Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Jason Werbeloff

  His drugged pupils contracted slowly, and for a few seconds he had to shield his eyes from the LEDs. When he knelt down to scoop her up again, he noticed her color. Already the jaundice in Autumn’s cheeks had waned. The black circles under her eyes were lighter. Her lips were a delicious pink.

  His cybernetic liver, nestled in her abdomen, was working.

  With renewed strength in his legs, he lifted her. Carried her to the bed, and laid her out on the bleached sheets. He stretched out beside her. Wrapped his knees above and under hers. Rested his head on her breast.

  Her heart was slow. Her skin was softer than Odin’s chin.

  “I have one last errand to run,” he whispered to her sleeping form. A tear rolled down the crow’s foot of his right eye. “I won’t look quite the same when you see me next. But I’ll still be me.”

  The chemical spray of the anesthetic on her breath dissipated. She moaned softly through a distant dream. The sound hung above her lips, in a pastel blue so pale, he could barely see it.

  He hugged her elfin frame. Kissed her cheek. Switched off the bedroom light.

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  He dabbed the tears from his cheeks on the way to the bathroom. Retrieved the now quarter-full tub of Rejek, and closed the door to the apartment behind him.

  “Kassandra Jackson,” he mouthed, as he descended to the lobby. A relative of Detective Kage Jackson’s maybe? Unlikely. Jackson must be a common surname.

  The crisp early-morning air of the Bubble grated the scabs on his face. Not yet sunrise. These were the quiet hours. The dead of night, when footsteps echoed too far. When screams didn’t echo far enough.

  Daniel pulled up the tracking application Margaret had installed on his glasses. Adrenaline thudded in his chest. How would Autumn react when she saw him next? Would she recognize him? Would she want him once he’d become … something else?

  Daniel didn’t know much about love, or whatever it was that he and Autumn shared. But he’d watched children change at the Orphanage. They’d lost their skin. Their eyes. Their limbs. He’d watched the Orphanage dismantle them, piece by piece. But the orphans didn’t seem to lose their friends. When Daniel’s cornea had been replaced with a weeping synthetic, Hooplah hadn’t treated him any differently. (He suppressed the sting in his heart at the thought of her.) Maybe Autumn wouldn’t treat him differently either? He would look different. But he wouldn’t be different. Would she understand what he was about to do?

  He was about to search for Kassandra on the tracking app, when his thoughts sidetracked again. Gods, he wondered where that damned android was now. He pulled up Margaret’s location instead. The app said she was back at her apartment. Well, that could mean just about anything. She might be lying in a pool of hydraulic fluid, dead at Detective Jackson’s feet. Or she could be drinking a cup of tea over his dead body. Gods only knew.

  He couldn’t worry about that now. He had an amygdala to retrieve.

  He reconfigured the app to search for Kassandra Jackson. There. A pulsing red dot just north of Bubble Central. He zoomed in. She was in a place called “Orgia”.

  He winked, and his glasses pulled up a website. It didn’t take him long to work out what Orgia was. He wanted nothing to do with the place, but if that’s where Kassandra was, that’s where he’d go.

  Text flashed at the top right corner of the display. “Jobs”.

  He whispered the word, and the page changed. “We’re hiring,” announced the header. He read on. “Industrious, open-minded employees sought for upwardly mobile jobs at elite club in Bubble Central.”

  He began to read the “Duties” section of the job description, but averted his eyes halfway through.

  He could wait for Kassandra to leave the club. Follow her home, wherever that was. But who knew when that would be? He didn’t have time to wait around for a better opportunity. The Detective might find him first.

  “Applicants apply at Orgia, phase 7049,” declared the bottom of the web page.

  He knew what he needed to do.

  Daniel ordered a taxi. While he waited, he searched social media sites for Kassandra Jackson.

  That was odd. A slew of traffic on her Facebook page. Lots of sports and fitness posts. Men with arms thicker than Daniel’s thighs. Shoulders broad enough to make Atlas blush. But all of it, all Kassandra’s social media posts, had ceased six months ago.

  He expanded her last status update.

