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Last Gas

Stephen Faulkner

    When Allen Nyster arrived to relieve Peter Midlent of duty in the Silo Operations Training Center he did so without any of his usual enthusiasm. He entered the Primary Room as stiffly and quietly as if he were carrying a sleeping animal under his fatigue shirt that he did not want to waken. His face was paler than usual, his expression sullen.
    “Bloom’s off the rose, eh?” said Midlent as he gathered up his collection of comic books in preparation to leave. “Important as this duty is, you’re finally finding out that it’s just another job after all, right?”
    “Just not feeling too swift. Must’ve been something I ate,” said Nyster and, true to his word, he did look rather drawn. “Hard to get yourself jazzed for eight hours of watching lights and dials when your guts are in a bind.”
    “See the doctor about it?”
    “Yeah. He says it’s just a mild case of the grippe. Any worse and I’d be having gut cramps that’d have me bed ridden. As it is, I just feel crappy, like the old plumbing needs a good cleaning out. Noisy and queasy-making, that’s all.” Just then a loud borborygmous gurgling issued from his abdomen as if in greeting. “See what I mean?”
    “Well,” said Midlent as he handed over his watch keys and headed for the door. “As long as you can hold down your breakfast, I guess you’ll be okay.”
    “I think it was breakfast that did it. I’ll be all right, I think. Speaking of food, what’s on the menu for lunch?”
    “Mine was the usual – S.O.S. I think yours should be the same.”
    Nyster’s abdomen said Blorp! in response, causing its owner to belch.
    “It wasn’t that bad, really,” said Midlent commiseratively. “Anyway, Eisen’s your watchmate until 1600. He’s in the Secondary Room right now, making the hourly check. I don’t know who’s coming to relieve him.”
    “Eisen,” said Nyster blandly as he sat down. “Good. He and I get along pretty well.”
    At the door Midlent stopped. His long, pleasant face was awash with unspecified concern. “Allen,” he said chummily. “Drink water, lots of it. It’ll help flush out your system.”
    Nyster nodded absently at his departing mate, having already opened the small access door on the Primary console with his watch key in preparation to making his preliminary systems check. He did not hear Midlent leave the room.

