What Goes On In The Walls At Night: Thirteen tales of disgust and delight

by Andrew Schrader

  He watched the men and women checking and rechecking their cargo, administering sleeping aids or poison tablets to apes and dogs and birds—there were even sage grouse, coyotes, elk, and buffalo. Others counted, double-counted, triple-counted the birch trees and bushes, nervously checking their devices to read the current price of their cargo and determine their cut of the loot. Electric-powered parking attendants made of silicone and aluminum yanked and jerked their mechanical arms, guiding the drivers into their proper places in line.

  Vehicles bearing Resources from all over the region had converged on this one spot, on this bright day in American history—the opening of The Developer.

  The Developer: a building so large it was given a permanent location in the desert of southern California—to account for the millions of Resources it would soon digest. Five years in the making, its wiring alone consumed more electricity than New York City.

  The Developer would save the economy.

  “What does it do?” Charlie had asked.

  Alan had put him on his knee and explained. He told Charlie how the modern stock market had ruled the minds of men. How it calculated and integrated vast swarms of data in milliseconds, ripping apart information like vultures picking meat off bone, then put it all back together again so the economy could run properly. Before, most business between people was done without the authority of the government, and so the market could only estimate prices of, say, rubber or wheat. There was no one single source of pricing. Therefore, prices were unreliable.

  So corporations had come up with a brand new idea. Why not have a machine that could be the single interface for all markets, and all people? Furthermore, why couldn’t regular, ordinary citizens bring the raw materials of the world directly to the Developer, and be paid a 60-percent cut of the profits for their efforts?

  Hours after the announcement for The Developer, millions of Americans took to the remaining trees, to chop them down; to the broken-down, dilapidated buildings in their districts, to strip them of wire, glass, steel, wood; to the desert, in search of rare plants; to the dying oceans, to net a few fish; to the bird feeders in their backyards; to the abandoned cell phone towers, to collect the copper wiring; to the dumps; to the recycling centers; to the animal shelters; to the swamps, for precious American crocodiles; and to the Great Plains, for the remaining one thousand ground squirrels in existence.

  Animals and plants and trees and other natural elements quickly became the most valuable Resources.

  “Why is that?” Charlie asked.

  “Because of their rarity,” Alan explained. “Rarity is essential in any economic system. That’s what makes anything valuable.”

  The Developer would make making money easy again. Every transaction recorded by each Resource Owner was mainlined directly into the veins of the economy. Prices were recorded and broadcasted across the planet, so everybody could see the going rate of beef or diamonds or Douglas fir trees. The crab fisherman could more easily estimate his morning catch, the car junker could justify scrap metal prices, the banker could price his derivatives. Market crowdsourcing, they called it.

  And this first Developer was only the beginning. Soon, there would be smaller ones in Montana, where the national parks were finally sold off; and in Virginia, where there was more biodiverse life than in the rest of the country.

  “But where do they all go?” Charlie asked.

  “The Resources?”

  “Yeah.”

  That, Alan wasn’t sure about.

  Hours passed. Their truck rolled silently onto a movable walkway; they turned off their engine and slept. The conveyor belt carried them somewhere through the night, deeper into the exoskeleton of the complex that housed The Developer, though it was so dark Charlie could hardly see anything except dim outlines of buildings and oddly shaped structures.

  Morning came, a toxic gray morning.

  Gray was all the sky could be anyway. It had been years since the flesh was put around the Earth to block out the dangerous light from the sun. Skin cancer and other diseases had sprouted up all over the world. Those with money escaped inward, toward the earth, building cities beneath cities from which they could run their above-ground businesses. Governments stayed running above, doing what they could to keep the peace.

  Human ingenuity combined with a good old-fashioned corporate drive kept life going, but as the sun’s rays became too radioactive for anyone to be outside, exposed to it, it was decided that a razor-thin but sturdy net made of micrometals would be hoisted into the air and kept at 40,000 feet using powerful magnets. The combined use of metals, chemicals, and synthetic agents could keep out not only the harmful rays, but repel the heat of the yellow goddess, which had begun taking its toll on terrestrial life.

