"Lawg Vlog number 2. I have been documenting my adventures for future generations of explorers in case some day I discover that I am not immortal. I mean, I might be, this is space so anything is possible and I should have probably died by now from any number of insane situations I’ve been exposed to. The point is I’m probably immortal, but in case I’m not I want the Lawg legacy to continue. Now that I think about it…I probably have kids already. Damn I should really look into that. If they exist, they would be half me and that’s still pretty awesome. Maybe somewhere there is a really awesome kid of mine, like still young enough to follow in my boot-prints but not young enough to need supervision all the time. Definitely a boy, women are too much hassle. Oh damn…then I would have future competition. If he's anything like me, by the time he's 18 he would be a regular poon prowler. I’d have to start installing doors and that would really limit my privacy options. Ugh, screw that, no kids, nevermind. I’ll just have to live forever like I’ve been doing so far. I mean it's working fine so why change things? Which reminds me, we need to find a space port at some point for fuel and poon. Maybe some milk too, I found some cereal I’ve been dying to try but apparently you need milk. Whatever. Log out.” he said closing his video tab and noticing a 4 foot bunny in the reflection, waiting patiently.

“We got a problem, we’re really in deep shit Lawg.” He muttered.

“What kind of problem?”

“Deep shit.” He repeated.

“I mean specifically what kind of problem, I get that it’s serious.” He said frustrated. Marley blinked silently and sighed.

"You need to see this."

Lawg stood with a look of terror and disgust on his face, staring down at the most horrifying thing he ever saw.

“The toilets are broken. We are 6 days from the next station and the crapper isn’t letting go.” said Marley.

“I can see that…ugh geese, what did you eat that resulted in that?” he said shutting the door.

“Hey, that isn’t just mine, you guys have baked some loafs of your own. You carnivores are particularly disgusting. I only take credit for the discreet little pebblettes in that desecration of food long lost.” he defended.

“Okay, I get it. Why is there numerous deuces adding up to one big sum in the toilet? I know I have been flushing and that accumulation is at least 7 days of 2s. That’s 14!” He objected. Marley pulled out a pocket scanner and ran a laser over the pipes.

“Yea just what I thought…the pipes run under the gravity plating. It’s a bad design. It works for a while but with too much use, it corrodes the plating at the tailpipe and it causes zero-G cloggage. The debris starts floating and attracting to the pipe. It’s a real issue in the older ships. Whatever idiot put these pipes in should be slapped.” He noted.

“Hey, it was a short-range cruiser. It was only designed to transport frozen food for 12 hour runs. You don’t get many runs in those runs, all the waste just went into a tank and it had to be removed and dumped after every mission. The Captain doesn’t do routine poop shuffles, so I just ran the pipe to the rear of the ship and put a dump valve on it. Eliminated the work, dump the dumps.” Log grinned proudly.

“You also didn’t use stainless pipe. The gravitanium coating on the septic tank was what kept things flowing. Now you have a straight pipe in line with the gravity plane and corrosive metal for the last 40 feet of pipe. It’s a wonder we have had full gravitational backslosh by now.” he said pointing to numbers on his scanner.

“When the hell did you get all smart?” he asked.

“I’ve always been smart.” Marley pointed out.

“You didn’t know to re-boot the GPS on that bounty ship when we found you.”

“First of all Lawg, I was scared and alone and I hadn’t eaten for days or slept in 30 hours, I didn’t have my universal scanner, and I nearly died of alcohol poisoning, so just drop it Lawg.” He argued.

“Okay, so the shitter is broke. Cant we just remove the pipe and let it vent naturally?”

“You’d think since space is a vacuum and all but no. It’s very technical. We don’t want any of that getting pulled back in the aspirators. You could ruin the engines and then we die in space without a working shitter.” He explained.

“Yea that’s bad. Can't we just wrap the bowl in plastic wrap and use the other bathroom till we reach the station?” he suggested.

“It’s the plumbing, not the actual toilet, so it affects both of them you chimp!” he said kicking air, rather angrily.

“Hey calm, down little buddy, we have enough plastic wrap for both. We can just use the food containers when were done and then blow it out the airlock.”

“That’s seriously your solution? Just pile the essential airlock we walk through to get to the cargo bay, with little cans of poop and then occasionally subject it to a sudden pressure difference that wastes air and covers the airlock doors in poop?”

“It’s an airlock, you pump the air out of the room first so it just gently floats away." he explained

“Okay…not only is the airlock on the side of the ship, the only one because you turned the upper rear airlock into a convertible…and not only is the oxygen very precious in a spaceship, but the whole reason the airlock functions at all I because it pumps the air back into the collectors. Do you know what happens to a gallon of poop when you pull a vacuum and pump the fumes back into the ship repeatedly for 6 days? Because I don’t know what it would do but it sounds really bad doesn’t it?”

