The Tragedy of Tad Deeper
In the year 2045, bearded vegetable Tad Deeper jerks awake from a 20 year coma. Panicked, disoriented, his sunken eyes flit, sweeping the foreign white room: a ticking clock, a red call button remote, a muted TV mounted high in the cornerโflickering with an ancient Maury rerun. A dry antiseptic smell clings to the nostrils. A nearby vital sign monitor beeps. Beneath his gaunt body, an adjustable medical bed with plain white sheets. The rails are up.
“Where am I?” Tad croaks.
“Half-a-Mind Hospice,” a voice off-handedly offers.
“Ah!” Tad recoils from the app-scrolling college-aged youth sitting on a vinyl chair beside him. “Who are you?!”
The youth doesn’t look up. “Your son.”
“My…son?” Tad squints and sees himself. Or rather, who he used to be. “My God,” he says. “Your face. This beard. I must have been in a coma forโ”
“Twenty years,” the unenthused youth says. “Name’s Barry. Barry Deeper.”
“Jesus. I remember now!” Tad grips the bed rails. “Monica flipped the car while I was punching her clutch on I-35!”
Barry pulls a face, still scrolling. “Gross.”
“You must be Monica’s son!”
“Wrong. Your car went careening off a 100 foot tall overpass and jack-knifed into a chicken tender joint.” Barry explains. “Your girlfriend was ejected through the windshield and died on impact.”
“Oh my God.”
“They found her head first in the fryer vat.”
“Oh my God!”
“Cooked ๐๐ฃ๐ crisped.”
“How horrible,” Tad whispers, visibly shaken by the dreadful news. “Wait.” He pauses. “…Cane’s or Zaxby’s?”
At last, the teen looks up. “What?”
“Did we crash into a Cane’s or a Zaxby’s?”
“Man, I don’t know.” Barry shrugs, returning to the phone. “Zaxby’s?”
“Damn. Fatally finger-blasted into the inferior chicken finger fryhouse.” Tad lowers his head. “You deserved better, Monica.” He does the Sign of the Cross. “Requiescat in pace.” Tad’s not actually Catholic, so he loses track of the movement halfway through.
Barry thumb scrolls on.
“Hold on.” Tad looks at Barry. “If Monica isn’t your mom, who is? I’ve only had one girlfriend.”
Barry snorts. “Cuck.”
“I was sixteen!” Tad blurts defensively. “How many girlfriends have you had?”
“307.”
“…and how old are you?”
Barry grins. “Eighteen.”
Tad puzzles. “…that math ain’t mathing.”
“Vanessa.”
“What?”
“My mom is Vanessa.”
Tad blinks in dim recognition. “Vanessa…” Then it clicks. “Monica’s mom?”
“Yep.”
Tad’s eyes go wide. “The mother of my son is my dead girlfriend’s mom??”
Barry twirls his finger. “Hooray.”
“Hey, you don’t understand. Vanessa wasโI loved Monica, believe me, but Vanessa, wow, she had a whole Christian Hendricks thing going on.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“The redhead with the hooters on Mad Men.” Tad extends his hands and cups his fingers. “We’re talking real smother-me-mommy energy, you know?
“Again, this is my actual, biological mother we’re talking about.”
“Oh, right.” Tad lowers his hands. “Sorry.”
“Cuck,” Barry mutters.
“Okay but…I never cheated on Monica, so how…”
Barry sighs, lowering the phone again. “Vanessa had me one year after you went into the coma.”
Tad furrows his brow. “…that math ain’t mathing.”
Barry rolls his eyes. “Overwhelmed with grief at the loss of her daughter, my mother stayed at your bedside every single day…”
“Aw. That’s sweet.”
“And then one night she kinda-sorta…”
Tad leans in. “…kinda-sorta…?”
“You know.” Barry gestures to the bed.
Tad recoils. “WHEN I WAS 17?!”
“Yeah.”
“IN THE COMA?!?”
“I mean, when you say it like thatโ”
“HOW ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY IT??”
“I don’t know!” Barry throws up a hand. “She said it was the only way she could have a piece of Monica again.”
“What kinda fucked up logicโ”
“Hey, you’re the one who said she had smother-me-mommy energy!” Barry snaps.
