Waste Disposal Systems in the Ivory Tower: Technical Report

I was going back to the Institute to do some contract painting for Valarie, one of the scientists I used to work with.  This was after escaping from the family I was traveling with by buying my freedom from them.  Anyway, someone I used to know at the Institute was showing me around the place; it had changed from when I was there before.  Now peons had lockers instead of desks.  I set off to find Val so I could get started on the painting, because I couldn't be sure of getting paid until she had signed the papers hiring me, and I was already working just by being there.

The building was large and varied and there were people rushing all around doing things.  I knew my way around even though things had changed, so I wasn't worried.  I had to go to the bathroom, though, and the only bathroom I saw had two doors and glass walls, plus two people had gone in just ahead of me.  This was in a part of the building that also happened to be a kind of museum display of interior decoration, so the bathroom was an exhibit as well as a bathroom.  Since I actually had to use the toilet, I asked the two people ahead of me (who were in there just looking around) if they intended to use it or not, implying that I needed to.

They wouldn't budge, though.  Someone else told me that there was a bathroom down the hall, off a large room that was being redecorated by Val and a team of construction workers.  I figured that if the room was being redone, chances were the toilet was not functioning or inaccessible.

That left me with only one choice: a toilet I had passed a few rooms back.  This was a room that was like a fancy executive secretary’s office, fronting the inner office of the actual executive with a large glass front and glass doors separating it from the hall.  The chair behind the desk was also a toilet seat and toilet.  However, the desk was angled such that anyone sitting on the chair would be in full view of any passers-by.  Also, there was no toilet paper.  For this reason, I hadn't wanted to use this toilet.

However, I was now desperate to void my bowels so I bit the bullet and went into the room.  Even though the inner and outer doors were both perfectly clear glass, I tried to close them.  I think the outer one closed, but the inner one kept falling open.  Then I went over to the toilet seat/chair.  Someone had left a stack of papers on the chair, so I picked them up and set them on the desk.  Then I saw that the reason they had left the papers there was because the chair/toilet didn't flush, and was full of the previous user’s feces.  I sat down on it anyway and started to do my business.  The owner of the papers drifted into the office, looked enquiringly at me, and started to ask where the papers were.  I gestured, embarrassed, toward the desk where I had put them.

I went to the bathroom successfully but somehow managed to splash feces on my white shirt.  Then I was wearing something like a white fur coat and realized that the feces had gotten all over that, too.  Everything was worse than before, even though my bowels were now relieved.  Feces were splattered everywhere, but at any rate the other people in the room seemed sympathetic.  Everyone seemed to know it was a dumb place for a toilet to begin with, precisely because accidents like this do happen.  However, I felt guilty about leaving the toilet—which was also someone’s desk chair—in such a mess.  Also, the feces-covered coat I had shed was now a woman’s dead and mutilated body, which didn't seem to be the sort of thing to leave lying about.  I asked another woman who was standing nearby what she thought I should do, and she suggested placing an anonymous call to the maintenance staff, alerting them about the mess.  She commented that the sooner it was cleaned up the better, since the teeth continue to grow and the longer the monster is ignored the more dangerous it gets.