“Yea I guess it wouldn’t be a good idea. So what do you suggest?”

“We do an EVA spacewalk and pump the system. It’s a simple concept and in theory would take a half-hour or so. We have all the tools.” suggested Marley.

“Since you know damn good and well we don’t have an EVA suit that would fit you, I assume you are assuming you are exempt from this mission.” He said squinting suspiciously.

“Hey, I can't help it if they don’t make EVA suits on humanoid ships designed to fit Delmarian anatomy.” he grinned.

“Captains don’t plumb, it's against the plumber's union code.” He reminded proudly.

“Well you did the plumbing that created this mess but what do I know…besides…you have a subordinate who would fit a humanoid suit.” He noted.

“I hate you guys.” said Uka, putting her boots on.

“Hey, this is space exploration, baby. Peter Puffball here can’t fit the suits and I have to manually keep the spleefter valves in check while someone does the spacewalk.

“There is no way that is a real thing!” she said pointing a very angry finger.

“That is absolutely a real thing on starship plumbing lines. It takes 2 people to run back and forth and one to EVA and you don’t know the different valves in a pinch.

“You wanna know what a Captain does in a pinch, because I’m about to pinch your head off.” she growled.

“Okay, not to interrupt your conversation but in regards to pinches, we happen to have a clogged poop-tube that is only getting worse, so let’s maybe do this in a timely fashion without settling your lovers quarrel during the evacuation's evacuation.” said the tech-bunny, handing her a bundle of rope.

“What is this deal?” she asked, holding up the frayed end of rope connected to the carabineer, held with Survival Green tape.

“EVA tether. We can’t stop moving or the pipes will just dump both ways.” explained Captain Lawg. "That's Einsteins conservation of gravity!"

“Newton's law of momentum. I get that much…why is my EVA line a piece of string with tape on it…old crusty rope the size of a shoelace.” She barked.

“I sold some stuff a while back. Didn’t think I needed it.”

“What could you have possibly traded for some nylon rope and a clip?”

“Bout 20 feet of iron pipe, don’t worry, you’ll see it for yourself.”

Uka nervously climbed the rails on the underside of the ship, tracing the pipe to its problem area. She counted the panels until she got to panel 35.

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“Doing good?” asked William with a yawn.

“Great, just tethered to a moving ship by a piece of string, about to root the backed up crap from a week’s worth of vending machine waste. Freaking sunshine and rainbows down here.” She said squinting at something as she pried the panel off. She wiped the frost off the valve and examined the label. “Spleefter valve, really?” she grunted rhetorically.

“Yea, you’re at the junction. Wait a second…” he said. Suddenly one of the lights flickered and “twinkle twinkle” began playing sluggishly over the alarms.

“Oh hell. We got a problem. Uka, see if you can crawl into the panel and shut it behind you.” he suggested.

“What?!? WHY!?!” she barked.

“We have company…you need to hide now.” he said.

“If this is a prank I will literally asphyxiate you with this shit-pipe until you die.”

“Not a joke, into the crawlspace with you. Watch for sharp things, your EVA suit is pretty old.” he suggested

“You don’t have one descent EVA suit?” she asked. He turned off the coms. As she crawled into the panel opening he shrugged to Marley.

“I mean…there is my suit, but its got “Captain” in big letters on it. I’m not letting her wear the captain suit.” He muttered to Marley as if it was obviously justified. The com system changed to the hailing channel.

“This is Captain Crayta of the starship Deathmaggot. You have something that belongs to us.” said a deep menacing voice.

“This is Captain Lawg of the…spacefleet gunship supreme…Disembowlinator. Whatever we have that may belong to you…I’m sure we can return it and it was probably just a misunderstanding.” He said calmly. "Let me just turn the gigantic guns a little so we can talk." he bluffed.

“You have my shuttle pod, and I believe your ship says “Tast-E-Chill” on the side. Isn’t that an unarmed dairy vessel?” he snickered.

“Damn, I was hoping he didn’t notice that.” whispered Lawg.

“Release our shuttle and prepare to be boarded. If my cargo is intact and the damage to my shuttle is minimal, I may allow you to live.”

“Um, there is a tiny issue with that, see the cargo is fine, but the shuttle is sort of…attached to the ship. I sort of used the floor plating to repair some holes and long story short…we can't really take it off because we won't have a roof. We need that to have atmosphere and life and whatnot.” He said looking concerned.

“I fail to see why that is a problem for me.” replied Crayta.