***

    Herbert Eisen studied the last of the readout quickly. All Secondary Systems were working properly. He made the necessary notations to this effect in his watch log and hung the lightweight clipboard on its wall hook. He went back to the empty Primary room and sat down before his console. Nyster was in the bathroom for the third time since his lunch break at 1200. His punk demeanor had been obvious to Eisen as soon as he saw his watchmate when he first arrived. That greasy slop called chipped beef on toast sure hadn’t helped his buddy’s growling gut any. He couldn’t blame the guy for not being much help on this watch but he wished Allen could at least pull himself together enough to do the safety run-throughs on schedule. Eisen looked at his watch and sucked impatiently at his teeth – ten minutes past already. This sure won’t sit well with the Commander, he thought, no matter what Nyster’s state of health might be. He looked at the door to the hallway and shook his head. How long did it take that guy to squeeze out a sickly loaf anyway?
    Finally Nyster returned, looking even more peaked and ready for the Infirmary than when he had left. He sat down before his switching console and reached a weary hand to the Mode Selection knob.
    “What the hell are you doing?” Eisen asked.
    “Safety Check,” said Nyster. “Isn’t it time yet?”
    “Sure it’s time. It’s ten minutes past time, in fact.”
    “Then we have to do it,” his watchmate said and turned the knob to its S.C. position.
    “Of course we have to do it,” said Eisen testily as he flicked his own Mode Selection knob to S.C. “I’d just appreciate your letting me know what you’re up to instead of just plopping your ass down and turning dials. I’m part of this watch, too, you know.”
    “I’m sorry, Herb. I’m just not feeling too hot right now.”
    “I realize that, Al, but we’ve got to follow S.O.P. You know how the Commander is about order and keeping to schedules, especially when it comes to delicate equipment like this.”
    Nyster made a gesture to indicate that he understood, though not that he particularly cared all that much, and began reading numbers off his set of gauges while his digestive tract muttered a base saxophone solo in muffled counterpoint. Eisen held his laughing response to his mate’s stomach growlings to a series of stifled little hiccoughs buried behind the hard tissue of his larynx; the effort made his throat ache. Their gauge readings corresponded within the limits allowed by the Primary Manual. Nyster’s belly rumbles and Eisen’s stifled chortles, however, seemed at musical odds with one another. They turned their Mode Selection knobs back to Primary Function at the same time.
    Nyster sat back in his chair with a sigh and surveyed the five main series of blinking lights on his console. Without any prior warning coming from his gut a gas bubble suddenly appeared in his throat and popped, causing a gentle burp. He excused himself, then burped again. More accurately, he belched and this was not caused by any little bubble but was a full, thrusting gaseous release from the stomach which came out with the word “Damn!” enunciated in its burbling baritone. He looked over at his watchmate sheepishly and then both men began to laugh, not uproariously but definitely uncontrollably.
    The third belch, coupled with an enunciation that sounded like gorpf, sent Nyster running for the door with his right hand clamped over his mouth. Herb Eisen laughed all the harder, a high pitched whinny that caused the sheet metal framing of his console to vibrate sympathetically.
    The next matter off business that would soon be demanding their attention would be the hourly Secondary check and that wouldn’t be for another forty minutes. Plenty of time for poor Allen to toss his cookies and be back, Eisen thought as he wiped the tears from his eyes. Even if it’s something really serious (intestinal virus, ulcer, salmonella, dysentery) I’ll still have ample time to phone in for a replacement for the remainder of his watch. Eisen lost his train of thought once this idea had come to him. What if it is something serious? he thought worriedly.
    Allen Nyster returned with the glad news that he hadn’t thrown up. He had hung his head into the open toilet and almost deafened himself with the echo-amplification of his subsequent belches that that closed-in space had afforded, but his lunch had stayed down,
    “You had me going for a while there, pal,” said Eisen, relieved. “Thought you were coming down with the Tijuana trots or something. Lunch was too recent to have caused it, I think. What’d you have for breakfast that might have done it?”
    “Might have been the bacon,” said his watchmate with a shrug.
    “Eggs didn’t taste funny or anything?”
    “Yeah but that powdered crap always tastes that way.”
    “Too true,” said Eisen, punctuating that phase of the conversation. He looked around him, studied his immediate vicinity as if looking for clues to the solution of a problem not yet identified. “You were here when Midlent left,” he said. “Did he take all his comic books with him?”
    “I think so. Why? You itching for a Spiderman fix?”
    “Just something to read. We got a half hour to kill and I’m bored.”
    “What about that stack of magazines under the Secondary console?”
    “That’s Harmon’s taste, not mine. They’re all sleazy girlie mags. You know the type: tongues, tits, spread asses and shaved beavers, girls practically turning their hoo-hahs inside out for the camera. And editorial quality?” He clamped his tongue between his lips and razzed, causing a misty drizzle of spit. “Bunch of hokey sex stories and gross cartoons. Ads for colored condoms, dildos and dial-a-slut. And that’s about it; not my style at all.”
    “I see,” said Nyster. His stomach said something in its own gurgling language that sounded like an agreement.
    “Besides,” said Eisen in a thoughtful tone. “I’ve read them all already.”
    “Oh, I ssss...” Nyster began, then looked over at his watchmate who had not quite successfully hidden a sneaky smile. “Cute, Herb,” Nyster said, smiling too. “Real cute.”
    Glorblibum-gwik! said his gut, getting in the last word. Not to be outdone, his rectal end gave out its own long winded summary in shrill and sputtering syllables.
    “Oh shit, Allen!” Eisen yelled, He rose from his chair and backed the two steps remaining to him to the farthest reach of the narrow room.
    “Not quite,” said Nyster.
    “You letting loose from both ends now? If your belly button had a hole in it it’d probably be whistling ‘Dixie’ soon, I bet.”
    “I’m sorry, Herb. I just couldn’t help it.”
    “Hoosh! Man, do you ever stink like hell,” Eisen continued loudly. He snatched up a pad of report blanks and waved it in front of his face like a Japanese fan. “Woo! Bacon farts have just got to be the worst. Listen, buddy, you feel another one of those babies coming on and you can just take it to the....”
    “’Scuse me,” Nyster cut in. He bolted out of his chair so quickly that he left it rocking from back legs to front and back again for a few moments before it settled back onto all fours. He rushed into the Secondary Room just to be away from his watchmate or the next coming volley.
    “Allen! Wait!” The close proximity of the walls of the smaller room echoed Nyster’s rectal reply: A juicy sounding Bronx cheer performed inside a wide, hollow drum.
    “That’s not where I meant for you to go,” Eisen said softly as he sat back down. His swiftly fanning report pad was now a grey blur in front of his face.

