DAWN DEBRIS
A comic book without illustrations
by Tom Lichtenberg
copyright 1996 by Tom Lichtenberg
Smashwords Edition
License Notes: This free ebook is intended for your personal enjoyment only.
On a quiet September evening, I amused myself by playing 'Fly Me To The Moon'. The moon was full and red on the horizon. Suddenly, I stopped and stood up. Something is terribly wrong! I rushed out the door and onto the teeming city sidewalk, where I stood, confused and battered by pedestrians.
I don't know how to play the piano! - What's happening to me?
It all began when Morris Bevelhead showed up at my office at 9 in the morning, on August the 23rd.
"Dawn Debris? The Private Investigator? I need your help!"
I doubted his story immediately. How could someone steal an idea from someone who looked like he'd never even had one. But that's exactly what he claimed had happened.
"I was on my way to FedCorTron. I had an interview all set up with the Old Exec himself, you know, the man who started it all. I was in my car, driving, and suddenly it was gone. My idea was gone!"
"You mean you forgot"
"No! No! Not forgotten! Stolen! Somebody stole my idea!"
He had heard of me through my reputation. I was on a talk show once.
(KID FINDS HERO IN DEBRIS Chatanooga,Tenn.
Three-year old Sammy Delinqua thought he had lost his precious teddy bear forever when fourteen-year old babysitter Sheena Ramone accidentally left it by the garbage cans, where it was subsequently hauled away by the ever competent Sunset Scavengers. His parents, twenty-six year old factory worker Jamie Delinqua and his wife, twenty-three year old Marsha, a becoming blonde with shapely breasts, attempted to console the child with replacement bears, but the boy's behavior became increasingly aberrant and reckless. Unable to tolerate the squalling brat any further, the desperate parents turned to a self-styled private investigator, twenty-nine year old Dawn Debris, a nondescript brunette with scarcely any chest to speak of, who nevertheless has a reputation for recovering lost or stolen articles of dubious or negligible value. Through methods unknown to anyone, including herself, no doubt, Debris was able to locate the missing bear, or at least a facsimile thereof, convincing enough to placate the annoying child. Debris accepted no payment or reward for this effort, except for an invitation to a talk show, which certainly served to enhance her small but amazingly loyal fan base)
"You're the finder of things. Get my idea back!"
Needless to say, I was intrigued. I had found many things before, but never something so insubstantial, so intangible, so obviously nonexistent! There was the case of the accidentally discarded teddy bear. And the lost necktie. Not to mention the case of the missing fibula .
(Why wait any longer? get your copy of "Fissure Monroe" today! brought to you by Pigeon Weather Productions. not available in bookstores or newsstands anywhere)
This was entirely different.
"I'll take the case! ... but first I need to know what the idea was"
"I have no idea! That's the problem."
"Oh, then maybe you can me where you were, exactly, when you first noticed it was missing."
"I was on I-95 near Baltimore, just south of the Harbor Tunnel. I was driving down from Philadelphia. I only stopped once, at the Maryland House, for an all-you-can-eat breakfast at the Bob's Big Boy there."
"Then that's where I'll begin."
The all-you-can-eat breakfast was tasty, and a bargain to boot. The curious thing was that the waiter had to bring drinks. Evidently it wasn't an all-you-can-drink kind of thing. Morris had told me that the waiter and the cashier were the only people he'd had contact with that day. I showed a picture around , but no one remembered him. Why should they? So I gave up and went home. This was a stupid case anyway. A stolen idea. Who'd ever heard of such a thing?
Well, my friend Jack had, and he wasn't laughing. " Maybe they extracted it", he said.
"Like with a needle to the skull? "
"No. With gene therapy. Where have you been?"
I told him he had better explain what he meant. I had been in Philadelphia.
"The science isn't perfect, but they have come a long way. They've identified thousands of genes responsible for this and that, and it's become quite specific. Everyday another gene is isolated and explained.
"Sure, like for disabilities and diseases."
"Not just that, but also the opposite. Genes for health and abilities as well."
"So what's that got to do with anything?"
"They can put them in you and they can take them out.”
"Yeah, but you're talking labs and hospitals, not roadside restaurants."
"Come on, Dawn, you've been around. You know how it goes."
I was going to have to look into the matter further. If what Jack said was true, there must be an insidious black market dealing in desirable and undesirable qualities.
(A recent survey of our readers revealed that certain qualities are more desirable than others. Here are the results of our poll.
beauty 96.2
grace 93.6
style 89.4
charm 89.2
brains 84.9
talent 78.6
patience 66.8
compassion 66.6
duplicity 7.9
hypocrisy 3.2
the margin of error is +- 0.0006
(we're that good!))
