The Turd: An American Journey, Chapter 11 – Xperience Monthly – by Liam Sweeny.
Lysette pulled back their curtains, Navy blackout, to get a peek at the crowd, which had neither grown nor shrunk since they showed up. Cops didn’t want any part of it, told them to call 911 if it got feisty, their words. Well, they weren’t feisty, not much. They let Ernest and Lysette go to Funding Angels without much bother, a random “Keep it!” that was about it. Another pain in Ernest’s ass.
“Why won’t they just go home?”
“This is an unearned error, Ernie,” Lysette said. “All you have to do is go to the hospital, sucker that thing out.”
“And then what? Pay off a hospital bill for the rest of my life? It’ll come out on its own, eventually.”
“Ernest, you’ve been eating three squares a day for the past month and ya ain’t shit. The doctors are probably the only ones who can explain that. And all these people out there can get us funding for the surgery, and all you have to do is agree not to just flush it away. What’s so damn hard about that?”
Ernest joined Lysette at the window, which elicited a cheer from the crowd. He
backed off and massaged the stubble on his chin.
“It’s mine, you know?” He said. “It’s mine to keep, mine to flush. Look, I know how rare this is. I don’t even know what’s going to come out, but it’ll be mine. My name in the Guinness Book. My ceremonial flush. And I can decide who sees it, which really just means you, maybe Ed from the garage. I don’t know but it makes me special.”
“Ernie, you’re my right hand. If any of these inventions takes off, it’s your success too. At least that’s what I always thought.”
“It is, babe, it’s just… that success is yours and it should be yours. You’re a genius.
I’m just a low-rent tinkerer.”
Lysette put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re a luxury condo rent tinkerer,” she said.
Lysette went upstairs to work on the waste converter, what she took to calling her poop-to-food machine. Ernest favored PooMatic, but Lysette was going after respectable cash. Ernest gathered the trash and took it outside, having to cross the protestors and waiting, hoping one of them wanted to get feisty. But most of them had shit on the grass and were playing with it like circus slime.
He got into a call on his cellphone. Dave’s Garage.
“Hey Dave,” Ernest said. “What’s going on?”
“This isn’t Dave,” the voice on the other end said. “I’m sorry we had to spoof his number, but we need to talk to you.”
“You got a lot of nerve,” Ernest said. “I should call the police. Who are you?”
“My name is… alright, It’s Jasen. Jasen Nancy. I used to work for VidYou. I’m a hacker and they fired me. Sort of. Look, we need your help.”
“Need help with what, selling looney bin passes? Pass.” He hit the End Call
button and went back in the house. It rang again. He looked at the Call ID, which said “Funding Angel.” Ernest picked up.
“Look, whoever this is, I really am going to call the police. Or not answer the phone, whichever’s easier.”
“Ernest, this whole country being fascinated with shit, it must’ve sucked for you, probably still does. But it’s really sucked for the economy, and they’re going to tear social media down. All of it.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Ernest said.
“Hundreds of millions of people will lose everything they’ve built on social media,” Jasen said. “Pictures, videos, messages… and anyone who died, their profile will get wiped out forever.”
Ernest sighed. “So what is it you think I can do?”
“Can you meet us?” Jasen said. “You pick the place. We’ll show up. We have ideas, but you and your wife are pretty much geniuses, so maybe four heads are better than two.”
Ernest spent his half hour on the toilet scrolling through VidYou, which he’d given up two weeks ago when shit culture started. Now it was in full bloom. The ads were hit and miss; custom designed toilet paper, laxatives, toilet snakes, poop knives, and the mason jars that had become representative of the movement. It was all shit. Everything, every message, every picture and video had a shit angle. A splatter of your poo could be pictured as a filter on your profile picture. Every cowboy sang about coming home to a long lost favorite toilet, or going in the woods alone. Literature was fading, as there weren’t enough books with compelling bathroom scenes.
Lysette was easier to convince about Jasen and the meetup than Ernest thought,
she being the more sensible person. But she may have just been tired of the protesters. Either way, they were out the door, triple locked, before ten in the morning. They drove to Morris Bay, a supply store. He’d agreed to meet them in the parking lot, and they didn’t disappoint, having apparently been parked and looking for them before they arrived. A skinny kid in a flat billed baseball cap got out of the car, followed by a short, squat Asian girl.
“Ernest,” Jasen said, his hand out. “Jasen. And this is Ophelia.”
Ernest and Lysette shook Jasen’s hand and waved to Ophelia, who offered no hand.
“So how exactly am I going to save the internet?”
Jasen bit his knuckles. “We are still working that out. What we know is that you two are banging in rank right now. A small group, but it’s growing. This whole shit thing just happened. It was one guy who hit on a nerve in American culture, and it grew like wildfire. No more politics, no more religion, no more arguing and fighting, just shit, shit, and more shit. Peace in shit.”
“Put it like that,” Ernest said. “It doesn’t sound half bad.”
“Well, the people who make off from division also have their hand on that switch,” Jasen said. “Trust me when I say that life without social media, even a purge, will hurt hundreds of millions of people. It’ll kill some people.”
“Okay, so what do we do?”
“We wean people off this and let their attention go elsewhere,” Ophelia said.
“Your story is perfect for that.”
“We are trying to find an algorithm that can help spread the word,” Ophelia said.
