A.I. Zombie

by L. A. Johnson

"Ah, Vax can take care of himself," she said. "It's his patient, after all." Then she got an idea. "Hold on," she said, grabbing her phone. "Look, the first text you sent me came in just a few minutes after the initial Patient Emergency Notification that started the whole thing and sent me there tonight. Did you text me the minute the numbers went sideways or a few minutes afterward?"

  "Well, I double checked everything first. I figured there was probably an error."

  "Exactly. And this last text came through only seconds after the change in patient behavior in the hospital room. I was there and saw the whole thing. What about the next time, was there a delay?"

  Ian shook his head. "I see where you're going, and it does seem like a very unlikely coincidence. I just don't see how my research and your zombie could possibly be connected."

  Ian had raised his voice too much this time, and there were a few startled expressions from people nearby. It didn't help that she was in her medical coat and that both of them looked worried and were whispering.

  "Book club," Lyra announced loudly, "it's okay, folks." She tried to diffuse the situation, but they weren't buying it. "We're talking about this weird book called The Mystery Patient, you should check it out."

  Another text came though. This one was from Arthur. Something about MACRO. His text didn't make any sense though. She frowned at the phone. He was at the waiting room. As much as she hated to go back there, she knew that she had to. That's where everything was happening.

  Then she got an idea. "Hey, do you have any portable equipment? For your project? I'm asking because maybe you can use your equipment to scan the patient, see if he's the one that's making your numbers all wonky. It's worth a try, right?"

  Ian went all pale again, probably at the thought of getting close enough to scan the zombie patient. She rolled her eyes. "He's not really a zombie, okay? I've got an idea. How about if you show me how to work the equipment? I'll scan the zombie, and you can run the numbers."

  He managed a weak smile. "You said zombie."

  She smiled in response. "Fine, you're right. It's just more fun to say zombie."

  He thought about it for a minute and then appeared to come to a decision. He stood up to leave. She couldn't help but feel a little bad, but she couldn't blame him. The whole thing was just too crazy.

  "Well," he said to her after a pause, "let's go get my equipment. Are you coming or not?"

  Lyra jumped up and followed him. They left the coffee shop and headed down the hallway. She looked around to make sure nobody was around. "I'd kiss you if you weren't so worried about being around me now that I treated patient zero in the zombie apocalypse," she teased.

  She waited a moment and wondered if he had not heard her in all of the excitement, but then he stopped dead in his tracks and turned.

  His face was flushed from running and excitement and caffeine. He was facing her, all tall and dark with the curly hair and the muscles. He leaned in. "Well, we all gotta go sometime, right?" he whispered in her ear.

  "I wouldn't put you in any actual danger," she said, moving closer to him. "It's weird, but it's not zombie apocalypse weird, ok?"

  "But it could be," he countered. "Is this your attempt to get one last p-d-a in before the end?" He smiled a smile so charming it would have turned into even more than a kiss if there weren't a full-blown crisis going on.

  "Take it or leave it," she said, smiling back. Their lips met.

  Lyra was lost in that moment until a catcall rang out down the hallway. Feeling a rush of heat to her face, she stepped back and smoothed out her white coat with her hands.

  Either way, Ian had passed the test tonight. Even though he was visibly frightened of the zombie apocalypse, and she had had contact with the patient and the rat, he had still kissed her. He was in this now, right up to his eyeballs.

  "Right," she said, pulling away, "back to the mystery."

  Scythe made his way toward the main communications hub on the space station. He didn't need a map or directions, he could feel the energy, hear the voices as they translated through the ship. Following these signals was child's play to him.

  This time, the residents seemed to steer clear of him quietly. And that was the last thing he had expected, for this place to be so weird already that he would fit in.

  He arrived at and opened the door of the communications center. A handful of employees were scattered around playing phone games.

  He shut the door, went to the center of the room, and raised his arms.

  That's when the employees began to notice him. "Shit, what’s with the mask, dude-" The man moved quickly and physically removed the mask from Scythe’s face.

