A.I. Zombie

by L. A. Johnson

  "Yes and yes." He smiled and nodded enthusiastically. "I was paying attention by then. That rat stopped right in front of that one orc, lunged forward and bit him. And that's not even the weird part."

  Maura swallowed and wondered how the story could possibly get any stranger.

  "After biting the guy, the rat ran right to a point in the middle of the room. It seemed to do it on purpose. It just stood there in the epicenter of all of the illegal weapons that were pulled. And then it, well, like, started dancing or something. Weirdest thing I've ever seen. Still can't seem to get the image of it out of my head."

  Maura tried to sum up. "So, you're saying this rat came out of nowhere and chose a victim. Then, when it had attracted the entire room's attention, it went to the exact spot that would guarantee its own annihilation and then danced?"

  "Yup."

  "Until they all shot it dead."

  "Yes. But not before those morons all shot each other. Duh. If everybody shoots at something in the middle of a circle then people and not just rats are going to get shot. That's what the hospital guy said."

  "Who?"

  "The hospital guy. Dr. Grayson. Always in here. Usually he's the one starting bar fights, sneaky bastard. This time it wasn't him though, but the outcome was the same. He comes in, patients for the hospital come out."

  Maura frowned. "If Grayson wanted the maximum number of patients to go to the hospital, why didn't he grab the bite victim as he and the hospital staff were leaving?"

  Carl shrugged. "No idea. The whole thing happened so fast. Maybe Grayson didn't see the bite, he was at the bar. He just came out afterward and took control of the aftermath. He called the hospital and coordinated everything."

  "All of the victims of the idiot gun battle went to the hospital, right? What about the guy who got bit? Why didn't the lawyer mention him?"

  Carl just shrugged. "Who knows? Orcs aren't always big fans of hospitals."

  Maura thought about this. The whole thing was getting weirder and weirder. "Thanks, Carl," she said. "Oh, yeah, one more thing. Did you get the name of the guy who got bit? I want to check on him. You see, the lab is running a bunch of tests now, to see if there's any kind of sickness associated with this different breed of rat." She tried not to use the word disease with civilians per Floyd's standing instructions, although in reality it was a pointless endeavor.

  She knew that was immediately where everybody's mind went. "If he does need treatment, I want to make sure that he gets it right away."

  "I guess that makes sense," Carl said. "The guy who got bit is a regular. He's on the fringes of the rowdies, but mostly he keeps to himself."

  "Name?" Maura asked again. "Somebody's got to go check on him, Carl."

  "Steve. Steve from star station maintenance. Can't miss him. Big guy, black beard, ponytail."

  "Steve from star station maintenance," Maura repeated out loud. She wrote it down for good measure. "Ok, thanks, Carl. You've been very helpful."

  Maura walked out of the broom closet that doubled as Larry's office at the Frenzy and back out into the rest of the space station.

  She took a deep breath and looked at all of the nice, normal people walking around. In hindsight, it felt like Carl had told her a ghost story. That would be fine, if it weren't her that had to do all of the follow up. Plus, she couldn't get the image of those creepy, giant rats huddled together just staring at her out of her head.

  Her phone made a funny phaser sound effect. She checked it.

  Get to work, you.

  Hmmmm. That's new. It was from an S and M Motivation Corporation. That did sound familiar. Then she remembered an email about it. It was some new station wide productivity enhancement feature. Either Space Station Management was stupid, or it was just unaware of the seedy pun in the name. If Maura had to guess it would probably be option one.

  I am working. I'm tracking down that orc rat bite victim. Please be ok, please be ok.

  She made her way over toward starship maintenance to see if she could catch him. As it turned out, he was easier to catch than she thought.

  "There he is," the shift manager said, as he pointed to a figure sitting motionless against the wall and staring into space.

  "Um, is he on duty?" Maura asked. She was hoping that sitting there staring into space was normal.

  "Supposed to be, but he reported for duty like that an hour ago. We asked him if he was okay, if he needed any help, but he just sat there."

