a few seconds, it analyzes everything about the battery. Not just its output, but also its deepest fears and most profoundly embarrassing qualities. We then take the battery here, to the berating vortex.”
Doctor Davis removed the battery from the first box and inserted it into the next.
“Based on what we learned from the analysis chamber, the berating vortex, via electrical waves, mocks and yells at the battery, playing upon its unique psyche. The result is a battery that feels small. So that, when we deposit it into the self-realizing initiator–” Doctor Davis moved the battery into the final box, which immediately made a whirring noise–“it shrinks.”
Doctor Davis opened the box and removed a AA battery. “Now, of course, we only put this battery in the berating vortex for a minute, so it only shrank from a C to a AA. But with time we can shrink it even further. There are, however, some complications. For example, I left a car battery in there long enough to shrink it down to a watch battery, but when I put it into my watch, the excess power sent the second hand shooting through the glass into the lab, where it ricocheted several times before, eventually, depositing itself in my calf with a downright surprising amount of force. Hence, the limp. But I’m sure I’ll be able to work out the kinks with time.”
“Okay, so, while this is all very impressive,” Maude said, “I don’t think it’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
“You wanted something to use large batteries in place of small batteries,” Doctor Davis said.
“No, we wanted the opposite, actually,” Maude replied.
“Nonsense!” Doctor Davis stepped to his desktop computer. “Look, I have the email right here it says… oh… huh… I guess you’re right.”
“You know,” Maude said, “because people generally have more AA batteries than Cs and Ds.”
“Yes,” Doctor Davis said, a note of defeat in his voice. “That makes more sense. I’ll get on that. Build a sort of case or something.”
“Perfect,” Maude said. “We’ll check back in a month!”