Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Jason Werbeloff

  He was standing. Reaching for the strap on. He felt the cool metal buckles that dangled from its sides. He turned. Faced the sling again. It was occupied by a slender man. Horror was etched on his face.

  “Try to clench your hand,” said Una’s voice. But he felt it … felt the voice in his own throat.

  He did as he was told. But it wasn’t the hand of the body he occupied whose hand clenched. It was the man on the sling. Kage’s body.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, and saw the man’s lips move. Heard the voice emanate from the Kage-body.

  “You still control your own body,” said Una. “But you feel everything in mine. And I, everything in yours.”

  Kage tried extending his arm above his head. The Kage-body’s arm extended.

  A feeling of cool distance, of sickening disconnection, overtook him.

  “Try to relax,” said Una. “It’s uncomfortable having so much adrenaline run through your body. I feel every drop of it.” Una tweaked her nipple. “You like that?”

  “Yes!” He steadied his breath. Relaxed his eyes. Let them fall closed.

  “I can feel myself,” he said, “but only faintly. But your body is right in front of me. I feel all of you.”

  He watched his own eyes close. The feeling of seeing without seeing, was exhilarating. And numbing. His consciousness was caught somewhere in the invisible amber between the two bodies in the room.

  “It takes a few minutes to get used to,” said Una. She stroked her clitoris. “What’s it like to be me?” He felt every movement. From inside of her.

  He almost enjoyed it. Almost allowed himself to drown in the feeling of being Una. But something primal in him revolted. Kage knew what it was like to have breasts. A vagina. He’d fought with everything in him to transform from Kassandra to Kage.

  “Stop it,” he whispered.

  But she didn’t hear him, or she didn’t care. She inserted a finger. Rubbed more vigorously.

  The penis of the Kage-body stiffened.

  “Stop,” he said again. Louder this time.

  Una’s hand paused.

  “Thought you liked it?” she said. “You’re hard.”

  He couldn’t look at it. That pale, glowing appendage. He focused on the face instead. The Kage-body’s eyes were open now. Face contorted in revulsion. He didn’t know his face was so malleable. So transparent.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “Terminate application,” said Una.

  He almost choked with relief. He was himself again. He flexed his toes. Touched his flat chest. Kage was Kage.

  And as always, he was flaccid.

  “I have to go,” he said, stumbling out of the sling.

  “South Gate,” he said to the cab that arrived a minute later.

  He was too embarrassed to say goodbye.

  “There’s no reason to be embarrassed,” said a throaty voice in the center of his skull. “It happens to every man, one time or another.” A sultry Italian stud sprung onto Kage’s glasses. “When you need a good night, no matter what, try Erexile, the aide of choice. Erexile, when having a good night can’t be left to chance.”

  Kage tapped his glasses. The advert disappeared.

  “Neruda,” he said.

  Kage listened. To the story of a love forgotten. To a man who’d lost his dog. To a heart left adrift on a distant shore.

  “Hooplah Diaz,” he whispered to himself, as the taxi neared the southern border of the Bubble, “I have questions for you.”

  The Golden Circle

  The didgeridoo struck Margaret like a hover-bus.

  Daniel had never seen the android panic. Fidget, sure. But this was something else. When Margaret heard the sound of the ancient Australian instrument, her body lost its ridges. Lost its shape. She’d become a loosely-packed sack of nerves.

  “Margaret does not compute,” she said, her human eyes frantic, searching the grass for the source. “What is that sound?” She scratched at her single earlobe.

  Daniel pointed to the stage. The lung planted on Bob Stanton’s naked chest expanded. He stretched another plaintive warble through the instrument. “It’s music,” said Daniel.

  We had you cleaned

  We had you eat

  Although he’d heard Ben Stanton sing this song not two hours earlier, it struck Daniel with no less force this time round. A melancholy gray enough to taste.

  We ate your lungs

  We heart your beat

  Something in Margaret’s head ticked. She spun around. Her eyes searched for something. For meaning. “Margaret does not compute,” said the android. “Margaret does not compute.”

