Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Jason Werbeloff

  “There you go apologizing again.” She took Kage’s hand. Shoved it into the popcorn bucket. “Have some. Butter and chives. Really good. Come here often?”

  “Are you ready?” yelled the announcer.

  “Yes!” bellowed ten thousand voices through the stadium.

  “Put on your glasses now,” said the host, “because the greatest spectacle this side of the Bubble is about to begin.”

  Kage stared at the field. Sixteen players from one team, and nine from the other, ran onto the AstroTurf. “Put on your glasses,” repeated the girl. She giggled. At nothing at all.

  Kage tried to smile. Donned the Phaseball-issue glasses.

  Ninety players materialized through its lenses. Forty-five per team.

  “Now remember the rules of Phaseball, folks,” said the announcer. “Five balls. Five phases. You can see all the players in every phase, thanks to your special-issue lenses, brought to you today by our sponsor, Phased Logistics.”

  Keki slid an arm, light as tungsten, around Kage’s shoulder. Giggled.

  “But the players don’t have your glasses. The players see only in their own phase. Are you ready, Phaseballers?”

  Ninety thumbs raised.

  The crowd roared.

  Keki inched closer.

  “Kickoff!”

  One beer became three. Became five. Keki’s cleavage seemed to grow with each passing play. By the time the fourth quarter came around, even Keki’s shocking blond hair was hot.

  “Decapitate the cunt!” she screeched, and seized Kage’s thigh. Two players from the home team had switched into phase just in front of one of the away team’s halfbacks. They didn’t slow. Charged right at the hapless creature. Kage had heard there were microphones built into the field, but he didn’t need a mic to hear the crunch of helmet on bone.

  The crowd erupted. Howled and shrieked and hollered. Loud enough to shake Kage’s teeth. Keki flung off her top, and twirled it above her head. Her bronze tits jiggled and swung under the stadium lights. “That’s right fuckers,” she yelled. “Teach you to think twice before coming to our Bubble.”

  Kage took another swig of his beer, and felt a little less bothered by her exhibitionism.

  She sat beside him. Smiled a sloshy, half-conscious smile. “You know what you are? You … you’re like … dreamy, man. Yeah, that’s it.” Her hand slid up his thigh. “You’re a dream.”

  Kage clamped a hand on hers. “I feel pretty real.” He burped.

  Keki howled with laughter.

  “Oh man,” she said. “Feel like dreaming with me tonight?” She planted a wet, alcoholic kiss on his chin.

  Kage checked himself. There was a tingle down there, where her hand lay. An itch.

  “Yeah,” he said. He deepened his voice. “Let’s do it.”

  Keki stood. Tried, failed, then succeeded to pull on her top. The smart fabric flickered as it hugged her contours, then settled to black.

  “My place.” She hiccupped. “What’s your name again?”

  “Kage,” he said, and kissed her.

  “Weird name,” she said into his mouth.

  Kage was past caring.

  She yanked on his arm, and the two of them bumbled to the exit.

  *

  Bronze skin. Breasts big as juggernauts. Silken thighs. A tongue on his throat, where his Adams apple should be. Fingers scrabbling at the band of his underwear.

  Keki took a sharp breath. “God,” she said. “Why’s it that color? Isn’t it … yours?”

  Kage blushed so bright, his face illuminated the room. “Transplant,” he said, and rolled on top of her.

  Keki giggled. Lay back. “Whatevs.” She tossed aside her hair. “Put it in,” she moaned.

  Sweat erupted across his brow. Raked his naked buttocks, narrow as scythes. His arms were brittle. His elbows tremored. Knees locked.

  “Not yet,” whispered Kage and licked her neck.

  “Please.” She sighed. Rubbed herself. Shuddered.

  Nothing. Nothing was happening below. It tingled. It itched. It intimated. It threatened. But it didn’t swell. Didn’t thicken.

  Kage was soft as a wilted flower.

  Keki clutched at it, expecting to take hold of something solid. Something worth holding. “Oh,” she said, her face clouding over. “Oh, I see.”

  “It’s the alcohol,” said Kage, staring down at her. He struggled to keep his eyes locked to hers. He tried not to swallow.

  Keki attempted a giggle. “I got a caffeine tab in the drawer?”

  Kage nodded. Searched for it. Downed it dry.

  Keki sat up. Pulled the duvet over her thighs.