  Maura swallowed. "Is he normally that, um, quiet?"

  "No. That's not normal. I heard he was in that rat bar fight, figure he had a few too many and needed to sleep it off. And that's very unusual, Steve has never had any problems holding his liquor."

  "You said sleep it off," Maura said. She knelt down and waved a hand in front of Steve's face. "But he's not actually sleeping."

  "You're right," he said, "I hadn't noticed. It gets very busy around here and I'm covering for Steve." Something beeped nearby. The shift manager moved on.

  Maura was left with the catatonic looking Steve. She knew that hung over was not the same thing as unresponsive. Weird.

  "Steve? I have reason to believe that you were injured yesterday. Is it okay if I check you over a little bit?"

  Since he wasn't objecting, she looked over his jeans to see any evidence of a bite or wound or rip in the fabric. She found it right away. Ouch. The wound was angry and gaping. At the very least, he'd need stitches. And it still didn't explain why he was unresponsive. She decided to try again.

  "Steve, can you hear me? My name is Maura. You're hurt, so I'm going to call the hospital and tell them to come and get you, okay? I have a doctor friend, there. She's the best. They will have you fixed up in no time. Ok?"

  She stared at him for a moment. He was breathing and blinking and staring. Huh. She dialed the phone and called it in. Taking no chances, she also told them who she was and the background of the patient vis-à-vis the rat bar fight and the possibility of disease contamination, depending on the outcome of the tests. Then she hung up.

  "Okay, Steve. They're coming, and they're going to take good care of you, okay?"

  Maura shook her head and wondered if she should give Lyra a call. She decided to let them come get Steve first. Once he was taken care of, she could finish up some of this paperwork, give Floyd a heads up, and then maybe go visit Steve in the hospital. With any luck, all of this was just a series of weird coincidences.

  Emily saw the orc being hovered into the Emergency Room waiting area. "I got him," she told Gorb, who bobbed at her in response.

  "What have we got?" she asked as she looked down at the orc, who looked in reasonably good shape despite whatever ailment had brought him in here. In fact, he looked quite peaceful, so peaceful she wondered what the EMTs had given him. And if they had any more. "Hey, what meds did you give this guy? He looks totally strung out. Or are we looking at some new exotic drug making its way around the station?"

  "We didn't give him anything, didn't have to," the EMTs said as they walked alongside her toward the patient rooms. "As to what he's on, we have no idea. Maura called us, you know the pest control girl? Well, she said that he's a rat bite victim that fell through the cracks at the Frenzy. See?"

  He pointed to the patient's leg. The patient's jeans were ripped and he had a gash in his leg.

  Emily stopped walking. "I'm sorry, did you say that this was a rat bite?"

  "That's what we were told."

  She hurried to catch back up to the patient, mind swimming with all of the unpleasant fears that her earlier rat necropsy has brought up. But this was just a poor orc who got bit by the evil thing. And then, what? Maybe self-medicated. It wasn't fully adding up. "Why wasn't he brought in with the rest of the Frenzy patients?"

  "You're asking the wrong guys," they said. "Who was in charge at the Frenzy in the first place?"

  "Grayson," Emily muttered. "Figures. Put him in Operating Room five."

  You've got this, Emily. Just fix thi
s guy up and then the next time you run into Grayson you can ask him how he managed to let a rat bit victim leave the scene of a major incident.

  "Hello, Steve, I'm going to clean this wound, ok?"

  He hadn't said anything since they brought him in, but sometimes people were scared. Or on something. She smiled at him. Nothing. She waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing.

  "Alright, I'm still going to give you a little bit of pain medicine because I don't know what's going on with you or what you've taken. Like I said, I'm going to clean this wound and get you some antibiotics. And probably some shot that Disease Control deems necessary, I'm going to have to look that up a little later, but first things first."

