Two glowing boxes appeared in his vision. “YES,” bold and blue, and “NO,” in crimson.
“I … I don’t …”
“Respond vocally, or blink left for ‘yes’. Right for ‘no’,” chimed the woman in his head.
“Yes,” said Daniel.
Thomsin slumped into a chair. His head lolled to one side before he righted it. “Take this.” He held out one of his credit cards with a tremulous hand. “Please. Hurry.”
“Your taxi is here,” said the woman’s voice. A floating box appeared through the exit of the apartment. Its door slid aside.
Odin meowed from behind a thigh-shaped vase on the table, as Daniel stepped into the cab.
*
“Welcome to Phil’s Pharma. Shopper one-four-nine-nine, please take a seat.”
The lip of a floating chair pressed into the backs of Daniel’s knees.
1499. One away from a multiple of seven. Daniel was skeptical, but remembered Thomsin’s imploring eyes. He sat.
“Thank you, sir. One moment while we locate you.”
The seat soared into the air. Daniel gripped the edges with white-knuckled surprise. Around him, below and above him, in the great hall that was Phil’s Pharma, people floated on suspended chairs, as a variety of items spun around them.
A roll of toilet paper sprung up before Daniel’s face. So sudden and so close, he almost fell off, but a gentle forcefield corrected his posture to center.
“Smell it,” cooed an androgynous voice. “Touch it. Phil’s Paper is the smoothest toilet paper this side of the Bubble. Infused with three types of aloe. Add to cart?”
Daniel shook his head.
The toilet roll disappeared, and was replaced by a silver tray of white powder. “Special today on cocaine. Freshest cut. No added preservatives. Comes with complimentary –”
“No. I’m looking for Rejek.”
“I can help you with that query, sir. We offer Rejek in grades A through D.” A line of green vials danced around him.
Daniel didn’t know there were varying qualities of Rejek. At the Organ Farm he depressed a pedal and the stuff slushed out.
He grabbed one of the vials. Examined its contents in the fluorescent light.
“I’ll take this one.”
“Grade B. We offer volumes from three to thirty ounces. What is your requirement, sir?”
An array of boxes in size order hovered before Daniel.
He thought for a moment. He’d need to flush out Thomsin’s chest cavity, and get the boy to imbibe at least a glass.
He pointed to the largest box. “Give me two of those.”
“Very good sir. Will that be all? May I interest you in our special on –”
“Oh, I’ll need a suction pipe and pump.”
“Would you prefer –”
“Just give me a pipe and pump.”
“Very good, sir. We have a special on needles. Track-mark free. Would you –”
“No.”
“Very good.” A paypoint hovered before Daniel’s nose.
He swiped Thomsin’s credit card.
“Thank you for shopping at Phil’s Pharma, Thomsin.”
A brown bag holding his purchases settled into his lap.
“Thirteen-seventy-two Bentley Place,” he told the cab that collected him outside the pharmacy.
“Certainly, sir.”
Daniel braced himself. The cab rose into the air.
“Annual Pump and Dump Party at Vic’s,” shouted an excited voice in the center of his skull. A menagerie of nude women paraded across the inside of his glasses. One of them knelt down. Spread her legs.
Daniel tried to look away, but everywhere he turned, there she was. He shut his eyes. He’d shut his eyes the whole cab ride to the pharmacy, as advert after advert glazed his retinas with images of naked women.
“It’s Christmas at the Muffin Tosser,” said a deep voice. “And Santa’s been a very naughty boy. Penis extension and three elves included in the evening package.” Daniel peeked. Regretted it immediately.
He shut his eyes. Blocked his ears. But that didn’t help. The voice was inside his skull. “Downers getting you down? Try our latest line of heroin. Because cocaine is so last year.”
He was about to give up. To remove the glasses, when the door of the cab slid open. Thank Gods. “You have reached your destination. Thank you for using Helios Taxis. Enjoy your evening.”
Daniel hopped out of the cab, bag in hand.
The apartment was silent. The jazz had stopped.
“Thomsin?”
