PEORIA, IL — America is already beginning to heal after a massive carbon monoxide leak that has been affecting the country since 2001 has finally been resolved.
One man is singlehandedly responsible for recognizing this problem and solving it: Peoria resident Doug Bogatzki, a meter reader with the Illinois Commerce Commission.
“It all started with that eclipse we had,” Bogatzki said. “I was talking to a buddy of mine, and he started going off about how the eclipse lined up with some earthquake in New York and the Statue of Liberty getting struck by lightning. He said it was all in the Book of Revelation and the end times were upon us.”
That comment, Bogatzki said, was “the dumbest thing I’d ever heard in my life.”
“But it got me to thinking,” he said. “I remember when my cousin tried to heat up his house one winter by piping his truck exhaust through his bedroom window. He called me up that night and said there was a message from the Virgin Mary in his SpaghettiOs — it said ‘ooooooo.’ Well, he had carbon monoxide poisoning, of course. I thought maybe the same thing was happening to my friend who was all worked up about the eclipse.”
Bogatzki picked up a carbon monoxide detector and began driving around the city, trying to see if he could find a source for the theoretical leak. Sure enough, the signal led him to an abandoned home in East Peoria.
“Turns out, this place had an old oil furnace in the basement that had been running continuously since September of 2001,” Bogatzki said.
Dr. Bill Metzger, a biology professor at the University of Illinois, said that the damaged furnace had produced enough carbon monoxide to give most Americans a mild to severe case of CO poisoning.
“An oil furnace functioning normally produces only trace amounts of carbon monoxide,” Metzger said. “This one was producing about three billion tons per day every day since the fall of 2001.”
“It was really, REALLY broken,” he added.
In addition to physical symptoms, Metzger said, carbon monoxide poisoning can cause confusion, memory loss, and personality changes.
“Obviously, this explains a lot,” he said, gesturing broadly.
Upon finding the leak, Bogatzki killed power to the furnace, causing carbon monoxide levels across America to begin dropping immediately. Within just a few days, massive changes had already taken place. COVID vaccinations increased tenfold, solar panel manufacturers began rapidly selling through their stock, and instances of hate crimes dropped to the lowest levels ever recorded.
“I was writing up a new blog post about the Antarctica ice wall,” said Norman Higgins, President of the Flat Earth Society. “Suddenly, it hit me; what the hell am I doing? I mean, I’ve SEEN photos of the Earth taken from outer space. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was almost as if I’d been breathing some sort of magic gas that made me a credulous idiot.”
Meanwhile, Info Wars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones announced he was abandoning his long-running program in favor of operating a goat farm.
“A man holds a baby goat and he just realizes, ‘Perhaps I’ve been overthinking things,’” Jones said.
With the national carbon monoxide leak resolved, it’s unclear as of yet what impact it will have on national politics. However, Presidential hopeful Donald Trump recently offered a public speech congratulating Bogatzki for his actions.
“I believe it was Jacques Coeur who said, ‘À vaillant coeur rien d’impossible,’ which translates to ‘For a valiant heart, nothing is impossible,” Trump said to a crowd of hushed, respectful onlookers at a recent rally. “Mr. Bogatzki represents the apotheosis of the American ideal, someone who acts selflessly for the benefit of others and asks nothing in return. Though I am deep in my seventh decade, I consider myself a lifelong student, and I will endeavor to learn from Mr. Bogatzki’s example.”
“Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis,” Trump added, prompting his rally attendees to nod knowingly.