“Well yeah but…” Tad trails off. “I mean if it ๐๐๐ to happen…and it ๐๐๐ to be someone…and she does have those honkers.”
“Again, my biological mother.”
“And my rap-!”
Barry spears him with a sideways glance.
“Yeah okay. Fair.” Tad slumps. “I’m just mad I wasn’t awake.”
Barry grimaces. “Cuck.”
“It’s still a little messed up though.”
Barry returns to the phone. “Everyone in this family is messed up.”
“But wow, she stayed by my side. All that time. I’m moved. Genuinely moved.”
“Don’t be. After I was born, she fled from the authorities by eloping to Bolivia with a man named Alejandro Augustus Azumyama.”
“I’m ๐๐๐๐ moved.”
“He’s a billionaire who made his fortune on the back of an AI-driven clown fart fetish empire.”
“And now slightly sickened.”
“Anyway, he recently found out about you and sent me over here. Told my mom it wasn’t right to just leave someone in a coma like that.”
“So he’s your…stepdad?”
“My real dad.” Barry scowls. “๐๐ค๐ช’๐ง๐ the sperm donor.”
“Donor would imply some level of participation on my part. And that a crime wasn’t committed.” Tad clears his throat. “Still! That’s very noble of your father,” he says diplomatically. “I would expect nothing less from a Japanese Hispanic-Italian.”
“Actually he’s polish.” Barry sneers.
“Well then I’m at a loss.”
“Anyway I make a thousand dollars a day doing this soโ”
“Doing what?”
Barry flicks his phone. “Watching you sleep.”
“๐น๐๐๐๐๐..”
“So if you could just go back into the comaโ”
“I’m not going back into the coma!” Tad scoffs.
“Don’t be selfish, ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ฑ. I got a good thing going here.”
“Selfish?!” Tad fumes. “I just found out I’ve lost twenty years of my life, my girlfriend is dead and fried, you hit me with all this shit, and then you have the gall toโand what the hell’s so damn interesting on your phone anyway, huh?!”
“Eh?” Barry flashes his screen. “It’s Tinder, man.”
“Oh. I see.” Tad’s lip pulls to a one-sided line. “You’re 307 girlfriends.”
“308.” Barry corrects. “Just bagged another.”
“Uh huh. Look, call me old-fashioned, but you haven’t bagged a girl until you get her in the sack. Or twiddled her giblets on a major interstate highwayโ”
“I do have her in the sack. Right now.”
Tad blinks. “…come again?”
Barry shudders. “I just did.”
Tad pulls away. “๐โ๐๐ก.”
“Neural implant.” Barry taps the back of his skull. “Syncs with all apps on Android and iPhone.”
“Wait, so you’re like in the Matrix or something. Right now. Sleeping with a woman.”
“Three women.” Barry corrects.
“I don’tโ”
“Never less than three. Experts say you want to have an AI-assisted orgasm every twenty minutes for optimal heart health. Naturally I aim for more.”
“Wait? AI-assisted?” Tad tilts his head. “I thought you said you were with women.”
“I am.”
“AI women.” Tad clarifies.
“The only kind that matter.”
“Pft. You know in my day Tinder was for meeting actual women.”
“Yeah, I know some guys with a meat-space fetish.”
“Meat-space fetish?”
“Anyway how’d it go?”
“How’d what go?”
“Meeting meat-space girls on Tinder.”
“Honestly?” Tad thought about it. “It mostly sucked.”
“Meat-space usually does.” Barry shudders again.
Tad turns his head. “Jesus. I don’t think I canโwait. Does everybody do this in the future?”
“Do what?”
“I don’t know!” Tad twirls his head. “Get psychically whacked off by AI all the time?”
Barry shrugs. “Pretty much.”
Tad squints. “Be honest. How many times have you come since I woke up?”
“Uh, six? No wait, six and half.”
“Jesus Jerking Christ.”
Barry tenses. “And here comes ๐จ๐๐ซ๐๐ฃ.”
Tad lies down. “Put me back in the coma.”
Barry groans with relief. “I knew I could count on you, dad.”
“Wait.” Tad bolts up. “Do you get Christina Hendricks on that thing?” ฮฉ