The paper bag scrunched in Daniel’s tightening grip.
Odin brushed past his leg.
“Thomsin? I have the Rejek.”
And that’s when he saw it. He’d never seen one before. A body. It lay under the table, cheeks whiter than the lightest breasts on the walls.
Daniel placed two fingers against Thomsin’s neck. The skin was slick and cool. No heartbeat. He turned his head to listen to the artificial heart in the boy’s chest.
Silent.
“CALL EMERGENCY SERVICES?” flashed bold, uppercase lettering across Daniel’s vision.
He was about to answer in the affirmative, when something glinted in the corner of his vision.
He removed the glasses, and the world clarified. Breasts and vaginas disappeared, leaving a plain white room. And a chest. An open chest. It was the ribs that had caught his eye. Their white tips in the bloody wound around Thomsin’s heart.
Odin brushed past Daniel’s arm. And that’s when he noticed the blood on the cat’s lips. Noticed the blood smeared across his pant leg where the cat had touched him earlier. The blood, wet and thin, on his wrist now.
He glanced back at the ribs, their white tips yawning in Thomsin’s bloody chasm.
Daniel’s hand quivered as he reached into the wound to stroke them. The tips of the bones were cool to the touch. He thrust his hands further inside the boy’s chest. Nestled his fingers between the artificial heart and Thomsin’s lungs. The organs were tightly packed. But supple. Wet and warm and forgiving.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed while he sat over the body, his hands buried in the Bubbler’s chest, his eyes fixed to Thomsin’s. If he concentrated hard enough, he could see his own image reflected in Thomsin’s milky lenses.
Maybe it was the moisture on the boy’s corneas, but Daniel’s face seemed oily in the reflected image. Glossy. His own eyes were wild, large as artificial kidneys, under a mop of ragged hair.
Daniel withdrew his hands from the Bubbler’s chest. His knee servo cracked when he stood. Flecks of dried blood crumbled from his crimson hands.
He looked down at the body on the floor. Thomsin’s face was ashen, fixed in a perpetual question mark. What disturbed Daniel most was the … the thingness of it. Its immobility. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. Nothing would ever change in Thomsin’s expression.
A wave of nausea, sudden and pungent, heaved through him. Daniel looked around for something to cover the boy. A towel or a blanket. He stood in the living room. Two couches, a table and four chairs. Seven items of furniture altogether.
A pale muslin throw had been tossed across one of the couches. Daniel retrieved it, tossed it into the air, and let it come to rest on Thomsin’s body by gentle degrees. A cloud over a mountaintop.
Daniel glanced down at his hands again. Blood, dark as December, under his nails. Blood in the creases of his knuckles. Blood in the folds of his palms.
He looked for a bathroom, and found one. Sort of. It was tiled the way a bathroom was usually tiled. It was small, the way a bathroom was usually small. But it lacked the essential features of a bathroom. A shower. A basin. A toilet. Blank, yawning porcelain walls greeted him on every side.
He was about to leave the room, when something snagged onto the periphery of his vision. A shimmer in the tiles. He looked more closely. No, not in the tiles. Between him and the tiles.
He walked further into the room, and noticed that
the shimmer had a shape. By turning his head this way and that, by looking at the space from varying angles, he detected that the shimmering area was roughly square. A barely visible disturbance in the air.
He reached out with a bloody finger. Touched something cold and wet. He plunged his hand deeper into the space, and milky water appeared around his fingers, floating in an invisible oval container. He bunched his hands into fists. Relaxed. Rubbed them together. The blood came away in translucent vermillion bands.
Daniel withdrew his hands from the floating basin with a gentle thlopp. He was about to search for a towel, when he realized that his hands were already dry. And soft. As soft as Thomsin’s neck –
But Daniel hadn’t strangled Thomsin. That had been … a daydream.
Or had it?
Daniel hurried back to the living room. Peered at the muslin shroud on the floor. The ridges of a face stretched through the cloth. A dark stain permeated the fabric where the chest would be. Underneath.
