The feral-hamster claim, the tunnel detail, and the maggoty fridge

pivotal · 11 Nov YDAU, 1625h

• When: 11 Nov YDAU, 1625h onward, in the tunnels 26 meters below the Hal-Stice showcase match.
• What: Blott's biggest scene, told over the sub-14s' shoulders — his lunchtime claim that, short-cutting through the main tunnel, he espied "what was either a rat or, he said, what looked even more like a Concavitated feral hamster" is the whole reason the Eschatonites bring "very nervous or very excited Blott" down on their semi-punitive trash detail: to trace the rodent's possible routes, and to "encircle and discipline Kent Blott if it turns out he was yanking people's chains" (the scene's own hedge: "unless Blott had been tweaking their Units, in which case look out Blott, is the consensus"). He is the expedition's only outsider — "With the exception of Kent Blott, every boy down here on this detail is an Eschatonite and a member of the Tunnel Club" — and gets every bad job: "poor old Kent Blott is finally put in charge of picking it up" when a possibly-used condom turns up; they make him the bag-mule, dragging the tied trashbags back alone through dark tunnels; and when Chu has him test-lift a bulky doorless microwave and then "tells Blott to drop it, which invitation Blott takes literally," the crash and tinkle infuriate Gopnik and McKenna, "who say that scanning for rodents with Blott is like fly-fishing with an epileptic." While every other kid hopes hamster for reasons of Club glory, Blott hopes "simply and fervently for some sort of rodential sighting or scat-sample that'll keep him from being disciplinarily hung upside-down in a lavatory stall to shriek until a staff-member finds him." He quietly stashes empty Visine bottles for Mike Pemulis's next contest, and when he asks once too boldly why a wispy-dicked blubberer like Phil Traub gets to be in the Club while his own applications get turned down, Tallat-Kelpsa does something to him in the dark that makes him shriek. The climax vindicates him sideways: a midsized brown fridge some departed student left unplugged and full — opened to check whether Blott's hamster might be inside — erupts into a rout of ballooning cartons, moving sandwich-meat, and cries of "Maggots!", and Blott gets the last word an instant before the general flight: "'This is probably what the rat or hamster smelled,' Blott ventures."