Woke up with this fragment and had to get it down. Weak stomach people: might not want to read before breakfast. Not extreme, just vaguely scatological.
Frank Juarez finished some fine adjustments to the environmental control systems and checked his work queue to find something had jumped out of nowhere to the top of the list. He highlighted the item with a glare and drug it over with his eyes into the center of his vision. "Malfunctioning third redundant system?" he whispered, "This is top priority?" He wondered if the smart system that ran the support list didn't also need some adjusting. "Can't the bots do this?" A list of search terms to his question appeared at the lower right corner:
* bot malfunction
* crowded work queue
* electromagnetic anomalies
* extra vehicular requirement
He ignored them: typical shit. He trudged over to the airlock and suited up.
Outside the airlock, the EVA suit encouraged him to make a BM since it was low on power. "Couldn't you have thought of this before we left?" He ignored the terse textual answer. He paused and crouched. The high fiber diet had Frank nearly shitting all day, so this kind of on-demand break was possible. Then the suit rewarded him with a ripple of small, sentic stims: a subliminal picture of his mother smiling, a faint whiff of cinnamon, a light, smooth brushing against the back of his hand. He stood back up to his full height of four foot ten. The graphite in his flouride knee shifted smoothly. The suit went about turning the biomass into sluice juice, a catalytic cascade that powered the suit's systems with methane gas and hydrogen. Frank's diet was completely vegetarian, optimized for bone maintenance and fuel potential. "I ate more beans in space than my Mexican mama ever fed me," he liked to say.
Frank had shrunk a little since he started this tour. He was five foot even when he entered the Academy. He was specifically chosen because of this "asset." He had amazed at what had been a source of loathing throughout his life had become an asset. "Part of the Munchkins in Space Plan."
"You're the perfect pedigree," the recruiter had told him. Frank was born filipino-mexican-chinese-irish in the Mission District of San Francisco. "Maybe a little too much Catholicism in there, but we can work around that."
One of Frank's many adaptations was a sense of humor, so he appeared to take no offense. Frank had done a little standup comedy in college before he was fingered for the Academy. "I'm not so guilt-wracked that I can't perform my duties, sir." What he wanted to say was, "Oh so you think I'm docile? This pedigree has handled a lot of deadly weapons." He spared the recruiter his whole catholic routine.
Frank found himself at times like this, when his patience was at its end, that composing jokes in his head helped relieve the strain and boredom. He considered standup again after the tour of duty was done. After all, he wouldn't be in physical shape from bone loss to do any honest labor. The comic potential of the pants crapping thing alone was huge.
What follows would be Frank's struggle with the problem, his frustration with the ineptitude of various mechanical and software systems. All the while, the suit attempts to placate him by environmental and behavior-modification controls that become to seriously irritate him. He also composes some jokes if I can think of good ones.
Update: ironically, the toilet choose this day to back up. So I have to plunge it. But it inspired this new bit:
The arm of the cranespanner came whipping around and hit him in the gut. It was hard enough to knock his wind out but the magnetic shoes held. He felt something had snapped in the suit. Whatever snapped had also pierced the sluice bag. He felt moisture starting to creep up toward his chest.
"Have you ever had a colostomy bag explode in your face? You're laughing. Oh, you worked in a nursing home? So you know what I'm talking about. My mama worked in one. She said all those old people ooze all over the place."