GARY, Ind.—The following is an excerpt from the official court transcript of the State of Indiana v. Northern Power Solutions, regarding the ongoing power outage that has left thousands of residents in the dark for nearly two weeks.
PROSECUTION: State your name and occupation for the record, please.
WITNESS: Dr. Helene Vasquez-Thorne, Director of Forward-Looking Regret for the utility holding company.
PROSECUTION: Dr. Vasquez-Thorne, why has the power outage lasted for twelve days?
WITNESS: Well, the storm knocked out our primary grid infrastructure. We do not use traditional cables. We rely on a complex, underground network of metal wheels propelled by Siberian hamsters. The storm flooded their tunnels. The hamsters are currently on strike.
PROSECUTION: You are telling this court that a major electrical grid runs on rodents?
WITNESS: It is highly efficient when they are motivated. Unfortunately, our management team reduced their cedar shaving budget by forty percent last quarter. The hamsters unionized. They refused to run. That is why the power outage continues.
PROSECUTION: Why didn't you just transition to modern solar or wind energy during this crisis?
WITNESS: We tried to pivot to guinea pigs, but they demanded a higher pension plan. The entire energy industry operates this way. If you open any substation in America, you will just find a very large, very tired ferret. We all know this.