Computer Waste

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. They also cannot hear your stomach grumble. It is all just...

COMPUTER WASTE

I.

“We won’t even need to eat anymore. Just think of all the money we’ll save on toilet paper!”

“You’re not getting a coaxial CPU colostomy unit, and neither am I. That’s final, you understand.”

“But Mooooommmm….”

It was no use. She had laid down the law and it didn’t look like there was any way of persuading her. Feeling dejected, Tyreek went upstairs and sat down at his desk. A black towering structure of circuitry and cybernetics stared back at him. The dark blank screen mimicked his emotions. This machine was obsolete. A lumbering totem of the information technology age. Still functional, but not hip and trending like the new adhesive apps or the biological add-ons that were becoming increasingly popular. It was a time when man and machine were becoming more exceedingly intertwined and not everyone was a fan of this new surge of progressive body modification and computerized assimilation. He could certainly understand his mother’s apprehension at the idea, but some of his friends had the procedure done and nothing was wrong with them. He envied the way they could access data and always seemed to know when the coolest events were happening and where the best deals were at. They were always the first to order that new, limited edition pressed vinyl, of which there were only fifty copies made. They instantly knew all the hot spots around, where the best bands would play gigs, and, they had directions to the events before anyone else. They were given access to a world that seemed incredible, exciting, and gratifying. Tyreek wanted in.

He booted up his computer and sat there thinking about what one of those flavor pills must taste like. How it could make your stomach feel full just from ingesting a tiny capsule. Kind of like a headache pill, an aspirin, or an Ibuprofen, he thought. It attacked the brain receptors that were causing pain and eliminated it. These “flavoroids” must work in a similar way. Telling the body, it has been satiated and dispersing the chemicals needed for kinetic movement. Not all the flavor pills were tiny, but they were the molecular equivalent of a normal human meal. There were pizza pills, hot dog and potato chip pills, ham and egg pills. You name it, it was on the market or in development. Coming to a Drive Thru Pharmaceutical Dome near you.

II.

“Man, you should have been at the Dermatek show last night!!” Peter exclaimed. “They played four tracks off of the ‘Reversable Skin’ album and then they closed their set with a slowed down version of ‘My Organ In Uranus’. It was gnarly!!!”

“That sounds like fun man. What about Lazer Wafer? How good were they?” Tyreek was interested in this first-person account of the concert he missed out on, but the lingering depression with his current lot in life was unmistakable in his voice. Maybe Peter was used to it by now, so it didn’t really phase him.

“Yeah, they were good too. I didn’t really care for the two opening acts, Last Of The Lumberjacks and No Table For A Picnic. Kinda lame in my opinion. But it was a great show overall.” Peter recounted.

“Yeah, I liked a few songs by Last Of The Lumberjacks off their ‘Chainsaw Symphony’ album, but they aren’t very consistent in their style.” Tyreek replied absentmindedly. His mind was circling around how he could convince his Mom to let him get a body mod. If there was no talking her into it, he could always just disobey her wishes and try to get the coaxial CPU colostomy unit without her consent. Finding a dealer to do the procedure without a parent or guardian’s permission was the tricky part. He had heard of places that would do complex body mods on just about anyone for the right amount of money, or as some people referred to it as, “credits.” But these establishments didn’t exactly advertise their underhandedness and Tyreek felt a lot of it might just be rumor or hearsay.

“Yeah no kidding, once ‘Land Of The Last Oak’ came out, I was like, ugh, gag me with a tomahawk axe. They must have started smoking the droppings from all those trees they been cutting down over the years.” Peter joked. He was in a gregarious mood and could talk about music all night and all day if given the right audience. Tyreek and him had been friends for years and shared quite a few things in common. One thing that they didn’t share was their respective personal genetic makeups. Peter had some mods and Tyreek did not.

“Hey Pete, you ever had any trouble with your coaxial CPU mod? I mean like, you ever had a pizza flavoroid that tasted like a taco salad?” Tyreek asked his friend.

“Um, nah man, nothing like that. I did hear a story about someone that had taken four deviled egg pills at one time and it caused their gut to rupture and they wound up having to have their mod removed completely.” “Word on the street was that they almost died. But that was a long time ago, when the procedure was less common. They should have known better than to double up on the intake of flavoroids.” Peter replied. “Doubled up, deviled egg, gut rupture. You should write a song about it. Imagine the smell of that bellyhole bursting.”

“Ughhhh gross!!” “Well that certainly is food for thought. I’ll talk to ya later man.” Tyreek was ready to go bust a gut of his own. His bowels were playing a down-tuned symphony of digestion, but it felt more like intestinal destruction.

