The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror (17 page)

O’Shitt pressed the tip of the gun to Bouwelles’s nose. We crowded around, arms crossed, looking down at him in judgment.

“No need to point that at me, sir sir sir sir sir,” he said. “You’ve got my attention.” He cracked a grin. “Is it time? Just tell me who to nuke. I am so there.”

Tears sprang to the General’s eyes. “I know,” he said. “I
know.”

I spotted a lump in Bouwelles’s cheek. My eyes narrowed. “Open your mouth,” I said.

“It isn’t what you think,” he mumbled. “I can explain.”

The General cocked the hammer of his commemorative laxative weapon. “Spit. It. Out.”

A mouthful of half-chewed food tumbled from the man’s lips onto his keyboard. The assembled throng gasped in horror.

“What do you call that?” Turdd demanded.

“I was only chewing!” Bouwelles wailed. “I never swallow. It isn’t illegal if you don’t swallow!”

“Find out soon enough,” the General said. And shot Bouwelles in the shoulder.

The man collapsed in his chair. A dark stain spread across the traitor’s trousers. The smell of poo wafted up from below. Two guards appeared.

“Take this piece of human filth to the brig,” the General ordered. “He speaks to no one. Understood?”

“Yes, sir sir sir sir sir!” The guards saluted, and dragged the disgraced officer to his feet. A bag of chocolate candies spilled from the man’s jacket and skittered across the floor. Several of the airmen picked them up.

“Save the janitor some work,” one explained, filling his pockets. “Everyone’s got to do his bit in the War on Fat, don’t you think?”

“That’s the spirit,” Major Turdd said. “I’ll see you get a commendation for this. Maybe even a promotion.”

The airman beamed. “Thanks, Major!”

“General,” my partner said. “With your permission, we would like to question your man.” He indicated the limp figure of Lt. Capt. Maj. Col. Bouwelles.

“No time,” the General said. “Summary execution in twenty minutes. Right now we need to track down his accomplice out at Boring, before he has time to warn Fatso. And you.” He addressed Bouwelles. “You, you, you food terrist!” He spat in his colleague’s face. “You disgust me.”

Bouwelles hung limp between the two guards. Poo dripped down his trouser leg onto his shoe. “Sometimes you gotta catch a bullet for the team,” he murmured, his tone slack under the sedative. “Had to happen one day. Take care of my family, will you?” He was weeping openly now. The guards led him away.

“Our Smart Car is waiting out front,” I said. “It’ll be a squeeze, but there’s room for five. If there’s not too much traffic, we can be at the airport in an hour.”

“An hour!” the General said. “We can do better than that. Follow me.”

He led us to the far end of the bunker. What looked like an oil pipeline soared from ground level and disappeared through the far wall. He lifted a hatch in the pipeline to reveal a capsule.

Inside was like a limousine. It even had that new limousine smell. Clad in black leather, with a mini-bar of compressed air—all the flavors, too!—plus a built-in television and an arsenal of laxative assault rifles. The only difference from an ordinary limo was that the seats had fighter jet harnesses instead of seatbelts. And the seats, I noticed, were actually toilet bowls. Green depressed a lever on one, and it emptied of water.

“What is this contraption?” Erpent demanded.

“The latest invention of the Poo Propulsion Laboratory,” the General said proudly. “Gentlemen, I give you the Poo Rocket.”

“Alright, come out of there,” a voice said. A rent-a-cop in a plastic badge stood at the hatchway. His shoulder patch declared him an Official Drone for the Toilet Safety Administration. Motto: “Protecting Our Precious Air.”

“I was just showing it to them,” the General whined.

“You know the rules. Not before you go through security.” The TSA Official Drone gestured at a nearby metal detector and colonoscopy machine.

“But I’m the TSA Commander,” O’Shitt protested.

“So you say,” the Drone sneered. “How do I know you’re really you?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Of course he’s really him.”

The man snorted. “Anyone can gain five hundred pounds, put a bunch of colored ribbon all over their clothes and strap a couple of big balloons with stars on them to their shoulders.”

The General turned purple. “This is a direct order, Official Drone. I am your commanding officer!”

The man scratched his ass and sniffed his fingers. “Get in line, fatty,” he said. “Or I’ll report you to my supervisor. You’ll get the open-heart chest-cavity search.”