“But we’re running out of time.”
***
Jasen brought the fixins to Ernest’s toilet, a pocket of plastic wrap pinned by the seat to capture the soon-to-be flour. He shouldn’t have been so eager to imbibe; Ophelia was content to just sit back and watch. Not that she wanted to watch, just that she didn’t want to have to be out with the protestors.
The protesters had not died down. They were blocking the way out, and the cops had finally shown up; well, their cars did. Jasen tried to order them a turkey dinner by calling the precinct, but the cops there had no more interest in catering than the cops in the car had in taking pressure off their asses. So they sat surrounded, and should there be a fire, he was sure they’d warm their hands to it.
“How long have they been out there?” Jasen said.
Ernest reached for the maple syrup. “Since I went on Lysette’s Subscription service. Don’t know how so many people found out so quickly. I didn’t think that many people watched it.”
“Hey.”
“Sorry, babe, but even you thought nobody was watching it.”
Lysette cut herself a piece of her flapjack with a butter knife. “I never said no one watched. I said all the guys watching wanted to see my tits. I have a couple of thousand viewers of the free package.”
“You have a free package?” Jasen said. “You’re talking about SubscribeMe, right?”
“Yup. And you can have a free package.”
“Yeah, but why?” Jasen said with his mouth open. “I mean, you’re building
machines that turn poop into pumpernickel. Why would you give anything like that away?”
“You mean aside from altruism?”
“Yeah, aside from that.”
“I don’t know,” Lysette said. “Figure I’d give people a taste.”
Jasen aimed the tines of his fork at his pile of flapjacks. “Give them a taste of this.
It’s delicious.”
And it was. It had notes of nuts and berries, and caramel, which made sense because he’d eaten nuts and berries and caramel in the past couple of days. It had the heft of burger meat, which for some reason didn’t disturb the bouquet. Smooth – absolutely smooth, no lumps. And yes, a slight finish of pumpernickel.
“I can’t believe you’re eating that,” Ophelia said. She looked at Ernest chowing down. “I really can’t believe you’re eating this. Or anything at all.”
“Well, no offense taken. Truth is I can’t believe I can still eat neither.”
“Where does it even go?”
“Shangri-La,” Ernest said. “Fuck, I don’t know.”
Jasen wiped his mouth. “Man, if all that food is just in there, it must be as heavy as a brick of gold. How can you not have problems walking?”
“Strong legs, I guess.” He looked at his wife. “You know honestly I’m just a curiosity. Lysette just invented a way to help solve hunger. She just doubled the food supply. And they’re out there with signs because I won’t sell an old poo. She should be getting celebrated right now, and the Technology Review heard about the device and they want to know about the mechanic that built the casing.”
Lysette kept silent. Jasen could see hurt and shame on her face.
“Lysette, if we succeed, things should go back to normal, and this device will take
off.”
“Or when Ernest does his poo,” she said.
“In time, honey,” he said. “In time.” He got up from the table, gripping it as he gripped his midsection, grunting as he sunk slowly to the ground.
“Oh my God, baby,” Lysette said, flying off her seat to attend to her fallen husband.
“We gotta get you to the hospital,” Lysette said. “This ends today. Guys, help me with him.”
“Maybe we should go,” Ernest said. “This is the worst it’s been.”
“So it’s been hurting?” Lysette said. “You should’ve told me, Ernie.”
Ernest groaned. “Let’s just get there before I lose my will.”
They moved him to the door. Jasen realized that if Ernest passed his poo, they’d have less to work with. Lysette’s machine would still be in play, but it would take longer.
Longer was something they didn’t have.
They got out the front door to the protesters, who started to crowd them. Jasen put his arm out to keep them at bay, to no success.
“You’re going to the hospital,” one of them said. “You’re gonna pass it. Who’s getting it?”
“No one,” Ernest said. “I’m having the fucking thing burned.”
Lysette uttered a nervous laugh. “No he’s not,” she said. “He’s giving it to a lovely family from Sheboygan. Wife and husband, two kids, a dog. They’ll have loads of fun with it.”
“No way,” a twenty-something in a fisherman’s hat said. “He’s gonna burn it. We
gotta move, now.” He looked back into the crowd. “Get the thing, it’s go time.”
Another protester came from around the side of the house with Ernest’s garden hose.
“It’s just like an enema,” the kid said. “You just gotta wet that thing, it’ll come right out.”
Ernest spoke through grunts and groans, “Don’t you think I tried that by now?”
“You tried a garden hose?”
“No, and I’ll kill you if you come anywhere near me with that.” Ernest righted himself with a great deal of agony and tried to make it to the car, Lysette and Jasen by his side,
Ophelia trailing, wanting no part of the protest.
As they neared the car, the kid ran up and in a move far too deft for what appeared to be a twenty-year-old slacker, punch Ernest square in the gut. Ernest, no small man in musculature or stature, shook like jelly. Jasen watched as he bent over bracing himself, hands on knees.
Ernest cried out as he brought forth the biggest, rippingest fart that Jasen had ever heard. The crowd stepped back, assured that the feces mundus was immediately to follow. Instead, Ernest got back up and smiled.
“Thanks, kid,” he said. He glanced at Lysette.
“Traffic to the hospital would’ve been a bitch anyway.”