“Wait!!” Peter exclaimed. “Did you talk to your Mom about getting some work done or something?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, is it that obvious? It didn’t go over so well.” Tyreek somberly responded.

“Ah, I thought something was up. Well hey man, if you can come up with a hundred credits or so, I could talk to my guy and he might be able to work something out for you. I plan on seeing him in a couple of weeks to get my Endocrine Enabler adjusted.” Peter’s offer fell on exhausted ears.

“Yeah?? Thanks man, I’ll see what I can do. Have a good night Pete. Thanks.”

Tyreek hung up the call and rushed to the bathroom. The stress of arguing with his mother and the thought of possibly disobeying her must have been doing some damage on his nervous system. His stomach was a gurgling mess of knots. It sounded like drunken butterflies singing a binaural funeral dirge.

III.

During the next two weeks it rained for three straight days. Tyreek found himself wondering how hospital patients felt when it rained. With water levels on the rise and their health in decline, did the sight of the Earth being fed nurturing sky fluid give them a sense of hope and positivity? Did they feel that there was some omnipotent force out there that was crying for them, or maybe with them, during their illness? Did they view the rain as just congested clouds that needed relieving of their puffy cloud bladders? He was about to pick up his guitar and work on this idea when his intercom went off.

“BZZZZT.” “call from…6472-1573” The intercom sizzled and spoke.

“Tyreek here.” he said, pushing the small blue button that powered up his personal communication portal.

It was Peter. “Hey Tyreek, writer of rancid rhapsodies, its Pete!” he exclaimed in an overly excited manner. “What the heck are ya doing?!”

“I was just about to start work on a new song,” Tyreek responded. “Thought about calling it ‘Odin’s Obnoxious Umbilical Cord’ “What’s going on?”

He assumed his friend had a good reason for the call. Could this be the day that he would get that upgrade to his otherwise boring, holistic, human body that he so desperately wanted?

“I wanted to know if you were able to come up with that 100 credits and maybe ride out to UltraMorph with me?” Peter asked.

The invitation hung in the air like a sneeze without a home. Just germy particles of uncertainty floating around in an invisible oasis of oxygen. “You know it man!! Bless you dude. I have been holding onto the money hoping this day would come,” Tyreek replied. He was churning with excitement. Soon his days of being biomechanically abstinent would be over.

IV.

“So this is it huh?” Tyreek asked, feeling underwhelmed. They had arrived at their destination and much to the dismay of Tyreek’s imagination, the place looked like an abandoned parking lot with a small concentration camp located inside. Barbed wire fencing surrounded the exterior of a flat blackened pavement where shards of grass sprouted up in various spots, gasping for carbon dioxide. The building itself didn’t appear huge from the outside but its heavy grey brick exterior gave off an unwelcoming kind of vibe.

“This is the place.” Peter stated. “You excited?” There was a small sign hanging on the front of the building that read ‘Sherman’s Synths.’ Tyreek decided to deflect his disillusionment with a bit of humor.

“I didn’t think you were taking me to a World War Three keyboard factory.”

“Haha, yeah man. My friend Sherman has a Roland 2600 keyboard, some Cassiotech, and also a few of those bulky tanks from the second war. Come on, let’s go get upgraded.” Peter countered. He knocked on the front door of the building. A chirping noise went off and a deep voice boomed from somewhere.

“Hello. Welcome to Sherman’s Synths. State your business please.”

“Um, hey Sherman, this is Peter Krang and I am with a friend of mine. I have an appointment to get my Endocrine Enabler adjusted and my friend is looking for a keyboard.” Peter tried to suppress a laugh but failed.

“Welcome Peter. The two of you may enter.” The booming voice announced, as a mechanical unlocking of the door began. A series of clicks and clanks followed by a hydraulic woosh and the gateway to Tyreek’s transformation slowly opened. With the way the door sounded and the aura given off by the intercom, along with the bleak aesthetic of the facility, he half expected a waft of steam to erupt from the entrance and this Sherman character to walk out in black steel toe combat boots, a giant white lab coat whipping behind him, with a monocle in his left eye and a haircut that screamed ‘Hail Hitler!’. He wasn’t too far off the mark.

No steam was released by the opening of the giant metal door, but upon entering this domicile for the soon to be reconfigured, Tyreek’s excitement was reignited.

V.

