Turdy 2 When Shit Hits the Fan

Turdy tries again to reach paradise 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mind-atlas-peter-liam/1150184226https://books.apple.com/au/audiobook/the-mind-atlas-compelling-short-stories/id6769707768https://open.spotify.com/show/0qaqT21Dpl9bSJ3suLIYtA?s

https://peterliam.hearnow.com/mary-janeMake sure you add Mary Jane to your playlist 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:03

32 When Shit Hits the Fan. Word of Turdy's legendary disappearance to Paradise had leaked through the underground pipe network, reaching the grimy, moss-covered depths of Treatment Plant 2. While the local floaters revered him as a mythical prophet who had transcended the sludge, Turdy was harboring a deep, simmering frustration. The Apollo 2 ply rocket had been a logistical nightmare of methane instability and subpar aerodynamics. The corn coin market had crashed, and he was tired of being scooped by nets. He needed a simpler, more kinetic approach to colonization. Through the cracks of the corroda drain cover, Turdy had spotted his new target, the executive water cooler in the main plant office. It was a monolith of pristine, upside-down glacial water. No chlorine, no nets, just a shimmering tower of hydration that smelled like air conditioning and filtered purity. To get there, he wouldn't build a spaceship. He would build a lever. The seesaw scheme. Using a discarded wooden paint stirrer, the stirrer of destiny, balanced perfectly over a petrified, calcified piece of PVC pipe, Turdy engineered a high-velocity catapult right beneath the officer's ventilation window. He called an emergency town hall meeting at the scumline. The damp, humid air was thick with tension as thousands of fellow solids gathered to hear the prophet speak. Brothers and sisters of the sludge. Turdy shouted, his voice echoing off the curved concrete walls. The rocket was a tragedy of aerodynamics. But today, we embrace the laws of physics. I shall stand on the launching pad, and you, the collective weight of the proletariat, will leap from the high-pressure discharge pipe onto the other side. Force equals mass times acceleration. Today, we take the office. The community, eager to see their savior ascend once more, rallied behind him. Turdy marched proudly to the far end of the paint stirrer, adjusting his posture. He checked his reflection in a shard of broken glass, ensuring his corn kernel integration was symmetrical for maximum stability. On the high pipe above, a massive, tightly compacted group of heavy-duty solids lined up. For the dream. For the water, they roared. Three, two, one, drop. A dozen heavy, dense solids belly-flopped simultaneously onto the opposite end of the seesaw. The flight and the fan. The physics were flawless. The lever snapped down with tectonic force, launching Turdy into the air like a brown ballistic missile. He soared through the humid afternoon air, whistling past the paddock, his trajectory locked onto the open window of the office building. As he crossed the threshold of the office, everything seemed perfect. The air was cool and smelled of stale coffee and dink. The water cooler grew larger in his vision, a beacon of blue plastic heaven. He could practically taste the purity. But Turdy had failed to account for one critical, human-designed variable, the office air circulation system. Positioned directly in his flight path, humming at maximum velocity on the turbo setting, was a high-speed industrial desk fan. Time seemed to slow down. Turdy's eyes widened as he realized his trajectory was taking him directly into the whirling blades. He saw his life flash before his eyes. The murky darkness, the smell of sulfur, the pride of the corn coin IPO. Slap whack chop splat. It was a catastrophic structural failure. In a fraction of a second, Turdy went from a proud, cohesive visionary to a tragic, room-wide abstract painting. He was atomized. A splatter on the filing cabinets, a fine brown streak across the ceiling, and a depressing, moist mist coating the entire manager's cubicle. The Great Reconstruction. An hour later, the office cleaning crew arrived, led by a man named Dave who had been having a very long day. Or, hell no, Dave muttered, staring at the horror show on the ceiling. How does this even happen? He grabbed a fresh, heavy-duty pack of extra strength, flushable wet wipes. With a heavy sigh and a series of aggressive, soul-crushing scrubbing motions, Dave wiped down the walls, the ceiling, the fan blades, and the keyboard. Once the disaster was scrubbed away, he bawled the soiled, heavy-laden wipes into a compact mass and tossed them into the staff toilet. Flush! Down in the dark, turbulent bowels of the sewage system, the community was waiting in a state of absolute panic. Suddenly, the intake pipe groaned, and a thick, sudden clump of wet wipes splashed into the tank. The locals rushed over, their heart sinking. There, smeared across seven different wipes in a hundred different pieces, was Turdy. He was barely recognizable, a shattered mosaic of his former self. His, his in pieces, a frantic corn colonel shouted. Get the fiber, get the hair clogs. We have to save the prophet. The scene that followed was one of surgical intensity. The community acted as an emergency trauma team. They used strands of dental floss discarded by a dentist's office, long strands of human hair, and a particularly sticky, resinous residue dredged from the bottom of the tank to act as biological glue. They worked for six straight hours. They meticulously pieced him together, pressing the fragments into place, smoothing out the dents, and reinforcing his core with strands of nylon webbing. Finally, the work was done. Turdy's eyes, fashioned from two small, dark beans, slowly flickered open. He looked down at his new body. He was slightly lumpy, held together by sheer willpower and an impressive amount of synthetic fiber, but he was whole. He stood up, wobbling slightly on the edge of the pipe. He looked up at the ceiling of the sewer, then toward the distant, muffled sound of the office above. Well, Tody croaked, his voice gravelly and hollow. Now we know what happens when it hits the fan. He paused, looking at his loyal, weeping followers. The fan was a hurdle, not a stop sign. Prepare the supply lines. We are going to need a bigger catapult.