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I love a silver bullet. I'm always looking for one, no matter the circumstance. They're rare, and make great collector's items. It's not often that things work together well. And even when they do, it often arose from awful circumstances. I suppose I'm the king of the Pyrrhic victory, because I've found there's always a cost. It's what you get for working your ass off. To give a better impression of what I mean, I have thrown together this piece-of-crap. It is a sophomoric story about feces, because I know college students like to read about that kind of thing.
Anybody who has ever been in the University Commons apartments has been at least mildly impressed with them. The central air actually works, and they come stocked with all the basics. Each pair of bedrooms has a bathroom allocated to this. Of course, each bathroom has a toilet installed. But then you probably discovered the darker side of the University Commons apartment. Try flushing that thing, and you'll see what I mean.
This is where Daryl Hardy comes into play. He is a clever, eccentric engineer. He is a sophomore who got the room by rooming with three people that had severe allergies. If you don't know, University Commons makes special accommodations for such people. Some of this hypo-allergic kids would keel over and die in your average Riverknoll apartment. Daryl knew this, and knew some people to room with. His potential roommates thought they wouldn't get in, but Daryl knew better. That's because he's a clever, eccentric engineer. His classmates gravitate around him and watch him solve class assignments in the strangest ways. Daryl relished in it. He tried to live his life like a cartoon -- if there was a way to do something nobody ever thought of, Daryl tried it. So getting into the University Commons on the back of his hypo-allergic friends was only natural. It is just one demonstration of his talents.
So one evening, this poor guy is sitting on his toilet, minding his own business. Quaker Instant Oatmeal had been on sale at Wegman's the week before, and Daryl bought two boxes. These same two boxes of oatmeal were now oozing out of his ass, complete with box and packets. The smell was terrible, and would classify under the new Federal definitions of "biological weapons." Outside, a pigeon, dying from the odor, fell from the sky into a storm drain. Daryl, now covering his nose with the inside of his shirt, finally felt a lull in his intestinal contractions. This was the closest feeling to giving birth he swore he'd ever feel. The curry rice didn't help, nor the Thai peppers he put in yesterday's stir fry. And he knew he shouldn't have mowed down a garbage plate two nights before.
Daryl was relieved to finally stand up again. He was disgusted with the brown Picasso piece that filled up his toilet, and was glad to dismiss it. He leaned down on that flush lever with all his gusto, praying the smell would flush with it. The water level sank for a moment, and then rose again. It rose past where it had started. Irritated, he flushed again, which only added more water to the rising mix. Being eccentric (and stupid), Daryl tried one more time, and this is what did it. The toilet overflowed its brown soup and flooded the floor. His bathroom mat, a nice white mat with a fruit basket embroidered in it, suddenly became a brown white with a shit basket in the middle.
Daryl retreated from the bathroom with his tail behind his legs. The goo followed him from underneath the closed door. He was dragging his pants in the filth. You see, he had his first lesson in University Commons plumbing: the septic tank pressure is always low. He frantically called the Housing Operations office, who told him that "Frank" was tired of "running around with a plunger." So Daryl was stuck with this mess in his apartment. No, he had no plunger, but he had an idea.
Outside Daryl's building, his windowless van was parked and waiting. It was his mobile tool shed. It had all his tools, scraps, odd parts, and hogtied women. The last item was a joke, but you wouldn't be surprised if he actually kidnapped people and kept them in his van. Daryl was just a crazy son of a bitch like that. Daryl found what he wanted right away: a 250 psi air compressor, an outdoor pool filter cap, and some pool cleaning hose. Daryl managed to fit the compressor to one end of the hose, and the filter cap slid right onto the other. This cap was round, and had a slot for a hose that one could use for flushing. The cap was large enough to, say, fit inside a toilet bowl.
Meanwhile, physical plant was busy dealing with flaky plumbing. It had rained a good deal that day, flooding a few drains and screwing with the water. One of those regular e-mails had gone around campus about it, but nobody read it. Some of the pipes around campus had been closed off for this work.
