It's Complicated: A Zombie Romance Novel

Game Over

It's white here. Bright white, almost blinding. But I don't have to squint.

Tommy was here too. Only he looked like Gideon, not like MAAS' image so I know its not MAAS. He's shimmery, like my hands when I care to look at them. Everything here seems a little out of focus. More like a dream than reality.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"The main hub," Tommy replied. It's really him, or what's left of him. The part of him that his mother downloaded into MAAS so many years ago which MAAS had downloaded into Gideon, only that hadn't ever worked right.

"We're alone," I stated. Tommy confirmed my suspicion with a nod. "And are they?"

As if on cue a screen popped up in front of us with images of the control room.

"Remote viewing," Tommy said. "It will show us what is going on in the house via the cameras MAAS has set up."

I nodded. It was kind of surreal standing here with my crush/boyfriend/dead best friend.

"Is this live?" I asked. Tommy shrugged.

"I think," he said. "It's hard to tell in here. I could judge more when I was connected, well, out there." I nodded again, willing him to say more.

"Time doesn't work the same here. There really isn't a present or past, only what hasn't happened yet, I guess. MAAS can explain better than me." Tommy stopped talking. His face was flushed.

'Faces can do that in here?' I wondered.

"Yeah," Tommy replied.

'Had I said that out-loud?' I thought that had been a private thought.

"There really aren't any private thoughts here," Tommy said, growing even redder. I nodded. Not because I really understood, but because I could tell he had told me something in the only way I could understand it. There was no reason to press further. Maybe MAAS could explain it better, but I was in no mood to meet him this soon after he killed me.

The feed on the screen was of the pile of zombies that attacked me. They were all passed out on the floor on top of the pedestal and my body. Was this what people meant when they talked about angels looking down from heaven and stuff? They were starting to stir. Those that could stand looked like they were hung over.

As the top ones crawled away I could see that the ones on the bottom had started to move too. Twitches here, a foot there, but nothing really significant.

"Is there a fast forward on this thing?" I asked. Again as if on cue a remote popped into my hands. It was like Lee Ann's cable remote; totally tricked out. I found and pressed the fast forward button. Wow, this place could deliver! I wondered what it would do if I asked for a candy bar? One popped into my hand, replacing the remote. It sure looked tempting.

I dismissed the thought. It's more important that I find out what's going on than feed my stomach. As I shook my head the candy turned back into a remote.

The screen developed those zigzags across that showed time speeding bye. It was still pretty slow, but at least the bodies seemed to be picking themselves up of the floor with a little bit more animation now.

So whatever I was watching must have already happened. This was a recording, not live. I had this feeling that MAAS could only bring us images of recorded or live footage. It might be able to download and store whole human brains, but it still couldn't tell the future. At least I thought it couldn't.

Even with the fast forward they were still going at zombie pace. Maybe having your entire brain re-downloaded back into your skull was like a massive hangover and you really don't want to move afterwards. It was the only reasonable explanation I had for the amount of time they were taking to get up off that floor. I know if it had been me, I'd have been out of there as fast as my two feet could carry me.