21st Century Dead Read online

  “All of them? All the books ever written?”

  “I don’t know if it’s all of them. But I’ve never thought of a book that I haven’t read. If one book mentions another book, I’ve already read it. I know how they all end. I suppose it must be more fun to read if you don’t already know every scene and every word.”

  “No worse than the carousel,” said Cyril. “It just goes around and around.”

  “But the face of the person riding it changes,” she said. “And I don’t always know what they’re going to say before they say it.”

  “So you’re curious.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t really care. It just passes the time.”

  Cyril rode in silence for a while.

  “Why do you think he did it?” he finally asked.

  “Who?” she asked. Then, “Oh, you mean the resurrection. Why did God, you know.”

  “This is God’s Anteroom, right? So it seems appropriate to wonder. Why now. Why everybody all at once. Why children came back as adults.”

  “Everybody gets their perfect body,” she said. “And knowledge. Everything’s fair. God must be fair.”

  Cyril pondered that. He couldn’t even argue with it. Very evenhanded. He couldn’t feel that he had been singled out for some kind of torment. Many people had suffered worse. When his children had died, he was still able to talk to them. It had to feel much worse if they were simply gone.

  “Maybe this is a good thing,” said Cyril.

  “Nobody believes that,” she said.

  “No,” said Cyril. “I can’t imagine that they do. When you wish—when your child dies, or your wife. Or husband, or whatever—you don’t really think of how they’d come back. You want them back just as they were. But then what? Then they’d just die again, later, under other circumstances.”

  “At least they’d have had a life in between,” said Dorcas.

  Cyril smiled. “You’re not the ordinary dead person,” he said. “You have opinions. You have regrets.”

  “What can I regret? What did I ever do wrong?” she asked. “No, I’m just pissed off.”

  Cyril laughed aloud. “You can’t be angry. My wife is dead, and she’s never angry.”

  “So I’m not angry. But I know that it’s wrong. It’s supposed to make us happy and it doesn’t, so it’s wrong, and wrongness feels…”

  “Wrong,” Cyril prompted.

  “And that’s as close as I can come to being angry,” said Dorcas. “You too?”

  “Oh, I can feel anger! I don’t have to be ‘close,’ I’ve got the real thing. Pissed off, that’s what I feel. Resentful. Spiteful. Whining. Self-pitying. And I don’t mind admitting it. My wife and children were resurrected and they’ll live forever and they seem perfectly content. But you’re not content.”

  “I’m content,” she said. “What else is there to be? I’m pissed off, but I’m content.”

  “I wish this really were God’s Anteroom,” said Cyril. “I’d be asking the secretary to make me an appointment.”

  “You want to talk to God?”

  “I want to file a complaint,” said Cyril. “It doesn’t have to be, like, an interview with God himself. I’m sure he’s busy.”

  “Not really,” said the voice of a man.

  Cyril looked at the inner row, where a handsome young man sat on the throne. “You’re God?” Cyril asked.

  “You don’t like the resurrection,” said God.

  “You know everything, right?” asked Cyril.

  “Yes,” said God. “Everybody hates this. They prayed for it, they wanted it, but when they got it, they complained, just like you.”

  “I never asked for this.”

  “But you would have,” said God, “as soon as somebody died.”

  “I wouldn’t have asked for this,” said Cyril. “But what do you care?”

  “I’m not resurrected,” said God. “Not like them. I still care about things.”

  “Why didn’t you let them care, then?” asked Cyril.

  “Billions of people on Earth again, healthy and strong, and I should make them care? Think of the wars. Think of the crimes. I didn’t bring them back to turn the world into hell.”

  “What is it, if it isn’t hell?” asked Cyril.

  “Purgatory,” said Dorcas.

  “Limbo,” Cyril suggested back.

  “Neither one exists,” said God. “I tried them for a while, but nobody liked them, either. Listen, it’s not really my fault. Once a soul exists, it can never be erased. Annihilated. I found them, I had to do something with them. I thought this world was a good way to use them. Let them have a life. Do things, feel things.”

