Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Jason Werbeloff

  “Uh, no sir. But I really should see IDs for y’all. And, that cat don’t look so good.” He eyed the bandage across Thomsin’s chest. “And … ummm, don’t mind my sayin’ sir, but you don’t look so good either.”

  Daniel reached into his pocket to fish out his polycarbonate ID card, but Thomsin grabbed his forearm to stop him. “You’d need a permit,” Thomsin hissed in his ear.

  The Bubbler returned his eyes to the Guard. Thomsin’s shoulders relaxed. His cheeks bunched into another smile. “What sort of hours you work?”

  Daniel looked past the guard, to the border of the shimmering golden Bubble just a few yards ahead. He’d never been this close to it before. Now that he was, he noticed that it wasn’t static. There was a breeze in the air tonight, and as gusts of wind buffeted the forcefield, swirls of electric fancy cascaded over its surface.

  “Till sunrise,” said the Guard.

  “Till sunrise …” Thomsin shook his head. “That’s quite a shift. They’re paying you the mandatory night bonus, of course. That helps pass the time, I’m sure.”

  “The manda – what bonus?”

  “You know? The after-hours bonus owed to all civil servants. Was on the news just last week. Came into effect …” Thomsin looked up, as if trying to remember. “… yesterday.”

  The Guard eyeballed Thomsin. “You ain’t pullin’ my foot?”

  “Is that a paypoint?” Thomsin pointed at a black box strapped to the guard’s shoulder.

  “Sure is.”

  “How about a donation, then? In lieu of the bonus they should be paying you? I feel like it’s my civic duty. The border is a dangerous place. Our guards must be well remunerated.”

  “Remunerated …” repeated the border Guard. He seemed to like the taste of the syllables. He mouthed them again.

  “Alright,” he said, and handed Thomsin the box. “What’ya think is a fair bonus?”

  “How about this?” Thomsin swiped a card across its front. Punched some numbers into the keypad.

  The Guard’s eyebrow arched in the reflection of the LED display. “That’ll do, sir. Y’all free to go.”

  Thomsin tapped the side of his glasses. An opening about the size of a doorway appeared in the forcefield. Heart thumping, Daniel supported Thomsin through the orifice. Odin’s claws dug deeper into Daniel’s shoulder with each step.

  A cool breeze caressed Daniel’s cheek.

  This? This was the Bubble?

  Cat Got Your Tongue

  “But … where is everything?”

  Odin sniffed the air. His whiskers fluttered in the breeze.

  Thomsin glanced back at Daniel. Dark circles around his eyes betrayed his fatigue after the recent surgery. Slick alabaster cheeks framed his bloodless lips. “Of course. You’re a Gutter. Wrong phase. Follow me.”

  They were standing in a field of perfectly mown grass. Daniel had never seen grass before. At least, not an open expanse like this. There were little ponds of it at the Orphanage, under lonely trees. But all the open space in the Gutter was paved or tarred. “Not enough water for grass,” the memory of his Biology teacher’s voice echoed in his head. “People need water. Not grass.”

  But here it was. Acres of the stuff. Most noticeably though, was what Daniel didn’t see. There were no buildings, no cars. No people. Just grass. Cut into alternating columns of lime- and olive-green, like the cricket fields in the old cricket documentaries he liked to watch with Hooplah on Thursday nights. The other boys watched wrestling or football. But Daniel liked the finesse of the gentleman’s game. The nuance.

  “I just don’t get it,” she’d say munching on a handful of krill popcorn. “One of them throws a ball, and the other hits it. Then someone runs after it, and gives it back to the thrower. Then they do it all again. Why? And ya’know, who has time for that sort of thing?”

  “That was the past,” he’d tell her. “People played games in the past. They called them ‘sports’.”

  “But when did they work?” she’d asked. “We work sunrise to sundown every day. Everyone does.”

  “I guess they didn’t work every day.”

  He remembered the shock in her lidless cybernetic eyes.

  But here, now, Daniel was standing on the largest cricket field he’d seen. Bigger than Lords. Or the Wanderers. Or any ancient grassy stadium. But like a stadium, it was oval. And lit. If he strained his eyes hard enough, in the light that seemed to burst from everywhere at once, he could just make out in the distance what he thought might be the far side of the golden forcefield.

