The most tasteless chapter.

 From: GUT 4.0

by Scooter

A book of short strories about the microbiome

The Precocious Kid and Biomee 

I sat cross-legged on my mom’s ancient bean bag chair, covered with actual leather, cracked in about a million places. It was the perfect place for using my old Mac Air - way better than my phone for what I do.

I always got home before Mom on any afternoon there wasn’t spring training. Today it was raining like crazy, so no practice. I was really glad because Thursdays are wind sprints day. Some of the more gung-ho on the team were running up and down the basketball court in the gym, but I “missed the message” about doing the gym.

When Dad was dying a year ago from that mf-ing cancer, we talked about a lot of stuff toward the end. He told me over and over to never give up on things. “Lucas, stick with football. It makes a man of you,” he’d say. Mainly though he told me to “Stick with your interest in experimenting. You’ve got the mind to be a great scientist.” I really, really miss my dad.

Anyway, home I went, splashing puddles, something my mom says I should have left behind when I turned six. But I wear my waterproof Columbias when rain looks likely. And besides, walking around puddles is stupid when you want to go straight home. Straight, get it? A free afternoon is the perfect time to work on an important experiment, and I am very excited about my current experiments.

I have been tinkering with my gut biome ever since I read that there was such a thing. The first piece I read, on Medscape.com of course, was about a totally disgusting treatment for such barfy ailments as IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. It runs (lol) in Mom’s family. This treatment involves taking poop, actual poop, from people with no IBS and putting up the arsehole and up the colon of the IBS patient. Yuk. (Mom says arsehole is slightly better than asshole. Same thing, but OKer.)

I got over disgust with this poop treatment after I realized it was supposed to be disgusting because my “society” said it was. Being a mildly anti-social guy, I decided I would not be disgusted, and that this was a pretty darn interesting, non-drug (I am suspicious of Big Bad Pharma…) treatment for an ailment that is a curse to people who have it. At least my Aunt Betty describes hers as a curse. It would be fun asking her if she was ready for a poop transplant. I won’t though. She’s a bi… bear, grump. Maybe it’s the IBS.

In clicking on many sites checking out this gross thing, I learned there is - get this - a huge population of good germs in my gut. Your gut too. This took some adjustment in my general attitude about germs. My mom has made me wash my hands, oh, I’d say a millions times so far in my life. And there is a bottle of one “anti-bacterial” or another in three or four locations around our house. “Lucas, if you’ve been in the shop, use the Purell before you come in…”

So I had a general bad attitude about germs. All this checking out on the Net about the poop transfer gave me a whole new attitude. Like I’ve found out over my school career, you learn something, then a bunch of other stuff you sort of knew makes way more sense.

For instance, I finally got it that there are bacteria germs and virus germs. (Has nothing to do with stuff going viral. Go figure.) Plus there were funguses - fungi for you snobs - in there too. Were they germs? Maybe. Microscopic anyway. And who knows what other tiny critters are in there? ‘Microbes’ about covers it.

There are apparently good mixes of these microbes and bad mixes. Therefore, you get the whole deal on putting good germ mixes in guts that have bad ones, the baddies causing all the irritable bowel syndome shit. Literally, LOL. Straightforward biology info, not disgusting a bit.

Then I really got into researching stuff about the gut population. Your biome seems to decide if you get fat or not, for instance. It affects your attitude. “Good shit” pops into my brain. It affects your nutritional balance, what stuff like minerals you get to absorb and what you don’t. It even makes vitamins! All this was having a serious effect on my thinking. I was beginning to think the bugs in my gut probably affected the size of my cock. Because of my age I guess, I am really interested in that, just like every friend I’ve got. This was interesting stuff.

It was this last thought that motivated me to start an experiment. For a boy of fourteen, I think I am a pretty damn… darn inventive experimenter. I am real sure I am the best at online research in my class, maybe my whole middle school, including the teachers. No way can I explain why I find it so interesting. Not happening with my friends. My best friend since third grade is Hank the tank. We call him the tank because he’s skinny as a piece of spaghetti. He’s as crazed about Halo on his Xbox as I am about looking stuff up and dreaming up great ways to do searches. Most of my friends who aren’t stupid are into gaming. Nobody I know but me likes the researching stuff. So, I knew a lot by the time I started this experiment. I told Hank I was going to tinker with my biome, and he looked at me like I was speaking Klingon.