***

    Eisen hung up the telephone and turned to his watchmate. They had just finished the 1400 hourly check of the Secondary System – at least Nyster did. Eisen had refused to enter the smaller room ever since his watchmate’s unintentional flatulence had laid a sickening pall throughout the narrow corridor of air in there. The receiver made a loud clatter as it jockeyed with gravity and see-saw physics before settling to rest in its cradle. “The Commander,” Eisner informed Nyster of the identity of the person with whom he had just been speaking. “He’s scheduled a special test in five minutes. Complete power outage.”
    “But that will shut down the entire mainframe.”
    “Of course it will,” said Eisen, reacting impatiently to this statement of the obvious. Allen’s ill health surely hasn’t affected his memory, he thought. This is all textbook stuff. “But what happens after that?”
    “Auxiliary power kicks in on a count of five and then the.... Oh, yeah, right. Then the Secondary System takes over.”
    “Brilliant.”
    “So this will be a test of the capabilities of the Secondary equipment, then, to see if it can handle the job adequately enough.”
    “It’ll have limited capacity but it should be sufficient,” said Eisen as if reciting from the manual text, glad that his watchmate’s mental faculties hadn’t been affected by the sickness in his gut. “We’ve just done the hourly check, so we should be safe on that score.”
    “A second look couldn’t hurt,” said Nyster as he rose from his chair. He trailed a fresh and squeaking aroma behind him as he strode toward the Secondary Room. Eisen held his nose and laughed, then all the harder as the next tuba-toned eruption occurred. “That must be the chipped beef talking now!” he called.
    Just then the lights in both rooms dimmed and went out; the familiar sounds of the three integrated computers were silenced. Eisen counted to himself and at six, one second late by his estimation, a deep hum issued from beyond the far wall of the Secondary Room and the less luminous auxiliary lights came on. The Primary Systems stayed dark and functionless; the only sounds in the Silo Operations Training Center were the electronic beeps and mechanical chatter as the Secondary equipment came on line.
    “Takeover Sequence running smoothly,” Nyster called as Eisen approached. “Seventy-five, eight, eighty-five percent capacity already. Slowing down now. We still should reach ninety-five percent with ease.”
    “Not too shabby, wouldn’t you say? Where’s our main source of depletion?”
    Nyster’s belly made a comment, a deep rumbling that sounded like the sonic equivalent of a mudslide at the bottom of a septic tank. With their combined concentration firmly rooted on the job at hand neither of the two men took notice.
    “Memory capacity at ninety-eight point eighty-five percent,” Nyster recited. “Modal Operations Circuits at a straight ninety-nine. Not bad. Program Input – what the hell is this? Fifty-eight percent! And look! Program Output at a hundred and thirty point ten percent. What the hell is going on here?”
    “It’s taking capability from the Input and bleeding it into Output. But how?”
    And look here. Now the Modal Operations gauges are fluctuating, Secondary Systems are rapidly declining; Modal Operations are nearly off line.... All the circuits are going totally batshit here. What...?”
    Eisen thought that Nyster had farted again. He couldn’t blame the guy; if this were a real-life predicament instead of just a training operation he would be ready to shit his pants at a moment’s notice, too. But it wasn’t Nyster’s noisy sphincter this time. It was the warning buzzer, a hoarse and rasping claxon wail repeating sharply at two second intervals. Without either man having touched the necessary switches, the Fail Safe door on the Secondary panel had slid open, revealing the ARMING light already flashing. None of the keys were in place or turned; the computer had overridden the electronic locks and turned it functions over to the first phase of the COMBAT READY Sequence of its own volition. The fact that the equipment in the two rooms were not connected to any missile silos and were only for training and practice purposes made no difference to the two men. They treated the situation as if it were an actual emergency, that their reactions and decisions in the next few minutes would be instrumental in either saving mankind or beginning the sequence of events that would certainly result in its worldwide demise.