  Thomsin blundered ahead along a meandering dirt path. It didn’t take long for Daniel to catch up. The Bubbler limped. Tripped over himself. He had to stop in shorter and shorter increments to cough up growing clumps of blood. His lower lip quivered. After a minute of this, he looked up at Daniel.

  “It hurts,” he said. “My chest. Please … help.” He clenched Daniel’s forearm with weak fingers. “Walk with me. Another twenty yards or so. We’re almost clear of the border control building. Almost there.”

  “Almost where?” Daniel shielded his eyes from the glare, and peered around. No buildings. He looked ahead, trying to make out what Thomsin was talking about. In about twenty yards, the dirt path ended abruptly, but there was nothing there. Nothing but more grass.

  “Just … walk. Please.”

  He did as he was told. By the time they’d reached the end of the path, Thomsin had taken to leaning against Daniel, the Gutter shouldering most of his weight.

  Thomsin reached for the phase device on his shoulder. Turned the dial along its edge. The LED number displayed shot up. 1 … 146 … 649 … 892 …

  “Taxi,” he whispered.

  As the numbers increased, Thomsin’s body … changed. As though the edges of him had turned liquid. His color changed too. His alabaster skin grayed.

  “I don’t understand?”

  Thomsin’s body seemed to wobble. The numbers on the device’s display shivered. Blurred. Daniel glanced down. He could swear he saw grass through Thomsin’s legs. As though Thomsin’s skin had become translucent.

  The Bubbler ducked his head, leaned forward, and … disappeared.

  Daniel gawked at the spot where Thomsin had been a moment ago. The evening breeze whistled through the cut grass. Grass in every direction. Not a sound but the wind. The world inside the Bubble was empty and still.

  “Thomsin?”

  “Get in,” said Thomsin’s voice. Or what sounded like Thomsin’s voice. The edges of his words warbled. Faded into one another. And the pitch was wrong. Too high.

  “Uh … where are you?” asked Daniel.

  “Damned privacy settings. Taxis don’t interface well with the new glasses. You must be in Gutter phase. Hold on a sec while I shift …”

  One moment there was a patch of manicured grass. Just like every other piece of ground in the Bubble. The next, a saffron-colored box popped into existence. It hovered above the ground with a low humming noise.

  “Get in,” repeated Thomsin. He was slumped in a seat on the other side of the taxi. Odin meowed as Daniel sat down, and a door slid shut behind them.

  “Thirteen-seventy-two Bentley Place,” said Thomsin.

  Daniel’s cheeks pricked at the mention of 1372. A multiple of seven. No, not just that. It was divisible by a square of seven. He ran the numbers through his brain. Their precise lines calmed him. Ordered his edges. As the numbers formed and shaped, he realized 1372 was divisible not just by 7 and its square, but by a cube of seven too.

  A hot tingle passed over him. 1372. What a number.

  He settled into his seat. Breathed a little easier. Nothing bad could happen in a place named 1372.

  Daniel flinched. What was that smell?

  He sniffed. Glanced around the taxi. It was Thomsin. His breath had stretched across the taxi’s leather interior. It reeked. Daniel knew that smell. Hooplah would call it ‘Intestine Special’. The recipe for Intestine Special was simple. First, get hold of a length
of intestine. Block the one end, and pump Rejek into the other side. Wait a minute or so – Hooplah and some of the other orphans ran competitions to see whose could last longer – and pop! Intestine Special. The smell was astonishing. The resulting sludgy green mess was worse.

  Daniel was no doctor, but he was fairly certain that if that smell issued from a living human, it was a bad sign.

  A shiver vibrated through Daniel’s seat as the taxi lifted – Gods, it lifted – into the air. “Where we going?”

  “My place.” Thomsin’s chest bandage had shimmied down far enough to expose his open ribcage. The artificial heart gurgled behind the sharp tips of his ribs. With his sunglasses, blue lips, and exposed chest, he looked like something out of a Halloween holo vid.

  It made Daniel nauseous. But he felt something else as well. Something curious. Something playful. An image flashed behind his eyes. His fingers in the wound, between Thomsin’s open ribs. Prying them … prying them apart.

  “Uh …” Daniel chased the image from his mind. “You might need a doctor.” ‘Sepsis is no good,’ Geppetto would say.

