The Turd: An American Journey, Chptr 3 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

The Beringer Free Clinic smelled like a three-day-old bandage soaked in

Mercurochrome. He’d never been there, having had good health and a primary care doctor with a ‘57 Chevy he was restoring. Doctor Wyatt. Nice guy, healed everything with a pep talk. But he was stingy with a referral. Ernest appreciated Doc Wyatt’s approach to medicine. His approach to fidelity, on the other hand, did need a referral. Sleep with enough wives and the husbands catch wind. Wyatt’s philandering got him a lead suppository. Shot in the ass, that was the story as told. Ernest hadn’t found another primary since.

A neat pile of pills sat on the receptionist’s counter. They didn’t look like mints.

Ernest gave the woman keeping score his information and asked about them.

“Laxatives,” she said. “People started asking for them. Free, go ahead.”

Ernest waved them off. “Look, I don’t have any insurance. Can they do anything for me here?”

“Sure,” she said. “As long as it can be treated with Livophed, Sartizyne, Caplanet,

Pilobimine, or Gitrovex. We get those for free from the pharma guy.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

He went and sat on a mauve-cushioned seat in the waiting room. The room was packed like cigarettes. Across from him sat a woman with a belly that, woman or no, Ernest knew was built of beer. She was on her phone, and her children were running around the center table with the magazines on it. One cocked his knee and gave the other finger guns as he let out a sad little, whiny little fart. The other kid faked an M-16 and ran toward his brother with a trail of loud bottom burps. He, and they, looked at their mother, who got up, aimed her head and nose lower than they should have been were she not sniffing the air specifically. She was a hog on a truffle, and apparently finding it, she tapped her nose and pointed to M-16 son, who cheered, arms up.

It was Battle Farts. He’d seen the game on a Profiles video. Kids eat nasty shit, cauliflower and asparagus and Brussell sprouts and they compete with their farts, winner walking away with all bragging rights. What happened to basketball?

Ernest’s phone went off. The science fiction spaceship ringtone announced

Lysette.

“Hey honey.”

“Are you at the clinic?”

“Yeah,” Ernest said. “Fucking packed. I promised I’d go though.”

“You did, and I don’t feel bad pushing you to do it.”

“They’re not gonna tell me shit. All they do is give suboxone to junkies and penicillin to hookers and johns and cheaters.”

“That’s why you get the referral.”

“C-section, fuck that. It’s gonna come out when I least expect it.”

“Well, you do shit yourself when you die. Hey did you know John Wayne took huge turds?”

“I figure he ate nothing but red meat,” Ernest said. “And he didn’t get no

C-Section.”

“Really all they’ll do is shove a probe up there with a wire loop, break it up and give you more laxative to flush out the pieces. Marjorie told me, and she’s a nurse, so she knows.”

Ernest scoffed. “Ain’t nothin’ going in, only out. It’s a one-way pucker.”

“You gotta get over that. That’s homophobia, not a good look, Mr. Kreb.”

“Nope. I like gay people. I’m just very far not.”

“No you are not,” Lysette said. “I didn’t call about that though. Do you know where I left the plans for the rapid ionizer?”

“Bottom drawer of the sideboard. Why? Are you working on it again? I just got the prototype working.”

“No, I, um… I think we have to sell it.”

“I hope you have a buyer and not…”

“I gotta go with IdeaBank. Just this time. I have a plan, though. I’ll tell you tonight. Bye babe.”

IdeaBank was a site where they bought plans and prototypes for ideas and inventions, bottom dollar, and Lysette lost all her rights to her work. But she was a good customer, so one of her inventions could keep the bills paid for a month.

Ernest played solitaire on his phone until the waiting room emptied out, when finally he heard his name called out.

Ernest followed the nurse into the much smaller exam room, which was another

waiting room except with cotton balls to steal. But when he went in, he noticed that the cotton balls, tongue depressors, and gloves were encased in a bank of vending machines.

The nurse sat him down and pulled out the blood pressure cuff.

“This blood pressure reading brought to you by Miller’s Deli,” she said. “Huh?”

“I said this blood pressure reading is brought you by Miller’s Deli. It’s sponsored.

Sponsored care is cheap care.”

She took his temperature, sponsored by Arctic Cat Soda, and she listened to his heart, sponsored by San Eldra Crossfit.

“Okay, the doctor will be in shortly. Please avoid standing by the door.”

Ernest thought the last request strange until the doctor came in. Well the doctor’s face, on a screen, on a pole, on a set of wheels that looked like they could tear up some hallway.

“Ernest Kreb,” the doctor said. “That’s you, Ernest?”

“It is,” Ernest said. “So who are you sponsored by?”

“No one,” the doctor said. “Well, Bannister Kaufman, but that’s just for free malpractice insurance.” He appeared to be looking down at his phone. “So you can’t stop peeing, is that it?”

“No, that’s not me.”

“Oh, bugger, that’s my other patient. I’ve got six patients right now, and I’m three under par. Love this set-up. So here you are. Can’t poop. This viral turd thing must be killing you.”

“It is.”

“So have you tried…” the doctor rattled off the list of every obvious thing that

Ernest had tried before going there.

“Okay, tough one. I think we’ll have to take a look. Let me get the tactile unit fired up.” His face scrunched like he didn’t know how to start the tactile unit, but a whir in the back corner of the exam room told Ernest the doctor might have been an old pro at the device.

“Okay, drop your pants and undies and bend over the table. I’ll get it in position.”

It was then that Ernest noticed the white coated plastic unit, with sleek gray fingers aimed in an Italian gesture that started spinning clockwise at the wrist.

Ernest didn’t stop saying “Nope” until he got out to his truck.

