by BL Craig
AfterLife
An Undead Space Opera
B L Craig
MegaBunny Productions
AfterLife
Copyright 2021 BL Craig
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All rights reserved. Nor part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. We know because we made all the stuff in here up from our own brains. Except for some of the science which is accurate and we credit to the universe and a whole lot of really cool scientists who studied the natural phenomena mentioned. The rest of the science is pure nonsense we made up for reasons of plot.
Yes, we’re aware that the name of one of these characters is shared with another fictional character. No this is not because we really like that other authors work (though we definitely do) nor was it unconscious. The idea for this book and the name of the character came to us a long time ago, like when our now excessively tall, nearly grown son was in diapers. We were not aware of the other character nor of the work he exists in. We still liked the name. ‘nuff said.
So yeah, if anything else in here seems like it could be someone, some event, or some place you know, it’s not. Let’s face it. Humans aren’t that original. We (humans) repeat the same themes, tropes, and characters ad nauseum. We (the authors) hope you like these, our variants.
Things that are not fake: the earth, our solar system, galaxy and all the stuff in and on those.
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ISBN 978-1-955539-00-5
Megabunny Productions
www.blcraig.com
Created with Vellum
Contents
1. In Which the Hero Dies
2. Recruitment
3. Welcome to Your Death
4. Onboarding
5. Your SecondLife
6. Employee Relations
7. Chilling Effect
8. Due Diligence
9. Objective
10. Alternative Dispute Resolution
11. Your SecondLife, Again
12. Employment at Will
13. Transfer
14. Employment Behavior
15. Conditions of Employment
Author’s Note
1
In Which the Hero Dies
Carly was late. Carly was always late, but for once, William was grateful. As he stood up, his hand went nervously to his pocket for the fifteenth time in as many minutes. He felt the small fuzzy box and calmed a bit. Why had he chosen these slacks? The pockets were too shallow. What if the box fell out and he did not notice? He sat down, again in the iron café chair, conscious of how the slacks bunched and the pocket belled out, inviting the box to make a break for freedom. His hand went to his pocket again. He had a deep personal dislike for the way some people fidgeted, bouncing knees up and down or playing with nearby small objects, and now here he was, practically jumping up and down in his seat.
Other diners chatted and enjoyed the scenery provided by the river, the quaint shops and cafes that lined the bank. A couple of buskers with concertinas and improvised drums played a sprightly tune. Couples danced, carefree, while strolling pairs passed by arm in arm. The river walk had been specifically designed to evoke the works of long dead impressionist painters, right down to the cooing pigeons extorting pedestrians for crumbs.
If his sister Sophie were here, she would be telling the well-intentioned tourists to stop feeding the little scavengers junk food. Sophie loved feeding birds, but she always insisted on giving them healthy food like tiny diced up vegetables or, to the horror of their mother, bags full of little hopper bugs. She would bribe William with cookies to catch the insects in a tiny net. “It’s all fun and games,” she said, “until the pigeons all have gout.” William had no idea what gout was, but he loved the way she would bob her head front and back flapping her elbows like a demented chicken. “Gouty pigeons! Coo Coo! Gouty pigeons,” she would shout, making William laugh.
Sophie taught William the names of all the birds that visited the backyard feeder, noting if they were native or old world, and if they were migratory. She was full of strange facts, like how humans would have to eat 130 kilos of food per day if they had the metabolism of hummingbirds. That was on the good days.
William sighed and leaned back, fingering the box. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself but failed. Navy pilots had to be precise and controlled. Mistakes were deadly in space. William had been marinating in his anxieties all day. Maybe this was a huge mistake. He had not seen Carly in person since before the events at Mirada, and they had never talked about marriage in any significant way. Was he making an ass of himself with this grand proposal?
Thank god he had elected not to wear his dress uniform. “Ladies LOVE the uniform. Guys love the unform. Great big colonial lumberjacks LOVE the uniform,” other pilots insisted. “It’s tradition!” the deck crews echoed. But they were all from fleet families, more comfortable in uniform than out. Grounders like Carly were not so interested in the pomp and pageantry of military life. Which he told them, to the sound of jocular hisses and boos. He did not tell them that the ostentatious row of ribbons and medals on the dress uniform made him feel deeply uncomfortable. Mirada had not felt like “heroic and valorous” service.
William felt a movement in the air and heard the sound of soft steps heralding the approach of the waiter. He opened his eyes. This was another mistake. He had chosen the café for its quaint charm and excellent reviews, suggesting just the right combination of casual and decadent. Not a formal dining establishment, but still an indulgence. The kind of place where you propose to your girlfriend. How had he missed the absence of table-top kiosks and server bots? No, this café employed real servers, dressed in tidy black trousers and shirts with crisp white aprons, charming serviettes draped over their arms. It was a wild extravagance that explained the prices on the menu.