  Scythe let him and then turned his face toward him.

  Screaming sounded in the room, drowning out all other sounds, including the specific information that he was looking for.

  A single finger aimed at each was enough to terminate them. The room went quiet again so that he could concentrate, gaining the knowledge of the specific target that he was interested in.

  After a few moments, he stopped and he smiled. He found it. This target was everything he had ever dreamed about. Intelligent, brave, and utterly alive in every sense of the word. He practically salivated at the thought of the specimens he would be reaping soon, he wasn’t just here for one soul, he just needed the one to focus on and the rest would be surplus. Yes, soon he would have all that he’d need. He also put out an electrical hit on anything that could possibly stand in his way. His victory was nigh.

  He walked out of the communications room and into the hallway in a good mood, nearly running headlong into a guy with a goofy red hat.

  "Hello, citizen of Celestica," he said, "I am Scythe. I am about to change your life. You see, I am here to free you." He leaned down toward the little man, waiting to see if for once somebody would take him up on his offer before their reality was altered. Alas, it wasn't to be. He ran off like he had seen a ghost. Oh well. These residents would belong to him soon enough.

  16

  Hey, Dr. man, what are you doing to my friend?" Gorb asked.

  He was clapping his tendrils together in an excited way. Or maybe a threatening way. Arthur wasn't sure which.

  "I'm trying to communicate with MACRO here. Or at least understand him." He flipped through the pages of the manual. "I can't tell if he's agitated or just malfunctioning."

  "He's fine," Gorb said, pointing. "Look at him. He's having fun. Actually, I think he's dancing. It's the music."

  "What?" Arthur asked.

  "The music. The radio. That's when he started getting his freak on. That's right, you're an awesome little freak," he said to MACRO. "Way cooler than the square doctor here."

  MACRO continued to frantically beep, flash his red light in a sequence, and roll around in tight little circles. Then all of that stopped and for a moment he froze, emitting the absolutely ordinary single chirpy beep Arthur was used to. The one that meant that a new patient was incoming.

  Arthur turned toward the landing bay just in time to see a gurney being hovered in. He turned back to MACRO for a moment and saw that he had gone back to his erratic behavior after correctly alerting him to the new patient. Maybe Lyra wasn't crazy at all when she suggested that he was trying to communicate something important to them. He put the manual down on Gorb's desk and turned back to the EMTs.

  "What have we got?" he asked.

  "Squid. Knife fight. Internal wounds."

  Arthur froze for a moment. Then he blurted out, "Vax."

  "Sorry, Vax is in with the weirdo patient," Gorb said.

  "Lyra," Arthur suggested.

  Gorb beamed. "She's gone too. Second date with the same guy tonight. Don't you call her. She's bus-y."

  Arthur frowned. How could Gorb possibly know that? Were Gorb and Lyra closer than he thought? "We can page somebody, who's on call tonight?"

  Gorb pretended to flip through an invisible book on his desk before looking up and sashaying playfully back and forth, causing a slight
breeze. "That would be you, doctor man. You're the one on call."

  Smartass. Shit, he was right. Arthur wiped his face with his hand. His heart raced. He tried to remember what Lyra had told him. She believed in him. "You're worth taking a chance on," she had said. Lately, his fear of never being able to move forward was rivaling his fear of the inside of Cephalopods anyway. Squishy, gross, tentacle-y cephalopods. Why'd it have to be a squid? He looked around to see if there weren't more patients needing attention, maybe a nice, injured insectoid, but no such luck.

  The paramedics and the patient had passed him now and were heading down the hallway toward a room. "Are you coming?" one of them called. "Or do you want us to treat him ourselves?"

  Why is everybody in this hospital a smartass? His initial instinct was to pull out his phone and go over the major internal systems of that species again, but he knew them all by heart. In fact, he knew the information backwards and forwards and everything squishy in between. The only thing he lacked was actual experience.

