(this came after I emailed a short short story to Frank -- PK)
I liked your story SO much, that I decided to do a comedic take
of the scene again, with a slightly different feel.

Enjoy.

--Frank.

----------------------

In a sea of black, a light on a control panel begins to wink frantically
trying to catch the attention of the officer who was otherwise preoccupied.

"You mean to tell me, you were there, she was there, no one else was
there, and ..." the first began.

"Clear sailing, all systems go, bags checked through to your destination, 
go straight to GO and collect $200, drinks on the house, instant winner,
green light all the way," the second boasted.

"Ohhhh man...." Even though he had heard the story no less than three 
dozen times, he still loved to hear it.  And at two in the morning, 
there's precious little that's more interesting.  "And then what?  Tell
me again, what'd she do?"

"Red light," the second said, completely out of the the Don Juan character
of his story.

This confused the officer on duty at the monitor station, since up until 
now, the story never took a turn in this direction.

"She changed her mind?" 

"Red light," the lieutenant said again.

"She lost the mood?"

"Red light on the panel!"

"It was that time of the month?"

"Your panel!  You've got a red light flashing!  There!" he said, pointing
to the light which had been doing the closest thing a filament can do to
waving it's arms and shouting for the past 30 seconds.

The security chief turned and saw the light.  "The automated intruder
profile alert! It's him!  He's back!  The sensors have profiles 
programmed in and if they detect someone with a height, size, weight, 
gait, voice, etc. that matches, it warns us."

"So who is it?" the lieutenant asked.

"Well, um, there's a little problem with that.  Uh, the computer has
the database on who matches the profiles...WE don't.  So, if I said it
was someone who was 5'11", 170lbs, slender, silent, walks about 5mph,
with an average interstride distance of 2.75', does that ring a bell?"

"And how much did we pay for this system?"  Before turning away in disgust 
the lieutenant muttered, "If we only had a camera."

"Oh we've got lots of those," the chief happily said and punched a few
buttons and an image blinked to life on the screen above the panel.
It showed a man in his low 50s, with a touch of distinguished gray in
his short hair, a dark, straight, no-nonsense rectangular mustache,
and a beet-red complexion to his skin.  It looked like his eyes were
about to pop out of his head, and a bulging vein served to separated the 
two halves of his forehead.  Beads of sweat were on his forehead and
his teeth were clenched, ready to chew through iron bars.  The only
thing that identified the location was the roll of toilet paper visible
at the edge of the screen.

"I'd rather not watch the sarge turn a lump of coal into a diamond, if you
please.  We got those in every damn stall?"  But before the chief could
reach his hand out, the lieutenant added, "Nevermind, I don't want to know."

"It's his fifth one tonight," the chief proudly proclaimed, pointing to
the notepad by the desk.  He had been keeping track, not only of frequency
but of type and quality.  While a mere hour earlier the sarge had taken
what was known as a "teflon turd," he figured that this one would most 
likely either be a "tar baby" in which case more toilet paper should be 
ordered, or a "Sisyphus shit" in which a Herculean effort is spent on a 
very little return, and one would expect to see the sarge back for his 
sixth pitstop pretty soon after that.  But due to the fact that the mass
spectrometer and x-ray machines were only available in the labs, not the
bathrooms, the chief was quite far off in his estimate as to what was brewing
in the netherrealms of the sarge.

"The intruder.  Let's see the intruder."

"Oh, sure," and in a flash, the screen showed the unmistakable form of
Mr. Gumps walking down the hall at a casual pace.  Both men froze with
the look of a driver that just recognized the form of a deer staring
back through the rainy windshield.

In this case, the deer blinked, scratched itself and started to walk
down the hallway.  This woke the two out of their stupor.

"I can't believe it's HIM."

"The doors!  Secure the doors before he gets there!"

The chief quickly pressed some buttons and a sound of metal bolts
sliding into place could be heard, immediately followed by pressure-
locks engaging.

"Not OUR doors.  Secure the hallway he's on."

"But he can't break through our doors."

By now Gumps was 20 feet from the end of the hallway.  The lieutenant
lunged for the console and hit several recessed buttons.  Alarms began
to sound and the room was bathed in red flashing lights.  On the monitor,
it was apparent that the flood of red lights had spilled into all the
coridors.  But more striking was how the view had changed from a looking-
down-a-corridor shot, into a looking-out-of-the-mouth-of-the-beast shot.
And indeed, thick doors that had been flush with the wall were sliding shut.

The chief said, "You've just activated the intruder alarms!  All sectors
will be sealed off within 10 seconds!"

Cutting through the noise and wail of the sirens was yet another siren
that had lent its voice to the cacophony, this one far more shrill and
urgent than the rest.  The security chief immediately spun his chair 
back around to the big board, typed a few commands and looked at the 
indicators.