“Yea…that makes sense. Can you give us a few minutes to disconnect it while we seal off the section?” he asked.

“You have 3 minutes, or I open fire on your ship.” He said abruptly severing communications.

“Okay, so…any ideas?” he asked to Marley.

“Me? You’re the Captain, aren’t you supposed to know what to do?” Marley replied.

“Exactly, and as captain I am ordering my Chief Tech Advisor to tell me how we could potentially detour death.”

“Um, let me think…we can’t actually seal the section because you removed the door to fit the shuttle nose…we have no weapons of any kind because this is an ice-cream truck. We can’t outrun them, we have no valuable items to barter with and we have about 2 minutes to stop an armed ship from killing us. No pressure.” He said. Suddenly his ears perked up. “That’s it…no pressure.” He said darting across the room.

“Um, furball…we can’t depressurize the ship, that would kill us equally as dead in about the same time as the bad guys.” reminded Lawg

“Shut up and get me a shuttle-jack, your EVA suit, and a bottle of the strongest booze you have.” He ordered.

“Fine, but only because time is an issue and we might die. The moment we aren’t about to die you lose the right to give orders.” He said running to the hot-tub room.

“So…it’s a bomb?” asked William.

“Essentially yes, if the canister doesn’t hold. If it does, it’s more like artillery. Liquid oxygen and Golden Gem 195 proof in a thermos with a sensor detonator.”

“No offense…but suicide isn’t really what I had in mind.” he said watching him tape the canister very quickly and generously.

“It won’t kill us…ideally, like in theory it won't, if this works properly. This gravitanium pipe is tough stuff, we load the bomb in the pips, brace the valve with the jack and the shit-pipe becomes a cannon." explained Marley.

“What are you using as the projectile?” he asked.

“I dunno, we need something harder than dura-lite armor.” He shrugged. William took off and returned from the library with a small, silver device in his hand. With a sinister grin, he handed an old cell phone to him.

“The hell is that?” asked Marley

“It’s a Nokee 5 cell phone. Early primitive communication device. It still works, but these are regarded in lore as being virtually indestructible. They survived the great Franchise conflict of world war 2.”

“Fine, give me this stupid thing.” He said shoving it in the pipe and following it with the armed bomb. He quickly screwed on the cap and fixed the jack in tightly.

“So how do we detonate it?” asked William.

“We don’t, we run like hell.” He said dashing out of the bathroom and jumping behind the structural support.

“Won't their energy shielding stop it?” he asked.

“That’s the beauty of the sensor detonator. It is set to detonate when they lower shields. They can’t fire at us until they shut the shielding off. So all we have to do is line up the ship and haul-ass. When they get mad and lower shields to fire…poof, we put one in their intake manifold. The whole ship loses power.” Marley grinned.

“No we don’t!” hollered Uka from the communicator.

“When did I turn the coms back on?” asked William.

“You never turned them off you dipshit! I can hear everything. You are not setting off an explosive in the shit-pipe while I am firmly pressed against the Spleefter valve!” she hollered.

“It is open…right?” asked Marley.

“Yes.” She barked.

“Then it should pass right through, unless there is heavy damage to the pipe anywhere.” He shrugged, looking at William for a comforting confirmation.”

“There is green tape on this pipe.” She mentioned.

“Oh no, that was just to keep it from vibrating and making noise.” Lawg said shutting off the com. “She is probably gonna die.” He said discreetly to Marley.

“Bummer…so yea we need to make sure the pipe is lined up with the manifold.” He said heading to the cockpit with the Captain. He pressed a few buttons and looked confident.

“Now what?” asked William.

“We wait. I put it in autopilot and target locked the gyro to the left wing. That should line it up. Now we just gotta wait till they set it off.

“So what do you think? This gonna work?” he asked.

“I mean…the bomb will work, I would guarantee that part. The pipe holding is just a coin toss and weather or not a cell-phone shit-gun will be enough to penetrate the intake grill is another flip. It’s more likely that we just blow a hole in the gravity plating and get sucked into space with a few days worth of frozen poop, suffocating in our own excrement as Crewton laughs hysterically. That is probably a thing that could happen also.” He said. "OR…or…any number of other scenarios. Chafee luck, remember?"

“Damn…I really should have banged Uka when I had the chance.” said an oddly calm William.

“Yea no offense but why aren’t you already doing that? I mean I don’t know how attractive she is to humanoids, given my obvious biological differences, but you are kind of a horny douche-bag and even more so than most humanoids. You’re stuck on a ship together and the options are pretty slim.” Marley said bracing.