  Florida and New York and the states in between had already been swallowed by the rising seawater—as had all the islands in the Caribbean. Only the 90-foot wall that now butted up against the Louisiana border could protect the inland from drowning.

  It was during these crises that the government had to gather its ingenuity and raise the appropriate funds while also employing people and keeping the economy running. So the federal government, which subsumed the state governments, struck a deal with the titans of business. The government would be lent the funds necessary to build several Developers across the country. Corporations would take the immediate profits, then loan the money back to the government at interest. Each Resource developed would be priced using their corporate system, so they could set all prices for all goods based on their algorithms.

  The reality was that whatever was developed made no difference to the corporate forces, whether it be skunks, fig trees, or electric generators—what mattered was that it could be priced. What mattered was that it could be reduced to parts—whether meat or metal. The rarer it was, according to their system, the more money it was worth.

  To develop the last Resources in America, the Developer (and those soon to come) would need to be huge. Once built, they’d be fifty-five stories deep and fit a hundred thousand automobiles above ground.

  One million workers traveled from all directions to build it. Hundreds of thousands came from the deep south, across the humid terrain where lizards and serpents had doubled in size in ten years due to the rise in temperature. Others came from the north, from Washington and Oregon and Northern California, fleeing the dying and fungus-infested redwood forests.

  Locals though, they had it a little better. Once thought to be one of the worst and driest areas to live, Indio and the surrounding towns grew rich overnight. Desert people opened up their homes and charged exorbitant rents. Water quickly became scarce. The locals, having dug secret wells miles outside of town, could charge an hour’s worth of government pay for a single bottle of water. Many now had mansions outside of town, though the exhaust from all the invading vehicles was beginning to smoke them out. It was a gold rush for them in monetary terms, and they were thankful.

  Charlie frowned as he got his first real glimpse of The Developer. He couldn’t see much, only the facade of the building itself and some giant pipelines coming out of the top that wound their ways over the back of the building. Presumably they carried the Resources wherever they needed to go. They fanned out hundreds of miles in every direction, across the desert, over and under towns and freeways, out to the West Coast and down to Mexico, bright and shiny, ready to carry Resources anywhere they needed to go.

  After a bit, Alan and Charlie were halted at a series of checkpoints, marked by white and yellow lines on the ground. Their truck and bodies were searched thoroughly, and, after the soldiers had double- and triple-checked the duo’s paperwork and payload, they were ordered back into the truck and told to wait on the conveyor belt in a large station.

  Armed guards with dark eye-shades and fingers near their triggers stood against the walls, waving them along. From there, Charlie and his father were taken past two dozen cameras, X-ray machines, metal detectors, and many other devices pointed at a
nyone who entered.

  They soon reached the back of the large warehouse. The metal door clanged shut behind them, and a new one opened in front of them. They were ordered to stay in their truck at all times, as the conveyor belt took them through room after room.

  Then—up ahead. There it was. A giant hole in the wall. The Developer.

  Its giant metal jaws flung open.

  Charlie looked inside the mouth. There was nothing, only black. Above the mouth, where the eyes might have been, a phosphorescent and seemingly magical glow lit up the face of the great mechanical beast. A giant screen displayed ones and zeros, ones and zeros, ones and zeroes.

  A dozen soldiers stepped forward, out from around the face, approached and opened the back of the truck, and began bundling up the Resources. Charlie watched in the rearview mirror as each man emerged, pulling stacks of Resources encased in nets. Each lugged the Resources around on the floor in a wide arc and set them at the front of the giant mouth. No grunts, no groans, no bent knees—not a hunched back did Charlie see on any of the men.

  The ostriches came out last. All eight of them. They were set first at the altar, which was marked off in a black circle. Everyone stepped away from the circle. There was a whirring sound, and then a ding. The floor beneath the ostriches gave way, and they dropped under the building and disappeared. The numbers on the big screen spun and rolled.

