Tunnel detail: "knows from rodents," the Traub punch-and-console, and the fart that was the fridge

texture · 11 Nov YDAU, 1625h

• When: 11 Nov YDAU, from 1625h, 26 meters below the Hal-Stice Show Court.
• What: On the semi-punitive post-Eschaton shit detail that doubles as the Tunnel Club's feral-hamster expedition, Gopnik supplies the expertise: the overhead bulbs stay off "because Gopnik, who’s originally from Brooklyn and knows from rodents, says only a complete booger-eating moron would do rat-reconnaissance in the light." His temper and his charm run in one continuous beat: when McKenna's beam catches "Traub tickling Josh Gopnik," Gopnik "punches Traub in the radial nerve" — and then, Traub weeping and threatening to quit topside, it is "Peterson and Gopnik" who "try to distract and amuse Traub into staying," Gopnik delivering the consolation doggerel: "Mary had a little lamb, its fleece electrostatic / And everywhere that Mary went, the lights became erratic." When Blott drops the microwave, "the crash and tinkle infuriate Gopnik and McKenna, who say that scanning for rodents with Blott is like fly-fishing with an epileptic, which cheers Traub up quite a bit." He is party to the Club's scheme that a confirmed sighting could distract the Headmaster's office from post-Eschaton reprisals against the Big Buddies; and it is Gopnik, light panning across faces — "OK. Somebody farted." — who first registers the smell that turns out to be the expedition-ending discovery by the wall (the fridge), his interrogation ("If somebody farted, speak up.") dissolving into the horror that it is, in fact, a smell.