“Would sir like to order drinks while he is waiting?” the server inquired blandly. William looked up into the dead man’s eyes. They were a coppery brown with thick lashes. The full head of thick black hair, styled in a clean, conservative cut, did nothing to hide the brushed nickel plate on the left side of its skull. Olive coloration betrayed only the slightest pallor of death, but the early evening light showed the spider-lace markings that covered its exposed skin.
No reanimate, no matter how well-groomed, would pass for living under scrutiny. Even when the skull plate sporting the AfterLife logo was hidden, the dead simply lacked the spark of the living. They maintained most of the cognitive abilities of their 1st lives and could, with careful guidance, perform complex tasks, but they had no emotion or personality. Some theologians said that reanimates lacked true life because the soul had departed, leaving behind an empty automaton. For a brief period in history, reanimates had been commonly employed as caregivers and service personnel, but now most of them were kept out of site in off world factories or running the faster-than-light ships that made colonization and interstellar commerce possible. Most people found them creepy, preferring simple androids for the services humans required, but were unwilling to do themselves.
William had not been bothered by reanimates, before Mirada. Now, he looked away from the waiter, his mouth dry, trying to form a response. Then he caught sight of chestnut hair and a vivid red beret through the crowd of pedestrians. Carly was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet as she dodged a small pack of teenagers gawking at the river. Seeing William, she waved and smiled broadly. William started to stand, his own smile growing, the hand reflexively going back to his pocket.
He felt a sudden pressure. An intractable weight pushed down on his left shoulder and he fell back into the chair.
Dumbly, his brows furrowed. He turned to look at the reanimate waiter and the pain struck. There was something sticking out of William’s neck where it joined the shoulder. His vision crashed into a pinpoint focused on the waiter. The previously serene automaton’s face was contorted in rage. “Die,” it snarled in low hiss. “Die like they did.” Then it wrenched the knife from William’s neck.
William heard Carly scream his name. The sudden loss of blood pressure left him limp, boneless. He slumped onto the quaint brick pavers, staring up at the sky. His mind flashed back. Father, falling slowly, so slowly, then the train rocketing by. Sophie, covered by a sheet, wheeled away into an ambulance by the service bots. Mirada. The screams of the dying and the dead. Death had stalked William his whole life and now it would collect.
Sound was draining away, but he heard the flapping of wings as the pigeons vaulted skyward. They flew in front of the sun, visible only as black shadows cast by the red of the dwarf star.
“It’s the corvids you’ve got to watch out for,” Sophie had told him once. “Some say they carry souls to the afterlife, but I’m telling you, if anything is going to overthrow humanity, it’ll be those damned Caledonian Crows and their stick tools. Watch out for flying dinosaurs, little Whip-poor-William.”
There had not been any crows for Sophie. Would pigeons carry away his soul? What would Sophie say? William wondered, as everything slipped away.
2
Recruitment
The Reaper dropped out of slipstream and glided toward its dedicated dock on the sprawling Elysium Station, which orbited Neptune’s moon, Triton. The ovoid ship settled into position, the side lining up neatly with the dozen separate dock locks. The interior buzzed to life as soon as the green lights turned on. An army of reanimate drones unracked stacks of suspension pods and placed them on the transfer belts.
At the height of its glory, the Colosseum in Rome sat 50,000 spectators and could be emptied in under 10 minutes, so efficient was the design. Perhaps that legendary wonder of the ancient world inspired the massive death ship. Reaper was emptied of its nearly 80,000 corpses in just 23 minutes, and within another 35, replacement pods were stocked and in place. After inspection and refueling, the vessel would head back out on its appointed route, not two hours from docking. Pick up would take longer, as it required coordinating with multiple smaller ships.
Reaper’s primary stops were Mars, Earth, and each of five sister ships at the gates of the colony worlds: Eden, Arcadia, Xanadu, Babylon, and Mirada. Reaper would also visit stations around Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus as necessary. Using its faster-than-light drives, Reaper regularly made a circuit of the solar system in under 24 hours. Most of that time was spent loading the newly dead. Stops past Mars and the belt were rare. By comparison, the sub-lightspeed ships used for living humans were painfully slow, taking days, weeks, or even months to get to the most remote habitable stations. Few living bothered anymore, leaving space to the dead.
3
Welcome to Your Death
William woke up to a bright light in his face. It wasn’t really like waking, though. There was no gradual sense of increasing alertness. No transition from dream to consciousness. Rather, he wasn’t, wasn’t anything at all, and then he was.
He was in a room full of standard-looking medical equipment—but the tanks lining the walls with bodies floating inside of them were most definitely not standard. Various tubes fed blue-grey fluid into the peaceful bodies. A figure backlit by an operating light bent over him. A woman, he decided as she straightened and turned to a nearby console. She had tightly curled dark hair cropped close to the scalp. Her skin was a flawless bronze. The expression on her face was bland, almost serene.
