Congratulations on Saving Your Life Partner!

You’ll arrive at the park at 12:02 AM, where the terrorists will be standing around, looking chagrined. Carrie will be there too, suspended above the shark tank by some industrial strength nylon rope. When they see your Subaru blazing a path through the park, cresting hills with wild abandon and tearing up earth as you brake, they’ll look kind of relieved. That is, before you step out, gun in hand.

They’ll want to start talking.

“You will pay for-“ the lead terrorist (the one in a red head wrap, obviously) will begin, but he’ll be cut short when your nine millimeter round catches him in the throat, tearing out most of the valves and pipes that people take for granted in there. His friends will scatter, leaving Carrie bound and gagged, dangling above the shark tank. She’ll be mumbling and watching you as you stride towards the terrorists, gun in hand, firing round after round into them as they dive for cover.

You won’t take it easy or slow on them, and you won’t be shooting to wound the way you normally do. They made this personal when they brought Carrie into it, and you’ll want to make an example of them. You’ll want to show anyone who’s watching what happens when they try to bring your work back to your home.

Bullets will rain on them, catching men in the head and torso as they cower behind benches, struggling to chamber a round in AK-47s that seemed so easy to use a few hours earlier when they weren’t being shot at. You won’t miss with a single round, leveraging kill shot after kill shot in rapid succession. A dozen men will be scattered across the fields of the park when you stop shooting, dead or dying. Carrie will be watching you with wide eyes, her mouth straining against her gag. She’ll fall silent after the chaos subsides, content to stare at you as you stride up to the lead terrorist’s body and remove the machete from his belt.

He’ll still be alive when you take it, his breath sputtering with blood each time he exhales. His eyes will be wide and he’ll reach towards you as you step away from him, begging you to end it, but you won’t even look at him. You’ll just stride right past him, up to the shark tank, and jump in.

You’ll work with a quiet precision in the tank, slipping the machete around the shark’s teeth rather than into any particular part of them. Each motion will be clean, precise and instinctive. Carrie will catch the whole thing from her perch above you. Later on she’ll retell the story like she was watching you dance. She won’t mention the water stained red, the brain matter spilling out of the shark’s skulls. She won’t mention the stench of their bodies as they die. But she will mention when you threw the machete at the rope over her head like a boomerang, severing the rope and dropping her into your waiting arms.

She’ll tell it with a smile, just before she gets to the part where you took out her gag and asked her “Miss me?” before giving her the biggest kiss of either of your lives.

Congratulations on Saving Your Life Partner!

Congratulations on Hotwiring Your Own Subaru!

Most people will go their whole lives without having to hotwire a car. Most people avoid danger at all costs, mitigate risks and generally don’t draw the ire of international terrorists who concoct elaborate revenge schemes every time one of their ill-founded plans goes awry. But you’re a super sexy secret agent who happens to be incredibly gay and madly in love with her partner and today, in a perfect storm of shittiness, your partner is going to be kidnapped by terrorists and you’re going to lose your keys.

That means when the cell phone call comes in at 11:30 PM that you should show up at a public park by midnight or the love of your life will be lowered in a shark tank that the terrorists brought to the park at great personal expense, you’re not going to be able to call AAA and wait for them to show up. Hell, you won’t even have time to call the office and ask them to send a bunch of snipers down to the park the way you normally would. You’ll just have enough time to break into your car and hotwire it.

It’ll start with a coat hanger. You’ll twist it up and ram it between the rubber buffer outside the window and the window itself, feeling for the locking mechanism on the outside of the door. The Subaru Forester isn’t exactly a tough cookie to crack, though, so this won’t take more than a few seconds.

Once the door lock is off and you’re behind the driver’s seat, that’s when it’ll get tough. You won’t have enough bars on your i-phone to pull down an electrical diagram for your car. That means you’ll have to wing it.

You’ll have your wire strippers with you, rusted and well-loved but no worse for wear, and with them in hand you’ll slice through plastic and slip the wiring out from under the dash, one cluster of wires in each hand. You’ll strip them down a quarter inch each and begin twining them together one by one. You’ll have only the vaguest idea of what you’re doing, since most spy training consists of watching old movies about the CIA (and two of the four Die Hard films) but you won’t be discouraged. Each splinter of copper in your skin, each tiny shock from a mistake, will be like a badge of honor for you.

And after ten minutes of despair and trial and error, pairing each cluster of ignition wires together in every possible combination, you’ll finally hit on one that works. The engine will sputter as you touch the wires together, then roar as you twist and bind them.

“Fuck you, Google,” you’ll mumble at your worthless phone as you pull your car into reverse and back out of your driveway, racing the night towards the woman you love.

Congratulations on Hotwiring Your Own Subaru!