Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Jason Werbeloff

  When she looked up at him, there were craters in her eyes where her joy had been. “I thought … I … I thought they’d be …”

  He glanced at the clock above the glass. 7:57. Any minute now, the clerk would lift herself off that ancient swivel chair, and disappear into the bowels of Administration. Any minute now, Administration would close.

  Drool from the lipless girl’s mouth dripped onto the cardboard in her hands. Pooled and overflowed onto the floor. He pictured his hands on her sides. Lifting her up. Placing her to one side.

  But he didn’t move. He gritted his teeth.

  Waited.

  He peered up again at the clock with his weeping eye. He felt tomorrow’s distant sting of the decontamination fluid. 7:58.

  Daniel reached out. Touched her shoulder. Her skin was clammy. She stared into his eyes with her death grin. Silently, she pleaded with him. As though he could fix this. All of this. “I thought …”

  “Next, please,” said the Administrator behind the glass. The girl snapped to. The clouds vanished from her eyes. She turned on her metallic heels, and clunk-clunk-clunked away.

  “I’m here to collect my File,” said Daniel, before the clerk could ask what he wanted.

  “ID,” said the wrinkled woman. Did this mean she’d help him before the 8 p.m. shutdown?

  Daniel dropped his card into the metal bucket below the glass. He counted to seven. Realized he was tapping the countertop. Stopped. Counted again.

  The worry etched into the woman’s mouth deepened. “Says here you’re a Gifted Donor. Even temperament. Good BMI. Healthy vitals.”

  “Uh, yes ma’am.”

  She bit her upper lip. Narrowed her eyes. “I see you’ve given a … knee, lungs, liver, and tongue.”

  “And cornea,” said Daniel. He dropped his hands into his pockets. Why wasn’t she handing over his File?

  “No brain donations,” she said. “We haven’t harvested your temperament.”

  Daniel’s hands balled into fists. “My …? Uh, no ma’am.”

  “Says here you got a Class 1 amygdala. You’re due for harvesting. Can’t hand over your File ‘til you donate. You’re behind on your debt repayments as it is. Three months. Food and lodging is expensive. Cornea donation wasn’t enough to pay it off.”

  Daniel bit down on his tongue. Felt nothing.

  “I’ll schedule you in for tomorrow morning. Sign here.” She slid a piece of paper under the glass.

  DEBT RELEASE DONATION,

  read the title of the page. He scanned the text. “RIGHT AMYGDALA,” appeared in caps further down. “… to be replaced with printed generic.”

  Daniel had scrubbed plenty of them over the years. But he couldn’t remember much from the neurology classes. The lecture on amygdalas was hazy.

  “Move it, buddy,” said a voice behind him. A boy in a baseball cap stood next in the queue. “Ain’t waited in this line for nothin’,” he said around a piece of gum. The boy was what the orphans called a “onesie”. He was missing all of his skin, replaced with a translucent cybernetic cling wrap. His jaw muscles expanded and contracted as he masticated.

  “We’re closing now,” said the Administrator. “Sign.”

  Daniel reached for the pen. It was warm in his hand as he scrawled his consent.

  *

  “Coming, Odin.”

  The cat scrabbled at the inside of the door, as Daniel climbed the stairs to his apartment. Administration would add the scratches to his debt, he knew. But Odin was worth it.

  “What you get up to today, old man?” He stroked the susurrating animal.

  He needn’t have asked. A dead rat lay on his pillow. Daniel sighed, kissed Odin on the forehead, and carried the rat outside to the dumpster. Odin was not impressed.

  Daniel had found the cat in Spares, the hall at the back of the Organ Farm where students practiced scrubbing techniques on non-human animals. Human organs were expensive. Couldn’t risk losing them to inexperienced scrubbers.

  “Can I take him?” fifteen-year-old Daniel had pleaded with the instructor.

  The instructor had bent down to examine the creature cradled in Daniel’s arms. The man’s nose had curled. “Twenty credits,” the man had said.

  And that had been that. Odin had come home with Daniel, and lived with him ever since. Something in the folds of his feline brain had understood that Daniel had saved him from the scalpel that day, because Odin had been content to sleep by Daniel’s side every night since.