William lurched upright, reaching for his neck. The flesh seemed unharmed, new but somewhat numb. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
“You are on Elysium station. Please lie back down. I need to get a few more readings.” Not ungently, she put a gloved hand on his chest, pressing him down. “You will be briefed once testing is complete. First, we need to check your cognition and senses,” said the—doctor? technician? No, she was a reanimate drone. She—it—turned away to pull a monitor on a swing arm over William’s head. He saw the flat metal skull plate and the small shiny disc at the base of the neck. As his eyes came into focus, he caught hints of the light lacework markings on its face.
“That waiter stabbed me for no reason.” William continued rubbing his neck expecting a wound and pain. “Why did it do that?”
“I am uncertain. You may ask your counselor or a supervisor after testing is complete. Please watch the monitor and answer the questions I ask.”
Its voice was calm, lacking any urgency or frustration. It said, “What is your name?”
“Am I—Am I dead?”
“You have been reanimated here at Elysium after the termination of your 1st life.”
“But I don’t feel dead.”
The drone cocked its head. “Do you know what it is like to feel dead? I have no reference, though I have been dead.” There was no reproach in its voice, only a hint of mild curiosity, as if it really wanted to know what it felt like to be dead.
“I don’t know,” He said. “I’m naked.”
“Hmm, yes. It is common for the newly reanimated to be confused about their status.” It pulled a small towel from its medical cart and placed it on his chest. “Please tell me your name, if you can.”
“William Butcher.”
“Good. And where were you born?”
“New Oregon, on Eden, but…” He trailed off as his hand drifted to the side of his head, where he felt the metal plate.
“What is the last date you remember?”
William whispered, “It was Friday. Friday the 15th of March.”
The drone paused, cocking its head again. “‘He is a dreamer; let us leave him, pass’,” the technician intoned.
“Do I look like Caesar?” William snapped. How apt though, he thought, stabbed in public on the Ides of March. Was the drone amused at the comparison? Could drones be amused?
“You may sit up,” said the drone.
As he sat up and looked around. He realized he was not in a room so much as a hallway. The nearby wall was lined with the tube-bedecked bodies floating in their tall cylindrical vats. The nearest vat was empty and open, as were all those preceding it. The hallway curved in both directions, eventually disappearing past William’s line of sight. William draped the thin cloth over his groin and turned back to the technician. It ran him through a number of tests, checking his reflexes and responses to sound, then requiring him to hold a number of objects handed to him with tongs. The pressing need to understand what was happening—going to happen—to him left him restless as he waited for the testing to finish.
Finally, the technician concluded, “Your sensory levels are within acceptable ranges. Heat response at 49c. Cold at 3c. Color recognition minimal. Hearing is excellent. Your cognition and emotional responses fall into the high-functioning range.”
“But I could barely feel that scalding hot plate you handed me, and I don’t think I can smell anything! Something is wrong.”
“Reanimation is an imperfect process. You’ve maintained full cognition and emotional response. Only one in approximately ten thousand reanimates is high-functioning. Some sensory reduction is the norm.”
“But what does this all mean? Where will I go now?”
“The supervisors will help match you with a position with the AfterLife Corporation.”
“Eighty-seven years. They own me for 87 years? And then what? Will I be free?”
“For a certain value of ‘free’,” it said, with both ambiguity and more emphasis than he expected from a drone.
“I know that reanimates can live—function—for a long time. They can’t keep me after my service is over, can they?”
“You are now the property of AfterLife Incorporated. The terms of your service are outlined in your mortgage contract.”
On
a whim, he asked for her name. Somewhere in the conversation he had decided that the drone was in fact a she not an it. She had gently patted his hand during the testing and made soothing noises like the seasoned parent of a fussy child. “Luz, designation K6796LZ17,” she answered. She gave him a plastic-wrapped bundle and pointed down the hallway. “Follow the dashed green line to the orientation room. Not the solid yellow. That is for drones. Be cautious for your first few steps. Equilibrium adjustment can take a moment.”
William peered into the bundle and saw that it contained clothes and shoes. He slid off the table and stood up, awkwardly attempting to wrap the towel about himself while holding the bundle of clothing. He considered dressing here. It seemed the logical thing to do, but also rather undignified fumbling in an open hallway while Luz arranged her cart. After wrestling to secure the towel, he took a tentative step. He didn’t feel weak or dizzy, but there was definitely something . . . odd. He could feel the pressure of the deck against his feet, but something was off. He realized that he could not sense the temperature of the floor. The slate grey tiles should have felt cold against his bare feet.
He located the dashed green line that Luz had pointed out, running down the corridor near the edge of the wall opposite the tanks. The floating bodies appeared serene, but left William feeling uneasy. He looked away from the tanks. It made him feel creepy to examine the people, so exposed and vulnerable, stuck somewhere between death and whatever it was that William was now.