The procedure took about an hour and a half. In this time, Peter learned that his pancreas produced more protein than a pig farmer at a pork barbeque banquet. His thyroid was thirstier than a herd of camels soon to be culled for water consumption. He also learned that Tyreek was exceptionally squeamish towards sharp objects penetrating his flesh. There was a moment right before the initial incision when he thought his best buddy might just pass out. Tyreek’s face turned whiter than a Donald Trump rally and he began to sweat like an obese housewife using a Peloton exercise bike for the first time in an effort to save her failing marriage. After all was said and done, the two emerged from their separate operating quarters, forever changed. Sherman gave Tyreek some information on how to best utilize his new modification in the next few weeks of “adaptive assimilation” - as it had come to be known. He was by no means to contact the doctor in any event, be it an allergic reaction to the cosmetic experience or a complication due to the misuse of his new equipment. Nor was he, in any case, or under any circumstances, to disseminate the results of his surgery with anyone outside of the UltraMorph facility. Living or dead. Everyone got a good laugh out of that last part. Tyreek mentioned that he had a dead pet turtle that he wanted to tell immediately about what had just happened, but he would restrain himself in the best interest of the company. He felt grateful for this experience and a little bit sore in the abdomen. He paid Sherman the one hundred credits, whom he liked upon initial reaction, and after Sherman kept adamantly insisting he was not a Nazi war criminal sent from the future to elevate mankind to its untapped potential, he felt fully comfortable with the money going into those long, white, lab coat pockets.

“Thank you for your business gentleman, Farewell.” The deep resonant voice of the good Doctor S. projected as he led the two newly configured friends out of the facility.

“Hey Doc, one thing before we leave.” Tyreek paused in his pace towards their vehicle. “Why the name, Sherman’s Synths on the sign out front? Why not a giant lit up fluorescent UltraMorph sign? You might get more business that way.”

“For exactly that reason.” Sherman said with a sly smile.

On the way home Peter explained the intricacies of putting up a front, or a false lead, to Tyreek. He felt the need to give his friend a crash course in street wisdom. Also, his newly adjusted Endocrine Enabler had his hormones firing on all cylinders. It was like giving coffee to an Adderall abusing adrenaline junkie. He wouldn’t shut up. Tyreek didn’t mind and couldn’t resist fidgeting in his seat like a nervous baby with a diaper rash. Part of him felt like a Pop Tart that had been inside a toaster oven for too long - warm, gooey, and ready to burst at the seams with hot raspberry filling. Another part of him felt like a wine bottle that had been stuck inside of a freezer for too long - cold as ice and on the verge of popping a cork. In either event, it was hard to keep his temperature levels in check. His mind raced with exceptional pace and fluidity. While he knew that what they both had done was not exactly illegal, it wasn’t something he could go home and brag to his mother about, and the feeling of impending doom washed over him in a quick haze and then it was gone.

They finally made it back to town and Peter dropped Tyreek off at his house. He gave his credit bankrupt cohort a few different flavoroids to try (out of his personal stash) and told him he could intercom with him anytime. Tyreek walked upstairs to his bedroom, ready to pick up his guitar and put a few chords down to a song that had been running through his head during the ride home. ‘Synthetic Servitude At The Hands Of The Elitist Enterprise’, had a good ring to it.

“Tyreek, just the man I wanted to see.” His mother sweetly greeted him at the top of the stairs. “I have a story to tell you. You’ll get a kick out of this.”

“Uh-oh, does it involve rancid juices sloshing around in an empty coffin?” he jokingly prompted her.

“Hey, actually it kind of does. How did you know? Anyway, a lady at work told me that her daughter had been begging her to get one of those Coaxial CPU Como-lobsturdity thingamajiggis that you’ve been bugging me about. So, she finally gave in and let her kid go and get the implant. Guess what happened?” Tyreek’s mom didn’t give him a chance to answer. “After two weeks her taste buds went stale, and she couldn’t tell the difference between a jalapeno and a hot dog.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad Mom,” Tyreek interjected. “At least then she couldn’t tell the difference between mayonnaise and sour cream.” The thought of which made the drunken butterflies that constantly roamed around in Tyreek’s belly, flitter in disgust. He was voraciously opposed to both condiments.

“Yeah but that’s not it. Just yesterday her daughter had been complaining that her stomach was feeling unusual, like a gasoline container that was half full that somebody kept shaking up to see if it was empty. So, she took her kid to the hospital and when the doctor went to check her blood pressure, her belly burst open and she died right there on the spot. Apparently, her entrails couldn’t handle being overworked and they actually ripped themselves free from the confines of her skin. Pretty gross huh?”

“Whoa.” was all Tyreek could muster up in response. A cold sweat formed at the base of his scalp.

“Now aren’t you glad you listened to your mother?” she said matter of factly. “We may not be able to afford all that fancy gadgetry that some people have these days hotwired into their human frame, but at least I’m not using our toilet paper to pick up your gastric juices from the bathroom floor.”

“I need to sit down Mom,” Tyreek said.

He already missed the way a hot dog tasted as he ground his teeth in regret.

Written by : Brad Schoeneman