“Not the open-heart chest-cavity search!” O’Shitt said. “No need to call your supervisor. Please. We’re getting in line now. See? Here we are in line.”

“That’s better,” the Drone said.

We backed up behind the security checkpoint. The General grumbled to himself for a moment, then sighed.

“Now,” he said, “I don’t need all three of you with me. Agent Erpent, why don’t you update the Thin House on our progress?”

“Are you kidding?” Erpent said. “Of course I’m coming.”

Major Turdd said in a high-pitched voice, “Ma-ma! Ma-ma!”

Erpent swallowed hard. “On second thought, maybe the Prophet should be informed of the full capabilities of the NSA.”

“A wise decision,” the General said.

“But I expect a full report on my desk this afternoon,” Erpent said.

“And you shall have it. What about you, Agent Green?” O’Shitt asked. “You could wait for us in the lobby of the Pentagram.” The military’s star-shaped headquarters across the Potomacncheese.

Green stuck out his jaw. “You can’t threaten me,” he said. “I’ve got a right to come along, and I intend to do so. What’s more, when this case is over I’m going to make sure the whole world knows what you do here.”

“Think of your daughter,” the General said quietly.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing, General,” he said. “What kind of future do I want for my child? Do I want the NSA filming her bottom every time she goes to the toilet?”

A twenty-five-star shrug. “This is the price we pay to live in a free society,” the General replied. “Where everyone—regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, family status, hair color, number of toes on their left foot, favorite glue to sniff, movie they saw last weekend, number of cousins in Georgia, fluency in Swahili or preferred brand of pipe tobacco—is free to eat air.”

My partner crossed his arms. “I am beginning to wonder if that’s really the kind of freedom I want.”

The General’s jowls trembled. For a moment I thought there had been an earthquake. “Of course, Agent Green. I understand.” He glanced at the Plumber. “So your plan is to
leak
this matter to the press?”

“Leaks!” the Plumber screamed, and brandished his lug wrench. “I feeks leaks!” He attacked my partner, swinging his wrench wildly. “No! More! Leaks!”

Green ducked out of the way. The sergeant-at-arms and a pair of nearby airmen wrestled the Plumber to the ground. The TSA Official Drone looked on, nodding vacantly.

“Kill the leaks!” Too Secret For You screamed, as they dragged him away. “Leaks! Leaks! Leaks!”

“Sure you won’t change your mind?” the General asked.

My partner was defiant. “Positive.”

O’Shitt turned to me. “What about you, Agent Frolick? Do you want to help me catch Fatso, and receive all the glory of being there for the collar?”

“I am but a humble air-eater who struggles each day to live up to the Prophet’s teachings,” I said. “I am not the best man for the job. Maybe I’m even the worst. But the Prophet chose me. He needs my help. Who am I to reject that sacred trust?”

“Well spoken,” the General said. “We welcome an objective observer like you on this mission.” He glared at Green. “Your partner here could learn a lot from you.”

“You see?” I said, and slapped Green on the back. “I’m not so stupid as you think.”

He just stood there looking at me. “So goes the world,” he said at last, apropos of nothing.

“I haven’t got all day!” the TSA Official Drone called out.

The General gestured at the screening point. “After you.”

I took off all my clothes and stepped naked through the metal detector. Something beeped.

“Probably your fillings,” the Official Drone muttered. “Open wide.”

He stuck a pair of pliers in my mouth and pulled out a couple of teeth. Then I remembered.

I spat blood on the floor. “I don’t actually have any fillings.”

“I know what it is then,” the Drone said. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Bend over.”

I did so, and he began the colonoscopy.

When was my last Twinkie assault? Would he find the residue? I played dumb.

“What are you looking for?” I gasped.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be looking for it, now would I?”

“But what kind of threat to Toilet Safety could be hidden. So. High. Up?”

“Can’t have any blockages,” the Official Drone explained gruffly. “You have any idea how much it costs to plunge a blocked-up toilet these days? So much as a tiny turd and
woosh!
Water and toilet paper all over the floor. There are food terrists out there who would kill to go potty in our sewers, just to block them up. Some even try to flush themselves down the toilet. Suicide poopers, we call them.”

For a moment I thought the colonoscopy might come out of my mouth. Then it withdrew.