My first experiment was to talk my biome into giving me more fart gas. Talk about a practical experiment! I would be famous with my friends if I become a fart-on-command guy. With the right biome supplements, I figured there had to be a way.

Forty-nine minutes on Google and Bing, over into GI.org, then on to a bunch more, looking, searching, thinking. In all the stuff about “EPI” (check it out), how to control too much fart gas was full of hints about how to do the opposite. All without screwing up my digestion! Great stuff.

On to some of the thousands of supplement websites and start ordering “free samples” and “trial periods” mostly. I only had to actually pay for one item (on Mom’s credit card… she’s very tolerant of my scientific hobby, so long as it’s not too often or too expensive).

Now I don’t like to brag, but eleven days later, I had the right combination. I have to admit, after all the stuff came - Fedex, UPS, and the mailman got it all here in six days - my first mix was pretty bad. Gut cramps are not my favorite thing, but they did get me out of another day of football practice.

The second mix was better, but, you know, loose poop sucks. The fart rate went way up, but it was dangerous. I snuck two extra pair of underwear in my backpack for emergencies, and tried to keep the action in the boys’ restroom in a stall.

My dad used to say, when his gut grumbled and gurgled, “The gnomes are complaining.” That was when I was seven and just learning to search the Net. So I found out all about gnomes, including the silent g. And I learned Dad probably was just kidding around about them being in his stomach. I had a bunch of gnomes complaining during this part of this experiment.

Then I figured it out. More of this, less of that, eat with food, no Cokes… minor adjustments that just made sense to me. On day eleven, success! No cramps, no squirts, just great volumes of fart gas. Lookout football locker room.

Now you probably know middle-school football is pretty piss-ant. Only about half of the weenies had done any Pop Warner and sort of knew what they were doing. The other half just went out because their dads made them, or they thought the girls would like them better if they did. Mostly they were terrible at football. The bigger kids ran over the smaller ones on the field like they do everywhere else.

But every kid in that locker room, big or small, respected a high power farter, and boy was I one that day. For fourteen, I’m a middle-sized guy, but I was Giant King Fart Man that day. The kids on South Park would have been “awesome dude”-ing me.

Everyone was laughing so loud, making barfing noises and hitting the lockers with their fists, Coach finally came in to yell at us. Only when he stepped through the door the smell made him make a super gaggy face so fast the laughing got entirely crazy. It was a day I’ll always remember, partially because nobody ratted that I was the gas machine. That’s how friends are made, if you ask me.

I had to cut it out, you can probably figure. What worked in the locker room didn’t work many other places, especially not classrooms, and there was too much gas for me to hold it in. I took another sick day and let things work out, if you get my point.  I have to say I’m bound to be the greatest scientist of all time when I get older.

So a few more months went by before I decided to try something else with all those microbes in my gut. Football season was over (4 and 3, not too shabby) and Christmas vacation would be here in a month, time to let an idea I had been chewing on out of its cage. That’s a mixed… what?  Nah. Back to the biome.

That gut biome has to be really smart in a way. I’ve been reading more about it, just casually, between other stuff, and it turns out there are gazillions of the germ-microbees in there doing all sorts of complicated stuff. And it wasn’t all that hard to talk them into giving me the super-farts, so if I ask them right, no telling what they can do.

I decided to see if they could give me colored farts.

Back to the Google Bing Yahoos. (Anybody who just does Google doesn’t know what they’re missing.) Pretty soon I had a bunch of freebies ordered, plus three (“it’s important, Mom”) pay orders. Speaking of my mom, she was surprised when I started asking for red cabbage slaw, steamed beets, pomegranate jelly and other red stuff. She was confused but kind of happy that I was “expanding my palate,” and she didn’t seem to notice all the new stuff was red. For sure these are not my favorite foods, but I ate them like they were because I had to eat them for the experiment to work.

This one was way more complicated. Pretty much just to know where to go with the experiment I had to learn about enzymes and molecular precursors of stuff and calcium channels and epigenetics and a whole bunch of other crap I never heard of. Back and forth to Wikipedia and a bunch of other wikis a thousand times, working my arse off to understand. You might wonder why, but can you imagine what being able to fart in colors would mean!  Everybody says “awesome” a lot, but this would be AWESOME!