  Daniel placed a hand on her shoulder. Daggy’s skin was cold. “Music doesn’t have to make sense. It does not have to compute.”

  Margaret seemed to calm at the touch. The ticking in her skull slowed. Stopped. Her hands, which had been scrabbling at her microphones, lowered to her sides.

  “Does not compute,” she said slowly. “Not all computes.” She looked at Daniel with vast, cobalt eyes. For the first time, they were not cold.

  We heard your ears

  We read your eyes

  “Feel it,” said Daniel.

  “Feeling,” said Margaret.

  We had you bathe

  We had your feet

  Margaret shut her eyelids. Inhaled. She pulled her shirt over her shoulders, exposing her nipple-less chest. For a moment, Daniel didn’t see her thick purple stretch marks. Didn’t notice her gangrenous fingers. For a moment, although he did not know how, she was beautiful.

  We love your toes

  We love your meat

  Along with the Stantons and their swooning audience, Daniel and Margaret shifted up to phase 5200.

  And now Margaret’s wasn’t the only nude flesh. Daniel surveyed the writhing bodies. The delicate rhythms of copulation.

  “What are the humans doing?”

  Daniel shook his head. “Not entirely sure myself.”

  They stood closer to the stage this time. Inside the Golden Circle forcefield.

  Clothes were lobbed this way and that. A pair of oscillating pantyhose, shifting from black to translucent every half-second, landed on Margaret’s head. She removed it. Sniffed it. Daniel tried to ignore her feral grin.

  “Margaret wants to try being human.” She flung herself forward into the wriggling crowd.

  The sex seemed to last forever. Perhaps because Daniel didn’t partake. That said, Bob Stanton’s lung capacity was barely hindered. That man could multi-task, Daniel had to admit. And Ben Stanton’s voice was crisp as ever, even as a fan got down on her knees, and worshipped him.

  “Margaret,” he called. “It’s time.”

  The android looked up from the crotch of a fresh-faced hippie, her head curtained by his dreadlocks. “Thank you,” she said. “I have enjoyed your parts.”

  “Any time, dude,” said Dreadlocks, and planted a drunk kiss on her cheek. Margaret beamed.

  Daniel felt naked even in his dressful state. “They’re finishing their performance,” he said. “Go now.”

  “Project Alpha,” said Margaret, standing. “Margaret wants lips. Margaret wants what Margaret wants.”

  Daniel glanced at Bob Stanton. The didgeridoo player lowered the instrument to the stage. Spread his legs wide, and beckoned to the girls in the front row. Ben Stanton sang his last verse. Dismissed the microphone with a flick of his wrist. He bowed his head in the universal display of suffering artistry.

  Margaret pounced ahead. Clawed her way with bleeding fingers through the throngs of squealing girls. He lost her momentarily in the huddle. But there she was leaping onto the stage like a tigress.

  Margaret wants her lips, thought Daniel.

  The Stantons, together with their posse of women, meandered offstage.

  An hour. That was the arrangement. She’d be back there, with them, for an hour before he followed her. Time enough for the rest of the crowd to abate. Time enough for the Stantons to fin
ish with their harem. Then he and Margaret could spend some quality time with the Stantons.

  With their lungs. And their lips. And their kidneys. And their arms.

  When the Stantons had left the stage, when the crowds began to march off the grass, Daniel crawled backstage. Found himself a craggy outcrop on the grass with a good view of the Stantons’ hovering trailer. He nestled between the rocks, hidden from view.

  And waited.

  Queen of the Hill

  It was almost 1 a.m. on Sunday morning, by the time Kage passed through Bubble border security.

  “Reason for exit?” asked a bored official.

  “Private detective on an investigation.” He flashed his PI license.

  The bleary-eyed woman didn’t bother to look at it. “Sure.” She swiped his identity card. Scanned his iris. Waved through the next in a long line of commuters. Waitresses and cleaners mostly, it looked like. Returning home after the Saturday night rush. “Next.”

