Toilet Trouble
Descending through thick smoky clouds floating over the rocky deserts of planet Pittsburg one could see a bright burning glow. The light as seen from afar, was flooding its red orange glow over the surrounding lands.
Upon closer inspection the source of the light was a large flickering neon sign.
The sign was mounted upon a tall mast reaching fifty meters in length.
Its letters spelled “Redwood Space Truckers Service Station” and seemed to be working as a magnet for the many ships, big and small, coming and going in an endless stream.
Underneath the mast, wading through the smell of cheap preheated take away food, hull cleaning agents and H-fuel the small figure of a man holding a mop and a bucket could be made out.
Trevor Bronson sighed as he walked towards the toilet.
His boss, John Redwood made him run the service station single-handed and so he had to juggle the tasks of refueling, hull washing, and running the little truckers shop by himself.
“It’s almost closing time, finally” He mumbled to himself as he walked back from a parked Camara he just serviced.
Its impatient captain was already waiting in the shop and Trevor had a spring in his step for at these hours his customers often tried to steal things like rolls of candy and drinks while his back was turned to them.
“Your toilet is a mess,” the captain stated with an annoyed tone of voice as Trevor finished the credit transaction.
“Do you wish to have a receipt?” he muttered in response, but the captain already walked out, ready to fly somewhere, anywhere, where Trevor would rather be.
A loud click sounded when Trevor pulled the lever to shut down the neon sign. Humming to himself he made way to the toilet, its big rusty door and pungent smell welcoming him from afar.
Next to the door a large red button, obstructed by a safety cap that read “Ionic Cleaning Program” was situated. As Trevor lifted the cap and pushed the button, the rusty door spoke to him in a rusty voice, most fitting to its speaker.
“Initiating ionic cleaning program… Toilet is empty… Stand clear to initiate procedure in five… Four… Three… Two... One...”
A loud rumbling noise came from the toilet cabin and a bright light blue ray of light leaked through the gap underneath the rusty door. Then the smell of a disinfectant unit, combined with a dark smokey burning smell that Trevor really did not wish to focus on. Then the light returned and this cycle would continue for a few more minutes.
As Trevor locked the door of the shop behind him, and walked to the shuttle stop, the metallic voice behind him stated “Ionic cleaning program… Complete”.
“Use your afterburners and then engine kill bro,” Trevor shouted as he was turning his ship around in a wild maneuver.
He was now behind his target, and his thoughts drifted off to the times when he was a little boy, sitting on his father’s knee, listening to stories about his time with the Xenos Alliance as a fighter ace.
His lasers lit up his target and he could feel the vibration of the blast in his hands.
“Wanna try again,” a voice sounded through his headphones.
“Nah man, it’s Festivus, I should get to my mom’s place, my girlfriend is already there,” Trevor muttered with a tired voice as he lifted up his VR glasses.
“Alright bro. Is your mom still dating that big shot from Samura industries?”
“Yeah I think the right word is a trade liaison, he’s not so much of a big shot, just a guy from Pittsburg with a nice job” Trevor replied.
“So are we gaming later on man?” the voice asked.
“I doubt it, catch you later bro,” Trevor sighed as he shut down his entertainment system and walked over to the wardrobe.
A few hours later Trevor was sitting at his mother’s table.
Next to him sat his girlfriend, Aiko, wearing her LPI uniform as always.
Even though she mostly had a deskjob, she loved to wear her uniform outside of work.
On her belt, between her handcuffs and taser, her transponder was barking soft monotonous radio chatter.
“I’m on standby,” she said with a authoritarian voice to the square headed man across the table.
The man across the table, Rosko Junior smiled friendly and replied “I feel much safer already dear, that uniform looks really well on you.”
He was wearing a chalk striped black suit adorned with silver cufflinks himself.
Next to him, in a white suit sat Rosko senior, his fat arm resting around the waist of Trevor’s mother Claire.
In the corner of the room, a metal pipe adorned with a chain of little lights flickered nervously.
The table was filled with food and everyone was drinking wine, except for Aiko because she was “on standby”.
“My son loves the Liberty Police, we both donate to the force frequently,” Rosko senior spoke, his triple chin shaking like the endless waves of an ocean crashing to shore.
“Tell me dear, you’re from Kusari right? Junior and I love our business trips to Kusari, it’s such an exotic place,” he continued, making porkish sounds as he inhaled through his nose between sentences.
Rosko senior and Rosko junior came across like a difference of day and night.
Rosko senior, bloated, sweaty, and quite repulsive in general, and Rosko junior slick, smart dressed, a poster boy for the successes of Liberty capitalism.
“Well my parents are from planet New Tokio but I was born and raised right here on Pittsburg mister Biggums,” Aiko replied.
“Such a fine lotus to grow in the desert,” Rosko junior said, interlocking eyes with Aiko.
Aiko visibly blushed and Claire gazed at the two with a warm smile.
Trevor felt a bit underdressed wearing just his jeans and shirt and was staring at his glass of wine, rethinking his game of HoloSpaceAce Flightsimulator from earlier that night.
