Jobs of the Great Misery by Aaron Winslow

Author:Aaron Winslow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Skeleton Man Press
Published: 2016-04-30T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Installation of an External Blood Funnel

Upon our arrival in Iron Shaft City, I left the WarGIANT drivers to pursue my own ends. Some spans later, however, I began to experience some coagulation issues with my back-organ, and made an appointment with the local flesh physician, a certain Dr. Fist, who informed me that the most prudent thing to do would be to undertake an external blood-funnel installation.

“No,” Fist continued, peering closely at me as if in physical inspection of a specimen, which of course is exactly what I was. “Don’t worry about it at all, as the installation procedure has become quite commonplace and poses very little danger to the patient.”

He shook his head and scratched his fingers through a gnarled skin-beard, little more than a brittle composite of filthy dried flay-tendrils. Clearly, I thought, Fist himself has been suffering from a form of flesh-crystal withdrawal and, perhaps, a severe case of post-larval infection. This would be the only satisfactory explanation of the tendrils.

“I understand, doctor, but my reticence stems from a poor past experience with shoddy blood funnels,” I said.

“True, shoddy blood funnels were indeed a problem in the past,” the flesh physician nodded, writing out the order for surgical software installation on his jellypad, “And a distrust of such procedures is, I’ve found, especially common among those who served in Leggett’s Own Army during the March across the New Great Plains. Were you, then, a part of that glorious campaign?”

I admitted that I had, indeed, been briefly drafted into Leggett’s Own Army and had witnessed many faulty blood funnel installations at the hands of their ill-trained doctors, every last one of them a wall-eyed geek with a larval-based brain paunch, unable to express a medical opinion (should he have one) beyond the refrain of “gills, gill hearts, systemic heart, kidney, esophagus, digestive gland, intestine, anus, blood funnel,” a mantra burned forevermore into my inner regal cortex.

“Yes,” Fist admitted, coughing nervously, “Those were bloody and disordered times. Yet I cannot but observe that without the mistakes of those Geek Doctors we might never have mastered the blood funnel techniques which have today granted us so much comfort and convenience.”

He then passed me a fully written installation order, explaining that this would be honored at any Installation Center in Iron Shaft City and, most likely, even in Planned Zone 42, due to what he termed the “tacit modification-enhancement agreement” between the two sectors.

“However,” Fist warned, finger pointed sharply between my eyes, “Don’t try to use this anywhere else, especially in the wilds north of Rutter’s Point, as you’re liable to be arrested. They’ve been shutting down Installation Centers left and right and have recently discussed the possible issuance of a wholesale proclamation banning all installations.”

I paid Fist with my flesh-crystal—much depleted, to my woe—and left his office, intending to go directly to the Pig Den Installation Center just across the Dry River Bridge. Outside, the day, before so promising and clear, had developed now the oily sky-slick for which Iron Shaft City has become so notorious.

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