Steven Campbell - Suck My Cosmos

So I went back to the restaurant, my restaurant, and made a new batch. I again screwed up a few tries but finally got a sealed container of gross soup.

I then hopped into a cab and headed to the southwest to meet a friend.

My status had fallen precipitously since Belvaille’s rise to galactic power, but Delovoa was practically in the basement.

He had been around almost as long as I had. In that time he had been the city’s one true technical genius. But that was like saying you were the smartest thing in a rock garden.

Now that tens of thousands of scientists and engineers lived in Belvaille System, it had been made clear that not only was Delovoa behind the times, but he had been criminally negligent. He had let the station deteriorate to near destruction.

Mostly because he didn’t care.

Not only that, but when they were revamping the city they found he had been conducting experiments on the population for years.

There was a big trial and everything. The only reasons Delovoa wasn’t thrown into space was because he was still the best Portal engineer, and because he strongly hinted that all his experiments hadn’t been discovered.

He had his old house on Belvaille, quite a downgrade from the entire city block he once owned. He managed to pay for his Belvaille expenses by maintaining the Portals and by being an inventor of questionable technology to the ultra-wealthy.

Maybe Delovoa wasn’t the most brilliant guy any longer, but he was still quite knowledgeable. He had invented my Gravitonic gun, for instance.

I rang his doorbell and waited.

The door was answered a few seconds later by a Po.

“Ehh,” I said, momentarily disoriented.

The Po were a strange species. They were a big jumble of tentacle-like arms and hands. They had no great torso, no body of any kind, really. No head. No nothing. They constantly undulated which caused the whole creature to move erratically.

I had only ever known Po to be slaves of the Boranjame. Boranjame were the one race that hadn’t participated in the Colmarian civil war—a galactic-wide apocalypse was beneath their concern.

Boranjame were the big guys of the galaxy. Quite literally. They were a crystalline species that never stopped growing. When they became large enough they built themselves world-ships that were the size of…worlds. They pretty much did what they wanted. There was only one Boranjame on Belvaille, but he was pretty small.

Figures that Delovoa had tried to show off by getting himself a Po servant. I guess I couldn’t criticize, I had tried to show off by getting a Dredel Led servant.

This Po was colored a kind of light red. I couldn’t tell exactly because it moved so fast, but I think it was wearing a black bow tie somewhere in its midsection.

“Hank to see Delovoa,” I said, averting my eyes so I wouldn’t have a seizure.

It twirled and whirled and flittered away leaving me at the open door.

I took the time to remind myself that Delovoa was getting old. Each time I saw him he looked worse. But he could be prickly and I didn’t want to embarrass him when I needed his help.

“Hank?” I heard, and looked up.

“Thad Elon’s Three Balls, what the hell happened to you!” I asked, shocked.

Delovoa was a weird-looking mutant at the best of times. He had three eyes that gazed and blinked independently. He was thin, pale, and wrinkled. His head looked like an upside-down pear, round and bald at the top.

Well, normally he looked like that.

The whole top of his skull had been removed and replaced with a glass half-dome. What looked like blood spurted up and ran down the sides of the glass at regular intervals. He had bolts and pieces of metal on his face.

But the big change was his entire chest cavity had been emptied!

Clear cables and wires extended from his vacant chest to a kind of handcart that he pushed along on wheels. Inside it, in transparent canisters of plastic, were all his organs, floating in different-colored liquids.

He had three brains, by the way, which might account for why he was so smart.

“What?” Delovoa asked, as if he were surprised at my questioning his appearance.

“You…” But I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t even start. How was he not dead having all of his vital organs outside his body?

“Come in, you’re letting out the hot air,” he said.

I plopped in and the Po closed the door behind me and scurried away.

Delovoa’s home was the same as always. He made half-hearted attempts to be classy, but he didn’t understand enough or care enough. He had technical gizmos and junk everywhere. His couch, for instance, was antique embroidery yet was occupied by metal scrap and piles of electrical circuits.

“Why did you do that?” I finally asked, motioning to the cart.

“Oh, you haven’t seen me since my little make-over? I was having issues with my lungs and I figured, if I’m having problems now, I’m bound to have more later. And it’s such a hassle operating on yourself. Now, everything is readily accessible.”

He smiled a toothless grin. You’d think after all that, he could finally get some dentures.

“But it can’t be healthy,” I said.

“Well, we didn’t all get magical new bodies from a level-ten mutant like you did. When you were making wishes, it would have been nice if you could have gotten your friends new bodies, too.”

“It wasn’t like that, Delovoa. He didn’t even ask me. And he actually disintegrated my old body.”

“Let’s all cry for Hank! How terrible it must be to have a second youth.”

“I’m hardly youthful.”

“Try pushing your intestines around and then talk to me. Why are you here?” he said, and it was clear I was irritating him.

I was about to answer but I was just so dumbstruck by his appearance.

“Why did you make everything see-through?” I asked. I was staring at…I don’t know, his liver? Stomach? I hadn’t a clue. All the organs were still flexing and bobbing, and the tubes that connected to Delovoa were filled with blood and bile and food and whatever else goes on. It was extremely gross yet fascinating.

“As you know, I’m in the exotic technology business nowadays. I find being exotic helps with sales.”

“I guess I can see that.” I put on fancy clothes to get jobs, but that was a long way from what Delovoa did.

“Here, hold this tube,” Delovoa said.

“Why?”

“Just do it. Learn how biology works.”

“I don’t want to know how biology works. And my hands are too thick. I won’t feel anything.”

“How do you know if you don’t try?” he coaxed.

I tentatively stepped forward and took hold of the cable.

It came loose!

Blood started spurting out with every heartbeat!

“AH!” I screamed.

“AH!” Delovoa screamed.

Blood jetted all over the place. Delovoa’s arms were jerking around and he tilted his head to the sky, his face contorted in agony.

“What do I do?” I asked him.

“Blag gag! Blag gag!” He said.

I looked in his chest to see if I could find where it went. Blood squirted up against my head and blinded me. I dropped the hose and my soup container so I could wipe my face and see what I was doing.

The cable danced around on the floor spewing blood everywhere. I didn’t see any obvious place to plug it in, but I wasn’t exactly a surgeon. I looked at his organs, expecting to see them shuddering or rupturing or something, but I couldn’t tell if they were doing anything grosser than normal.

I reached down and grabbed the cord and put my thumb on the end, stopping the blood.

Delovoa was still convulsing and had dropped to his knees, two of his eyes were rolled back and one was glaring at me accusingly.