His eyesight fell on Junior’s sleeve, a cufflink was missing.
“A small victory for a small man” his mind muttered to himself.
He and Aiko grew up together, and went to class with Junior for most of their younger years.
Junior being the perfect guy all the girls fell for, Trevor felt lucky that Aiko one night, during a class reunion when Junior was absent kissed him on the cheek.
They were dating ever since, for five years now.
He never liked Junior, and he didn’t appreciate Junior becoming part of the family like this.
But his mother treated Junior like a son of her own, a son that accomplished way more than hie did.
“Trevor… Trevor!” Claire shouted.
“We are doing the Festivus’ Airing of Grievances, are you even listening?”
Apparently a whole conversation passed by him while he was lost in thoughts.
Trevor just shrugged and wished the night was over already.
Trevor’s head pounded from the wine the night before, even though his long shift was almost done already.
His bowels felt weak as he was serving his last customer of the day.
The happening of the day was a customer that got locked in the toilet, the old inner door knob broke off as it often did and Trevor had to liberate him using a screwdriver and a lot of patience.
As the last customer of the day walked out of the door and the service station was surrounded by darkness once again, Trevor pulled down the neon sign lever and continued the ritual by walking to the toilet.
As he pressed the red button the metallic voice from the door spoke: “Error, sensor defect detected”.
“Not now, damn it,” Trevor spoke to the door and he pushed the red button three more times.
“Error. Err— Error, sensor defect detected,” the metallic voice stoically replied.
Cursing ancient technology, Trevor walked back to the shop, took a mop and a bucket and filled the bucket with water and cleaning agent.
He was already late for his HoloSpaceAce Flightsimulator session and as he returned to the toilet he saw the shuttle he was supposed to be taking home pass by.
The next one would not come until an hour later.
Inside the toilet it looked and smelled like a pigsty.
With fresh frustration Trevor started to clean the walls, the floor, even the ceiling, for space truckers are quite indiscriminate about where they leave their filth.
He was almost done cleaning now part from a little corner behind the toilet.
As he leaned forward, he lost his footing over the slippery floor and could barely prevent himself smacking face first against the toilet by grabbing on to the doorknob.
With a loud “CLUNG” the door swung shut.
In his hand he was holding the inner doorknob, and he cursed loudly though in this toilet no one could hear you scream.
After banging on the door for a few minutes that felt like an hour, Trevor lowered the toilet lid and sat down.
His transponder had no battery juice left and nobody would come for the service station until the next morning when John Redwood would open shop.
Holding his head in his hands, Trevor cursed the day and tried to get some sleep in this awful smelly toilet that now became his holding cell.
Trevor woke up from a loud bang on the door.
He could hear the voice of his boss, mister Redwood, roaring in anger like a furious drill sergeant accompanied by the familiar sound of a screwdriver being moved inside the doorknob mechanic.
As mister Redwood opened the door, Trevor could do little more than sheepishly accept the tirade that he was subject to.
Mister Redwood went on and on about the shop’s door being unlocked for the whole night, the mechanic that would need to come to fix the toilet, and what a waste of skin his employee really was.
Trevor did not get the day off, in fact, he had to start his new shift in just half an hour.
On top of that, an unknown captain filled up his ship with H-fuel during the time of the imprisonment. Trevor’s contract stated the amount of credits lost were to be deducted from his income. Not only did Trevor lose a night’s sleep, he also lost two months of income. After mister Redwood left, the stream of customers was back to full force as usual.
Trevor ran around, refueling, cleaning, working the shop constantly since this day was particularly busy. At some hour a young mechanic came by, who told him something but Trevor was too tired and busy to really pay attention to his words. Something about the sensor not working stuck to him though and indeed before Trevor finished his shift, he manually cleaned the toilet again, though this time more careful.
When he finally came home, he could only think of sleep.
He got out of his dirty clothes and dropped on the bed.
Aiko was nowhere to be seen. “She must be having a night shift again,” Trevor thought. As he stared at the ceiling, he rethought the stream of events, his financial losses, and finally, if he’d ever be able to fly a real spaceship like in HoloSpaceAce Flightsimulator.
He woke up with a sharp pain in his cheek. Groggy from lack of sleep, he walked to the bathroom mirror. A silver cuff button was firmly embedded inside the skin of his cheek. He cursed and yanked it out. Suddenly a picture was painting in front of his eyes. He walked back to his bed and sure enough, Aiko’s handcuffs were dangling down the bar of his bed.
His transponder was beeping, and he pushed the little button on it.
A metallic voice rang through his apartment:
“You have -one- new message from -Aikotwentytwosupercop-”
Trevor shivered and braced himself for what was to come.
“Dear Trevor… No actually just Trevor. Junior is taking me to the Cortez system for a luxury cruise. Keep this between us for now, but him and me really have a thing going here. I’ve pulled up your files and read about what happened at the service station. Giving H-Fuel to Rogues is a criminal offense and they are starting an investigation against you at my office. I can’t have this sh* Trevor, why do you always mess things up, all you care about is your stupid flight simulator.