  Daniel stepped inside the apartment. If it could be called that. He could almost touch all four walls if he stretched out his arms and spun in place. An atom-sized desk, a bed (which folded into the wall), a basin, and a toilet. And Odin, of course, who watched Daniel expectantly from the food bowl beside the desk.

  Daniel pulled out a tightly-wrapped package from his pocket. Odin meowed even before Daniel had unfolded it. Rubbed against Daniel’s leg as he extracted the grilled Mopane worm. Daniel had snuck it from the cafeteria, as he did every evening. He’d considered feeding the cat the fat he scrubbed off the kidneys and intestines, but feeding Odin human meat didn’t feel quite right. No, Odin ate what Daniel ate.

  The cat was all too glad for the worm meat. Hell, he should be – insect was the only meat Daniel and the other orphans ate. He’d heard rumors that they served dead cows and chickens in the Bubble. He hadn’t believed it at first. Who would want to eat cows? But Hooplah had insisted it was true. She’d overheard some of the Administrators talking about it.

  Daniel removed the pillowcase and tossed it in the laundry basket beside his desk. He flumped into the chair. Kindled the desk-lamp, and examined the incomplete picture he’d drawn the night before.

  It was his father. Or the father his mind had conjured last night. Square cheeks. Stubbled. A golden tooth. Kind eyes. Black hair specked with gray. A nose that could pierce armor.

  He pegged the picture to the board above his desk, among all the other drawings (organized in rows of seven). His mother. His father. In all their permutations. Old and young. Fat and rigid. Sun-kissed and pale. He’d begun drawing them in his 210th month. When the dreams had started.

  He pulled out his flash disk from the drawer. Inserted it into the holovision port. Law and Order, in its ancient grainy cinnamon hue, sprung to life above his tiny desk.

  He hummed along to the intro. Tomorrow they’d open him up. Tomorrow they’d take a saw to his skull. Pry him open and remove the part of him they liked. And when they were done, he would have his File.

  Law and Order had always calmed him before he fell asleep. He’d watched every episode twice, the initial seasons more than that. But tonight the methodical formula didn’t still his churning stomach. Didn’t quell the nausea that was so strong, it glazed the walls of his room.

  Daniel slept fitfully that night. He dreamed he was a contract. His limbs were its lines, his organs their words. There, among the crossed ‘t’s and dotted ‘i’s were the bits of his brain. The tail of a ‘q’ bisected his corpus callosum. The curve of a ‘g’ wove through his prefrontal cortex.

  As Odin watched on, a titanic hand reached down to alter the terms of the contract. The gargantuan fingers rearranged Daniel’s lettering, and undotted his ‘i’.

  The Pink Almond

  “You feel that, son?”

  “No siw,” Daniel mouthed. His tongue was numb. Had been numb since they’d replaced it with the generic a year ago, but it felt more swollen than usual. Clumsy against his palate.

  “That’s good. Try to relax.” The surgeon’s voice was deep and quick. Like a scythe. “Music, nurse.”

  With Daniel’s head turned the way it was, he looked directly into the surgeon’s crotch. He tried to turn away, but his head had been immobilized.

  A beat Daniel remembered from somewhere rolled through the operating theatre. The bass vibrated along the legs of the steel table, up, into the brace that pierced his skull, down, through its metallic fingers, and into his brain. It tickled. />
  The surgeon shifted. A nurse’s masked face replaced the crotch. “Don’t move.” Only her eyes showed above the mask. The doctors and nurses all looked the same with their masks on. How did they tell one another apart?

  A grainy woman’s voice hissed through the beat.

  We had you cleaned

  We had you eat

  The high-pitched whine of a bone saw echoed in Daniel’s skull. “We’ll have you open in no time,” said the surgeon.

  Daniel felt pressure against his temple, above his right ear. The whine of the blade morphed to a lower, choppy grind.

  We had you bathed

  We had your feet

  Yes, he remembered the song now. It was all the rage in the cafeteria on Friday nights, when they cleared the chairs to make room for an ad hoc dance floor.

  “How the kids?”

