A line drawing of a shower dispensing pasta noodles, the Carlos’ Clean Canteen logo, spins on a loop. The chat on the side eagerly awaits the end of a saga that has eaten up the better part of a year.
The logo disappears, replaced by a grinning Latino man: the titular Carlos. Never has a man appeared so happy, a smile so wide unseen outside of horror films and clown masks. His face is in extreme close up. It is immediately clear that he is obscuring something from view.
“It finally happened, Cleaning Cooks. The day I’ve been waiting for. The day I know you’ve been waiting for. The day prophesied in the scriptures. Okay, maybe that last one was going a little far. Just a teeny bit.” He pauses for a moment then laughs. “I’m so excited I forgot how this works. Welcome to Carlos’ Clean Canteen, the show where we get clean and eat dirty. Today’s a special episode. Today’s the special episode. I see you in the chat guessing so I guess I better just get this out the way before y’all spoil everybody.”
Carlos slides out of frame-right to reveal that the camera is set up in a spacious bathroom. Thirty feet from the camera to the back wall. Blue and pink tiling give it the feeling of a Taco Bell dinning room from the nineties. Framed in the center of the shot is a futuristic device that appears to have taken design inspiration from both Tron’s lightbikes and the floating pods from Wall-E. The majority of the pod is see through except for these sleek white strips reinforcing it every foot.
“Behold, my white whale.”
Carlos steps back into view from frame right far enough away to see him in full. He’s wearing a white tank top that doesn’t quite cover his slender stomach and a pair of Chilean flag shorts.
“Isn’t it beautiful? I mean… wow. I truly didn’t think I would ever get to see it in person.” Carlos gets visibly choked up. It takes a moment to regain his composure. “Now most of you guys know exactly what this thing is and are screaming at me to hurry it along. But some of you are still scratching your heads. Maybe you’re new to the channel or you’re returning after a hiatus and you need to get caught up. Don’t worry, I’ve got a quick history lesson for you.”
Ear to ear, that smile.
“But first let’s take a look at today’s tasty treat,” Carlos reaches off screen right and comes back with a tray of sparkling rice crispy squares. “Today’s tasty treat recipe’s called Unicorn Patties and was sent in from HannahSilverStineWillNeverDie94. Now Hannah’s email didn’t say whether or not these are patties made out of unicorns or the other kind… I think you know what I mean.” Carlos sticks his tongue out and crosses his eyes. “Don’t worry though. Not only are these bad boys delicious but they’re pretty as can be. I don’t know if I want to eat them or frame them.” He pantomimes being deep in thought. “Okay, I want to eat them. But you get what I’m saying.”
With plate in hand Carlos bounces over to the device in the middle of the room. The camera moves forward with him, giving us our first sign that Carlos isn’t alone. The camera comes to a stop a moment before Carlos does and in the new framing we can better see inside of the device. The device is shaped around what looks to be a dentist’s chair, only there is some kind of controller attached to the arm. In addition we can see that the white strips are not on the outside of the pod but on the inside and each sports a line of tiny nozzles. This new framing also reveals a small table, hardly larger than a stool, alongside the pod and upon which Carlos sets the plate of unicorn patties.
“Probably shouldn’t tease them any more, should we Tony?” Carlos laughs at something the microphone doesn’t pick up. “I guess we could just cut the stream and call it a day. We could do anything. But really, let’s give them what they want.”
“This,” Carlos places a hand lovingly upon the device, “is the human washing machine. Just listen to that name. Human. Washing. Machine. It tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it? But there’s so much more.”
“I first saw this baby years ago at a tech conference in Las Vegas. I wasn’t there myself but I just love watching those shows and seeing all the new tech that will never survive the next round of funding. I find it funny. But not this time. That time. This time they had what I always dreamed of.”
“Course there was no way in heck I could afford it and so I never even looked around for a website. But a few years later I started the canteen and you guys have just drowned me in support and given me an opportunity I never could have imagined. I recognize a few names in the chat who were there when I first announced I was going to buy myself a HWM. How naive were we back then guys?”