  “Shouldn’t be long,” said Kage, watching down there.

  She nodded. Smiled pitifully.

  Kage cleared his throat.

  Keki slid on her glasses. Her pupils tracked something on the lenses.

  He tugged himself. If anything, he’d shrunk.

  “I … uh … I should really be going.”

  She raised a hand. “Be with you in a sec.” Keki thrust a hand below the bedsheets. Stroked herself rhythmically.

  Kage stood as quietly as he could. Pulled on his pants. Buckled his belt.

  “Be … with … you …” Keki was hammering at it now. The bedsheets writhed. “… in just a … se-cond.”

  Kage buttoned his shirt. Tied his laces.

  “That … oh … that’s better.” She tossed off her glasses. Smiled a dreamy smile. “What you say your name was?”

  “Kage,” he said, tapping his glasses. “Taxi,” he whispered.

  “Weird name,” she said. “Maybe think of something else. It’s a little …” She snuggled the duvet. “You know, a little … butch for you.”

  The sun was just rising as Kage left the apartment. This time yesterday, he’d been sitting in a SWAT van, ready to make an arrest. This time yesterday, everything was right with the world. Una had been a live possibility, and he’d had work. But now …

  Kage covered his eyes.

  He pinged the mailbox. Nothing. No testosterone. The Gutter dealer had taken the money and run.

  The amygdala replacement should have helped, though. Must be the penis. It didn’t work. Bad implant. Bad donor. And what was he thinking, accepting a white penis? How could he have thought nobody would notice?

  He was about to call Yaron, to threaten that slimy fucker into giving him a replacement cock gratis, when his glasses rang.

  “There’s been another one, Jackson.”

  “Another murder, Captain Weeks?”

  “Close enough. 8023 Seneca Close.”

  Deep-Fried Patriarchy

  Pizza.

  The word galloped across the folds of Daniel’s mind. Reached through the dusky recesses of sleep, and jerked him awake.

  PIZZA.

  The word was a gunshot in his brain.

  He groped around in the darkness for his glasses. Odin leapt from the couch at the sudden movement.

  “Search for ‘Daggy Munch and pizza’,” he whispered. No light shone from Margaret’s room. The android had said it needed to recharge. Was recharging akin to sleeping? Would his whispers wake the machine?

  Search results streamed down Daniel’s glasses. Images of Daggy beside ceiling-high piles of pizza boxes. That photo was from the world eating championships. Ratified by a post on her official Facebook fan page.

  “Daggy Munch loves pizza,” read the caption, “almost as much as she loves the taste of deep-fried patriarchy. She eats it at least one meal a day. Pizza, that is. The patriarchy is always on the menu.”

  Daniel checked the time. A little after 2 a.m. He rose from the couch. His feet slapped the dusty tiles as he found his way to the bay window. Much of the view was obstructed by the towers of obsidian glass. But between the buildings, he spied the northern lip of the Bubble. It shimmered an iridescent emerald in the early morning darkness, dimly lit by the reflections of the Promenade’s night clubs.

  Daniel looked more intently. Fo
rced his eyes to focus on what lay on the other side of the Bubble. Like a glass window at night, once the lights had been turned off within, it was easier to see beyond the giant lens. He didn’t see anything at first. But then Daniel made sense of the white horizontal lines that seemed to appear and disappear in a vast cauldron of darkness. It was water. A lake. Perhaps an ocean. Beyond the Bubble, on the northern border, lay a massive body of water.

  And what lay beyond that? he wondered. Another Bubble? Another Gutter?

  Daniel felt infinitesimally small. The ocean threatened to rise up and engulf him.

  He shook his head. Bit his tongue.

  His tongue.

  Daggy Munch had his tongue. And he knew how he was going to get it back.

  Pizza.

  *

  “Vat’s zis?” boomed the voice from apartment 8023.

  “Pizza delivery for a Daggy Munch.”

  Daggy levitated to the front door in her nightie. With her toes hovering at least ten inches above the floor at all times, she was the picture of an overfed Christmas ghost.

  “Since ven are za pizzas delivered at zis time? It is four a.m.”

  “A gift,” said Daniel, “from an admirer.”

  Daggy eyed the boy through her translucent front door. “He sent it now?”

  Daniel flexed his fists. This time, he wore gloves. This time, he wouldn’t be leaving DNA.