  “That worked fine,” said Cyril. “It was going fine till you did this.” He gestured toward Dorcas.

  “But there were so many complaints,” said God. “Everybody hated death, but what else could I do? Do you have any idea how many souls I have that still haven’t been born?”

  “So cycle through them all. Reincarnation, let them go around and around.”

  “It’s a long time between turns,” said God. “Since the supply of souls is infinite.”

  “You didn’t mention infinite,” said Cyril. “I thought you just meant there were a lot of us.”

  “Infinite is kind of a lot,” said God.

  “To me it is,” said Cyril. “I thought that to you—”

  “I know, this whole resurrection didn’t work out like I hoped. Nothing does. I should never have taken responsibility for the souls I found.”

  “Can’t you just … put some of us back?”

  “Oh no, I can’t do that,” said God, shaking his head vehemently. “Never that. It’s—once you’ve had a body, once you’ve been part of creation, to take you back out of it—you’d remember all the power, and you’d feel the loss of it—like no suffering. Worst thing in the world. And it never ends.”

  “So you’re saying it’s hell.”

  “Yes,” said God. “There’s no fire, no sulfur and all that. Just endless agony over the loss of … of everything. I can’t do that to any of the souls. I like you. All of you. I hate it when you’re unhappy.”

  “We’re unhappy,” said Cyril.

  “No,” said God. “You’re sad, but you’re not really suffering.”

  Cyril was in tears again. “Yes I am.”

  “Suck it up,” said God. “It can be a hell of a lot worse than this.”

  “You’re not really God,” said Cyril.

  “I’m the guy in charge,” said God. “What is that, if not God? But no, there’s no omnipotent transcendental being who lives outside of time. No unmoved mover. That’s just stupid anyway. The things people say about me. I know you can’t help it. I’m doing my best, just like most of you. And I keep trying to make you happy. This is the best I’ve done so far.”

  “It’s not very good,” said Cyril.

  “I know,” said God. “But it’s the best so far.”

  Dorcas spoke up from the ticket booth. “But I never really had a life.”

  God sighed. “I know.”

  “Look,” said Cyril. “Maybe this really is the best. But do you have to have everybody stay here? On Earth, I mean? Can’t you, like, create more worlds?”

  “But people want to see their loved ones,” said God.

  “Right,” said Cyril. “We’ve seen them. Now move them along and let the living go on with our lives.”

  “So maybe a couple of conversations with the dead and they move on,” said God, apparently thinking about it. “What about you, Dorcas?”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I’m dead, what do I care?”

  “You care,” said God. “Not the cares of the body. But you have the caring of a soul. It’s a different kind of desire, but you all have it, and it never goes away.”

  “My wife and children don’t care about anything,” said Cyril.

  “They care about you.”

  “I wish,” said Cyril.

  “Why do you
think they haven’t left? They see you’re unhappy.”

  “I’m unhappy because they won’t go,” said Cyril.

  “Why haven’t you told them that? They’d go if you did.”

  Cyril said nothing. He had nothing to say.

  “You don’t want them to go,” said Dorcas.

  “I want my children back,” Cyril said. “I want my wife to love me.”

  “I can’t make people love other people,” said God. “Then it wouldn’t be love.”

  “You really have a limited skill set,” said Cyril.

  “I really try not to do special favors,” said God. “I try to set up rules and then follow them equally for everybody. It seems more fair that way.”

  “By definition,” said Dorcas, “that’s what fairness is. But who says fairness is always good?”

  God shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I wish I did. But I’ll give it a shot, how about that? Maybe I can eventually fix this thing. Maybe the next thing will be a little better. And maybe I’ll never get it right. Who knows?”

  And he was gone.

  So was Dorcas.

  Cyril got off the hippo. He was dizzy and had to cling to the pole. The carousel wasn’t going to stop. So he waited until he had a stretch of open floor and leaped off.