He lifted the edge of the throw. He needed to see the neck. To make sure that it hadn’t happened. That he hadn’t strangled Thomsin. That the boy’s death wasn’t his fault.
Thomsin’s eyes were still open under the shroud, staring at the ceiling. But there was the neck. Pale. Unblemished. No bruising. No inflammation or scratches.
Daniel replaced the muslin over the boy’s face, and heaved a massive sigh.
It hadn’t happened. It wasn’t Daniel’s fault. Thomsin must’ve died from blood loss. Or an infection in his open chest.
Okay, Daniel. Alright.
He stood. Stroked Odin, who was preening himself on a legless chair. “So what now, old man?”
Odin glanced up. Licked his bloody lips. Regarded the glasses lying on the floor. Thomsin’s glasses.
Daniel picked them up. Slid their polycarbonate arms over his ears.
“CALL EMERGENCY SERVICES?” flashed across his vision. A persistent beep echoed through his skull.
“No,” said Daniel.
The beeping message box disappeared.
He hadn’t realized that the glasses could make calls. He’d only known of cellphones making calls, and he’d left his at Geppetto’s shop during the raid.
An image of the old man sprung in his mind. Geppetto slumped on the floor under the foot of an obsidian-clad Officer. Florenza on the operating table, her legs spread, uniforms crowding around her. Taking turns.
The nausea washed over him again. Dizzied him.
He reached out to steady himself against the wall, but his hand found flesh instead. He looked up, to see that the breasts had returned.
The glasses.
He removed them, and the breasts disappeared. He reached out, but his hand didn’t encounter flesh. All he felt under his fingertips was the cold, polished surface of the wall.
Daniel put on the glasses again, and the breasts returned. He reached out, and stroked the flesh of one of the rounder breasts. Goosebumps erupted around the nipple as it hardened.
Daniel jerked his hand away. Ripped his gaze from the obscenity. He wasn’t feeling that throb in his groin. He wasn’t.
How was this possible? He could imagine the glasses changing his vision. Changing the way he saw the world. But touch? Could the glasses alter his other senses too? Maybe the glasses altered his thoughts?
He shook his head, repulsed and confused.
A memory, a voice, clear and distinct, perforated his mind.
“Your parts are missin’,” the Holey Man had said. “You ain’t pure.”
He remembered now why he was here. He remembered his mother’s deathbed. The bloody mattress. He remembered why he’d come to the Bubble in the first place.
The confusion. The anger in him. The daydreams. The violent thoughts. It was all because They had taken his amygdala. His parts. And he needed them back.
But how to find his organs? The Bubble was enormous. Endless towers of glass, presumably filled with people. How would he find his knee, his cornea, his lungs, and liver? His tongue? His amygdala? Who had them? Each was likely in a different recipient. Each in a different body. How to find seven people in millions …
A light pierced the confusion.
Hooplah.
Hooplah would know.
“Call Organ Sales,” said Daniel.
The glasses complied.
*
“Daniel, is that you? Switchboard said someone by your name was looking for me. Tell me it’s you, Daniel.”
“It’s good to hear your voice, Hooplah.”
“Daniel!”
With the quality of the noise-conduction sunglasses, Hooplah sounded as if she were standing right beside him. Every photon of her sunny demeanor shone through the phone line.
“I need your help,” he said.
“I missed you. You just … you just disappeared. Life working for Sales isn’t as glamorous as the Organ Farm. No Intestine Special on Fridays.”
Daniel suppressed a smile. Buried the urge to tell her about Thomsin’s breath. “I found her,” he said instead. “My mother. She wasn’t … I never … she passed before … You there Hooplah?”
“Mine too. She died three years ago.” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
Hooplah paused. “You’re all I have … I miss you,” she said on an inhalation.
Silence squeezed its gentle tentacles through the wireless phone line.
“You have access to the sales database?” asked Daniel. “The list of organ recipients?”
Daniel could almost hear the layers of armor click into place around her voice. “Why’d you ask?”
“I want to find my recipients. I’ve got nothing left of them – my parents. Nothing but the organs they gave me. I want to find my parts. Speak to the people using them. See if they might give them back to –”
“We don’t release that information. Privacy laws.”