  The wound wasn't so bad. It cleaned up and stitched up pretty quickly, especially with the lack of chatter. Despite his lack of conversation and consciousness, the rest of his vital signs were fine. The patient was acting off, though. Weirdly detached and unresponsive. She waved a hand in front of his face just to see what would happen. Nothing, not even a snarky comment. And that was very unusual here, these residents had a comeback for everything.

  She was finishing up when a thought struck her. The rat. It had severe brain abnormalities. What if that was some disease that it had. What if it could pass that onto an orc patient? No, she thought. That would be crazy.

  Still, a quick brain scan wasn't a bad idea, especially since if he was on a new drug that they would have to track in the future, it would help to get a readout on that as well.

  She grabbed the pen like device and took a breath. She pointed it at his forehead and pushed the button. Here goes nothing. Beep.

  She looked at the readout. Then she hyperventilated again. Then she wasn't sure exactly what to do. This guy's brainwave activity was also off the charts, and it was in the ballpark of the dead mutant rat.

  14

  Lyra had to hurry, but she did manage to beat Vax to the room where his patient had somehow deteriorated and set off an emergency notification. Ha. The two of them had a sort of competition going on, although now that she thought about it, he probably didn’t even know.

  Of course, she had already been in this room a couple of times and heard Vax and Nancy talking about this particular patient, but she had only gotten snippets. In hindsight, the snippets she had gotten were weird. It wasn’t her fault, though, she had been distracted by the rat.

  The minute she ducked into the room, though, the strangeness of the whole thing washed over her. The hairs on her arms and neck stood up.

  The patient was sitting up, which should have been good except for a couple of details. One, it was her understanding that this particular patient had been in a coma since arriving and shouldn't necessarily be sitting up. And for sure he shouldn't be singing.

  And it wasn't any normal kind of singing, not any kind she had ever heard of, anyway. It was more a weird kind of emotionless, tuneless, vocalizing that didn't involve any lip movement at all. Lyra could not possibly imagine walking into a creepier situation.

  But there he was, right in front of her, sort of singing. While sitting up, and with his eyes huge and fixed.

  Swallowing hard and unsure of what to expect, she approached the patient cautiously, grabbing the flashlight out of her coat pocket. She fixed the beam of light on one of the patient's pupils and then the other and got the exact same response. Nothing. She checked again and got the same reaction. Where the hell was Vax, anyway? She briefly considered ducking out of the room and pretending she was never there. Get it together, Lyra.

  She checked all of the patient's vital statistics on the readouts and tried to see a pattern, the only pattern was that everything appeared completely normal.

  Except for the Patient Emergency Notification she had received, of course, which appeared to be because the brain waves of the singing patient appeared to have flatlined sometime in the last twenty minutes. She double checked everything again and realized that none of it made sense. She hadn't felt this way since medical school, when an idiot attending had decided to pull pranks on her.

  She sighed hoping that Vax was indeed pulling a prank, but the hairs on the back of her neck said otherwise.

  A noise startled her and she jumped, but it was only a phone notification. It was from Arthur. He found the manual for MACRO. Good for him. She took a couple of deep breaths and tried to steady herself.

  Then she did the only thing she could think of, and crossed the room to grab the chart, keeping a wary eye on the patient. She decided that from now on she'd just let Vax beat her to these P.E.N notifications. At least some of the time.

  In fact, she was still standing there pretending to look at the chart when Vax finally crashed into the room, almost literally. He gave her a dirty look and then noticed the patient was sitting up. Lyra rolled her eyes at the order of events.

  "What the-" he said.

  "Good news," Lyra deadpanned, "your patient is awake. Now would you mind telling me what in stars name is going on here? I thought he was in a coma."

  The patient stopped the weird vocalizing for a moment and there was nothing but dead silence in the room. If anything, it was creepier than the singing. The patient was only pausing though. He took a long, wheezing breath and then started again. It was like nails on a chalkboard of all of her musical senses.

  "How long's he been like this?" Vax asked just as Nancy entered the room. Nancy was breathless from running and stopped suddenly upon entering. She took one look at the patient and took a few steps back. "Lyra, what did you do to him?"

