2456 Terran Standard

Exo Oort Colony - Tyche City

During his short tenure in the field of psychotherapy, Herbert the Walrus found one particular patient to be a bit of a challenge.

Part of it was that Javier was completely forthcoming, perhaps to a fault. He was also prone to graphic expletive detail. As a therapist, Herbert was well adjusted to dealing with people who acted only in terms of the inane or insane. Herbert just wasn’t as adjusted to Español, which was the only language Javier spoke.

It was a dying language, ancient and extant only because of deep-space immigrants like Javier. Less than zero-point-zero-four percent of the Solar System’s population spoke it anymore.

Herbert himself was fluent in modern basic and ancient Nihongo, and to a greater degree, a variety of advanced maths. The skills, as they say, pay the bills. The language barrier wasn’t all that stumped him though. At the heart of it, Javier was overly obsessed with flatulence. Herbert didn’t know how to deal with that.

“Tengo miedo de que si me tiro un pedo, explote. Será una explosión trágica y espectacular,” Javier stated for the four millionth time - sweating, dripping from his nose.

Herbert’s nanotech translated Javier’s words. He knew what it meant by then. Had known by the two millionth time what his sad patient had said it actually.

Approximately.

“I am afraid that if I fart I am going to explode,” the tech registered in his ears. “It will be a tragic, spectacular explosion.”

Looking at the files listing details about past sessions in front of him, Herbert wished it could all be over with. He was facing sheer insanity once again, not a thing that could be accurately evaluated and held to account.

Worse things he’d faced, however, and worse he’d face again. He scratched at the whiskers above his left tusk.

“Erm, no. That’s just—that’s not real. The most obtuse flatulence, crass as it might be, is still categorically not spectacular.” The venerable walrus spoke with certainty. He perused Javier more intently and was taken aback. “Have you been putting on weight?”

It was evident that Javier’s midsection had swollen considerably, as if he’d taken on eighty-four years of a beer belly in a scant few weeks.

Herbert felt a spurt of body shame bubble up within himself in poignant reflex; he’d viewed it internally so morbidly.

“Si, son los pedos que se acumulan en mi interior. Puedo sentirlo. Voy a explotar^1.” Javier’s face was painted in layers of angst.

Herbert’s mind drifted away as Javier expounded about feelings of certain doom. Some inevitable-but-for-now-held-off fart that eventually must come to pass. He’d heard the complaints translated several million times before. His subconsciousness filtered it out, clearing a pristine, vapid space.

He turned off the translation in his ears via manual override, transmuting the diatribe into an indecipherable, soothing white noise. Javier was an ingrown toenail that he was waiting till payday to laser remove.

Thinking instead of the only other place he had heard Español, Herbert recalled The Pythia where they charged a nightly cover because the ventilation systems pumped N₂O into the main room. The patrons drank merrily and laughed their asses off. Herbert especially liked The Pythia because no one there reacted strangely to the fact that he was a sentient and high functioning walrus. Something in the air indeed.

He could sit there in one of his stupidly expensive tweed frock coats and meet the most bizarre people.

Recently there was this friendly, simpleminded, starlight-addicted intrastellar trucker who delighted Herbert. The fellow was an uncouth revelation, obsessed with drugs, pornography and holocast sports events. An avatar of dumb lust slipping into slapdash proclivities.

A perfect specimen.

After blathering for an hour about how boring it was to be a space trucker, he finally asked what it was that Herbert did for work.

“Well, I do accounting, but I’m pursuing my Master’s in Astrophysics so I can quit this bullshit therapist gig I’ve been doing. Just because I’m qualified doesn’t mean I like sitting through it.”

The barkeep, Sherri, had come up with their drinks, commenting, “No hay trabajo malo, lo malo es tener que trabajar².”

Herbert had smiled politely, tipped her well. He thought about how her abuela was from the Jovian moon Io, where a small population of Español speakers worked illegally, harvesting algae.

Such reflection brought him back to the surface reality of Javier prattling on about how a fart could make him explode and how important it was for him to hold it in. To hear it from him, it was a matter of life and death.

Herbert’s bushy eyebrows came together as Javier stopped the spiraling Möbius strip of complaints and began to moan loudly, clutching at his bloated stomach. His moans grew louder and his belly began to pulse, unnaturally expanding and contracting.

“Oh dear,” Herbert said.

Javier looked directly in his eyes, his gaze a pair of collapsing binary stars, “Ahora sucede³.”

Suddenly, a flood of viscera and tiny prizes burst outward from him in a vibrant, astounding fashion. The eruption was accompanied by the sound of a phonebook-torn-in-half plus a propulsion-engine inflected infernal fart noise pushing out from the splitting abdomen of Javier.

Absurdity abounding in atrocity.

Splattering out of the split was a deluge of piñata prizes and disseminating organs. Small stuffed animals and sealed-in-plastic-capsules smaller prizes sprayed the office. A tiny portion of the disbursal resembled claw machine prizes from the early 21st century. A trillion tiny 3D printed figurines tore out violently, pelting Herbert with candy bars and individually sealed Jolly Ranchers in all flavors green apple to watermelon.

Javier’s head tipped back unnaturally.

Dripping in filth, it occurred to Herbert.

What happened to his suit was tragic, and admittedly, he’d never witnessed a more spectacular spontaneous combustion in his two hundred eighty-four years.

Javier had been right all along.

1. Yes, it's the farts building up inside me. I can feel it. I'm going to explode.

2. There is no bad job, the bad thing is having to work.

3. Now it happens.

About the Author:
Phoebe A. Xavier was born the same month that the first Star Wars movie came out. Since then she’s written a bunch of songs, short stories, blogs and comic books. Most of her comics and her first short story collection can be found at Indyplanet.com/123go. She writes Sci-Fi, horror, comedy and more recently magical realism. “Life is a very dangerous place and very few make it out alive.”