All the Dead Are Here (8 page)

“There. See that thing?” he asked as he pointed at the screen. The image tilted jerkily around until the front of the computer could be seen. “We use those things to type, you know, with our fingers. To give the computer instructions or to access the internet,” Said John pointing at the keyboard. “We see what the results are on the screen.”

“Then it’s lucky we were at the exactly correct place/location/spot to view this ‘internet’,” said Cadish, calculating the staggering odds of that happening.

“What? No. Any object like that, really anything with a screen that looks like that can access the internet or store information,” said John.

“Really?” said Cadish.

“Yes. Try to log on to it, if you can find anywhere with electrici...” John stopped as the PC on screen booted up. The image changed to show the flickering scene of millions of computers booting up simultaneously even though the apocalypse had stopped the supply of electric to all but the most secure bunkers.

“Ah yes. I will retrieve/gather/harvest this information. Harvest complete. What now JohnKendall?” said Cadish.

“Have you just downloaded the internet?” asked John, stunned.

“Yes.”

“That was quick.”

“No it wasn’t. Your computers are slower than light.”

John felt like apologising for some reason. He didn’t. “Look up ‘Religion’.”

“Oh,” Said Cadish. The room seemed to dim around John and when Cadish spoke again it was in a low tone.

“The Nanodes and I did not calculate this possibility.”

“Wait! Hang on, what now?” said John. “You mean you know about this?” The room visibly bristled with alarm, the screen folded up into the roof and a rod and blade hand shot out to grab John’s and shake it vigorously.

“VerynicetomeetyouJohnKendallthishasbeenveryinformativeIwillnowtransferyouback.”

“Whoa.Whoa. Wait a minute, you. What do you mean, ‘The Nanodes’?” exclaimed John.

There was a long pause.

“It appears, JohnKendall, that I may have a confession/redemption/apology to make,” said Cadish, contritely. The screen flicked down from the roof and an image appeared of a group of people, dressed in black, mourning at a funeral. The coffin was being lowered into the ground and the people around could be seen crying and shaking with grief. The image morphed into a succession of funerals from different parts of the world. “This was the first image/funeral/burial I really saw on my arrival. It confused me for eight seconds, which is a very long time indeed.”

John sat back in the spindly chair. “Why did it confuse you?” he asked.

“Everyone was very sad/morose/scared. It made me feel similar.” Cadish’s voice was very quiet now. “I did not want to study so much sadness. So I calculated several million possibilities and planned a future with limited outcomes. Bar some population errors, it appeared to be a good solution. The Nanodes were dispatched to implement the plan/scheme/non-linear action.”

John rubbed his forehead and eyes in frustration. He had a headache coming on. “So what did you do?”

“The idea/thought was to repair all damaged meat structures. So no-one would.......die, and those that were dead were repaired,” said Cadish.

“Well it didn’t work did it?”

“Yes it did.”

“No it didn’t.”

“Yes it did.”

“No it didn’t, they are all still dead. None of their organs work, none of the nerves work.”

“Actually, it did but not as it was prior to the event. We decided that it would be inefficient/poor form/just plain wrong to repair them as they were and so the Nanodes replaced all existing autonomic functions, with the exception of the higher brain activities, so as better to assimilate themselves back into a live state, and prevent further cellular decay leading ultimately to a system failure/death.”

“They were going to be immortal?” said John.

“They were going to be immortal, and so would you when you suffered a terminal system failure/went kaput,” said Cadish.

“So you were actually trying to stop death?” said John.

“Yes. I thought this was what the people were like before they died but I don’t believe that to be correct/resolved, hence my communicating with you.”

John thought about this for a moment. Cadish, for some reason, could feel non-linear time wriggling about in the background as the possibility of this revelation revealed itself like a mass of writhing snakes.

“So you thought all the Zombies were like this before they died?”

“Yes. It was the only resolving pattern.”

“So the Nanodes got something wrong, then?”

“Not possible. They have 100% success rate at all tasks we agree on,” said Cadish, a little offended it must be said. He contacted the Nanodes. “Oh.”

