Once upon a time, in the great cosmic comedy club that is the universe, a fart was dealt. Then smelt. It wasn’t just any fart, oh no. It was the kind of fart that might make even the most jaded celestial body turn its head. It was a fart of such monumental import that it changed the course of Earth’s history. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is no ordinary fart. This is the fart that consumed the Earth.
The origin of this world-altering gas blast was a man named Edgar M. Springleton, an unremarkable fellow living in Ohio, which, let us be honest, is often mistaken for a place where nothing remarkable ever happens. Edgar was an insurance salesman, a profession so dull that it made watching paint dry seem like an Olympic sport. On a particularly uneventful Tuesday, Edgar sat in his living room, snacking on potato chips and staring vacantly at the television.
It was during this peaceful evening that Edgar released the fart, a quiet, unassuming puff of gas that did not even stir his cat, Mr. Whiskers, from his nap. To Edgar, it was just another bodily function. To the universe, it was the beginning of the end. This was not merely an expulsion of intestinal gas but a confluence of cosmic forces and quantum particles, like a supernova in a snazzy pair of trousers.
As the fart began its slow, deliberate journey through the atmosphere, strange things started happening. Scientists noticed odd fluctuations in the quantum field—like someone had dropped a huge, invisible jelly bean into the cosmic punch bowl. Astronomers reported that planets seemed to wobble slightly, as if they were being nudged by an unseen hand. Philosophers began to question the very nature of existence, which was ironic because they usually did that anyway.
The fart was an insidious thing. It didn’t come in with a bang but rather an expanding, malevolent whisper. The weather grew erratic. Rain fell sideways. Snowflakes spiraled upwards. Plants began to droop as if embarrassed by the spectacle. Animals wandered aimlessly, their olfactory senses overloaded.
Governments, in their usual fashion, tried to handle the crisis with a mix of confusion and bureaucratic inefficiency. Some proposed harnessing the fart as a new source of energy—never mind the fact that it was fundamentally changing the atmosphere. Others suggested a global apology to the cosmos, though nobody was quite sure how to execute such a thing. In one particularly amusing turn of events, people began spraying perfumes and deodorizers into the air, creating a bizarre cocktail of scents that only made things smell worse.
And Edgar? Edgar remained blissfully ignorant of his role in this cosmic farce. He continued his life, oblivious to the fact that he had inadvertently ushered in the Age of Flatulence. His daily routine remained unchanged—potato chips, TV, and the occasional trip to the supermarket. To him, the world was as it always had been. Little did he know that he had become a footnote in the absurd annals of cosmic history.
As the fart’s influence grew, Earth began to take on a new, gaseous form. The sky turned a sickly green, and the landscape became a vast, undulating sea of flatulence. The surface was now a floating soup of atmospheric gunk, and humanity was left to drift about in makeshift islands of …never mind.
The survivors adapted with a certain grim resignation. They fashioned boats out of old furniture and made homes from floating detritus. They lived in a world where the smell of potato chips was a constant reminder of their bizarre origins. Their new society was a curious blend of pragmatism and absurdity, a reflection of the strange twist of fate that had befallen them.
And so, Earth continued its orbit, now a floating, gaseous relic in the grand expanse of space. Edgar M. Springleton’s fart had indeed consumed the planet, not with malevolence but with a grotesque sense of humor. The universe, in its infinite wisdom, had played its joke, leaving behind a world where the only certainty was the absurdity of existence and the unremarkable man who had, in his own mundane way, set it all in motion.
And that, dear reader, is the story of how a single, unremarkable fart came to consume an entire planet. The universe, it seems, has a sense of humor after all.
—PP
Contributor
Not Phil Italiano.