  The Gutter wasn’t as Kage remembered. Had it been this … dirty? Garbage bags spilt over into the street. Actual cars puttered by. Ground-based. They coughed their fumes into the viscous Gutter air.

  Kage wiped his brow. He wasn’t used to the humidity. The Bubble didn’t receive rainfall – engineers had seen to that. The grass was watered from underground aqueducts. Nothing to mar the eternally clear skies.

  He tapped his glasses. Pulled up a map of the Gutter. It loaded slowly. The signal was poor here. Soon, he’d have no link at all to the Bubble. Thankfully, Organ Sales wasn’t far. To be honest, he didn’t need the map. He knew these streets.

  He pulled up the collar of his leather jacket, lowered his eyes, and stepped onto Main Street. This was a dangerous world. Ungoverned by the civilities of Bubble culture. It didn’t take much effort to forget that he’d originated here. That he’d walked these roads as a child. Before his mother had given everything to pay for Kage’s entrance to the Bubble. For his citizenship. For a new beginning.

  Kage strode past the Delicatessen, its windows just a little more cracked than he remembered. Up and over the knoll that he used to climb with his friend a lifetime ago – what had her name been? – Sarah. “Queen of the hill,” he’d scream when he’d reached the top before she had. Kage had always reached the top first.

  “Race you down to the bottom,” the girl had shouted after him.

  Sarah had grown up. Moved away in search of another Bubble down south. “They’re only starting the colony now,” she’d said. “They’re accepting Gutters too. I’m gonna try.”

  “Good luck,” he’d said, when he’d left her at the dock.

  He wondered what Sarah would think of him now. As Kage, rather than as Kassandra.

  What would his mother have thought?

  It was summer, and the night air was a furnace at his back, but Kage shivered under his leather jacket.

  He hadn’t known what his mother had planned. He’d never had allowed it had he known. He’d been but a child then. Barely twenty years old. He couldn’t have guessed it. A full body donation. Every organ. One day she was there. Head and a torso. Arms and legs. Cajoling in that way that only his mother could. She’d found a joke in everything, his mother had. But not mean-spirited humor. She’d never had anything nasty to say. Not about Mrs. Colford, whose shower she scrubbed thrice a week. Not about Mr. Colford, who could silence a room with his drunken glare. Not even about their son, Halley, and his wandering hands.

  One day she’d been there. The next, she’d been chopped up and distributed to the Bubble. She hadn’t even said goodbye. Other than the credit card on his pillow.

  He glanced up at a heavy, cracked façade. He didn’t need to refer to his glasses. This was Administration. The Place-You-Don’t-Want-to-Go as a Gutter child. The place They took you if your mother stepped under a bus. If your father didn’t come home one night. Or if a black market dealer noticed how healthy you were, how strong your limbs, or supple your joints.

  There was the entrance to the Organ Farm. The Residential Block for the orphans with its face-brick outcrops. The buildings had grown in fits and starts, flinging wings in every direction to accommodate the exponential increase in orphans. Sarah had said it looked like a constipated god had taken a shit on the Gutter.

  And behind the Residence … there it was. Organ Sales.

  Nobody who’d ever received an organ actually visited Organ Sales. Even at a five-minute walk through the Gutter, it was well outside the comfort zone of a Bubbler. But with the biggest call center of any industry servicing the Bubble, there was no need to visit in person.

  “How may I help you?” asked the receptionist. Her good eye blinked.

  “I’m looking for a …” He tapped his glasses. “… Hooplah Diaz. She’s a sales consultant, I think.”

  The receptionist pulled up a translucent holoscreen. Kage peered through the photons back to front as she typed Hooplah’s name.

  “She’s on shift at the moment. May I ask what this is about?”

  Kage flashed his Private Investigator license.

  “She’s in subsection 34D. Walk down that passage. Take your third right. Second left. Ask for directions from there.”

  The linoleum was old enough to crackle under his moccasins as he walked. Whether by age or design, the ceilings, floors, walls, and doors were all a uniform sludge gray. No windows. The air tasted like wet cardboard.