“I mean she is smoking hot, but I don’t do relationships. If I bang her, then I can’t leave when she falls asleep…it’s my ship. And I can’t just kick her out either, we’re in the middle of nowhere and there are no habitable planets with modern technology to leave her on. Wouldn’t be right to ditch her somewhere that didn’t have stable motels or restaurants. We have no money to leave her for a space-taxi or anything. So normally yea, and now that we might die it’s an opportunity missed but I wouldn’t want that kind of tension around here and I’m not a monster who could just blow her out an airlock.”

“That, and she might sabotage the hot-tub.” said Marley.

“Oh damn, that would be bad. Do you know how hard it is to find a hot-tub in restorable condition floating in space?” he asked.

“Just thought I’d let you boys know…you still didn’t turn off the coms…so thanks for the concern, I’ll be fine here straddling a faulty Spleefter valve as the ship implodes.” She said. "If the bomb blows the haul, at least I get to watch you both asphyxiate until my air runs out."

“How exactly do you shut off the coms?” Lawg asked curiously just before the ship shuttered with an explosion and everyone went silent, waiting for the hiss of leaking hull panels or the sound of…like, death or whatever. Lawg waited for a good minute before realizing the ship didn’t explode.

“Uka…you dead?” asked William.

“No you asshole, I’m fine!” she barked over the static. They checked the panels.

“Minor damage to the rear exhaust port, electrical fuses lost over the lower deck but nothing critical.” reported Marley.

“NNNNNOOOOO00000000OOOOOOOooooooooooo!!!!!!” bellowed the Captain as he dropped to his knees and let the communicator fall slowly from his hand and roll away as he froze in a pose of despair and defeat.

“What? Did the shit-cannon miss? Are we going to die?” asked Marley.

“The hot-tub…it’s broken and covered in shit. It’s all gone.” He said almost weeping. “I forgot to close the drain valve before we set the bomb off.” he said slumping to a seated ball of pain and loss.

“Who cares? I mean yea it’s a bummer but we are alive, look, the phone went clear through the intake system, they’re drifting, we won. We live and celebrate and cheer falalala.” said Marley

“It doesn’t matter…I’m nothing without my hot-tub. I’m just a washed-up middle-aged loser with no hoes and no hut-tub to lure in hoes. No hot-tub to party with them. That hot tub was my greatest weapon in the fight against poon-deprivation sickness. Now I have nothing and it’s covered with shit…some of it my own shit.” He wept aloud.

“First of all, I'm positive that is not a real disease, secondly we can probably fix the tub, thirdly…most of the solids are Uka’s cuz you sustain almost entirely off boozy liquids, and lastly…have you actually scored a single time directly as a result of the hot-tub or is that just theoretical? Because I fail to see why a plastic bowl of hot circulating chemical-water would make much difference.” He pointed out.

“You can’t fix it…they don’t make the parts anymore and asbestos fiberglass is banned in 34 sectors. I’ll never find another one, the odds are impossible.”

“Cant you just make one? Spray the bed of that crate you have in the garage in flex foam, that crap can make a screen door boat! Surely if it can keep water out, it can keep water in. How difficult is it to make a circulator pump and seal a big metal box. You are way over thinking this Lawg." he suggested.

“No, it’s not the same. Sure I could build another one but it won’t have the history, the nostalgia of Earth history soaked into every inch of the asbestos resin. It won’t have the worn spots where dozens of fine alien asses have been, so many memories and so much chill has been imbedded into that plastic over time, and now it’s soaking in a solution of vodka-shit and the love is all gone. It won’t ever be the same now, even if I fixed it, I would know what it has been through. I would know. I WOULD KNOW!” He said dragging his feet and shuffling to his room.

“Um…so who is gonna clean this mess?” he asked. Uka came stomping out of the maintenance room, looking exhausted from her crawl through the panels to get back in the ship. She grabbed a lever on the wall and yanked it. The door creaked shut and the airlock vented, blowing out the tub parts and the unmentionable desecration.

“Oh right…the airlock thing. Did it get all the shit?” asked Marley. She tossed her helmet down and glared angrily.

“No, I think I missed the biggest chunk; it walked to its room before I could shut the door." she said, trudging away.

“Hey…weren’t you in the de-pressurized crawlspace just now…how did you get up through the hatch without decompressing the entire ship?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about it. The universe provides, remember?” she sarcastically growled, heading to the shower.

“Oh, you may wanna take a sponge with you. We didn’t have time to shut off the drain valve to the showers either, so it’s probably in a bad way as well.” He informed, meriting a high pitch scream of rage and frustration that permeated the halls.

“I mean…I thought it was a descent day. The ship survived.” He muttered to himself. “Oh hey…I bet the toilet flushes now" he said rushing to the toilet and flushing it. "Neat.” He grinned.