The Filth Fighter Ch 2

Ralf walked down the halls, past the banners, past the scientific posters concerning the deep ocean, past the Filth Fighter V6 cleaning bot, and walked into the central courtyard. He could see many fountains, food stalls, benches, tables, and even some people. Beyond the courtyard, in the center, was a massive, squat skyscraper. The general frame of the building made it look like a mechanized water droplet, shimmering in the early morning sun. However, looking to the left, he saw that the central building was surrounded by massive, shorter, equally squat towers. These towers connected to each other through walls that people could travel through. This made the towers and walls look like advanced tech castle walls, protecting the excellent water drop. He walked to the left on the path and, after a few minutes, made it to a sea-green colored pillar with a sand-colored base and entered.

“This place always smelled different,” Ralf said to himself. The main office was similarly colored, with posters, banners, and rooms dedicated to plant-heavy ecosystems like kelp forests. So many people loved coming to this building, and he heard that the upper floors and halls were some of the most beautiful spaces in this entire space colony. Unfortunately, he had to trudge to the elevator and press the button down.

“Down to the graveyard. Where things get done, they get dumped to the final floor.” The door opened up, and he walked in. A female student was already inside and looked up from her device only to notice that this was not her floor and let the irritation show on her face. The two sat in silence as they went a few floors down. Elevator music, raw audio taken from a kelp forest played, quietly sounded from the speakers. Then, when the doors opened again, she left. Another man entered the elevator, splattered with kelp.

Ralf asked, “Tony, filters busted on the kelp tanks?”

The student responded, “No, my experiment is done. When the pile collapsed on me, I was extracting the filter frames by the pools.”

Ralf frowned, concern etched into his face, “You injured?”

Tony shook his head and said, “Startled, but I got a warning.”

“Warning?” Ralf asked.

Tony turned to look him in the eye. “It’s weird; I thought I was alone, washing lungfish filters from my final experiment. I had a stack taller than me, and I was on the last few when the song ended. Before the next one played, I heard some squelching sounds, and when I turned to look, the tower fell on me.”

“I wish I could have seen that experiment,” Ralf said.

“It was good,” Tony said. “But this morning was too much to take before breakfast. So it is time for one hot chocolate.”

Ralf said, “Head injuries can be serious, and you are about to graduate. So you need to go to the doctor. On the ground floor, across from the drink place, is a first aid room.”

“Oh, thanks, didn’t know where that was,” Tony said. Then, finally, the doors opened, and Ralf left the elevator and got into the bottom floor of the building.

As the doors were sliding shut, Ralf said, “You’re welcome.”

He entered a hallway that encircled a large central room. On the other side of the hallway were several individual rooms. He pulled the door open and entered the main room. This room was large but crowded with aquariums, materials, scraps from experiments, and more. It was the worst-smelling room, as new, uncleaned garbage always needed to be dealt with. They needed to be dealt with by professionals like him. By the main entrance was a storage closet. He flashed his keycard in front of the door. It slid open. He gathered a mechanized mob and his bucket with wheels.

“I better clean and find Howard; otherwise, chunky will give me hell. I hope that photographer didn’t run off or something stupid like that.”
He checked his notification tech and said, “What are the marked spots?”

The device flashed over thirty different pictures. These images displayed hard-to-reach areas for the machines or experimental materials that were not in their programming to clean. Each image also came with a neon orange outline, showing where the worst of the dirt was. The first image was a pipe covered in dirty test tubes. He went to that area and dumped the used materials into his bucket. Next, he pressed a bucket button, and foamy soap began to fill and wash the items. Ralf then pressed a button on his mop handle, changing the bottom’s shape into four fuzzy, mechanized furry tentacles that cleaned the pipe. After a few moments, he put the tubes in a nearby bucket and set them aside. A few pictures later, something caught his eye. An image of a burst pipe with some off-color blur in the corner was unusual.

“Looks like something burst out of the pipes,” he said. He touched the image, and it got bigger.

“Some slime or sludge is on the edges.” The other thing that stuck out to him was some kind of peach and yellow blur in the corner. He took a closer look at it for a few moments before his eyes widened in horror.

“That’s his watch! Howard!” He dropped the bucket and gripped the mop like a spear as he ran straight to the back of the room to see some kind of slime trail going into the doors. Ralf, seeing this, stepped forward and opened the doors. He saw the broken pipe and the dried red blood on the floor.

He started shouting, “Howard! Howard!”

A quiet voice nearby said, “No.”

“Howard!” he shouted. He then looked at the cabinets nearby and started opening each one. Finally, at the third one, he found what was left of Howard. He was in a Hawaiian shirt, and dry blood stained his left shoulder. He was pale like all the jokes and joy were sucked out of him.

Ralf ran to him and said, “Your bleeding. What happened?”

Howard weakly said, “Is it still here?”

“What?” Ralf asked?

“The monster,” Howard muttered. “It comes from the pipes. And the tanks. One minute everything is fine. Then, the next, it pops.”

“What monster, Howard?”

“It walks and burns. It should not do that.” He gasped out. “I tried to blind it. It only bit harder. It’s wrong. So wrong.”

“Injured enough to be talking mad. You only see this in the bad bites.” Ralf said to himself. Turning to the injured man, he said, “Howard. You are too hurt for a first aid kit. We need to get you to the ground floor with the doctors who can help you. I am going to shoulder carry you. Can you walk?”

At the word walk, Howard reached up and grabbed Ralf’s neckline and shouted weakly, “It walks. It should not walk!” After his weakened outburst, there were some strange noises made. It was squelching like rubber boots were stepping in honey-soaked mud.

Ralf grabbed him and started to haul him out of the container. Draping Howard’s good arm over his shoulders allowed Ralf to pick up his friend and keep him steady. Ralf’s left hand held him steady, while his right hand held the mop like a spear. As he started to walk out of the room, he was thankful that Howard was conscious enough to also start walking with him. When Howard slipped, they were out of the back room and halfway down, getting out of the claustrophobic mess of the main room. His foot hit a pile of shiny, small irregular fishtanks that clattered, making noise and refracting the dull overhead light. A massive creature jumped out from a dirty, kelp-filled tank in the center. It had a body like a catfish and an eel. It was over 12 feet, 3.65 meters long, and covered in mucus. It had long facial tentacle-like whiskers, longer than a man’s hand. It had axolotl-like frills by its gills. It had strong-looking, elongated fins that seemed to work well as limbs. It was a massive fish with legs.

Howard’s eyes widened in horror as he said, “Monster. Fish can’t walk. It’s a monster.”

Ralf then said, “I think Tony was doing experiments with lungfish. I did want to see what he was doing, but this is not what I had in mind.”