  The one other time he was actually in the room with a cephalopod patient, he had flat passed out. He only regained consciousness later with Grayson throwing water on him in the doctor's lounge.

  "Coming," he called, but it was mostly because he had no choice and the horrible silence was getting to him. It was, above all, time to do his job.

  "You can do it, Arthur. I believe in you." Gorb held up his little tendrils in loops that Arthur could only guess was supposed to be a thumbs-up gesture. "The robot believes in you too, look. He turned his circles the other way. I think that's what that means."

  "MACRO."

  "What?" Gorb asked, losing the thumb structure and returning to his normal shape.

  "The robot's name is MACRO."

  A nurse was calling him now and he had to go. As he walked down the hallway toward his and possibly the patient's doom, he heard Gorb loudly whisper to MACRO, "I can't believe he's going to do it."

  Crash was having a busy day. His date for the evening bailed and he was three quarters of the way through the contacts on his phone trying to get another one. So far, no luck.

  Then there were all of the incoming phone calls. Fires were popping up all over the station. Not actual fires, mind you, but it meant work for him just the same. The residents seemed needier than usual today.

  His phone rang again. Crash listened. "Can you repeat that?" he asked, pressing record. A body. That was pretty unusual. The gatekeeper on duty had been found dead. Even stranger. "Okay," he said, "send all of the security footage to my computer."

  Crash's computer chimed with the arrival of the footage. He ignored another phone call while he fast forwarded. When he saw the strange, masked, hooded figure appear he paused it.

  "What the-"

  That's when he knew he had a real problem. If this really was the killer, all he had to do was ditch the mask and hood and he could be anywhere on the space station. They wouldn't even know who they were looking for. That would make everything a lot more difficult.

  He kept fast forwarding, hoping that this guy wasn't the killer. But it wasn't to be, the masked figure seemed to point at the gatekeeper and he just went down. Just like that. And then the masked figure left and the gatekeeper stayed. He wiped his face scales with his hands. Oh boy, this is going to be a long day. He was still contemplating putting a quiet APB out for this masked guy in hopes that he was dumb enough to keep his Halloween costume on when there was a knock on his door. He looked up just as he answered the ringing phone for the fourteenth time in the last hour. The phone fell out of his hand onto the desk.

  "Hello?" It vibrated and chirped. "Hello, Crash? Are you there?"

  Crash hung up the phone without taking his eyes off of the newcomer, who lurched into the room and heaved himself into the chair opposite Crash.

  Crash couldn't help but stare at him. It was the figure from the security footage, mask and hood and all. Unbelievable. What kind of nutcase am I dealing with here? He decided to try to keep the situation calm for now. "Can I help you?"

  "You're in charge of security, here, yes?" His voice had a metallic ring to it.

  Crash couldn't help but notice the odd stiffness to his movements. And the strange mask. He had never seen one quite like it before. What exactly was it that he was looking at? It's not like he didn't run into his share of crazies as head of security on one of the universe's most distant space stations. He was still stumped, though. "Yes, that's me. I'm in charge of security. What exactly can I do for you?"

  The stupid phone rang again. Crash didn't even remember placing it back on the receiver after the suspect walked into the room. He picked it up, mostly out of instinct and because of the uncomfortable silence since the newcomer failed to answer. He seemed stuck or something. Crash kept an eye on him, though, and decided to use the phone call as a distraction to reach under his desk and get the biggest BFG within current arms reach.

  "Hello, what's the problem? Oh, it's you hospital people again. Noise complaint? About a patient? What kind of nonsense is this?" He held up his hands in a what are you gonna do gesture, in an effort to put the suspect at ease while his other hand felt around for the mini laser howitzer he always kept nearby. Whew. Found it.

  "Well, why don't you just sedate him or call the shrink or something? You can't possibly be asking me to go down there and arrest an emergency room patient that arrived just yesterday."