“As we discovered, they only ever made the one model. That same one they were showing off in Vegas. I couldn’t find any information on why they never made more but like everything in life my guess is money, money, money. Cost too much, demand too little. That’s that market working baby, woo.” Carlos fist pumps and does a little dance. After a minute of this he calms down again and continues. “Finding this thing was no easy task. I hired a dozen guys who all hired a dozen guys who then fired the first dozen and hired a dozen more. It was a nightmare. But then we got a lead from a fan of the show who said his dad worked on the pod. Through his father we found out the original pod was sold as an art piece to a collector in Germany. Once we got in contact with the collector we hit another speed bump: he didn’t want to sell. We were ready to throw in the towel when he had a change of mind. If we were willing to pay twice our offer, it was ours. So after nearly bankrupting the company,” Carlos gives a quick glance off camera, “I can finally say I own the human washing machine.”
The camera moves in to linger voyeuristically over the chair as Carlos speaks from somewhere unseen.
“This thing is incredible. I’d go over the specs but we’re not a tech show so instead I’m just going to hit you with the important stuff. Variable temperature, pressure, and speeds. All of which you don’t control at all. How can that be? The answer to that question is the built in sensors in the seat itself. See them there?” Despite the close-up, no sensors are visible on camera. “I guess can’t but they’re reading everything from your core temperature to your heart rate and brain wave patterns. It’s wild. I don’t fully understand it myself but the chair does and that’s important because it uses all that information to design the perfect washing experience.”
The camera pulls away from the chair and introduces Carlos back into the frame. It’s clear that Carlos is getting excited, childishly so like that boy he once must have been sometime long before views, sponsored ads, and the capitalist impulse to monetize his every interest. Here, it is obvious, is a man made pure through joy.
“As my father always told me,” Carlos nearly shakes as he speaks, “The best way to understand something is to try it.”
Carlos slides his hands over the pod. The pod opens like the cockpit of a fighter jet. Carlos takes his seat inside. Carlos is not a large man but he still manages to take up three quarters of the space inside. The camera steps forward to get a better angle on Carlos’ face.
“Here goes nothing.”
Carlos closes the pod shut. After a moment there is a loud click like a deadbolt being locked. Carlos’ mouth moves but we can no longer hear him. The camera shakes for a moment and Carlos visibly laughs. Afterwards he no longer talks to the camera but instead makes a pantomime of his actions. He points to the controller attached to the arm of the seat and then to the white strips which whirl into life a moment later. The strips travel 360-degrees around Carlos. Each nozzle, and there are hundreds of them, puff out a light mist. Carlos appears to be having a wonderful time. Then the mist becomes a spray. Carlos points and says something, catches a blast in the mouth, coughs but laughs it off. Then there is a disgusting grinding sound. Carlos looks at the camera with an expression that asks “Should I be concerned?” Before the cameraman could possibly reply the force of the nozzles intensifies and Carlos begins to convulse from a thousand tiny punches across his body. He yells something, still unheard. Then the whole world shakes as the camera is quickly set down.
The image is now on its side but it still captures a decent view of the human washing machine. We see the cameraman from behind as he beats against the pod, hands clawing desperately across the surface for the latch, button, pad, or handle that opens the machine. It’s hard to see Carlos now, though the new angle has nothing to do with this. There is far too much steam inside the pod to see anything more than the occasional flash of red. The cameraman tumbles backwards out of frame and reveals that the bottom half of the pod is smeared red. A moment later he rushes back into view with an ax gripped over his head. He brings the ax down on the pod. It bounces off harmlessly. He tries again and again but the ax doesn’t make so much as a scratch. He falls to his knees and buries his face in his hands.
He sits and cries for eleven long minutes, a man trapped in a moment he’s incapable of altering, until the human washing machine comes to a rest. He doesn’t notice the water stop. Not until the door begins to open and he hears the slurry sound of Carlos’ breathing, a sound which the microphone has suddenly picked up again. The cameraman screams and rushes to his feet, towards the camera, knocking it out of place to capture only floor tiles for the few seconds before the stream cuts out, but not before the camera captures twelve frames of Carlos and the reason the human washing machine never went into production.
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