***

A coffeepot sat on a podium with a flat top. The coffee was in bulk, not the fair-trade, organic, special press stuff they circulated throughout the campus like soil through an earthworm. This was the janitor’s coffee, the groundskeepers’ coffee. And it reminded Jasen of the time he worked in a Mickey’s Restaurant on Beaufort Drive, the coffee in the back for the line-cooks who barely tolerated anything more than pure crystal caffeine, just enough grounds to turn it brown.

It was delicious.

Ophelia was glued to her laptop, Jasen to his phone, flipping through his thousand-plus contacts, some of whom knew him, some of whom didn’t. He was hanging off his chair, catching significant side-eye and throat-clearing from Ophelia.

“Can I help you with something?”

“If I solve this, I’m asking for your money too,” she said. “I wish I was close, I could really use a double paycheck.”

“I am actually working,” Jasen said. “I’m looking for contacts to help out.”

“So you’re outsourcing your work?”

“I barely know what my work is here. Had to shit, just said yes, remember?”

Ophelia sighed. “I’m going to tell you why you’re here, just in case you’re useful.

How’s that?” Jasen righted himself in his chair as Ophelia slid her laptop his way.

“The turd video was organic,” she said.

“I figured,” Jasen said.

“I mean, the spread was organic. This video went up a week ago, by the first twenty-four hours of it going up, it had a hundred million views. It wasn’t news, it wasn’t a music video or a stunt – just a turd on a dinner plate. It shouldn’t have gotten a hundred million views that fast. And it shouldn’t be taking over the internet right now. Did you know there’s a religion about turds already? I got offered a laxative on campus like it was a communion wafer, and she had a roll of toilet paper for me to wipe my mouth.”

Jasen told her about his bathroom confessional offer.

“Fucking weird,” Ophelia said. “This was a hacker. Way. The original turd account only had ten subscribers. Ten. And they weren’t influencers.”

“So maybe we shouldn’t do anything, let it peter out.”

“Well, we’ll both fired and they’re paying buttloads for some progress. I can’t afford to just be fired. You?”

“Not really.” Jasen slid Ophelia’s laptop back. “How much success are you having hacking into VidYou algorithms? How about Profiles? PicFeed?”

“No success,” Ophelia said. “They’re Fort Knox.”

Jasen pulled his phone back out. “I can hack too,” he said. “But straight breaking through social media security layers isn’t possible. I’m guessing it’s time we don’t have. Social engineering is the way to go. The weak spot of a billion-dollar network is the minimum wage idiot they give too much access to.”

“I’m not good at that,” Ophelia said. “People are chaos.”

“Helps to spend a couple of years in telemarketing.” Jason spun through his contacts and landed on one.

“Jim Barner,” Jasen said. “He gets people their passes. He does other stuff too, but everyone knows him for getting them new passes when they lose theirs. Not too many people do, but I pretended to once, just to figure out what would happen if I did.

Had it in my back pocket to ‘find’ if replacing it turned out to be a bitch, which it wasn’t.”

“So you’re just going to call him and get a pass?”

“Yep.”

“Isn’t being fired going to show up on his computer?”

“He told me that they update personnel on Fridays. It’s only Tuesday.”

“He told you all that?” Ophelia said. “Why?”

Jasen shrugged. “He’s a lonely guy down in the basement – on this floor, actually. He has an important job, and people only care about getting their passes reissued. If you just show the barest bit of interest, people open right up.”

Jasen called Jim Barner.

“Hey Jim, Jasen Nancy. Can you do me a favor?”

Jasen laid on Jim a story about losing his badge in a move from one position to another. Jasen got promoted. He was asked to call Jim, but he couldn’t make out the board member’s chicken-scratch. What clearance did he need for the subbasement floor of VidYou Building Three?

“Got it, I’ll go pick it up. Thanks, Jim.”

Jasen let out a breath. “I just got us a clearance badge to the server bank.

Apparently you need that if you work down here.”

“We don’t work down here,” Ophelia said.

“We do now.”

#

Jasen flew down the highway toward his apartment. He had a turd on his mind. It was actually the last thing on his mind for the past week aside from being a respite from heavy nipple action. But it was organic. It had close to eight billion views as he drove, one view for every person breathing the earth’s air. The president of Russia and a beggar in Bangalore had likely both laid eyes on the same fresh stinker, the white china plate with the blue windmills on it, the silver fork and spoon; even the solid oak table beneath.

Could the turd on a dinner plate be a symbol of unity?

Jasen pulled up his driveway and activated the garage door opener. He opened the door to an unpleasant aroma. The plumber would get a call tomorrow, an angry call that he didn’t fix the problem the first time.

Shannon,” he called out. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah babe, come on up. I have a surprise for you.”

Shannon was magnificently hot and she could melt a man’s shoes to the pavement. She aimed her beauty like a weapon, her long blond ringlets of hair stone-turning snakes. Jasen never got through a fight past the first protest when the fire in her eyes burned his picket signs.

He got upstairs and found Shannon in their room, black silk lingerie with green sequin trim, fishnet stockings, and shiny green stiletto heels. And Jasen found out what was causing the smell; an open turd in a bowl in the middle of the bed.

“I was thinking,” she said. “Since you’ve been working really hard, that we do something a little naughty. It’s fresh. It’s called shitplay, that’s what they call it on

15Min.”

“Oh hell no, I can’t do this,” Jasen said.

Shannon picked up the bowl. “Let me rephrase that,” she said. “I’ve been working really hard, and we’re doing this. Or you’re sleeping somewhere else.”

That night, Jasen had a hard decision. Unfortunately the hard decision was whether to sleep in the front seat or the back.

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