So Daryl drops his filter head into the toilet bowl, plugs in the compressor, and gets to work. He covered his mouth and nose in a wet bandanna to squelch the terrible smell. He was going to flush that crap down no matter what it took. At first, nothing really happened, but then the brown water began to work its way down the toilet. It began to bubble. Meanwhile, the aforementioned pigeon had breathed its last, and was busy clogging up the only clear drain left on campus. Another person in Daryl's complex noticed his own toilet was belching up huge bubbles. Physical plant, however, noticed an alarming rise in pressure. Outside, you could hear the drains moan in the rain.
It was around this time Daryl realized this wasn't working as well as he wanted. He wanted to teach RIT a little lesson. He went back into his van, and got some rubber lining. He cut it to fit the pool filter cap, and it now rested plush inside the toilet. With leaky air problem fixed, the full 250 psi from his compressor could be put to good use. The thing sounded like a jackhammer inside the cramped bathroom. Daryl walked away from it momentarily and bragged about it to his friends on Instant Messenger.
A gush of air flooded the pipes, and wove its way into the septic tank. The low pressure was equalized for a moment, and University Common tenants noticed the best performance from their toilets in RIT history. Another groundbreaking record would be made soon thereafter.
Daryl had to go to class, but he left the compressor running. The pressure was rising slowly, so there was no rush. This might be because he was compressing the air in the entire sewage system. Half an hour later, little air bubbles started to dance in everybody's toilet bowls. It was like carbonated water had been pumped into the sewers.
An hour later, Daryl was farting around in the College of Engineering lounge. He was busy cramming for physics. Meanwhile, Erick Littleford, Student Government president and defender of the little guy, found time to take a bathroom break at his apartment. He sat on the toilet without bothering to remove his SG jacket. It looked like he would be there awhile. Pulling his little PDA from the pants at his ankles, he checked his schedule. Erick sighed how much time he wasted with the bureaucracy. They dragged their heels through everything.
Daryl forgot about his air compressor, and his roommates weren't around to gawk at it. It continued to pump, for an hour and ten minutes now. The pressure was beginning to reach the maximum. Air occasionally tried to backfire through the compressor, and it struggled to keep chugging. But that compressor was a little trooper. The pipes under the campus moaned under its perseverance. Physical plant was attempting to fix the drain clogged with the pigeon now. Dirty water was flooding the tap water main nearby, and they had to shut it down. Soon thereafter, all hell broke loose.
Erick was the first to feel it. His toilet attacked him, backfiring shitty goo and sending him a foot into the air. Shocked, he tried to find a clean spot to put his PDA, but there wasn't any. He looked down and found he was covered in other people's old feces. He stood up, trying to avoid the spew. But the toilet wasn't done. That first shot was just a big bubble. A geyser came next, and the shit went straight to the ceiling. Getting clean was priority one, and our clever president pulled on the nearby shower handle. It sprayed out clean and true water . . . for a good ten seconds. Then the water began to tan, until it emitted thick, brown sludge.
The situation was the same all about campus. Students, professors, faculty, and bureaucrats alike all were attacked in a tsunami of shit. A main right outside the College of Science exploded. All students within a 50-foot radius were covered in feces. Those in the immediate zone were wounded by flying bricks and shrapnel from the pipes. Even Al Simone's private urinal was put out of commission. This was a serious problem.
Daryl's air compressor felt a rush of backwash, and the filter cap jump an inch. Excluding the pool of shit on Daryl's floor, his bathroom was spared. The toilet on the other end of the apartment was not. The ceiling vent was clogged with corn poo. It collected on the ceiling, and fell into the bathtub. It sounded something like wet, dead tuna fish falling six feet to the floor, and it smelled like it too. Daryl eventually realized what was going on, but only enough to know to stay away from the bathrooms. Of course, classes went on, so Daryl didn't shut off his air compressor for another two hours.
In the aftermath, RIT was looking at some major lawsuits. One very pissed off Erick Littleford was leading a mob on the Eastman building. For once, the administration bent a little, and caved to their demands. A time of prosperity fell on RIT that has never been known. Professors helped students through the disaster, and bonds formed. It was a rosy, happy place, once the shit was cleaned off the quarter mile. So the moral of the story is:
You'll
get to wherever you want to be, but you'll have to wade through three feet
of shit to get there.
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