Reputed mafia kingpins would be involved. The potential for profit was enormous! Imagine wanting blue eyes. Tinted lenses are one thing, but actually having blue eyes would be better. Could you actually get injected with the genes for blue eyes?
"Exactly! And not only that, the new gene would be enhanced to override the old one. But you're thinking small potatoes."
Suddenly I understood! There would be secret laboratories, organized crime, federal laws to be ignored, rich people knowing who to know, hush-hush deals, fancy dress parties, fashion statements in the making!
'My god, this is terrible!'
"Welcome to the future."
It wouldn't stop with blue eyes. That was just the tip of the iceberg. They would find the gene that produces wrinkles, and extract it. The gene for curly hair. The gene for perfect teeth. But I was being superficial. If all of this were true, you could make yourself whatever you wanted to be, inside and out. We could all realize our lifelong fantasies! The madness must be stopped!
(A Dissenting Opinion
by Ferdinand Jerome, "so-called expert".
I disagree with the foregoing statement, that 'the madness must be stopped'.
Why, indeed, should it be?
What could possibly be wrong with everyone realizing their lifelong fantasies?
I, for one, have long dreamed of losing this bit of paunch I have around the belly.
I've tried everything, from diets to liposuction to rubbing vaginal cream on my anterior.
Why not a little DNA insertion, if that would do the trick?
I feel it would be terribly selfish of Miss Debris to deprive me of this opportunity.
If you agree, dial 1-900-YES-MA'AM.
If you disagree, dial 1-900-NO-SIREE.
Local toll charges apply )
And I, Dawn Debris, finder of things, would be the one to stop it. But not right then. I felt like singing.
'Fly me to the moon' I sang, and accompanied myself on the electronic keyboard. The piano sound wasn't very convincing, but I didn't feel like trying to program the damn thing.
I should be recording this. -
Wait a minute, I don't sing, and I don't know how to play the piano. I'm Dawn Debris. What the hell is going on? -
I realized that I'd been altered. I'd been poisoned with talent! My mind went back to the Bob's Big Boy in Baltimore.
- It must have been the juice! -
If that was true, then a vast conspiracy was unfolding around me.
(What's all this crap about conspiracies?
by Frankie Johnson
And what the hell is happening to the people of this country that they insist on seeing a conspiracy in every little thing that happens? It's gotten to the point that even if one of these theories turned out to be true, I wouldn't believe it anyway. This is what it all boils down to: UFO's killed the Kennedy's because Marilyn slept with Castro even though he was a homosexual who was blackmailing Khrushchev, who, by the way, was an extraterrestrial agent from a renegade planet which had been secretly bombed by the CIA operating out of a secret nuclear waste dump in Waco, Texas. So there. )
They'd gotten to Morris, stolen his idea, then followed him to me. Then they followed me and drugged my drink with genes. Must've been a hell of an idea he had, but nobody messes with Dawn Debris! -
I was intent on revenge, but then I decided to try my hand at watercolors. Soon I had a lovely landscape, with trees,grass,rocks etc... It was like the coast of California , only different.
I oughta get myself an agent!-
All I ever wanted to do since childhood was to fight crime and protect the weak and innocent. Well, I couldn't do that, but at least I could find missing things and serve the public that way, but none of that seemed important anymore.
-Let them find their own damn things! -
I was busy exploring my inner nature. Okay, so maybe it wasn't my own inner nature. Okay, so it had been insinuated into me through a glass of juice. Anyway, I was discovering things about myself I never knew before, because they'd never been in me before. I was going to museums and actually appreciating the art! I was listening to modern jazz, and enjoying it! I watched the evening news with interest!
(NOW MORE THAN EVER
NEWS YOU CAN USE
FROM THE TEAM YOU CAN TRUST
WE'RE THERE WHEN YOU NEED US MOST
WHICH IS NOW MORE THAN EVER
stay tuned for more news from THE news leader ... )
My friends were worried about me. I was boring them with talk about the transitory nature of experience. My girlfriend, Ruby, was especially upset.
(Ruby Replies
I wasn't that upset, really. I was getting kind of bored with the old Dawn, and this was something new. Imagine actually having a new conversation with your lover after eleven years of cohabitation! Imagine all of a sudden not knowing exactly what she'll say under any given condition. Imagine a different reaction to the same old stimulus. Imagine having sex with someone else and it's not cheating because it's still her, sort of. So I wasn't especially upset. But since Dawn likes to think she's the tough one, I let her think I was. )
"What happened to the Dawn Debris I know and love?"
My cousin Larry had even less patience than usual.
(Larry Says
As usual, Dawn is exaggerating. I have a lot of patience, at least more than she does. Remember that time the waiter took twenty minutes to bring the water? Who was screaming and yelling, huh? Who got us thrown out of the restaurant? And the time we got stuck in traffic on the beltway? Who threw the tire iron at the beamer? Not me. )
"You need help!"