  “Insisted you get it before your breakfast show, ma’am. Your inspiration to my patron is so great, he thought it fitting to show you his gratitude before even the sun rose.”

  “And since ven is za pizza delivered through za taxi?”

  Even now, a microphone floated about her lips, broadcasting everything she said to the sleeping Bubble.

  “It was the fastest form of transport available. Only the best for the founder of Hypo-Feminism.”

  Daggy craned her neck to assess the boy. Flicked back a band of greasy hair. Daniel thought he heard it slap with oily weight on the back of her nightie. She seemed to approve of what she saw. She nodded, and the door slid aside.

  It took everything in Daniel not to fall back into the taxi. The stench overwhelmed his senses. The sheer reek of fetor and feta, punched him square in the jaw.

  Daggy smiled a dizzyingly ugly smile. Teeth hung every direction but vertically between her frankfurter lips. “You are a pretty boy, ja?”

  “Thank you ma’am.” Daniel braced himself against the taxi door. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  Daggy licked her lips in a wide arch. Daniel thought he saw blue fuzz colonizing the tongue’s taste buds. He almost, Gods help him, almost reached out and grabbed it right then. He’d wrench it out of her head. Brace himself by digging his other hand into her bulbous eyeballs. He’d tug at it, yank it, rip it, until the tongue, his tongue, tore from that filthy head.

  Daggy farted, turned, and wafted into the bowels of the apartment. She signaled with a cucumber-sized finger for Daniel to follow.

  “It does not surprise me zat I have an admirer. I have many of such things.” She rounded a column of toilet paper.

  Daniel glanced behind him. The taxi had left. And although the Bubble never really slept, it was quieter now than usual. Few cars whistled by at this time of morning. And no news crew or cameras buzzed around the apartment like they had the previous afternoon.

  He hurried to catch up with her. Daggy hovered at quite a pace. The mountainous floating woman swung left at a hillock of shoes – they were all left-shoes, Daniel noticed uncomfortably. Through an archway of cutlery. Right at a chocolate fountain, and then up and over a pile of wildlife magazines. “Soak up the song of silence,” cooed one of the covers.

  There it was. The cathedral of pizza boxes. They’d been compressed to the point where each box was wafer-thin. Daniel wondered at the impressions on the top – two enormous pimples swelled out of the pile.

  She tapped her glasses. With all the grace of a levitating anvil, Daggy Munch hovered up, up to the top of the stack, until she settled upon her throne.

  She patted a spot beside her on the top box. “Come have a slice vith Daggy. Zis is mine private chamber. Za place I come ven I need silence. A rest from mine duties. A break from za cameras.”

  Daniel glanced up at the folds of flesh hanging over her ankles. He held his breath, and scrambled to the top. He struggled for purchase, but his leather gloves helped, clinging to the sides of the pizza boxes as he climbed.

  Daggy intimated at the duffel bag slung over Daniel’s shoulder. “So, vat flavor pizza has za pretty boy brought for me?”

  Daggy’s breath was like nothing Daniel had experienced. It rivaled the rot that wafted through the floor of Amputating Amy. Richer than the odor of Thomsin’s rotting chest cavity. Fuller, more bodied, than the awesome pong of an Intestine Special.

  “I love mine bacon. Mine Strauss vould never eat za piggy. He’d say it’s za dirty animal.” Daggy shook her head, jowls dancing. “But I tell you, za bacon is good-good, ja.”

  Daniel steadied his thrumming heart. Counted the teeth in her mouth in clumps of seven until his lungs relaxed.

  Daggy waved the microphone away from her mouth. The glowing device faded to black.

  “Mine Strauss vas an old man,” she said softly. “I miss …” Daniel suppressed a shudder as she flopped a chunky hand on his thigh. “… za young meat.” Daniel thought he saw dying embers flash in her eyes.

  His thigh crawled under Daggy’s fingers, but he left them where they sat. He unzipped the duffel bag.

  “Feed me.” Daggy shut her eyes. Opened her mouth.

  Daniel’s hand closed around the handle of the paring knife he’d borrowed from Margaret’s kitchen. What did the android need with a kitchen knife? he wondered.

  As Daniel withdrew the blade, drool oozed down Daggy’s chin, snaked through the folds of her neck, and dripped onto Daniel’s knee.