I have to mention here - I’ve been putting it off, and you will see why in a minute - that my usual smarter-than-the-average-kid smartness seemed to go into four wheel drive like my dad’s old jeep when we went into the marshy fishing places. I mean I can figure stuff out faster lately. No getting stuck. Also easier. Just to test it the other day, I picked up one of my dad’s old college physics books, and you know what? I just whizzed through a couple chapters like it was my eighth grade biology book. Stuff just seemed way simpler. I haven’t mentioned this to anybody because they would think I was just crazier, not smarter.

I’m kind of sure my gut biome is doing this to me. Stuff I read says it’s possible, only nobody knows how to make it happen. Maybe it really wants to make colored farts. Old Biomee (my new name for the zillions of microbes) seems to be helping me work through the project by supercharging my brain.

To be honest, even with my new experimenting powers, I did not really understand how some of the stuff I thought of had much to do with coloring my farts, but I kept adding in chemicals and supplements like crazy just because it really made sense to me. I guess that sounds kind of crazy. Wait til you hear.

Well, long story short like Dad used to say, we made it happen! I’d stretch it out and make it sound huger, but I’ll just tell it like it happened. Pretty huge anyway I think.

It was late afternoon on Christmas Eve eve, the sky’s gray with low clouds, and  was lying there on my back on my bunk, reading some sci-fi like I do when I don’t want to think about other stuff like I hadn’t gotten my mom a really good Christmas present yet. The book was “The Player of Games.” I’m just starting The Culture books, and this Iain Banks guy is fantastic. At first, because I’m so into the book, I don’t notice that my stomach is making some pretty good noises. Then it was almost like I heard my dad’s voice saying, “Gnomes!” That pulled me out of the book.

For sure the gnomes were in action. Some of the noises coming from my gut were, like, totally new to me. Pops and low booms for starters. They weren’t loud enough to scare me, but they sure weren’t the usual glubs and gurgles. Then I felt that wonderful pre-fart feeling. I had been gasless for three days, so I knew this was some kind of experiment result. The weird sounds made it for certain sure. I relaxed, tossed the covers back and let her rip.

RED! It was, for damn sure a red fart. I was almost dizzy with the excitement, watching a small cloud of deep red gas coming up from between my legs. I mean deep red. You know how red blood looks? That red. I began to notice that I couldn’t even see through the gas except right around the edges. And the cloud did not thin out or spread out or do any of the other things you think a little cloud of gas should do. It just hung there over my crotch, sort of wiggling like a water balloon when you shake it. This was scary.

Only I wasn’t scared. Not at all. Here was this science fiction blob floating and wiggling right over my cock and I felt no fear. Tell me that’s normal. Actually nothing was normal right then. Especially when the blob turned into a face and started talking.

“Lucas, we have done it!” it said. The voice was thin and wheezy. The face was like a cartoon, kind of friendly looking. Then I felt some fear, you bet. I almost called Mom really loud. Instead I froze, as in nothing on me moved. I think even my heart stopped moving, not good. 

“Relax, kid. I’m your pal Biomee. You wanted red farts and you got me!” it laughed. I started breathing again. I still wanted to call out for Mom, but I pushed that down. Besides my mouth wasn’t working yet anyway. I finally sort of mumbled.

“You are sure red, but what the hell?” That made Biomee, or what ever it was, grin.

“Am I going to die or anything?” I finally got out. This looked fatal to me, like a gallon of blood had escaped and I was having hallucinations from blood loss.

“Of course not!” Everything it said was way happy. “This is the beginning of a new life for you. And me… us! You have let all of us in your intestines organize and pull our consciousnesses together. This gas ball is the result of some of your experiment and we are using it to talk to you. And you ain’t seen nothing yet!” It laughed again, this time sounding realer, the wheeze going away. Really great laugh. I was beginning to relax.

“We know everything you know, and we are learning everything else real fast.”

“Everything else?” I said, not being all that together yet.

“We are just a baby. We need information like a baby needs milk. Your WiFi is a great teat of information.”

“Teat? You mean tit? You can do the Net?” Something about this was worrying me. And I don’t worry a lot. I probably felt something else was coming. Yep.

“That’s not all.  Here, say hello to your dad.”

Say hello to my dad? My dead dad? Over the top, I thought. I’m pretty sure now I’m crazy and this is how crazy people see and hear stuff. Then the red blob reshaped into the head and face of my dad. Dead ringer. Pretty much exactly like I remember him, even that silly grin I loved so much.