Be happy I never mentioned that story about your dad at the office. You’re in a lot of trouble mister and you’re not dragging me down with you. Get a life loser!”
Trevor clenched his fist and cursed loudly. The metallic voice replied: “End of message”.
Trevor did not have much time to lament on what just happened, for he was almost late for work and barely made it onto the shuttle. For once the universe seemed to have mercy on him.
It was a quiet day and part from the occasional customer, Trevor had a lot of time to overthink his mistakes. He wondered if he could have done anything different and why he always had so much bad luck.
In the distance he saw a little dot on the horizon slowly getting bigger.
He recognised the shape of this dot as it was coming closer. It was a black CTE-4000 with the name “Rosko Senior Biggums” engraved on it’s hull. Rosko Senior parked his ship, leaving the keys in the ignition and walked over to him. His triple chin waved as usual as he spoke.
“Give her a refuel and a wash kid, I’m needed at the restroom”.
Trevor just nodded observingly. Rosko senior was either oblivious of what transpired, or lacked any sense of delicacy. For Trevor it did not matter, that pig was the cause of all the trouble in his life. If it wasn’t for Rosko Senior, none of this would have happened.
Trevor’s knuckles became white with anger as he was mopping the cockpit window of Rosko’s ship but his train of thoughts got rudely disturbed by a loud banging, coming from the rusty toilet door.
“This damn no good door knob broke off!” Rosko Senior’s voice buldered through the little gap underneath the door.
Irritated and loudly sighing Trevor walked to the shop, picked up a screwdriver and walked back to the rusty door. As he stuck his screwdriver inside the mechanism, his eyes fell on the red button. For a moment he imagined how good it would feel to push it.
Even though the mechanic told him the ion cleaning device was out of order and nothing could really happen, he fantasised about the sense of reward it would give him.
To wipe out this pig of a man like a brown stain on the floor, or the ceiling, of this toilet.
Trevor couldn’t help himself.
He knew that nothing would really happen, and just to give himself the little reward of vividly imagining doing this terrible deed he laid his fingers on the red button.
“Take that you pig” he mumbled to himself, to soft to hear and pushed the button.
A loud metallic voice spoke to him.
“Initiating ionic cleaning program… Toilet is empty… Stand clear to initiate procedure in five… Four… Three… Six... Eight… Seven...”
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“What are you doing!? Are you doing this Trevor?! Trevor this is murder!” Rosko’s voice rang loudly, interrupted by porkish sounds between sentences.
“No mister Rosko sir! I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me!”
He could hear Rosko Senior’s voice, speaking to his transponder inside the toilet.
“Yes! LPI? Trevor Bronson is about to MURDER me! I am at the Redwood Service Station, send help now!”
“No mister Rosko sir this is a mistake,” Trevor shouted loudly while jamming his screwdriver inside the door. The door wouldn’t butch and the metallic voice spoke again.
“Three… Two… One…”
A bright white blue light leaked through the gap underneath the rusty door.
Black smoke smelling like roasted flesh and cleaning agents steamed out of the gap into Trevor’s face, making him cough and stand back. Accompanied by shrieks of agony, Trevor could see blood and liquified entrails seeping through the gap, the gorey matter painting the tips of his boots in a colour somewhere between brown and red.
He heard loud scratching sounds and could only imagine the sight of Rosko’s little fat fingers scraping against the other side of that door, the flesh dripping from his bones.
In the distance he could see two black dots appearing at the horizon.
Ignoring Rosko’s screams, he shrugged off the smell of burning hair, ran towards the CTE-4000 and jumped in the cockpit. Finally some luck! The keys were still in the ignition.
Wiping the tears from his eyes and with his hands shaking he prepared for takeoff just as he did a thousand times before in HoloSpaceAce Flightsimulator.
As he was taking off he opened the nav menu and set course for the Colorado system.
He heard once there was lots of Xeno activity there and maybe, just maybe, if he mentioned his father’s name he could take refuge in one of their outposts. In a state of panic he flew out to space, ignoring the LPI pull over signals coming through his comm system. Before he broke through the clouds, he took one last look behind to see a black plume of smoke rising from a red orange glow, flooding the desert that was becoming smaller and smaller in his rear view mirror.
“Alright miss Bronson that should be all, we are so terribly sorry for your loss,” the LPI officer said while handing Claire another tissue to wipe her tears and blow her nose.
Claire looked around the interrogation room, the officer that was questioning her had a friendly face and looked calm and reserved. In the corner Aiko stood, pale around the nose, silently observing with a sad look in her eyes.
“One more question miss Bronson. My colleague here said that Trevor’s father used to mingle with the terrorist organisation the Xenos alliance. Is there any truth in that?”
The officer took a sip from his coffee and awaited a response.
“My... Erh… My ex husband loved to tell tall stories, he never was part of any organisation though, he couldn’t even fly a shuttle,” Claire muttered between her tears.
The officer took another sip and responded.
“We have came to that conclusion ourselves miss Bronson, our records state that he is still working as a janitor in Trenton Outpost, your son is clearly misinformed. We are sorry for your loss.”