  "Easy," Lyra said. "I didn't do anything except foolishly beat you guys to your creepy patient. What the hell. You really should give people a heads up if your work descends into b-movie weirdness." Then Lyra remembered Gorb and Grayson and all the other nosy people who loved to lurk around hospital hallways.

  "Hey, guys, what do you say we close the door until we figure out what in stars name is going on here before letting every doctor and passerby duck in here and gawk?"

  Nancy recovered herself and closed the door.

  Vax repeated his question. "How long has he been like this?"

  "You mean sitting up with fixed and dilated pupils and doing this weird vocalizing/singing thing? No idea. I got here just before you. Which parts of this was he not doing before?"

  "All of it," Nancy said.

  Nancy joined Vax in looking over the equipment and double checking the numbers. "Usually, brain wave function flat-lining does not accompany sitting up and singing or whatever that is." Nancy walked over to the patient and waved a hand in front of his eyes with no response.

  Vax pulled out his flashlight and examined the pupils, as Lyra had done earlier. She sat and watched.

  "Did you get the same response with the flashlight that I did?" Lyra asked.

  "I don't know," Vax answered, "what response did you get?"

  "Nothing."

  "Then yes. I got the same response. Twice."

  Lyra wasn't sure what to do next. "I think it's safe to say that we're in uncharted territory here. The important question is, what do we do next? Or who do we call."

  "You want to call Grayson."

  "I don't know," Lyra said, "I've never seen anything like it, but the whole thing is starting to feel like it's way above my pay grade."

  Vax crossed his arms. "You're just the teacher's pet."

  "Yeah, that's me," Lyra deadpanned, "always kissing up to Grayson. Look, if you have any other ideas, I'm listening."

  She crossed her arms, making sure she kept both Nancy and Vax between her and the patient. She wondered why she was doing that. It was almost like it was some kind of reflex. Why in space would she be afraid of a barely conscious patient with no brainwave activity? She waited, secretly hoping that Vax would figure out what was going on and make her feel better about the whole situation. The singing continued.

  "Wait," Lyra said, re-checking the brainwave info. "When I got here, it was because the brain wave function had plummeted, right?"


  "Yes, that appears to be the case," Vax said.

  "Well, it's not anymore. According to these new numbers, not only is there brain function, it's unbelievable. It's like he's a genius on red bull."

  A cell message from Ian broke the silence. He was very excited about something. Something about the numbers he was studying jumping around just a few minutes ago. Or at least that was the gist of it that she got while skimming and being stared at in awkward silence by Vax and Nancy.

  Um. Yay. I'm a little busy right now, though. In the middle of an emergency code. Will talk later.

  When she looked up Vax and Nancy were staring at her. "What?" Lyra asked at last.

  "Are we interrupting you?" Vax asked.

  Lyra felt her cheeks get hot. Of course, the texts. "Was I interrupting you guys? It's not like you were actually doing anything or had any ideas. Speaking of which, what exactly are we going to do?"

  She started humming, then caught herself, realizing that she was actually joining in with the patient. The stares continued in her direction.

  "And what's with your patient and that weird singing type noise he's making? And the whole eyeball thing." Lyra took a step toward Vax, pointing a finger up at his chest. "You have bigger problems than me getting a text message, mister. This is your patient. You should be the one figuring out what to do."

  "Okay," he said, looking as panicked as she had ever seen him. "You're right. Let's think it through. Maybe he did regain consciousness. And what if he's just blind? He was unconscious when he was brought in, so there's no way for us to know what condition he was in before he got here."

  Okay, that actually made sense. And it helped Lyra feel a little better. Maybe this simply wasn't as strange as it appeared to be.

  That's when the patient turned his head to look right at Lyra. She screamed and backed into Nancy, who also started screaming.

  Lyra's blood ran cold with those eyes staring right through her soul. Despite the pupils being huge and unreactive, she could swear he was looking at her on purpose.