  He stumbled, lurched against a wall, slid down, and lay on the floor. The quartet stopped playing. The carousel slowed down and stopped. Apparently it automatically knew when there were no passengers.

  A baby cried.

  Cyril walked to the ticket window and looked in. On the floor sat a toddler, a little girl, surrounded by a pile of women’s clothing. The toddler looked up at him. “Cyril,” she said in her baby voice.

  “Do you remember being a grown-up?” Cyril asked her.

  The little girl looked puzzled.

  “How do I get in there?”

  “Hungry!” said the little girl, and she cried again.

  Cyril saw a door handle inside the ticket booth and eventually figured out where the door was in the outside wall. He got it open. He picked up little Dorcas and wrapped her in the dress she had been wearing. God was giving her a life.

  Cyril carried her out of God’s Anteroom and down the stoop. The crowds were gone. Just a few cars, with only the living inside them. Some of them were stopped, the drivers just sitting there. Some of them were crying. Some just had their eyes closed. But eventually somebody honked at somebody else and the cars in the middle of the road started going again.

  Cyril took a cab home and carried the baby inside. Alice and Delia and Roland were gone. There was food in the fridge. Cyril got out the old high chair and fed Dorcas. When she was done, he set her in the living room and went in search of toys and clothes. He mentally talked to Alice as he did: So it’s stupid to keep children’s clothes and toys when we’re never going to have more children, is it? Well, I never said it, but I always thought it, Alice: just because you decided not to have any more babies doesn’t mean I would never have any.

  He got Dorcas dressed and she played with the toys until she fell asleep on the living-room carpet. Then Cyril lay on the floor beside her and wept for his children and the wife he had loved far more than she loved him, and for the lost life; yet, he also wept for joy, that God had actually listened to him, and given him this child, and given Dorcas the life she had longed for.

  He wondered a little where God had sent the other souls, and he wondered if he should tell anybody about his conversation with God, but then he decided it was all none of his business. He had a job the next day, and he’d have to arrange for day care, and buy food that was more appropriate for the baby. And diapers. He definitely needed those.

  He slept, and dreamed that he was on the carousel again, dizzy, but moving forward, and he didn’t mind at all that he would never get anywhere, because it was all about the ride.

  REALITY BITES

  S. G. Browne

  “WELCOME TO REANIMATION REWIND, the TV show that keeps you up-to-date on all of your favorite zombie reality programs. I’m Zach Taylor.”

  Zach Taylor, the living Ken-doll host of Reanimation Rewind, flashes an unnaturally white, blinding smile on the fifty-inch, flat-screen television, which is mounted to the wall in the office of Paul Silverman, vice president of production at ZTV Studios in Hollywood.

  “And I’m Megan Richards.” The camera cuts to the cohost of Reanimation Rewind, the Barbie to Zach’s Ken, who displays her own custom dental work. “Whether it’s Zombie Apprentice, Dancing with the Undead, or The Real Zombies of Beverly Hills, we’ve got it all for you right here. So if you’ve got an appetite for the undead, get ready to dig in.”

  “That’s right, Megan,” says Zach. “Today, our show includes clips from Survivor Zombie, The Reanimated Jersey Shore, and The Amazing Zombie Race, where this week the remaining zombie and human teams are in New York City, racing from upper Manhattan to Coney Island. Trust us when we tell you that you’re not going to want to miss that one.”

  “I can’t wait,” says Megan. “But first we kick things off with a clip from the most popular reality show on television: The Z Factor…”

  Evan Carter, an independent producer, hits the Mute button as the screen is filled with the image of a female zombie with a missing eye and no lips. She’s standing on a stage under bright lights, attempting to eat a microphone, her face in danger of sliding off her skull, as Simon Cowell unleashes some unheard criticism.

  “This is what I’m talking about,” says Carter, pointing at the television. “It’s all retreads. Reboots. All these shows are doing is putting a new product in old packaging.”