  Thomsin scoffed. Which turned into a cough. Which morphed into a fit. “And what would I tell him?” he said eventually, after he’d caught his breath. Oh, yeah I bought a black market heart. Please don’t report it, doctor. Why not organic? Well, doc, my Daddy doesn’t much appreciate my lifestyle. ‘That coke’s gonna kill you boy,’ he says. ‘And when it does, don’t come runnin’ to me. One more heart attack, and I’m cutting you off.’” Thomsin sighed, and a stunningly rank cloud of fetor filled the cab.

  Odin buried his nose under Daniel’s armpit.

  Daniel couldn’t tear his eyes from the bone-white tips of Thomsin’s ribs. They jiggled as the boy spoke.

  “You can help me, right? You worked with that old Italian guy? The surgeon?”

  “I’ve watched him do a few replacements, yes.”

  Thomsin coughed up a handful of blood. “My place it is.” The Bubbler smiled a dreamy smile. Daniel watched his heart pump inside his broken chest, keeping pace with the electric hum of the taxi.

  Daniel finally managed to look away. Stared out the window. Grass. More grass. In the distance, the skyward sheet of the Bubble incandesced. Reflective and opaque. No hint of what went on outside. No suggestion of the Gutter and its atrocities. He couldn’t see the smoldering ruins of New Settlers Way from here. Couldn’t see the Organ Farm. The orphans. Hooplah and her missing eyelids.

  Daniel was nudged forward in his seat. It was difficult to judge without a frame of reference on the grassy plane, but he thought the taxi might be slowing.

  “We’re home.” Thomsin coughed. A sprinkling of blood and spittle dusted Daniel’s face – the feeling wasn’t altogether unpleasant. The door on Thomsin’s side of the cab slid open, revealing a sheer drop.

  Was Thomsin mad? Maybe the sepsis had gone to his brain. “There’s nothing out th–” But before Daniel could stop him, Thomsin had stepped out of the cab into fresh air. He was gone.

  Daniel had time to think that this would be a problem – that without Thomsin, he was stuck in a strange, barren world, with no plan of escape. He scurried over to Thomsin’s side of the cab. Peered down, expecting to find Thomsin’s body on the grass below. He wasn’t sure exactly how high the taxi hovered, but the cab couldn’t have been less than five stories above the ground. Falling from this height, Thomsin wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  But no matter how carefully Daniel examined the grass below, there was no body. No Thomsin.

  “You have arrived at your destination. Please disembark,” chimed a melodic female voice.

  Daniel searched the cab’s interior for the woman who’d spoken, but other than Odin and Daniel, the taxi was empty.

  Thomsin’s voice pierced the silence. “Hmmm. Uhuh … setting the phase to one, with gradual increase over the next few hours to return to default … Yes. There we are. Sorry about that. Haven’t adjusted this apartment in years.”

  A moment later the boy appeared through a doorway. A room shimmered into existence behind him. Hues of silver. Glimmers of white. A legless table. Legless chairs. Below the room, was air. Nothing but a gentle breeze.

  “We don’t …” Thomsin coughed. “I don’t have all day.” Thomsin rounded a corner.

  Daniel toed the floor with his loafer. Solidity greeted his foot.

  He didn’t trust the gleaming porcelain tiles. Expected to fall through them any second. But after a moment, he relaxed. The floor seemed to hold his weight well enough. He stepped into the room, and the taxi shimmered out of existence behind him.

  Jazz.

  He’d heard the piece before. Plaintive, wholesome notes caressed the folds of his ears. They licked the nape of his neck.

  Jazz.

  Daniel shut his eyes. Drew in the mournful tones.

  “What the bloody fuck!”

  Thomsin’s alabaster cheeks rounded the corner. “What in the Bubble’s name is this?” He pointed to his chest. He’d removed the bandage. The stark tips of his ribs screamed through the open wound.

  “There wasn’t time to sew you up.” Daniel’s voice sounded deeper, richer in his ears. The jazz flowed over the ridges of his face. Under his armpits.

  “The hell …” Thomsin’s eyes rolled back in his head, then snapped back onto Daniel. He braced himself against a floating chair. “… the hell you think you’re doing? Help me. Do something!” He slumped to the floor.

  Daniel stood over the boy. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Fucking Gutter,” seethed Thomsin.

  Something in Daniel’s skull throbbed. An itch behind his eyes. Words cascaded from his lips, before he knew he was speaking. “Maybe you want me to find you another heart? Perhaps you’d like mine.” Daniel stabbed a finger in his own chest. He tasted iron at the back of his tongue. “Maybe you want my hands too.” He knelt down. Straddled the boy. His face was above Thomsin’s. The Bubblers eyes were wide. Bloody. “You fucking Bubbler,” spat Daniel.