  “Good, thanks doctor. Jordan’s starting school next week.”

  “Already?”

  Daniel tried to swallow, but lying on his back with his head fixed at this angle, most of the saliva dribbled onto the operating table.

  We ate your lungs

  We heart your beat

  The bone saw slowed to a toothy stop.

  There was a hollow metal twang, as something red dropped into a metal bowl on the edge of Daniel’s vision.

  “You doing okay there, boy?”

  “Yeth, ma’am.”

  The surgeon bent down. Peered into Daniel’s eyes.

  “We’re in. Won’t be too much longer now.”

  We love your toes

  We love your meat

  Daniel watched the surgeon. The nurses. Sniffed the antiseptic air. It was all outside of him. He was behind his eyes, behind his nose, behind his ears. And the surgeon, the nurses, the antiseptic and the music were outside of him. Except, that was changing. The doctor was fiddling inside of him now. Inside his brain. Crushing. Scraping. Carving him out. Dissecting him.

  The outside was inside.

  “Incision along the middle temporal gyrus. Entering now. Which school?”

  The room wobbled. The doctor’s legs bowed. Receded.

  “Heartrate increasing, doctor.”

  “Calm down kid.” The surgeon’s voice dropped. “Administration will kill me if I lose another one today.”

  We had you cleaned

  We had you eat

  “Sacred Hearts. Hardly a mile inside the Bubble’s edge. Ten minutes transit from here.”

  Cinnamon and smoke found Daniel’s nostrils. The pale taste of Mopani sushi filled his mouth. The way it had tasted before they’d harvested his tongue.

  “Good school, that. My niece went there. Great options on torso organs if the kids need them … I’m at the parahippocampal gyrus now.”

  Daniel was under the Birch again, gazing into his mother’s hazy eyes. The leaves above her head ruffled this way and that, driven by the beat of a distant song. She lifted him to her cheek. He inhaled her. Pineapple.

  “Cauterizing the bleed now.”

  The acidic scent of the pineapple shifted. Grew sweeter. Acrid. The aroma of burning flesh stroked Daniel’s cheek.

  We ate your lungs

  We heart your beat

  “Prepare the generic replacement.”

  Daniel blinked. He was back in the operating room. The nurse held up a pink, almond-shaped mass between her fingers.

  “Heartrate steady.”

  We love your toes

  “Mapping is done. Put him under. I’m almost finished here anyway.”

  We love your meat

  *

  “… waking up.”

  “Boy, can you hear me?”

  Daniel tried to open his eyes. A shard of glass flared through his temple.

  “Don’t touch the bandage. You only came out of surgery an hour ago. Needs time to heal.”

  “Where …” Daniel swallowed dust. “Where’s my … File.”

  “Rest.”

  He opened his eyes again. Gritted his teeth. A smoky ward wafted into view. He blinked, and the smoke cleared.

  A pair of narrow eyes examined him through horn-rimmed glasses. Green. Everyone’s eyes were green, Daniel realized. Hooplah’s. His. As though all their eyes were made of Rejek. Maybe they were.

  He shook his head to clear the fog that suffocated his thoughts, and fresh agony erupted behind his ear. “Where’s my File?” he seethed.

  “Shhhh.” The eyes grew closer, larger. Greener. “Sleep a bit. Plenty of time for that later.”

  A hand reached for his shoulder. Thrust him into the mattress. He swatted the hand away, but his drugged arm traveled a different path, and connected with the pair of glasses instead. He heard something snap. A woman yelled out. Footsteps. A prick in his arm. And then less than a prick. Less than a yell. Less and less. Until everything faded to nothing.

  *

  Daniel came to, gasping. Waves of ammonia swaddled his lungs.

  Everything clarified in less than an instant.

  He’d had an operation – they’d taken his right amygdala. The pain behind his ear was almost gone. His debt to the Orphanage was paid. He needed to get to Administration. Needed to retrieve his File.

  His mind raced. Every minute he lay in this bed recovering, every drop of medication he absorbed, was a way for the Orphanage to put him back into their debt. Nothing was free at the Orphanage. Food, lodging, clothing, medicine – someone had to pay for it. And that someone was Daniel. He needed to get out of here. Before they said he’d incurred too much debt to access his File. He needed to leave.