  “That’s the way it works,” says Paul Silverman, sitting behind his island of a desk in his ocean of an office, a view of downtown Los Angeles floating in the background behind him. “You know as well as I do the entertainment industry doesn’t want original. They want safe. They want marketable. They want a proven commodity.”

  “I know, I know,” says Carter. “Giving Hollywood an original idea is like giving a four-year-old boy a prostitute. Neither one of them knows what to do with it.”

  “Truer words have never been spoken.”

  On the flat-screen television, the female zombie deep-throats the microphone and her lower jaw snaps off.

  Silverman lets out a bark of laughter. “It may not be inspired, but let’s face it, you can’t beat the ratings.”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.” Carter sits down in one of the red leather wingback chairs opposite Silverman’s desk. “I believe I have an idea for a show that can beat them.”

  Silverman leans back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. “Talk to me.”

  “What are the most-watched zombie reality shows on television right now?” says Carter.

  Silverman nods toward the television, where a clip from The Reanimated Jersey Shore shows four guidos in bathing suits scrambling out of the hot tub to get away from their naked, decomposing female zombie housemate, who has fallen into the water. “In addition to this one and The Z Factor, you’d have to include Undead Idol and Zombie Fear Factor.”

  “None of which ZTV Studios created or produced,” says Carter.

  “Are you trying to put me in a bad mood?”

  “Just doing some scene setting.”

  “How about you just get to the plot.”

  “Come on,” says Carter. “How long have we known each other?”

  “Too long,” says Silverman with a smile.

  “Would I ever bring something to you that wasn’t worth your time?”

  Silverman checks his watch. “I’m listening.”

  “Okay,” says Carter. “In spite of everyone’s preconceived pop-culture notions of zombies being these single-minded eating machines feasting on human flesh, what we have are a bunch of harmless, mindless corpses stumbling around, acting like they’re still alive while they gradually decompose.”

  “Not exactly The Walking Dead.”

  “Right. People we
re expecting the apocalypse. Hordes of flesh-eating ghouls. Chaos and mass hysteria. Instead what they got was this.” Carter motions toward the television, where a zombie fails the immunity challenge for his team on Zombie Survivor when his rectal cavity bursts open.

  “Where is this leading?” asks Silverman.

  Carter leans forward in his chair. “What if we could give the people what they were expecting? Something none of these other shows can offer? Something people didn’t know they wanted until we showed it to them?”

  “Keep going.”

  Carter stands up and walks around the office, which also contains a wet bar and a private bathroom. “I’m talking about reinvention. Reanimating the reanimated. Not just giving the public something new but revolutionizing the reality genre.”

  “This is television we’re talking about,” says Silverman. “People want something they can understand. Something that doesn’t force them to think. They don’t want clever and smart. That’s why shows like Arrested Zombie Development get canceled.”

  On a clip from The Amazing Zombie Race, a walking corpse of unidentified gender staggers into the middle of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and gets nailed by a bus.

  “Besides,” says Silverman, “how, exactly, do you reinvent mindless, living corpses? Whether you put them in a Jacuzzi, on an island, or in a hot-air balloon, they’re still mindless, living corpses.”

  Carter stops in front of Silverman’s desk. “What if they weren’t mindless?”

  Silverman removes his hands from behind his head and sits up in his chair. “I’m listening.”

  “What we have now are shows with different situations, different scenarios, but they’re all interchangeable. They’re all dealing with brainless casts and mindless contestants.”

  “Just like all of the old reality shows.”

  “Exactly,” says Carter. “So what if we had a show where the zombies weren’t all doing the same thing?”

  “Such as?”

  Carter puts both hands on Silverman’s desk and leans forward. “What if we had a zombie that could talk?”

  Silverman looks at Carter for several moments, then bursts out laughing. He keeps laughing until he realizes Carter’s not kidding. “You’re serious?”