    As they frantically pored over the three softcover volumes that comprised the Secondary System’s Operations Manual, a readout chattered forth confirming the trajectory, cruising altitude, speed and target of each of the three hypothetical missiles under their command. The red ARMING light went out to be replaced by the next one down on the panel: ARMED. Soon the SILO READY mode would be announced in green and then the ten second countdown would begin.
    “Output Circuit – negative,” Nyster recited, reading off gauges as he turned a series of dials to their respective “check” positions. “Modal Operations – negative.”
    “Try Output – Modal Interface,” Eisen suggested.
    “Negative.”
    “Input – Modal Interface.”
    Pause. Harglflbm! belched Nyster and made a sour face. “Negative.”
    “Input Circuit.”
    Pause. The SILO READY light came on cover blown, missile exposed, ready to launch. The LAUNCH SEQUENCE light began to blink.
    “Negative. But look at this; we’re getting a jumpy reading on the Input-Output Interface circuit.”
    “That’s got to be it. Start Override Procedure.”
    The LAUNCH SEQUENCE light held steady. The LCD readout came on, showing the numeral 10.
    “Sequenced for override,” said Nyster, his digestive tract ominously silent. “And now.... Done!”
    Countdown at ten, nine, eight....
    Gauges began their backward climb. The sequence was reversing itself. The gauge that indicated responses on the Input-Output Interface circuit remained in its negative position, unmoving. Override had been successful, the burnt-out circuit deadened and bypassed. The Main Activity gauge slowly turned back to its READY position and remained secure.
    Countdown at five, four, three....
    Eisen’s eyes burned as he watched the readout display flicker on three as if readying itself to go to two. He sank to the floor as the readout blanked and the yellow ABORT Light began to flash.
    “Pull that damned circuit,” he told Nyster in a voice that sounded both angry and relieved. “Let’s find out what the hell happened here.”

***

    As soon as the Main Power came back on, the brighter fluorescent lights flickered back to life and the phone rang. The Commander was understandably upset. If this had been an actual occurrence rather than just a training exercise the world would have been brought to the brink of an unwinnable war. After he was told at some length what had happened, Eisen could barely hold onto the telephone receiver for the vibrations that the old man’s hearty laughter caused it. Such had been both Eisen’s and Nyster’s reactions when the truth of the matter had become clear to them.
    As soon as they had the Secondary System console broken down and the offending circuit out and open in front of them, it sat smoldering in Nyster’s hands smelling faintly of methane. Two of the three silicon chips that were the heart of the palm-sized board had been corroded by what a cursory investigation indicated was something akin to swamp gas, organic rot, vaporous intestinal refuse.
    “Fart juice,” Eisen had said, giving the corrosive agent its vulgar appellation. “World War Three started by the well timed, well placed passage of a rank and rancid heinie burp.”
    When Nyster’s anterior end gave its full raucous approval of that estimation there was to be no more intelligent communication between the two men. Eisen had to forcibly restrain himself from giggling when he went to answer the ringing telephone.

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