  Fear crept across Thomsin’s sallow cheeks. The points of the boy’s open ribcage tickled Daniel’s buttocks through his jeans.

  “You steal our organs,” continued Daniel. “Kill our parents.”

  Daniel found his hands around Thomsin’s neck. The flesh was soft. Softer than Daniel’s had ever been. It oozed between his fingers as he squeezed. Tighter.

  “Well,” Daniel said through clenched teeth, “you can have my hands.” His fingers locked tighter around Thomsin’s throat. The boy flailed beneath his thighs. Thomsin’s Adam’s apple was spongy. He thumbed it inwards, until he heard a satisfying pop. The sound of bubble wrap. The kind with the big, hard bubbles. The kind they used to package the organs at the Farm.

  Thomsin’s sunglasses fell from his face. His eyes bulged as he tried to shake his neck free. “I think,” said Daniel, his hands throttling ever tighter, “that you might need new eyes.”

  Thomsin’s lips parted, but no sound escaped. Nothing but the stench of Intestine Special.

  “What’s that? Cat got your tongue?” Daniel lowered his face until his lips locked around Thomsin’s. The boy’s tongue flailed about, but Daniel seized the tip between his front teeth, and tore it off.

  Now the taste of iron was thick and rich at the back of his throat. He never knew tongue had this consistency. He chewed on it for a moment. Spat it out.

  “Yeah, I’m sure Daddy will buy you a new tongue for Christmas.”

  Odin investigated the piece of meat. Sniffed at it. Then leapt away, onto the floating table.

  Daniel laughed, deep and forever in his chest. The cat cringed behind a vase of lilies.

  A final flash of terror cascaded over Thomsin’s crumpled face. Daniel thought there was something omniscient, something whole, in the boy’s eyes.

  He became still under Daniel’s hands.

  “Snap out of it, man.”

  Daniel blinked. Blinked again. Shook his head. Thomsin stood against the hoverchair.
His arms folded over his open chest. “You mind helping me out here? I’m kinda in trouble.” Thomsin coughed.

  Daniel’s throat tightened. “I … uh.” He remembered the taste of blood in his mouth. The feel of Thomsin’s throat under his hands. He looked for the piece of tongue on the floor, but it wasn’t there.

  “There ain’t time for standing around. Help me.” Thomsin tapped an exposed rib. “Please.”

  Had he dreamed all that? The strangling? The tongue? What the hells was the new amygdala doing to him?

  Daniel’s awareness snapped back into the room.

  Geppetto. He’d used Rejek on patients with sepsis.

  “You got Rejek?” asked Daniel.

  Thomsin laughed. “Do I look like I carry Rejek? You’ll have to go out and buy some. I’m in no shape.” Thomsin hacked up a mouthful of blood.

  Daniel peered out the translucent door he’d entered earlier. Grassland stretched out forever. Where the hells was he going to buy Rejek in a grassland? “Where?” he asked.

  Thomsin handed him his sunglasses. “Put these on. They’re configured for default phase. Twenty-three hundred.”

  Daniel slid them on. His mouth fell agape.

  The room in which he stood, the room so delicately composed of creams and hues of white, exploded into a billion configurations of depravity.

  Breasts. They wallpapered the room. Hung from ceilings. Breasts. Pert and enormous. Golden and black. Brown and porcelain. Clitorises the size of fists replaced the light switches. The chairs had become beckoning, pubeless laps.

  Daniel swung his gaze from the room. Peered out the window. Framed by a curtain of buttery smooth legs, the Bubble glowed in all its splendor.

  Towers of variegated glass perforated the sky, kissing the top of the Bubble. They threw a dizzying array of multicolored prisms against one another. Against the now rain-bowed surface of the meniscus in the sky.

  Thomsin coughed, and a spray of blood splattered a porcelain breast on the wall. Daniel couldn’t be sure, but he thought its nipple hardened.

  “Where do I find Rejek?”

  Daniel jumped. Thomsin hadn’t answered. Instead, something vibrated along the tops of his ears, along the scar from his amygdala extraction. And as the vibration tickled his skull, a voice, clear as quartz, more benevolent than Hooplah’s, more woman than even Florenza, spoke in the center of his brain. “Nearest retailer is Phil’s Pharma. Request a taxi?”