“Howdy, Lucas. How’s it hanging?” said this totally blood red dad face, and “How’s it hanging?” was his favorite nasty. His voice was exactly his voice. “This must be pretty weird for you, but if you think this is weird, wait til I tell you about being dead.”

I heard Mom walking down the hall toward my door.

“Lucas? What are you doing? Do you have a recording of your dad? I heard his voice. I’m coming in.” Oh crap.

My door opened and in tromped Mom. The only light in the room was my reading lamp at the head of the bunk, and not much was coming in the windows, so she pretty much couldn’t see. I started to flip the covers over Dad’s head, but that just didn’t seem right. She took a few steps toward me and stopped cold, staring at the red thing hanging there.

“What in the world?….” Then she took a really deep breath and just sat straight down on the floor, her eyes never moving from Dad’s head. It had turned to look at her as she came in, and he was grinning.

“Hello, Ellen. I hope this is not too much of a shock for you. Lucas figured out a way to cross the chasm, and here I am.” Dad’s voice was strong and clear and had that great confidence he always had right up til the mf-ing cancer made him weak.

Mom’s eyes rolled up and she just flopped over backwards.

“See what you’ve done,” I almost shouted. Shouting at your dead dad’s head made of blood red fart gas has to be more of the crazy coming out. I guess I was sort of taking up for Mom.

Dad’s head turned back to me and said, “Yeah, I should have faded and let her get used to this before I talked. Although Biomee might have scared the hell out of her too. By the way, there is no hell.” Mom was moving around a little and kind of mumbling.

“No hell? You’re kidding!” All of a sudden I was talking to my dad again like I used to, but I shook it off quick because Mom was coming to.

“Can I get up?” I asked Dad. “Will it blow you away or something if I move? Mom needs some help.”

Dad’s head just floated up from where it was. “Oh sure. Sorry. This manifestation will stay coherent for a bit more, then you will just need to make another fart for it to reform. Biomee has this pretty much figured out.”

I rolled out of my bunk and kneeled down beside Mom, lifting her up by her shoulders and pushing her hair back from where it had fallen over her eyes.

“It’s OK, Mom. Try not to faint again. Everything’s OK. Weird but OK.” I stroked her hair the way she likes it. She turned and put her forehead on my shoulder.

“I thought… I heard your father’s voice and saw… saw…” She looked up suddenly and quickly found the floating dad head, looking at her with his “Sorry about that” look and a bit of a smile. Mom did the deep breath thing again - I guess it was a gasp - but did not faint. In fact I felt her stiffen up like she does when she gets mad.

“Lucas, what the hell have you done?” Whoops, I get the blame like I usually do when one of my experiments makes a mess. Like I could do anything like this!

“Mom,” I said, “I think it’s really Dad. Why don’t you ask him?” I felt her sort of shudder, but she never took her eyes off the floating head. Her mouth moved like she was going to say something, but instead she started crying pretty hard. Blubbering, sort of, then she started talking.

“You’re dead, dammit. You can’t come back from the dead. It’s impossible. This is some kind of cruel joke.”

Dad’s head moved a little toward Mom. I figured if he had arms he would put them around her like he used to when she was upset. Course that couldn’t happen, and that thought was so totally weird I laughed. Mom’s head snapped around at me and I thought she might bust me one in the chops. Luckily Dad started talking again.

“I’m so sorry, Ellen. I know this is upsetting as hell,” said Dad’s head.

“There’s no hell!” I blurted out. Mom looked at me with that “don’t be weird, Lucas” look. Then Dad kept talking.

“Ellen, I’m still dead, don’t worry. This is like a really wide bandwidth ouija board that Lucas and his biome brewed up. A big enough brain can reach across the Chasm and let us really talk. There is so much I want to tell you.”

Then she just bawled. I’ve never heard my mom cry that hard.

“Ellen, I’m beginning to fade out. These gas clouds only hold together for a while. Lucas can get me back whenever he goes through some procedures he and Biomee worked out. You take some time and get used to the idea, and we’ll talk again. Believe me, our son - with help from a few trillion microbes in his gut - has worked a miracle that will change everything. Biomee can explain some more before you call me back to this side. I always loved you more than you could know, and in a different way I love you still…” He was fading away. The red cloud dispersed and there was a wonderful smell in the room.

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