Mardock Scramble

“Sorry for keeping you all waiting—Gosh, little Minty! What a naughty boy you are!” Rare had bounded back into the room and was blushing bright red. “Here you go, here’s mine! Five people’s worth.” Rare showed Boiled some pieces of skin and hair pressed between plates of glass, folded up neatly and soaked in liquid.

“None of them really take my fancy, to tell you the truth. The hectic lives they lived meant they didn’t have much time to look after their hair, I suppose,” continued Rare.

Boiled ignored him and turned to Medium. “And are there any of their parts that you discarded?”

“When they catch a whale on the continent they use up all the parts. I mean all— skin, bones, nothing goes to waste. The only part they discard is the nothingness left after the whale is gone, so to speak.”

“And what do you use the parts for?” asked Boiled.

“The flesh is used for transplants, scientific research, as decoration—or as a delicacy,” said Medium.

Rare giggled. “We sell them to people who really get off on the idea of eating human flesh.”

Medium pointed at Rare as if to silence him. Pointing with a finger that could have come from anybody. “We get a good price for the bones, for marrow transplants, or to medical students. And the internal organs have long since been reserved. Even parts like appendixes,” said Medium.

“And the parts that you’ve taken for personal use?” asked Boiled.

“We’d agreed that these were to be part of our payment…”

“That’s fine, I just need confirmation.”

“Well, it’s all safe, everything’s okay. They’ve all vanished. Not a single drop of blood left. Transplant technology advanced in leaps and bounds as a result of the war. There aren’t going to be any leftovers. Three cheers all round,” said Medium.

“And the data the doctors were working on?”

“We’ll show you to our analysis department straightaway. Follow me, sir,” Medium beckoned.

Boiled stood up and followed Medium deeper into the container, an attache case in either hand.

“Ooh, that back—manly, but in a very different way than yours. And what smooth skin for a man!” Rare whispered to Mincemeat as they followed behind.

It was a giant container with a series of joints where it could be dismantled. Medium unlocked the electric lock on a door that divided two of these joints and headed in.

“Please do come in. This is the information HQ for our company. One of our members is a specialist in data management. In the war he was a distinguished Comms soldier—hey, Flesh! We have a guest!”

Inside were various computing and communication devices strewn all over the place. They walked through the gaps, tracing a route to a place surrounded by even more equipment, when some flabby mass wobbled round at them.

“Hey,” said a sweet voice. His eyes were black and wet.

He had no hair and gave the impression of a young boy’s head protruding from a mass of flesh.

“I’ve been watching you since you entered the port. Using the harbor cameras. Now that’s probably the man we’ve been waiting for, I thought to myself. He’s that sort of person, I thought,” the mass of flesh croaked. He sounded like a precocious schoolboy.

“Indeed, Flesh. This is the iron man himself, Mr. Boiled. Be sure to treat our valued client with all the respect he deserves,” said Medium.

“Welcome, sir. I’m Flesh the Pike. In charge of information ops.” He pointed at himself with his right hand as he spoke. His hand was like a pale baby’s hand that had been grotesquely overinflated. Boiled watched Flesh—and his hand—in silence.

Flesh was wearing something that at first glance looked like a gown, but on closer inspection turned out to be more like a giant sheet that covered his fleshy mass. There was an incredible amount of fat there—the word obese wasn’t enough to describe it accurately.

The sheet was swollen into a bizarre shape. From the outside it was impossible to tell even whether he was sitting on a chair or was just sprawled out on the floor. He could have been standing.

Boiled put his attache cases down and took a step toward Flesh. He stood in a position so that he could see a number of monitors all at once, then spoke.

“Show me the data. The neurotreatment reports that the five doctors were collaborating on.”

“Just a moment.” Flesh’s whole body started trembling under the gown. As he stared at the screen his fat hands plugged something into the port that was embedded in the back of his neck at the top of his spinal column, his fingers moving with surprising agility. It didn’t seem to be the sort of device that plugged into his brain tissue directly—rather it was a simple output device from his brain.

“It’ll be a little while. We’re covering our tracks as we go, you see, falsifying the University Hospital’s data at the other end as we download them for ourselves. Wanna have some fun while we wait?” asked Flesh.

Boiled didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no.

Still, Flesh continued, looking up at Boiled with a drowsy expression. “I don’t mind this man touching them. This man knows about our little hobbies, right, Medi?”

“Mr. Iron Man didn’t seem to find anything too objectionable when I showed him mine—or when Rare or Mincemeat did,” said Medium.

“That’s what I thought, most probably.” Flesh grinned. He fiddled around for a while loosening his gown with his chunky fingers. The gown fell to the floor, slowly, nonchalantly.

“Go on then, just a little. I don’t mind if you feel up my collection.” Flesh’s voice cracked as he made his mound of flesh wobble. A mountain of white meat swayed as one. Boiled could now see that they were women’s breasts. Hundreds of them.

Pairs of breasts protruded from his whole body—particularly his chest and stomach—clustered together like bunches of grapes.

Flesh wasn’t wearing any clothes under the gown. But he couldn’t really be described as naked, as there was no way of telling where his skin ended and where the stolen flesh began. His feet could just about be seen protruding, dangling, from under the mass, and it seemed that he was resting on some sort of easy chair. Breasts ran down both sides of his thighs and calves.

“Not interested. Just give me the data,” Boiled said. Flesh gave a creased smile and put his gown back on, nodding knowingly, glancing fleetingly at Medium.

“I like people who are honest about their tastes. To each his own, that’s what I always say,” said Flesh.

“We’re talking about Mr. Iron Man here, Fleshie. He’s not interested in your Oedipal complex. He likes his fetishes a little more hard-boiled, like me,” said Medium.

“So it seems.” The plug in Flesh’s back started flickering and making a chattering sound.

Flesh scanned the surrounding monitors with a quick flash of his eyes. As with breasts, he had hundreds of monitors, and they too were quivering, this time with lists of seemingly random numbers.

“Okay. All done.” Flesh reached out to one of the monitors. A machine that was evidently designated for writing data started whirring, and a disc popped out into Flesh’s portly fingers.

“Here you go. This is now the only copy of this data in the entire world.”

Boiled took the disc, lifted it up as if to look closer, and squeezed. Until the disc was no more than crumbs of plastic and magnetism.

The data—once the contents of Shell’s memory—was now oblivion.

“And the rest is silence,” said Medium. Boiled glanced at him.

Then, for the first time since entering the harbor, Boiled nodded.

04

“You must be growing weary of carrying those heavy bags around with you, sir. Won’t you let us lighten your load?” Medium asked Boiled as they left the room, as if he were sharing a particularly witty joke.

“I was told that there were five members of this company. I’d like to hand it directly to your boss. Judging by the size of the exterior of the container, there should still be other rooms here. Where are they?” asked Boiled.

“Ah, our boss is not at home just this—”

“There’s someone else inside this container right now. In the Comms Room just now I saw a record of the changes in mass aboard the container. There is someone I haven’t met moving around inside.”

“Well…it’s not that we’re trying to hide the boss exactly. It’s just that he’s in the middle of sorting through his