  The board flashed: HIGH MARKET RATE FOR 8 WHOLE OSTRICHES: $27,350

  One of the pullers stepped up to the cab of the truck and handed Alan his cut of sixty percent, or $16,410.

  “Where will they go?” Charlie asked, jutting his head out over his father’s shoulder. “The ostriches.”

  “Fire,” the man grunted. “They go in the fire.”

  “You don’t use them for anything?”

  “They have been used.” He pointed his big beefy hand to the screen above. “Their price has been broadcasted by the market.”

  Charlie grabbed the bottom of Alan’s shirt. “Please don’t let them kill them.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Alan said, head down, counting his money. “It’s over. The market has already absorbed them. They’re gone now.”

  “No, take it back. Give them back the money!”

  “Quiet,” Alan said. “Let them finish.”

  “Give it back!”

  Charlie ripped the money from his father’s hands and exploded from the cab of the truck. The pullers didn’t try to stop him. He ran inside the mouth of the Developer.

  “Please, take it back!” Charlie yelled, waving the money.

  Alan screamed and jumped out of the driver’s seat. But it was too late. The floor of the altar dropped out. Charlie disappeared.

  Alan watched helplessly as the Developer absorbed his child. The giant screen eyes lit up again—a brilliant white and yellow this time. The room shook.

  Everything stopped. There was a ding sound. Then the jaws opened.

  Up on the screen: “HIGH MARKET RATE FOR WHOLE CHILD…” Alan waited anxiously. “… $110,354.”

  Alan was sad. But he got paid his 60 percent, or $66,212.40. And he was reimbursed for the ostriches, too, which brought his total to $82,622.40. Then there was the money for the other items, which made him quite a bundle.

  He was shuffled on his way, out the door. He called his wife to tell her the bad news. And then the slightly better news.

  Charlie had been absorbed by the market. But Alan had made history as the first father of a Developed Child.

  The news quickly got out, and everywhere around the nation, men and women began bagging their children for their high prices.

  The next year, six more Developers were built.

  The Sewers Are Angry!

  Most people don’t realize this, but you can flush more than just shit down the toilet. All kinds of things. Socks, wallets, electronics, pens, cans, bikes, dirt, shampoo, old hamsters who’ve outlived their usefulness, bowling pins, executive suits. An ingenious person can make almost anything disappear down that twisting vortex. You may also be surprised to learn that there exists an entire competitive flushing league with loose teams and fellowships around the world—some stationed in the U.S., others in Greece, even more in Iceland where they really know how to flush turds (and bankers).

  Hundreds of thousands of kids rush home every day after a long, sweaty slog at school and barge into their garages and workstations to shave millimeters off their next piece of wood or hard drive or bike seat—all to win the next great achievement of champion flusher.

  Why, just last year Miyaku Yamamoto, age 13, won the worldwide championship by sending a whole engine block in three separate flushes, weighing 350 pounds cumulatively, somehow, magically, straight down the tubes and into the Japanese sewage main, where it missed the treatment pipe and went into the public water supply.

  (In related news, three thousand people were treated for acute metals poisoning.)

  You have the technology, right here, right now, to flush whatever you want. You’re bound only by the confines of your imagination.

  Flushing is a young person’s game. Anyone will tell you that. Older people go soft and forget the toilet’s magical properties. At thirty they start grumbling about the added costs of water and plumbing damages, and how every dollar counts in this economy.

  The key to the game is squaring off your puck (that’s slang for whittling down whatever you’re sending into the shitter) so it fits into the hoop (that’s the hole). To get started, you’ll need to cut, chop, filet, squeeze, juice, or otherwise vivisect your puck. As you get better, your pucks will grow bigger.

  The smartest kids know how to perform all the right moves for the highest runs (those are points). Squared edges earn the most runs. The hoop is round, so rounder things go down it easier; thus, they earn the least runs. Go ahead and start with something small, like an old sock. A rusty doorknob. Golf balls. Anything to get you some runs and put your team on the board.