"Oh no!  Bathroom 7 is registering a 'Super Stinker.'  I'm trying to
localize it, but it seems the sensors on the stalls are no longer 
functioning.  The closest think I can get is a nearby urinal sensor
and recalibrate it for a #2."  There was a pause as the chief did 
just that, and the lieutenant lean in a little closer.  Both ignored 
the fact that Mr. Gumps had dove through the doors just before they 
sealed, though merely trapping him in the next corridor.  Finally 
the chief got the data, and said, "Oh god, it's a Polluter, Class 6."

The lieutenant, used to handling emergencies said, "Well, we should be
able to contain it, the bathroom's sealed and all the stalls lock.  Wait.
Which stall did it originate from?"

Both men immediately blurted out in horror, "THE SARGE!"

"A Class 4 Polluter will immediately effect even the one who produced
it.  My god, a Class 6 would..." the chief's voice trailed off.

With a combination of fear and respect the lieutenant finished the 
thought, "...it'd knock a buzzard off a shit-wagon, all right.  And
probably pluck the feathers off and deep fry it before it hit the 
ground.  Dave, whatEVER you do, DO NOT switch to that stall camera.  
I don't want to see it.  Override the locks and pressure seals in the 
bathroom.  Fuck it, in all the bathrooms, I don't care.  And flush the 
air system.  Flush the damn toilets while you're at it.  Dump some 
fresh air into there.  That'll give the sarge a fighting chance."

"I'll have a crew suit up and go in there as quickly as they can."

The two security men had not followed Mr. Gumps' moves after they started
to seal off the sector.  He had been trapped in the next corridor, and
seeing no easy way out, as it is near impossible to blow the pressure seal
off a door without some high explosives or powerful drilling tools, he
took to the nearest ventilator shaft.

The narrow metal shafts that criss-crossed the entire facility were
like nerves running through an organism, relaying a surprising amount
of information to anyone willing to listen.  In Gumps' case, he had 
no choice; being inside of the nerve, he could hardly ignore the flood
of information sweeping over him.  Sirens from all decks echoed.  Brief
3-step shuffles of people, trying to reach a corridor, then finding it
sealed off, was a favorite background sound.  But soon he heard a new,
strange noise.  The hissing of a pressure lock.  While that was nothing
new, it was releasing its load, set on emergency vent.  Someone was 
OPENING a door.  Gumps was heading in that direction almost immediately.

The next puzzling bit of information was the breeze he felt.  The ocean
waves of air, howling by his ears and chilling his body told him that 
whatever room was his destination, it was being completely ventilated.  
This was a mass flow, direct from the main chillers, no time to warm it.
Not the direction a person would want to be heading.  However, he realized 
he could just as easily have been on the downwind side of the vents, 
breathing whatever it was they were trying to remove.  He knew the safest 
place would be in the center of the danger.  But then, that was nothing new 
for him.

It took ten minutes before security got an initial report on the situation.
Whatever it was, it had been mighty ugly.  Even in their full protective
suits, the stench of the Polluter the sarge had laid had tried to cut
through their barrier.  They also had not planned on the fact that
by ventilating the bathroom, they blew the stench into almost a third
of the building.  As the squad unsealed the locked doors as they made
their way closer to the bathroom, they encountered people effected by
the Polluter.  Some were unconscious.  Others were in a mad, frenzied
rage.  Still others seemed to be choking, in pain.  Dealing with all
the people had delayed them by precious minutes.  But eventually they
made it to the bathroom and had found the sarge, sitting there catatonic,
quivering slightly, a jello dessert with pineapple in it (don't try 
making this at home, kids).  But he was a tough customer.  He had to
be, if his dumps could produce things more toxic than the ones produced
by the by-products of the labs in the building.

The two were so relieved when they heard the report on the sarge that 
it took another five minutes to realize that Mr. Gumps was the whole
reason for this debacle.  He was, of course, not in the corridor where
they had left him.  They quickly discovered the broken air vent cover,
but his trail ended there.  In fact, there were many broken covers
throughout the building, as many people in the building had had similar 
ideas, only most of them were downwind of the bathroom.  Much to their 
horror, they had discovered that the vent shafts only led them closer 
to the source.

It wasn't until three days later that they discovered the missing
environmental rescue suit.  And another day until its previous owner 
finally regained consciousness in the infirmary and could confirm how 
it had be wrested from him.

Mr. Gumps was, of course, thousands of miles away by then, safe and 
with the object that he drawn him there in the first place that he 
had liberated.  

The lieutenant and security chief however, had not faired as well
(while they no longer held their ranks, it would be far too awkward 
to refer to them as "the former-lieutenant" and "the former-security chief"), 
They were still adjusting to their new assignment.  They had always
worked closely together, and that had not changed.  And the Lieutenant
was still bossing around the chief.  "A little more.  A little more out.
OK.  Hold it there, that should be the right lenght."  

"All systems go," the chief said.

The sarge, who had never been a patient man, could stand no more, and
turned his head to look behind him and yelled back at the pair, "All 
right you knuckleheads, more work and less talk.  Now wipe me!  And make
it fast, I feel another one coming on."

The new security chief and lieutenant switched off the stall monitor,
leaned back in their chairs, and continued the discussion they were
having.

"So anyway, like I was saying, it was just me and her there.  No one 
else around..."