  “Those of you who know me may have seen this coming …”

  Daniel’s eyes widened as he read on.

  “I don’t take this decision lightly, not that it would be problematic if I did. This is my right. My choice. But I hope you will all continue to be a part of my next life.”

  Below was a link to another profile. The thumbnail beside it was too small to see any detail, but the face appeared familiar. And not just familiar from seeing Kassandra’s profile picture. Those high cheek bones. That regal nose.

  He navigated to the link.

  Daniel had to blink thrice to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks. But it was no phantom. Daniel was sure of it. In bold, black lettering, was the name he’d come to dread:

  KAGE JACKSON

  No wonder Kassandra had elected to receive a male amygdala implant. Kage was transforming, and he needed male parts.

  The taxi touched down on the street a few feet from where Daniel leaned against a lamppost. He hopped inside.

  “Orgia,” he said.

  “Can-can-cannot process request.”

  “Orgia.”

  “Plea-please repeat,” stuttered the cab.

  He peered up at what looked like microphone holes in the ceiling. The once pale gray material was crusted over with something he wouldn’t be surprised was blood. It had spattered across the length of the panel in varying-sized crimson droplets. The microphone was caked with it.

  He neared his mouth to the clogged microphone. “Orgia,” he yelled.

  “Right away sir.”

  The cab’s gravimetric motor grinded as the taxi rose into the air. It lurched to one side most of the journey, but Daniel was nonplussed. His mind had narrowed to a single, dazzling thought.

  Detective Jackson had his amygdala.

  *

  “Come here often?” asked Kage.

  The woman was intent on looking at everything, and everyone, but him.

  “Uh, not so much,” she said to the ceiling.

  Kage splashed nervously in the Jacuzzi. There were two other couples in the hot tub, and they were far too busy to hear what Kage had to say. Which left him with the only unoccupied woman, who had resolutely ignored him thus far. She may have been sitting, naked, barely five inches from him, but they might as well have been in different Bubbles.

  “Great décor,” he said. This wasn’t just an icebreaker. Kage was genuinely impressed. He’d expected the club to be seedy. Dark. The reality couldn’t have been further from his expectations – from holographic walls that shifted their patterns and designs as he walked, to floor lights that illuminated his footsteps in an amber glow on the porcelain tiles. And the smart-towel – soft as a kitten. It had hugged his waist just so. Now it hung on a hook to one side of the Jacuzzi.

  The woman stared at a point just above his head, gave a tight smile, and nodded.

  Kage, well-attuned to rejection, stood up, and retreated out of the water. He needn’t have attempted to shield himself. The two couples, lost in the throes of coitus, didn’t notice. And the woman he’d been chatting up – she made a point not to look his way.

  Giving her one last chance to notice Ben Stanton, Kage dried his torso with slow, deliberate ruffles of the smart-towel. She didn’t so much as glance at his groin.

  No matter. Plenty of fish and all that.

  Kage meandered deeper into the maze that was Orgia. Saunas and cubicles. Naked, naked people. Slings and dark rooms. Leather. Alcohol. He sat in the steam room for a while. Watched the body pit. But soon enough it became clear
that he didn’t belong in Orgia. None of the other patrons noticed him. And he didn’t want any of them – okay, maybe he wanted a few of the bustier women. But he knew it. They knew it. Kage was out of place.

  He needed a bed. Cotton linen. Sheets that made his skin sing. That’s what he needed. A woman with a hearty smile, and a healthy bosom. Una off drugs. The sassy woman with kind eyes. She had a bed, but in a lower phase. Maybe he could convince her to take it slow with him. To keep things vanilla, if not platonic. For now at least, that’s what he needed.

  Kage walked around the club one last time on his way to the lockers. Sunrise crept into the rooms with windows. The light lacerated the allure of the holographic walls. The mood lighting fractured. The subtlety of the night, with all its enchantments, had gone.

  Kitsch and stale, he thought, as he unlocked his locker with the key hanging from the elastic band on his wrist.

  He checked the time. 5:20 a.m. He’d be dressed and out the club in a few minutes. The Anti-Sleep had saturated his system – he’d be perky for another twenty-four hours at least. There was one more name on Daniel’s list to investigate. Autumn Beckett. He tried to remember which of Daniel’s organs she had.