“Alright,” the Official Drone said. “You’re clean.”

I gave a sigh of relief. I had heard the TSA Drones weren’t very good at spotting threats. But then it occurred to me—if he couldn’t find the remains of my Twinkie assailants, much less the Twinkie hidden in my ankle holster, how would he be able to spot a genuine food terrist intent on blocking up our sewers?
Note to self: mention the TSA to the Prophet once I’m working in the Thin House.
Maybe it was time to upgrade the security checkpoints so that everyone got the open-heart chest-cavity search.

I got dressed. “So what set off the alarm?”

“Oh that,” he said. “It always goes off. Standard procedure. Next!”

Green and the General squawked their way through security and joined me inside the capsule. I’m sure they were clean, I thought guiltily.

“Drop your pants and strap in, gentlemen,” the General said. “And don’t forget to flush.”

“What did you call this thing again?” Green asked, slipping into the harness across from me.

“The Poo Rocket,” the General said. He hooked his balloons to the ceiling. His ribbon-covered trousers pooled at his feet, and he settled himself on the potty beside me. “Now hold on to your toilet seats. We’re going for a ride!”

Twelve

Woompf!

I was flung back in my seat. My head slammed against the headrest. My eyes sank into my skull. With great effort I looked to one side. The General’s jowls spread out until they covered his ears.

“Why is it called the Poo Rocket?” Green shouted over the rumbling noise outside.

“Don’t you read the papers?” the General asked.

“You mean the government propaganda mills? Don’t believe a word they say.”

“Well maybe if you weren’t such a cynic, you’d know what Airitarian ingenuity has produced. The Poo Rocket is a nickname for the Sewer High-Intensity Transit System, or SHITS for short.”

“That’s right,” I shouted. “Now I remember. Propulsion system based on raw sewage. There was a big hullabaloo in the Air Congress about it, as I recall.”

“Yes, Congressman. No, Congressman,” the General mocked. “Why are we spending billions of dollars on a rocket that runs on poo, Congressman.” He snorted. “You know what he thought we should spend the money on instead? Grain-burning silos in Iowa.”

“But burning grain is important,” I objected.

“Sure it is,” the General acknowledged. “I got nothing against grain-burning silos. But when our freedom is threatened by dangerous food terrists who want to destroy the Airitarian way of life, terrists who can’t stand the fact that we’re thin and they’re not,” —and here he caressed his eleven-inch belly, which had flattened itself against the wall behind him— “money must be spent first and foremost to give us the tools we need to hunt down these overweight food-eating scum.”

The kinds of tools every country deserves. I know you Frenchies must be jealous. Why don’t you have a SHITS here in Paris, you’re wondering. It’s only natural that France has fallen behind. We, the United States of Air, are the most advanced country in the world, after all. However, as a gesture of friendship, I am authorized to share this cutting-edge technology with you. If you renounce your allegiance to food, close your food terrist training camps and stop promoting food terrism abroad, all this—and more—can be yours.

To continue:

The roaring outside the Poo Rocket stopped. Acceleration slowed. We were suddenly weightless.

“Poo-AHH!” the General bellowed.

Green gripped his toilet seat with white knuckles. “What’s going on?”

“A gap in the sewer. The launching tube flings us out via the Potomacncheese. We should be landing soon in a sewage treatment plant near the airport.”

Green looked around the leather-clad interior. “But how do you steer?”

The General chuckled. “You don’t.”

“But what if we’re off course and miss the treatment pool?”

“Hasn’t happened yet.”

“Oh good,” I said.

“Not since last Tuesday, anyway,” the General added.

The capsule fell. I screamed. My Twinkie screamed. We all screamed. It was like a roller coaster, only worse. It went on for a minute and more.

Splash.

The capsule slowed and came to rest. Green and I breathed a sigh of relief. Outside a clinking noise rasped against the hull. We seemed to be turning.

“Are we there already?” I asked.

“Now do you see the value of the Poo Rocket?” the General said. “So much faster than a Smart Car.”

“Is it safe to get out of our harnesses?” Green asked.

“Sure is.” The General reached for his own. He pushed at the release button but nothing happened. “That’s funny. Can you open yours?”

“Mine works fine,” Green said. He stood up and stretched.

“Must be a glitch.”