  He examined her throat – thick and blubbery as a seal’s. He could plunge the knife in right there, and search around for something important. Law and Order episodes sprung to mind. Images of Colombian neckties paraded through his brain. He could dig the blade in deep under her chin. Pull out the tongue. Drape it down the length of her fatty neck before he lopped it off.

  He shook his head. The thought of digging around in Daggy Munch, sloshing through all that fat, wasn’t appealing.

  Daggy still sat there, mouth agape, waiting for him to feed her a slice of pizza.

  Don’t hesitate, he told himself. Don’t falter. You’ll have just one chance.

  He inhaled. Tightened his grip around the knife, and sprung forward.

  In one smooth adrenalin-fueled lunge, he reached into Daggy’s mouth, gripped the tongue with his gloved fingers, and yanked as hard as he could.

  For a moment, Daniel thought the microphone had reactivated itself, because the thunderous yelp that escaped Daggy’s maw slammed him backward. But he recovered quickly. And before she could bring up her hands, before she had a chance to slip from his grip, he raised the paring knife and thrust it through the base of her tongue.

  Blood sprayed across Daniel’s glasses. Blinded, he recoiled. Almost fell off the swaying pile of pizza boxes. He regained his balance. Flung off his glasses.

  Daggy’s hands were frantic. They clawed at her mouth. Desperately seeking the handle of the knife to pull it out. Her eyes darted about the room, as if seeking something, anything, to stop the pain.

  Daniel batted away her fists. Closed his fingers around the handle of the blade, and with a great heave to his right, sliced the blade clean through her tongue.

  With an ear-ringing squeal, Daggy propelled herself away from him, and off the pile of pizza boxes. She hovered in mid-air like a weather blimp, blood tumbling to the floor in a crimson waterfall. Daniel stood shakily on the pile of boxes. She was floating away from him. Any moment now, she’d be entirely out of reach. He couldn’t let that happen.

  He leapt forward. Landed with his knee square in her stomach. Fl
esh rippled beneath him as he fought for balance on the enormous, quaking raft of flesh. Daggy tried to scream, but all she managed was a blood-soaked gurgle.

  The tongue hung limp from her mouth now, lolling to the left of her chin. Only a sliver of tissue still connected the muscle to its base in her throat.

  Daniel formed a fist around the tongue, and with a single jerk, tore it off.

  An electric calm, a blue-crested peace, settled over Daniel as he held the tongue, his tongue, in his gloved hand. He wanted to remove the glove. Touch the muscle. Stroke it with his fingers. But he knew better. Fingerprints were a problem. DNA. He could inspect the tongue later.

  Daggy seemed to relax. Her eyelids flickered, then drifted shut, as fluid filled her mouth. He could leave her like this, and she’d drown in her own blood. She’d die right here, and he could harvest the rest of what he needed – the skin and the cornea for Margaret. But as he felt her body writhe and convulse, a cold itch began at the nape of Daniel’s neck. It traveled down his spine. Webbed an unbearable tingle across the middle of his back.

  He couldn’t do it.

  Daniel turned the woman’s head to one side to open her airway. Allowed the stream of blood to drain from her mouth. Her convulsions steadied. Daggy’s breath resumed in shallow, gelatinous snorts. But her eyes remained shut. A film of sweat bathed their lids.

  The momentum of Daggy’s propulsion away from the throne of pizza boxes had carried her hovering body, with Daniel on top of her, to the far side of the room. What he needed was in the duffel bag, back where he’d leapt off the mountain of pizza.

  Daniel rested his feet against the wall, and with all the energy his knees could muster, kicked. That movement would’ve sent a hot rod of pain through his left knee before he’d retrieved it from Lincoln. But now there was no pain at all. Not a twinge.

  Newton’s Third Law obeyed, propelling Daggy and Daniel back toward the pizza boxes. Back toward the duffel.

  He unzipped the bag. Removed the jar of Rejek, and dropped the tongue inside. That would keep it healthy. Preserve it until he could get Hal to implant it.

  As he replaced the jar in the bag, his hand brushed the implement he’d need next. Never used, the switchblade glinted an ungodly silver as his eye slid along its edge. “Slick&Sleek,” shouted the label that still dangled from its hilt. “Skin a deer in under 10 minutes with the tungsten-edged blade.” Best customer rating of any knife at Phil’s Pharma.