Episode 4: Turdcano

A shitty music festival created by Turdy

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mind-atlas-peter-liam/1150184226https://books.apple.com/au/audiobook/the-mind-atlas-compelling-short-stories/id6769707768https://open.spotify.com/show/0qaqT21Dpl9bSJ3suLIYtA?s

https://peterliam.hearnow.com/mary-janeMake sure you add Mary Jane to your playlist 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Episode 4. Turdcano. Following the great chemical defeat by the city's fire brigade, Turdy realized that launching individual attacks, whether by rocket, seesaw, or mutant wings, was too inefficient. To truly conquer the human world, he needed a force of sheer, unstoppable nature. He needed to weaponize tectonic pressure. The inspiration came on a Tuesday morning. Turdy was floating near the surface of the primary intake valve when a treatment plant worker leaned against the railing, talking on his phone. Yeah, mate, the whole crew's got to set up portable units out past the north paddock, the worker laughed. Splendor in the sludge is happening this weekend. 10,000 people out on the grassy flats, drinking beer and listening to rock bands. The plumbing's gonna be working overtime. Turdy's dark bean eyes narrowed. 10,000 humans. A massive grassy field. And beneath it all, an interconnected web of ancient, high-pressure bypass pipes. He didn't need to fly to the humans. He was going to bring the underworld directly to them. He was going to build a turd canoe, the six-month incubation. A project of this scale couldn't be rushed. For six grueling months, Turdy transformed the underground bypass chamber directly beneath the festival grounds into a massive, pressurized magma chamber of waste. He organized his loyal community into a highly disciplined labor force. The blockers, heavy-duty solids, were assigned to pack themselves tightly into the main exit valves, creating a flawless, impenetrable seal to build up pressure. The gas harvesters, teams channeled every available molecule of subterranean methane, sulfur, and carbon dioxide directly into the chamber, heating the mixture to a bubbling, volatile simmer. The structural engineers, using petrified tree roots and calcified minerals, they reinforced the walls of the chamber, shaping a massive, upward-pointing volcanic cone directly beneath the festival's main stage. As the months rolled by, the ground beneath the paddock began to vibrate. The pressure gauges in the treatment plant office were pinning into the red, but Turdy's forces sabotaged the dials with sticky grease. The trap was set. The Mystery Mound. When festival day arrived, the crowd noticed a peculiar geological anomaly right in the middle of the mosh pit. A jagged, dark brown mound had slowly pushed its way up through the turf, standing nearly six feet high. It was steaming slightly and radiating a distinct, heavy heat. Because it was a music festival, the humans didn't run away. Instead, they completely embraced it. Yo, check out this art installation, a guy in a bucket hat yelled. Within an hour, the mound was the most popular spot on the grounds. Hundreds of festival goers gathered around it to take selfies and photobomb each other in front of the steaming apex. Influencers posed with peace signs, completely oblivious to the fact that deep inside the crust, Turdy was holding a stopwatch, counting down the seconds. Cosmic Psychos and the eruption. Night fell, and the main stage lit up. The legendary Aussie Punk rock band, the Cosmic Psychos, walked out under the flashing lights. The crowd erupted in cheers, packing tightly around the mysterious mound. The fuzz guitar kicked in, loud enough to rattle teeth, and the heavy thud of the bass began to thwack against the ground. That bass frequency was the exact harmonic resonance Turdy had been waiting for. Deep underground, the vibration fractured the final retaining wall of the volcanic cone. Fire in the hole. Turdy roared to his crew. Right as the band slammed into the chorus of their opening song, the ground gave a violent heave. The photobombers around the mound suddenly stopped smiling as a deep, ominous rumbling drowned out the amplifiers. Boom! The Turdcano blew its top with catastrophic, primordial fury. A towering, majestic plume of pressurized brown magma shot 80 feet into the night sky, illuminated by the stage lasers. It rained down upon the mosh pit in a thick, inescapable deluge. The crowd's cheers instantly turned to panic shrieks as 10,000 people realized the art installation was a geezer of pure subterranean vengeance. People slipped, slithered, and scrambled for the exits, while the cosmic psychos, ever the professionals, just kept right on playing through the chaos, shielding their instruments from the falling debris. Up from the center of the crater, riding a surfboard made of a plastic traffic cone, shot Turdy. He looked down upon the absolute pandemonium he had created, his heart swelling with dark pride. He had finally brought the real world down into his domain. Of course, the victory was short-lived. The sheer force of the final blast sucked the remaining vacuum dry, creating a massive sinkhole that immediately pulled the entire eruption, and Turdy right back down into the treatment plant's main intake pipe. Splashing back into the tank for a few minutes later, completely exhausted but utterly victorious, Turdy looked at his cheering followers. Now that, Turdy beamed, was rock and roll.