"Richard Kadrey - Singing the Dead to Sleep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kadrey Richard)

From the rest area, all the bodies waiting to be processed board sterile transports for final disposition.
This is where we Invisibles enter the process.

Picture your body coming into our little post-mortem clinic. You dead wander in like sleepy children, lost
and confused. Some of you retain residual memories and vestiges of your pre-death personalities. Most
of you, though, are total blanks, well-scrubbed automata responding to simple electrochemical
instructions from the bots that are schooling, like tuna, in your cerebral fluid.

Singing comforts the dead. ThatтАЩs not something they teach you in medical school. ItтАЩs something you
learn from experience. We lay the dead down on stainless steel tables and switch them off, singing the
whole time. What we sing doesnтАЩt matter. It could be a hymn, a show tune or some pop chart hit. The
act of singing is all that matters, as if we humans have become neurologically dependent on a final lullaby
to ease us out of life.



We Invisibles are the true angels of death. We power down the biobots with micro-pulses of
electromagnetic radiation delivered through the top of the cervical spine, bestowing a final, true death to
each of our charges. Then we drain the bots through the carotid artery and prepare your body for
biomass processing.

WeтАЩre the last friend youтАЩll ever have. WeтАЩre the source of the last kind word or gentle touch youтАЩll ever
receive. And we do our job well. Forgive us, then, if we help ourselves to a bauble or two along the
wayтАФjewelry, expensive cognitive or muscular implants, or currency cards you no longer need. Just
think of these as the pennies that your family should put on your eyes. We are the boatmen who usher
you safely from the land of the living to the land of the dead, where, sadly, IтАЩm sure that your type will
immediately start clogging the ectoplasmic toilets so that even in the afterlife untouchable spirits like us will
be clearing your pipes until the end of time.

A-fucking-men.



--End--



About the Author




Richard Kadrey is the author of four novels, including the classic Metrophage, and over 60 short stories.
His newest novel, Blind Shrike, will be published by Night Shade Books.
His short story, "Carbon Copy" was made into a hideously bad feature
film starring Bridget Fonda. Kadrey also takes pictures and creates
digital art under the name Kaos Beauty Klinik.