“What?” said John.

“It appears there may have been an iterative error/cock-up/mistake.”

“What?”

“Given that the Zombies’ state was a second state separate to that of standard meat structures, there may be a reason for it. Initial subjects did not act like meat structures and the Nanodes could not determine the reason for this. They are not as intelligent/pan dimensional/omnipotent...No...too much ego. Not as smart as me and they looked for a precedent on which to base higher function programming. Seeing as this was not a normal state for the meat structure to return from system failure/death they used a guide to understand higher function programming and not knowing individual psyches/higher functions/personalities/memories they based it on a template,” explained Cadish.

“What template?” said John pensively.

“A DVD copy of George Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’,” said Cadish, the room shuddering with embarrassment. “Everyone was the same. It made the programming easy and this was what we assumed the people looked like before death, because they still looked like that in their graves. I think the Nanodes may have become confused and thought it was a historical document. This has never happened before,” said Cadish.

“So you thought everyone would embrace Zombies as old friends and loved ones and that no-one would notice that they weren’t actually acting like they used to?” said John.

“This may have been an error.”

“Yes, Cadish. This is an error,” said John, thinking about what this meant. He rubbed his face and forehead. His head ached and was getting worse. Eventually he looked up at the screen and smiled. “I reckon we can fix it.” he said.

“Hmmm.” vibrated Cadish. “I’m not sure how wise this is. I don’t want to interfere/spoil/mess up and make the situation any worse.”

“Can’t you just go back in time and stop yourself doing it?”

“As you yourself said, JohnKendall, it doesn’t quite work like that,” said Cadish.

“Really? Ok. Well we’ll just have to repair what you’ve done the best we can,” said John.

Relinquishing the endless possibility of Cadish’s considerable power to this meat creature was too delicious a opportunity to ignore. He felt positively giddy at the thought, and he could feel non-linear time flapping about like a wet fish with all the uncalculated possibilities that could occur. Cadish tried not to show his excitement.

“Can you get the Nanodes to relinquish control of the bodies, just let them die again?” asked John.

“Hmmm. I am reluctant to comply. People will not see their loved ones again, and will be sad. I cannot allow that.” John laughed. Cadish was stunned at this reaction, it was like nothing he had ever seen before, he was quite perplexed as to its meaning.

“Cadish, I absolutely guarantee that the people will be happy about it,” laughed John, smiling for the first time in hours.

Cadish negotiated with the Nanodes and, reluctantly, they agreed. On the screen John saw the Zombies drop to the floor, their link severed from their microscopic puppet masters. The image changed to show a group of survivors fighting a running street battle against the Dead. As the pursuing Zombies fell to the floor, the group slowed to a walk, looking dazed and confused. Slowly, one edged back to the now dead pursuers and poked it with the end of his machete. It didn’t move. The grouped started jumping around, laughing, hugging each other, and crying. They didn’t look sad at all.

“Ooh!” said Cadish, “well that
is
good, isn’t it?”

John sagged in his seat, relieved the nightmare was over. Cadish flicked through other scenes of celebration occurring all over the globe, but John couldn’t see the celebrations, all he could see was the devastation the last night had caused. This gave him an idea.

“Cadish. Can the Nanodes repair inanimate objects as well as living forms?”

“Oh yes. It is much easier, but the amount of damage done compared to time of my arrival is massive, this may take several linear...sorry...minutes to achieve and may not be one hundred percent accurate, but I can ensure that none of the errors are dangerous. Would that suffice?”

“We’ll try that then,” said John.

Cadish was stunned, the meat creature, knowing that the solution would not be perfect, was willing to complete the task anyway! Oh to have such uncertainty, oh to have a wild stab in the dark without calculating the trillions of possible outcomes! Cadish deliberately ignored both linear time and non-linear time, he didn’t want to know what would happen next. It was so exciting. It negotiated with the Nanodes who complained bitterly at the amount of work involved. He promised them a reward for their hard work and loyalty and they agreed.