“Hooplah, please.”
“I could lose my job.”
“They’ll never know it was you.”
Hooplah sighed. “I miss Thursday night cricket reruns, ya’know.”
Daniel thought about the grass he’d seen when he’d first stepped through the Bubble. He wanted to tell her. About the invisible cab. The glasses. The –
He glanced at the shrouded body on the other side of the living room. He couldn’t tell her. Couldn’t tell her anything.
“Please,” said Daniel. “I need to find my parts.”
“You got a pen handy?” she asked.
Daniel hurried to the bedroom. Rummaged through the bedside tables. A pen and a Bible.
He ripped out one of the pages. “Go ahead.”
“I have to go,” he said when she was done reading the names. She’d listed the recipients of all his organs, except for his amygdala. Not in the database yet, she said.
“Can’t we talk a while longer?” asked Hooplah. “It’s been forever.”
“I can’t now.”
Hooplah’s voice cracked. “I miss you.”
“Tap the arm of the glasses to end this call,” prompted the voice in his skull.
He hesitated. A part of him wanted to keep talking. But he knew the longer they talked, the more Hooplah would find out. And he couldn’t have that.
“I miss you too,” he said, and ended the call.
He exhaled. Read the first name on the list Hooplah had narrated to him.
Cornea – Margaret Evans:
3406 Hadbury Heights
He searched the bedroom walls for a clock, but there wasn’t one. “Time,” he muttered to himself.
A series of glowing numbers appeared over his vision. “21:36,” they shouted.
Nifty, thought Daniel.
It was late though, to go looking for organs. And how would he do it, anyway? Ask politely? Please, Margaret Evans, could you return my cornea? He couldn’t imagine that ending well. Obviously Margaret, whoever she was, needed the cornea.
Maybe he could buy it back from her with the money in Thom
sin’s credit card? Did the card have enough credits? And was he prepared to take it from her if she refused?
Daniel sunk into a pool of fatigue. He hadn’t thought about this when he’d left the Gutter. He’d been angry. He’d been so certain his quest was noble. They were his organs after all. Why shouldn’t he get them back?
Odin jumped onto the bed beside him. Nuzzled Daniel’s elbow.
He noticed how soft the bedding was. Stroked the linen with fingers still tingling from the strange basin in the bathroom. The fabric was softer than Florenza’s eyes.
Daniel nudged off his shoes. Placed the glasses on the nightstand. With Odin on his chest, he settled under the duvet. The pillow. Gods almighty, it was perfect. Firm under his neck. Cool to the touch. It cradled his head. Like his mother’s embrace that day so long ago under the Birch.
The texture of the bloody mattress in New Settler’s Way pricked his heart. He let it go. Let go of everything.
The light dimmed around him.
Odin’s face appeared above his. The cat’s eyes stared down at him. Through him. Their pupils were slits at first, but they grew. Expanded. Until their obsidian depths swallowed the universe.
Project Alpha
Morning slapped Daniel across the face.
“Margaret Evans,” his lips mouthed soundlessly. “Margaret Evans, Margaret Evans.”
Daniel shielded his eyes from the sunshine tearing into the bedroom. His stomach groaned.
His swung his feet out of bed. The carpet was even softer than the duvet. He traipsed into the living room. He glanced around, looking for the kitchen.
There was no kitchen.
How could that be? With its plush carpet and porcelain tiles, with its crisp, pale lines, the apartment seemed the height of luxury. What did Thomsin do when he was hungry? Surely he didn’t only eat out?
Now accustomed to the solution for finding invisible things, Daniel returned to the bedroom and put on the glasses. Standing in the living room again, he noticed that one of the walls wasn’t covered in breasts. The wall was flanked by the image of two 1950s-style waitresses. They smiled brighter than Hooplah, their dresses high enough to display their glazed naked buttocks. They pointed to a central spot on the wall. He neared. Squinted. Noticed the familiar intangible outline of a forcefield, much like he’d discovered in the bathroom the night before.
Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 7