  Liver. That’s right.

  Maybe there was still time. Daniel might not have found her yet. He pulled up Autumn’s location on his map. She was in an apartment block in the Promenade. He could be there in ten minutes if he ordered a taxi now.

  He was about to do just that, about to tap his glasses and issue the command, when a honeyed voice spoke behind him. “Strange place.”

  Something in her timbre, something mellifluous, something that smacked of Pablo Neruda, arrested him. Not yet dressed, still clad in his towel, he turned on his heel.

  “I don’t fit in,” said Kage. He regretted it immediately. He could’ve said just about anything else. Something about the patrons. Or the opulence of the décor. Or the hedonism. Or anything else at all.

  But when he saw the owner of the voice, his brain short-circuited. Curves. Curves along the lines of her silky breasts. Curves down her hourglass hips. His eyes traced those heavenly parabolas, ignoring the phase modulator on her chest. She too was getting dressed, and had dropped her towel. She seemed comfortable in his gaze.

  Something under his towel stirred. “I don’t fit in,” he repeated.

  She laughed, comfortable in her nudity. “You just said that.”

  Kage returned the laugh. “Then I really don’t fit in.”

  “Everyone just seems so …” She glanced at the only other person in the changing room. (It could have been the sexagenarian for all he knew – he couldn’t tear his eyes off her.) She lowered her voice. “… glazed over. Like they’re acting in a film. Playing a role.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  She opened her locker. “So what do you do?” She rummaged around until she found a pair of lacy white panties.

  “Private detective,” he said. He might have slurred the words.

  She glanced down. At his waist.

  Kage followed her eyes. Saw the bulge in his towel. Ben Stanton was at full attention.

  She laughed a syrupy laugh. But there was no malice in it. No Shoulders-like derision, or Botox-y humiliation. “Looks like you’ve got a problem to solve there, Detective.”

  He blushed.

  She stepped toward him, panties hanging from her pinky finger. “This is Orgia. We’re both adults. And we both …” She winked. “… have a problem.”

  Kage snapped his locker shut. “This way,” he said, and took her outstretched hand.

  *

  “I’m here for the vacancy listed on your website.”

  The bushy man behind the front desk eyed Daniel, then ignored him. He tapped his glasses. Whispered something. Tapped his glasses again.

  Daniel waited. Tried not to ogle Bushy’s arms. They were hairier than Daniel’s head. Coarser than a cricket pitch. The hair erupted in dizzying, ad hoc dunes along the man’s forearms. The pelt along his knuckles and fingers was so dense, Daniel could barely detect the flesh beneath. It was entirely possible Bushy had no fingers at all, just clumps of dense fur.

  The hand twitched. Flipped over.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here for the cleaning –”

  Bushy’s eyebrows unfurled in tremendous architectural spires. He held up his hand to stop Daniel. Tapped his glasses again. “Yeah, I sent down two of ‘em to take care of it … Yeah, I told you. We cleared that mess up earlier … No, I wasn’t aware that the …”

  Bushy spun his chair. Gesticulated his formidable arms at a stained wall. “I hear you, Bronwyn. That’s why we need to get another one. Got an applicant here right now. I told you I put the ad up just last week … Remember, on Monday after breakfast. Yes, I did tell …”

  Set into the grimy walls to either side of Daniel were two doors. He tapped his glasses. Pulled up the tracking app. The right door, the door behind which Kage’s dot was flashing eagerly on his overlay, had been painted a scuffed black. The tint had flaked away in places, revealing tracts of rotten wood.

  Daniel threw a cautious glance at Bushy’s back. The man was explaining vociferously that he had told Bronwyn. He most certainly had. Daniel sidled to the black door, and slipped inside.

  Bacchus Mall in phase 7049 was not a clean place. Vomit. Partly digested food. Piles of garbage. But Orgia in phase 7049 made Bacchus Mall look pristine. What Daniel couldn’t take in, the stimulus his brain simply could not accept, was the stench.