John watched the screen intensely as broken glass rose from the floor, millions of pieces coalescing together, forming a white hot ball of glass before stretching out to the size of the window it came from. It drifted back into place, cooling rapidly as it went. A car rolled onto its wheels before the panels buckled out to their former shape, the wing mirror flew in from the left of the image and re-attached itself and it glided gently into the parking spot from which it came. John and Cadish watched in awe as the scene unfolded, in fact, if it wasn’t for the reaction of the people watching the scene it would just look like a film in reverse. After a couple of minutes, the Nanodes reported in.

“99.14% correct realignment of damage,” reported Cadish, proudly.

“What about the 0.8 or whatever is left?” asked John.

“Of the incorrect realignments the most severe is a tree in Idaho which has the DNA of a horse. It will not be a problem... As long as the DNA has no muscle stem cells, of course.”

“Right,” said John, trying to imagine the horse-tree running free across the plains of Idaho. He shook his head and got back to business.

“Last thing, Cadish. All the dead are going to rot and cause horrific diseases, can you remove all the bodies? Dispose of them?” asked John. Cadish didn’t answer but on screen all the Zombies corpses instantly bubbled, grew into a sort of small mossy hill then disintegrated into the Earth.

“Next?” asked Cadish.

“Next? Well the last thing I think is to return me home isn’t it?” said John.

“Oh,” said Cadish.

“What?”

“It would be unwise, JohnKendall, for your species to know my name / nomenclature / power / existence. I’m afraid you cannot go homeworld,” said Cadish, quite saddened by this turn of events, and the fact that JohnKendall was going to leave this mess a lot less tidily resolved than Cadish would have liked.

“Cadish. Look up ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘alien abduction’,” said John.

“Oh,” said Cadish “They will think you are insane/nutty/mad-in-da-heid/not well.”

“Yes. That is why I’m not going to tell anyone about this.”

Cadish thought for a while before agreeing. It had considered the possibility of putting John in his subspace Zoo, but felt this would be a bit unkind given all the help - and fun - he had provided.

“Well, JohnKendall, it has been an absolute pleasure to meet you.” The blade and rod hand shot up and shook John’s hand enthusiastically.

“Er, and you,” said John, taking care to not cut his fingers on the vicious looking blades and rods that shook his hand.

“I’m sorry about all that erm, all those erm, well I’m sorry anyway,” said Cadish, and he meant it, it had been quite the strangest visit he had made to anywhere in a long time.

“Oh that’s ...ok,” said John. Ok? Ok! He had lost his girlfriend and his best mate. God only knew who else and here he was saying it’s ok like Cadish was a seven foot tall body-builder who had spilt his beer in the pub. It didn’t pay to antagonise body-builders and John concluded that Cadish was a lot more powerful than a body-builder in the pub.

John stood there awkwardly for a moment.”Well then, ’bye,” he said hopefully. He waved his hand feebly to the room.

“’Bye, JohnKendall,” said Cadish, and in a moment John was back in the alley, tingling all over. In the distance he could hear singing. He walked from the alleyway without looking back and never spoke of Cadish with anyone, however, he often pondered the experience and decided after a few years to join the clergy.

Cadish hung like a silver star in the heavens for 7.6 nanoseconds. In this time he catalogued the internet, watched the whole of youtube, and everything ever made on television. He read every piece of writing committed to file. He came to the conclusion that he liked Benny Hill, Chess and JRR Tolkien the best but didn’t really like the film ‘2001’. Finally, he filed all the data away in subspace along with the dimensional search results and the trillions of simulations he had conducted, and decided to leave a marker for any passing traveller who happened upon the human race. For his own amusement he decided to leave it as a meat creature email.

‘[email protected]

Dear Traveller,

If you find this message it means you are in Geosynchronous orbit above a most remarkable planet, whose populace display the most interesting possibility solutions. I would recommend the inhabitants be viewed for a period of linear time, or to see the planet from first-life to fiery end, I suggest a hat-stand of non-linear time be employed.

However, I most humbly request that you do not interfere or disturb the creatures below as their existence is short, brutal and fragile and any well meaning action can have disastrous consequences as I, Cadish, have learned.