  One of the countless doors along the corridor swung inwards, and a young man stepped into Kage’s path. He was pale. Bloodshot eyes. He didn’t look up as he sauntered by.

  Third right.

  This place was labyrinthine.

  Second left.

  He knocked on the door. 34D.

  Nobody answered. He knocked again.

  He tried the handle. It opened. Unlocked.

  “Yes, we can have the kidney ready for you by Tuesday.”

  “That’s right, the guarantee covers everything up-until-and-including class three rejections.”

  “Unfortunately we don’t disclose the donor’s details, ma’am.”

  A barrage of voices assailed him. Dozens of people sat, one to a desk, each with a headset.

  “Yes, all our donors are free range.”

  “No, sir. Our liver package doesn’t include bile ducts.”

  Kage stepped inside. Tapped his glasses, and brought up the image of Hooplah Diaz he’d retrieved earlier that evening in the cab. Golden hair. Huge smile. In the picture she didn’t look older than sixteen. But her records indicated she was eighteen now.

  He peered through the rows of consultants. Nobody with hair that color. He cleared his throat in the stale air. “I’m looking for Hooplah Diaz.”

  Nobody looked up. Through swollen lids, the agents’ eyes tracked the screens that hovered in front of them. All but one of them – she had no eyelids at all. A bare-scalped girl with coffee skin. He tapped her shoulder.

  She raised a hand.

  “Correct, sir,” she said. “Yes, that’s correct. You do receive our Two Organ Discount if you take the eyes in addition to the arm. No, unfortunately the eyes together count as one item. We don’t sell them separately … I see. Alright, sir. I’ll wait for your call. Remember to ask for –”

  She turned to Kage. “Every time. I know they always cut the call before I’m done. But every time it gets to me.”

  He tried not to stare at her lidless cybernetic eyes. A gear spun in one of her pupils. “Bubblers,” sighed Kage sympathetically, masking his discomfort.

  “Bubblers,” she agreed. The frown on her face lifted into a careful smile. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Hooplah Diaz. She works here?”

  She eyed Kage up and down. Paused at his moccasins. The seams of his leather jacket. “I’m Hooplah.” The leading edge of curiosity lined her voice.

  The database image of her overlaid his vision. He focused on her. Then on the image. Same expansive forehead. Same nose. But the joy in her cheeks, and her long to
usled hair, had disappeared.

  “I’m investigating a call you received earlier this week.”

  Hooplah swallowed. “Yes?”

  Kage pulled up the details on his glasses. “At just after eleven p.m. on Wednesday night.”

  The color drained from Hooplah’s lips.

  One of the other consultants glanced up at them for a moment. Then continued with her call.

  “Perhaps we can talk somewhere a little more private?” asked Kage.

  She led him into a bare room with a chair-less table and a coffee urn. She closed the door.

  “Wednesday night, you say?” she asked.

  “That’s correct. A young man …” He watched her face for a reaction. “… a friend of yours …” Her mouth twitched. “… called you here.”

  Hooplah swallowed again. But her eyes remained on his.

  “He asked you something,” Kage persisted.

  Hooplah’s brow narrowed.

  “I field dozens of calls each day. It’s a twelve-hour shift.”

  “You don’t receive dozens of calls like that one.”

  Hooplah sat at on the edge of the table. The tendons in her neck strained with the rigidity of her posture.

  “He asked you to do something you aren’t supposed to do.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Something illegal. He asked you to check the organ donation database for him. To check his history. Who his recipients are.”

  Hooplah had been pale when he’d first seen her. Her lips were blue now.

  Kage sat beside her. “You did what he asked.”

  Hooplah stared at the floor. Her lower lip trembled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I understand,” said Kage. “Really I do. I was born here. Three blocks down. On Eighth Street.”

  Hooplah glanced up. An unshed tear flickered in her eye.

  He lowered his voice. “I know we Gutters have to look out for each other.”

  Hooplah nodded slightly. Progress.

  “You did what any true friend would do. You helped him.”

  She wiped away the tear.

  He could feel it now. So close.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” asked Kage in a honeyed voice.