Of course it was Jack who took action.
"I'm taking you to a specialist!"
Larry and Ruby had to hold me down all the way to the hospital. The specialist declared it was impossible for someone to be turned into an effete bohemian dilettante through genetic transfusion.
(PERSISTENCE OF DISORDER IN CRYOMATIC PATIENTS
Journal of American Cryomatosis, June 2016
In clinical trials occurring over a period of eleven years, it was determined that cryomatosis tends to persist in those patients in whom the disease lasts longer than in others. )
"Stop wasting my time!"
Every doctor they dragged me to said the same thing.
Finally Jack had enough.
"No more so-called experts! Now let's get down to business!"
They took me to the secret laboratory of Dr. Hideo Tarantula. He scraped samples from various parts of my body. While I waited, strapped down in a dentist's chair, he studied my scraps under a microscope.
(My husband is a dentist.
That's why I would never trust my teeth
to anyone but FedCorTron
Makers of an assortment of fine products. )
Occasionally he shook his head and grunted like a pig. Ruby held my hand and tried to keep from crying.
Actually, I was trying to pry her off me. There was an issue of Highlights in the waiting room that I wanted to read, but she wouldn't let go. )
As for myself, I was pondering the rites of consecration, and their relation to tribal dance forms. Finally the doctor reach a conclusion.
"I'm afraid the news is bad!"
Ruby couldn't contain herself any longer.
"What is it ,doctor? What the hell is going on?"
I wasn't really paying attention, to tell you the truth. That's why I asked what the hell was going on. )
"I'm afraid her genetic code is being overwritten at an alarming rate. It seems that not only traits, but an entire personality has been insinuated into her system."
"But who is it?"
"There's no way to know."
"What about the real Dawn? How can we get her back?"
"I'm not sure it's possible."
"Isn't there anything you can do?"
"Well, the best hope is Counter-Adaptive Replacement Therapy"
(COUNTER_ADAPTIVE REPLACEMENT THERAPY
Journal of American Counter-Adaptive Replacement Therapy, September 2028
A survey of American Counter-Adaptive Replacement Therapists reveal that a significant majority favor the use of Counter-Adaptive Replacement Therapy. )
"In other words, we locate someone similar to the old Dawn, and overwrite the overwritten genes with those. But you must tell me what she was like before."
My friends proceeded to describe the me that no longer was. Apparently, I was rude, crude, ignorant and ill-mannered. All I cared about was finding lost things and pocketing the fee. I had no use for culture of any kind. I preferred anything superficial to anything of substance. I was a bloodhound, a single-minded private eye with a taste for the street and a nose for the criminal underground. The doctor was pleased.
"I have just the thing. I just happen to have here the personality blueprint of one Inspector Slaymaker, formerly of the Newark police, now in a coma in Secaucus."
My friends rejoiced, and before I could escape they were pouring more O.J. down my throat. The next few days were a blur. I lay on the couch, exhausted, as Slaymaker's traits did battle with those of the snob, which were still kicking my own around. One minute I hankered for a violin to pluck. The next I craved a shotgun to blow away my TV set. I would draw a sketch, then set it on fire with my lighter. I tried to listen to the opera on the radio, but then I'd fiddle with the dial, trying to find the police scanner frequency. I sipped wine. I swallowed six-packs. I threw up frequently. I couldn't eat, because I didn't like anything I wanted, or want anything I liked. Dr. Tarantula took notes at a furious pace, while Jack and Larry played poker in the corner.
(The Notes of Dr. Hideo Tarantula
What are these people doing in my lab? I told them to get out of here it seems like days ago they're driving me nuts i mean how much poker can you play how many hoagies can you munch just what the hell do i have to do to get these morons out of my house? i gave her the damn shot so why don't they leave? like i really care how all of this turns out. i take mastercard, what else do i need? )
Gradually I realized what I had to do to get out of there. I managed to inhale some more hoagies and belched. I asked Jack for a shortwave, so I could nap to the soothing sounds of emergency dispatches.
(911 Transcript 5784398723872
Dispatcher: what?
Caller: Hello? Hello?
Caller: Is anybody there? Can you hear me?
Caller: Somebody please answer, it's an emergency.
Caller: Hello?
Caller: I've been shot!
Caller: I'm bleeding to death. Is anybody there?
Caller: aaaah ....
Dispatcher2: what was that?
Dispatcher: wrong number, I guess.
Dispatcher2: what? )
I kept my mouth shut. By morning, I had convinced them I was better. Slaymaker made me buy a trench coat and a fat cigar. On the street, I was aware of every nuance...
... a 501 in progress ... (visualize a man in Levi's, if you will)
... a 411 going bad ... (someone talking on the phone)
... a 666 heading south on Main. (Satan driving his Mustang)
...
widez2