ECOPOCALYPSE CH.5 - HOME SWEET LAB

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.5 - HOME SWEET LAB
By Matthew C. Plourde

Your hands shake as you connect the wires to the companion cooling tank. Sweat greases your fingers. Your face rotates between flushed and clammy. You know you’re not sick. This is just that sinking feeling you get before totally losing it.

Mum and Milo are dead. Your life is dissolving to shit around you. And you may be responsible for more deaths than any other individual in the history of the human race.

Great. And here you are, affixing a souped-up coolant tank to a shitter.

Flush the release chamber. Connect the ground. Wipe brow through the hazmat suit. Release the gas into the vapor chamber. Fill the caustic chamber—slowly. Steady hands.

“The suit will protect you,” Madge says, her voice muffled behind her oversized, protective helmet.

Deciding she could do more good at the lab, Madge decided to accompany you in the helicopter. Though you saw a few sludge zombies shambling around the outside of the building, the lab’s only reminder of their presence is long streaks of fudge along the walls and floors. Thank God for the hazmat suit!

“There,” you declare, stepping away from the Environaut as it quietly purrs to life.

Madge steps to your side. “What did you do?”

“Connected a supplemental cooling system to account for the caustic soda from the mercury. It should block the mercury poison from going gaseous and causing… well, you know.”

She looks into your eyes and asks, “Should?” Memories of your childhood together leap to your mind—it was a typical Madge I’m not sure you know what you’re doing expression. She wore that look a lot. You never were in control of anything. Especially not now.

This time, however, you know your own stuff. Milo’s notes refreshed your memory about some early mercury units which failed. Milo had a solution. The co-coolant unit will do the trick, but you slouch into a chair when you realize the truth.

“It’ll work,” you say, defeated. “But what’s the point? We can’t produce and get this out to millions of units today. I’m not a fuckin’ medical doctor or pharm expert. I can’t make a cure for the mercury poisoning. All I can do is fix the Environaut, not the frothing feces-flingers. The damage is already done.” You kick the table. “Shit.”

Never one to surrender, Madge puts her hands on her hips and stares down at you. “You fucked up. Fine. That’s in the past. I told the president’s CDC liaison that we’ll have a fix for the millions of units in American homes.” She turns to the altered Environaut on the table. “Am I looking at that fix?”

You nod, still empty with defeat. Only one thing makes sense.

“We just have to wait it out,” you say, your voice barely a whisper.

“Wait. What?”

You glance at your sister and say, “The people know to avoid the Environauts. And those who have used them are fucked anyway. Without a cure, we’ll have some new infections crop up. We just have to give this design to whoever can mass produce and distribute installations of it.”

“The president ordered the shutdown of all power grids!” Madge said. “And who knows how many can respond to that request. For all we know, the employees have been turned into shit zombies, headed home to try and save their families—or died in the chaos.”

She’s right. How could anyone possibly manufacture and distribute this fix to millions of homes across America and the world? Never mind convincing thousands of skilled handymen/women to install the units while poo monsters fling chocolate sludge-pies at them.

A laugh escapes your lips involuntarily. Then another. Soon, you are cackling like a maniac as you realize what you've really done: you caused the apocalypse. It wasn’t meteors or aliens or nuclear war that did the earth in; it was you and your magical toilet.

You close your eyes to the world and laugh because it’s the only thing that makes sense at the moment. The only thing keeping you totally from the dark chasm of total insanity. The only thing you can do.

Eventually, you snap out of your moment of hysteria and only the occasional half-laugh interrupts you.

Madge sighs. “Wow. Thought I lost you there for a moment. What the fuck was that?”

You don’t answer as you keep your dead eyes fixed on a blinking light near the corner of the room.

“Well, I don’t think that’s an option,” she says. “Let’s get this unit to the CDC and see if they can help. It’s why they exist, after all.”

You look up at your sister and see determination in her eyes.

What do you do?

A. Hole up in the lab and wait out the shit storm. It'll all blow over, right?

B. Go with Madge to the CDC with the fixed Environaut. They will will know what to do, right?

C. Get your shit together and call in all your favors--maybe you CAN make an antidote to save the poo zombie population. You are a scientist, after all...

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.3 - TO THE LAB!

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.3 - TO THE LAB!

by John Elrod

Without saying anything more, you turn and walk right back out of the boardroom, leaving the actual suits to deal with public relations, lawsuits, and market projections. Frankly, you’re not usually any help with those things, anyway; you’re a scientist. You belong in the lab, which is exactly why you spend so much time there that, when you were having this state-of-the-art, skyscraping monolith constructed, you had them incorporate a private express elevator with three stops: the basement lab, where you almost always want to be; the boardroom, where you almost never want to be; and the roof, for when you want to be anywhere but here.