  In America, we have some of the best flushers in the world. One in particular had the goods. A true all-star, he was proud, cocky, had a strong work ethic, ambition, and stick-to-itiveness. On the minus side, the kid was ugly, real hideous. His name was Edgar Thorpe. He had a face like a red apple and semi-jagged teeth that were set back in his jaw, so his mouth resembled an over-biting bear trap. No one enjoyed his company: 1/3 due to his smell, 1/3 because of his jaw, the other 1/3 due to his repulsive red skin, and all of them because the kid was meaner than a possum in a birdcage.

  Nothing brought more joy to the ugly boy’s heart than flushing his fellow students’ favorite toys down the toilet. As he watched things most loved swirl down the pipes, a sense of power and authority would rush into Edgar’s belly and up to his head, and he would dance and cackle around the bowl as everything made its way to Shit World.

  Yet he was plagued by frustration. He aimed to be the best. And for everyone to know he was the best. Not in the country—in the world.

  But he couldn’t be, not while Guo An Nu from China continued making headlines flushing an airplane hangar, piece by piece, down his vintage Prescott toilet bowl. (Guo, though, let’s remember, was unfairly advantaged: his toilet flushed counterclockwise, and everyone knows it’s easier to flush things counterclockwise.)

  One day Edgar sat and brooded next to his toilet. Hate sputtered out his mouth in torrents. Even though his flusher was brand new, and made of the finest porcelain in the world, and had his name engraved in solid gold just above the handle (to remind everyone of Edgar’s champion spirit), he hated the thing. It would never take him to the top. Edgar sat there, sullen, crying, choking on snot, and he flushed his father’s favorite watch just to cure his self-pity.

  Suddenly, a monster—bleeeech!—shoved his head through the hoop and leapt out of the toilet. Caked in shit, its body consisted of all the things Edgar had flushed over the years. Edgar at once recognized the two bike frames that now substituted for the thing’s legs; the piggy bank that made up its stomach; the
guitar neck running up its spine. He even saw the doll heads he flushed years and years ago: Raggedy Anne dolls he’d stolen from Anne Marie, after she’d refused him a kiss in preschool.

  The thing had popped one of the doll heads onto the guitar neck, making a rough neck and face. Poop and toilet paper filled in the gaps of its face and body, so the thing resembled a giant shitty mummy that left chocolate trails wherever it went.

  But Edgar was too sad to care about the shit monster. He could hardly lift his head off the hand that supported it. He just sat in the bathtub and moaned.

  “Why the long face?” asked the shit monster. Edgar wiped the tears from his ugly eyes and told him about his dashed flushing dreams.

  “Hm, that is interesting,” said the shit monster, listening to Edgar’s story, sitting on the toilet, legs crossed, his right hand fingering his pubic-hair-trimmed shit chin, his body smearing shit all over the seat.

  “Well, it just so happens,” continued the monster, “that I, having a unique underground perspective of all things flushed, should be able to help you.

  “Think about this: No one, not even the Japanese champion, has eyes and ears in the pipes, inside the sewer! With me, you’ll know what’s working for you, what’s not, how to refine your strategies, where and how to cut the next item for maximum runs, and, most of all, what the specific twists and turns of the pipes are down below, so when you send down your next television or Fabergé egg, you’ll know exactly what obstacles lie ahead! Think of the possibilities!”

  Edgar contemplated this. In a flash he leapt up—glory, sweet glory!—and he grabbed the shit monster and they danced, banging into the glass shower door, flinging shit on all the walls, the toothbrush, the mouthwash bottle. What a fantastic idea!

  But Edgar stopped the celebration and withdrew, suddenly suspicious. See, he’d been taught by his father, a wily American, to trust no one, no matter how nice or giving they seemed to be. Everyone had an angle, everyone was trying to screw everybody else. So why was this shit monster so eager to help him?