  He hadn’t smelt anything like it. It wasn’t the astringent whiff of urine that had been pervasive in the toilets at the Organ Farm. Nor did he balk at the unmistakable pong of excrement. What got Daniel, what slapped him clean across the cheek, was the astonishing reek of gallons of drying ejaculate.

  Everything in Daniel wanted to throw up right there, against the stained wall. If his reptilian brain had its way, Daniel’s feet would turn on their heels, and exit through that rotten black door. If Kage Jackson wanted to hang out at Orgia, good luck to him.

  But Daniel knew he might not get another chance at surprising the Detective. The dot on his overlay was so close now, he was almost on top of it even when the map was zoomed to its finest detail.

  Kage seemed to be wandering around the building, circling the maze of rooms in a slow, methodical circle.

  Daniel gripped the capped syringe in his right pocket. The syringe Hal had given him.

  At some point, Daniel would need to switch phases, down to whichever phase Kage occupied. In phase 7049, Kage couldn’t see Daniel. But Daniel couldn’t see Kage either.

  He didn’t want to switch down too soon. With his slashed face, Daniel guessed he wouldn’t blend well with Orgia’s patrons. He’d likely have only one shot at this. He was going to choose his time carefully.

  He trailed after the Detective as he circled the establishment – Daniel in 7049, Kage in his lower phase. Daniel guessed that his target was in the default Bubble 2300, but then again he’d learned during the Stantons’ performance that public sex seemed to happen in the upper phases.

  Daniel passed by what he guessed were shower cubicles. The faucets and taps were missing, but the shape of the rows of forcefields was familiar from Thomsin’s bathroom. He averted his eyes from the clumps of hair and Gods-knew-what-else that clogged the drains.

  “Sorry about that.”

  Daniel was so absorbed in the map on his overlay, he almost bowled into Orgia’s only cleaner. The man had four arms and a hunchback.

  “No problem,” said the hunched man with a wan smile. He waved Daniel away with one of his four knobbly hands, not pausing his mopping with his other three.

  Daniel walked on, following Kage as the dot moved through a warren of narrow corridors, winding around and back to the room Daniel had first entered. There, Kage seemed to stop.

  The dot pulsed steadily, unmoving. It probably wasn’t a good spot to phase down. The room had on one of its sides the b
lack, peeling door. It must be the throughway into and out of Orgia. Other patrons would see Daniel if he phased down now.

  Morning struggled through a broken window above, casting a spear of light across the room. Maybe the Detective was leaving. If he was, this might be Daniel’s last chance.

  Daniel slid his fingers over the phase modulator under his shirt. His other hand closed around the plastic top covering the syringe, ready to pop it off.

  The dot moved. Kage was no longer in the room. He’d headed back into the bowels of Orgia.

  Daniel caught his breath, and hurried after him. Down a corridor, left, and into a large open space. Kage’s dot ceased moving again.

  According to the tracking application, Kage should be about a yard ahead. Daniel eyed the space. Didn’t see anything but bare walls.

  Where should he stand when he phased down? It seemed like a bad idea to materialize on top of Kage. He guessed the least likely place for Kage to be was against the far wall.

  Once Daniel had his back to the brick, and had crouched into as unobtrusive a position as possible, he thumbed the device on his chest. Allowed the phases to switch down slowly – five hundred frequencies per second.

  6500. 6000. 5000.

  Nothing changed. The empty room yawned around him.

  4500. 4000. 3500.

  The light altered. The sunlight filtering through the slice of windows above him no longer seemed like the only source of illumination. The room warmed and darkened at the same time.

  3000.

  A gray curtain warbled on the edge of his vision. It surrounded him, about three yards in front of him, and a yard to either side. It clouded his view of the rest of the room.

  2500.

  The curtain solidified into something like a wall. A divider maybe? Between him and the divider was a flat, black rectangular object. He couldn’t see it clearly with the distortion of the phase differential, but he thought it looked something like a bed. Its top was about the height of a mattress, and its dimensions were similar.

  He stood by careful increments, ready to phase up should he be taken by surprise. He slipped the syringe out of his pocket. Forced his knuckles to relax around the plastic.