It takes a total of 47 seconds for the elevator to go from the boardroom to the lab. There is no ignominious Muzak or senseless dinging noise. In fact, the inside of this elevator is entirely without distraction; without those things shopping malls employ to keep you from realizing you don’t need to spend half a month’s salary on those shoes; without those tactics hospitals use to make you forget you’ve just seen a loved one for the last time. Yes, this elevator was absolutely boring in every way; you'd made sure of that because it takes a total of 47 seconds to go from the boardroom to the lab, and that’s 47 seconds of pure, unadulterated thought. It was in those 47 seconds that you had finally been able to think of how to bring the Environaut’s consumption-to-production ratio over 200%; it was those 47 seconds that had given you the idea for the iPoop, a toilet USB port that attaches to any toilet and uses your waste to directly charge any compatible device; and, on days like today, it’s those 47 seconds that simply keep you from going insane.

The opening of the elevator doors brings your serenity to a screeching halt as your ears are flooded with an expletive-laden tirade.

“How the fuck could this fucking happen? I fucking told those motherfuckers not to fucking use fucking mercury. This is un-fucking-believable.”

It’s Milo. He’s yelling at an empty room, but you know exactly what he’s upset about. Back when you and Milo were developing the Environaut, you hit upon a problem: it was introducing too much toxicity into the surrounding environment. Your solution was to replace the mercury you were using as a coolant with a gallium-indium alloy. It was an easy fix, but the Smart EcoGen board members weren’t thrilled about the expense of controlling the alloy’s wetting and aggressivity; it wasn’t cost-effective, but they agreed to the change—or so you thought.

Milo sees you come out of the elevator. “Can you fucking believe this? You’re the President and CE-FUCKING-O!”

“I know.”

“I’m the Vice Fucking President, for Christ sake.”

“I know.”

“This is just—”

“I know, and now we get to say, ‘We told you s—’”

Your snarky quip is interrupted by a video call from the boardroom. Milo is very eager to answer and throw some obscenities their way. He hurriedly presses the button, but on the screen is nothing but an empty boardroom.

“The damn thing must be broken.” Your voice tries to console Milo’s rage.

“Goddammit!” Milo’s rage is beyond consolation.

Suddenly a face come into the video’s frame. It’s Hal, the security guard. He’s still smiling through gritted teeth, but something is different about him. His skin is a jaundiced hue, his eyes are glazed over in a buttery haze, and his face is fixed in the same dead expression as those protesters who stormed your home.

“What the fuck?” Milo’s rage has given way to confusion, now.

“I don’t kn—”

You are interrupted once more, this time by a slurpy growl that seems to be coming from Hal’s throat. The gurgling gets louder, as Hal’s bite loosens just barely and his lips are overtaken by a thick, brown slurry. The sludge dribbles down Hal’s chest, while the lab has become a swamp of palpable fright. Slowly, Hal backs away from the camera, and you notice some of the board members are ambling about. Then you see it. There in Hal’s left hand, held firmly at the tuft of its neck, is the severed head of Smart EcoGen’s CFO, George Quellen Field.

“I second that ‘What the fuck?’” Now you’re the one speaking to the empty room as Milo has hastily evacuated to the elevator.

“Let’s make like Schwarzenegger and get to the fucking chopper!” How Milo can simultaneously make a pop culture reference and shit his pants, you don’t know, but he must be shitting his pants, because this is absolutely a “shit your pants” moment.

25 seconds into the longest 47 seconds of your life, and Milo is still rambling on about not knowing what is going on. Why doesn’t this elevator play music, or fucking ding, or just do anything to distract you from the thoughts wildly rampaging through your mind? There’s nothing to stop you from going insane! What sadistic bastard designed this torturous, 47 second device? But it’s not 47 seconds; not this time. This time, it’s 68 seconds, because you and Milo are going to the roof. More specifically, the helipad on the roof, and the two of you are getting as far away from this building as possible. Let the government come in and deal with this—literal—shit storm.

On the roof you both hop into the helicopter, but not before exchanging reassuring looks with one another. You’re both absolutely positive things are going to be fine. Maybe you’ll head down to Mexico for a couple weeks while things blow over. Sure, it’s a PR nightmare, and the stock is going to take a hit. Blah, blah, blah. None of that concerns a couple of genius lab rats like you and Milo. It’s fine.

You’re the pilot, of course, since you are the one with a pilot’s license. Milo, for lack of a better word, is your co-pilot, even though he can’t even manage to write with a Pilot pen, let alone have anything to do with piloting a helicopter. You set your heading for Mexico, and—

“What’s that?” Milo is gesturing downward.

You don’t want to look, but you have to. What you see are the streets clogged with abandoned vehicles and crowds of people moving at two distinctive speeds. Those running are doing so from those walking; those walking are those who didn’t run fast enough. You’ve seen this in movies, and you’ve lived this in video games. You’ve always thought it might happen, but you didn’t have any idea you could cause it. You can’t go to Mexico; you have to do something, because everything is decidedly not fine.

Do you...

A. Land the helicopter at the hospital, where your sister works, and see if she can help--if she's even still alive.

B. Land the helicopter at the police station, where you're sure to be abel to the get hold of some firearms, them come out blasting.

C. Land the helicopter somewhere outside the city and try to devise a plan.