  Now.

  He yanked the IV from his arm, and was surprised how painful it was. He rolled off the bed. Staggered to his feet. Scrounged in the metal closet beside the bed for his clothes.

  Pants. Shirt. Socks.

  Shoes. Where were his shoes?

  He rummaged through the cabinet again. Checked under the bed. His shoes were gone.

  Daniel shifted the curtain that surrounded the bed. Peered around. Rows of beds lined the walls of the ward. All of them were occupied. Children. They were all occupied by children. All with bandaged heads.

  He headed for the exit. Left, down the corridor. He was just about past the nurses’ station when someone called out. “Where’d you think you’re going?”

  The nurse glared at him through horn-rimmed glasses. One of the lenses was cracked. She stepped out from behind the desk. She was wearing his shoes.

  Something flashed through Daniel’s mind. A shadow of a memory of a thought. Something he couldn’t catch, and couldn’t stop. It was in his curling toes, cold on the linoleum floor. He tasted iron. His jaw clenched so hard, his teeth creaked. His fists bunched.

  “Doctor says he needs ta talk to you. Amygdala replacements have side effects. Aggression and emotional outbursts and such.”

  Why was she looking at him like that? Smug. Like she owned him. Like she was better than he. Standing in his shoes. In his fucking shoes.

  He’d kill her, he realized. If he didn’t stop himself, he’d walk right up to her, and punch her in the gut. Yank those glasses off her pasty face, and break her nose. Shove his fingers down her throat. Tear her insides out.

  Daniel closed his eyes. Shook his head. Counted to seven. Unclenched his fists. That image. His hands scrabbling down her throat. Ripping her open. He could see her neck split in his mind’s eye, down the middle. Where had that image come from? Daniel had never hurt anyone.

  “Doctor says the generic replacement doesn’t always work so well at first. You need time to wear it in.”

  “I’ve got to go,” he heard himself say, as he turned on his naked heels, and stumbled to the exit. To Administration. To his File.

  *

  “You’re back.”

  It was the same clerk behind the glass. The woman with the worried eyes.

  “My File.”

  “ID?”

  Daniel slammed the polycarbonate on the counter. Slid it under the glass.

  The clerk
raised an eyebrow. Muttered something that sounded like, “amygdalas,” under her breath. Then seemed to shrug it off, and typed at her workstation.

  “Says your debt is paid up. Brain donation put you in the black.”

  Daniel heard the high moan of a printer. The clerk handed him a sheet.

  “Sign here … alright. May I have my pen back? Right. There you are.”

  She slid the File under the glass. Daniel touched its perfect edges. Ran his fingers across the beige cardboard.

  “Next please.”

  His hand shook as he opened the cover. He couldn’t see the contents of the single, crisp page until he’d blinked away the film of anxiety encasing his corneas.

  There were only six lines of text.

  MOTHER

  Name: Alicia Mendez

  Address: 84 Porcuperry Road, New Settlers Way

  Contact information: Unknown

  FATHER

  Unknown

  Knocking against the glass. “Move along. There’re other people in the queue.”

  Daniel caught his breath. Shut the File. Clutched it with burning fingers as he made his way toward the doorway of light that was the only exit from Administration.

  Daniel knew what he had to do next.

  He had to find her. He had to find his mother.

  The Gutter

  “I’m leaving,” said Daniel.

  He plugged the snaking tube into the pancreas on his workbench.

  Hooplah lowered the spleen she was scrubbing. She didn’t say anything, but her enormous, unblinking cybernetic eyes screamed their disapproval.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” said Daniel.

  Hooplah was silent.

  “I need to find Her. My mother.”

  “I understand,” said Hooplah. Mercifully, she looked away. “I’m leaving too.” She raised the spleen with her dainty fingers.

  Daniel’s eyes were heavy. A throbbing began under his scalp. Underneath the bandage. It was too tight. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m telling you now,” said Hooplah.

  “Where will you go?”

  She didn’t answer for a time. “I knew you’d leave.”