  Crash had seen that patient, and he was in bad shape. There was no way that guy was actually causing a disturbance. He wondered if there wasn't a gas leak or something over at the hospital. That was the only thing that could justify the number of phone calls he was getting. He hung up and scribbled a quick note to call environmental and get them to double check the area

  before looking back up into the steel blue mask of the matter at hand.

  The figure had located one of Crash's other numerous weapons around the room. "Don't touch that," Crash said, raising his weapon so the figure could see it.

  Maybe it wasn't a great idea to randomly place weapons around his own office.

  The figure slowly put the weapon back down again. "Trust me, I don't need your primitive, ineffective weapons."

  You're about to figure out just how effective my weapons are, Crash thought.

  The figure rose to his feet stiffly. "I am known as Scythe. And I'm here to set you free."

  Crash didn't expect that. He expected to say, look, I saw the security footage and know that you're a murder suspect, but something told him to hold off. He ran a bunch of scenarios through his mind as to what he could possibly mean. Is he hitting on me? What's going on here? "Scythe, you say? Is that a first or a last name?" Suddenly, he remembered that conference he went to that included training with stressed and/or distressed beings. Then he had an idea of how to proceed. "I am interested in your offer to set me free. What I would like from you now is more information." Nailed it, that's exactly what they told me to say in this type of situation. Make the subject feel at ease and in control while giving you relevant information. Who knew that stuff would ever come in handy?

  "You are the head of security, correct? What about your very pressing issues?" Scythe asked.

  "Don't worry about that. You just tell me why you're here, and then I'll deal with those other matters."

  Instead of answering, Scythe raised a hand in his direction, but he wasn't pointing. His fingers were too loose. Crash felt a searing pain in his right hand, his left leg, and his belly. Those were, coincidentally, all of the places where he had had surgery to fix various ailments with artificial parts.

  "What are you doing?" Crash asked, through gritted teeth, his hand spasmed and the weapon fell to the ground with a clatter.

  Scythe stood up and crossed the room frighteningly fast. He placed his hand on Crash's throat. Crippled with pain, Crash was unable to fight back.

  Scythe bent down and whispered in his ear, "I said, I'm here to free you. And free you I shall. I will free all of you. And you wil
l be so much better off. Before this is over you will be on your knees thanking me."

  Crash was fighting to stay conscious, but he couldn't breathe. Think. He remembered the alarm button under his desk. He pushed it with his left hand. It was the last thing he remembered.

  17

  Lyra burst into the waiting area with Ian trailing behind and carrying his portable equipment. She looked around. Whatever she was expecting, this wasn't it. Everything seemed relatively normal and quiet.

  "What's going on, Gorb?" She had long ago figured out that Gorb knew everything. How he knew everything, however, was still a mystery.

  "Hi, Lyra!" Gorb floated over to her. "What's going on? My robot friend got tired and took a nap or something, see?" he whispered and pointed to the corner of the room. Lyra frowned, a little while ago, she had never seen the robot so active, and now, to the best of her recollection, she couldn't remember ever seeing it completely shut down. The last thing she needed right now was a bipolar robot.

  "Gorb, what happened?" she asked. "Did you shut MACRO off?"

  Gorb held a few tendrils in the air. "I never touched him. I'd never hurt the little guy and I have a dozen surly witnesses to that fact." He indicated the patients scattered around the waiting area looking down at their phones. "Who's your boyfriend?"

  "Oh," said Lyra as she felt her face get hot. "Um, this is Ian." Her eyes flicked up to him and he wore a smile. That would have to do for now.

  "Ian, Gorb. Gorb, Ian. Oh, and the robot has a name it's MACRO. What's up with Vax and Nancy?" She knew that she could just barge in there and get the scoop from them, but the scoop was always more entertaining coming from Gorb, and frankly, she was getting tired of these things sneaking up on her.

  "Vax and Nancy are very confused," he said. "They don't know why the patient is so creepy or how he's even alive. The patient was singing so loud I could barely hear the song on my radio, but then he quieted down a little and I could. Then I turned the radio off because of the little robot. I said it was voodoo. But they didn't listen."