Inspired By "The Days of Solomon Gursky"
"The Days of Solomon Gursky" features nanotechnology able to revive the dead, and is an excellent short story. A massive corporation comes to control the technology and thus all who have been revived with it. Dying, even once, changes you, irreversibly, as a person, though you look the same. There is, at one point, a rebellion, an uprising of the dead, against the corporation, to take control of the Jesus tanks and stop being the underclass.
Keep all this in mind...
It is the near future. Resurrection is possible, but only if you sell yourself into debt to the corporada. There are some, however, who have stolen the technology; but those brought back in the pirated Jesus tanks often have something horribly, horribly wrong with them.
In my dream, I am one of those illegally resurrected - the FreeDead, the resistance movement. Something went wrong with the resurrection process, and I look like one of the flayed, preserved cadavers from Body Worlds (and happen to be male, for some reason.) I hide out in a run-down house in a dangerous part of town with others who've been brought back, and with some living souls who fight with us. They steal the technology from the corporada; they tend to those whose resurrection has left them horribly altered.
At one point, I remember walking down the street, hiding behind a long coat, a mask, and other paraphernalia so people can't see the grotesque evidence of my resurrection. I pass two ancient women, alike as two crows save for one thing - one is missing her left eye, the other her right. Their ragged black garments conceal something foul, rotting, though I don't know how I know this. They are an omen, a harbinger of something terrible, and fear starts to rise within me as I make my way back to the safe house, faster and faster, trying to avoid notice even as terror and nausea make me certain that I am already too late.
And I am - agents from the corporada have already found the safe house. I'm not sure how many people were home when they came; but when I arrive, they have a young woman - still in her first life, not one of the FreeDead, slim and beautiful and the object of my unreturned affections - stretched out on the kitchen table.
The light that filters through the filthy windows, the dusty drapes, is yellowy-brown, turns things the color of shit; but there is still far too much light to see by, too much illuminating the terrifying scene before me. She is screaming, twisting, fighting to get away as two men hold her down, stretch her out like a pig for the slaughter. A third man holds something that glitters, even in the glutinous light - a scalpel.
She has already told them everything she knows. There is no need to torture any information out of her. There is nothing to be gained from this. Still he comes, emotionless - there is no anger, no eagerness, in his eyes. He is not a zealot or a sadistic freak; in fact, the most chilling thing about him is how completely emotionless, how blank, he is. Instead of seeming robotic, he seems inhuman in a terrifyingly human way.
I hide in the shadows, sick and helpless with fear, unable to do anything but watch. The man with the scalpel bends over the woman and, as delicately as a surgeon, an artist, he begins to cut her eyes. He cuts tiny, tiny slivers - thin as a fingernail-paring, and as short across - from her eyes, as she screams and screams. He does so slowly, carefully, unhurriedly.
There is no blood. There is nothing sane left in her screams - she has passed into the madness that prolonged terror brings. There is nothing I can do. He cuts and cuts. Tiny shavings of her eye fall away, tiny pieces of my soul. She screams and screams and screams and I wake up, echoing her screams into the waking world.
Keep all this in mind...
It is the near future. Resurrection is possible, but only if you sell yourself into debt to the corporada. There are some, however, who have stolen the technology; but those brought back in the pirated Jesus tanks often have something horribly, horribly wrong with them.
In my dream, I am one of those illegally resurrected - the FreeDead, the resistance movement. Something went wrong with the resurrection process, and I look like one of the flayed, preserved cadavers from Body Worlds (and happen to be male, for some reason.) I hide out in a run-down house in a dangerous part of town with others who've been brought back, and with some living souls who fight with us. They steal the technology from the corporada; they tend to those whose resurrection has left them horribly altered.
At one point, I remember walking down the street, hiding behind a long coat, a mask, and other paraphernalia so people can't see the grotesque evidence of my resurrection. I pass two ancient women, alike as two crows save for one thing - one is missing her left eye, the other her right. Their ragged black garments conceal something foul, rotting, though I don't know how I know this. They are an omen, a harbinger of something terrible, and fear starts to rise within me as I make my way back to the safe house, faster and faster, trying to avoid notice even as terror and nausea make me certain that I am already too late.
And I am - agents from the corporada have already found the safe house. I'm not sure how many people were home when they came; but when I arrive, they have a young woman - still in her first life, not one of the FreeDead, slim and beautiful and the object of my unreturned affections - stretched out on the kitchen table.
The light that filters through the filthy windows, the dusty drapes, is yellowy-brown, turns things the color of shit; but there is still far too much light to see by, too much illuminating the terrifying scene before me. She is screaming, twisting, fighting to get away as two men hold her down, stretch her out like a pig for the slaughter. A third man holds something that glitters, even in the glutinous light - a scalpel.
She has already told them everything she knows. There is no need to torture any information out of her. There is nothing to be gained from this. Still he comes, emotionless - there is no anger, no eagerness, in his eyes. He is not a zealot or a sadistic freak; in fact, the most chilling thing about him is how completely emotionless, how blank, he is. Instead of seeming robotic, he seems inhuman in a terrifyingly human way.
I hide in the shadows, sick and helpless with fear, unable to do anything but watch. The man with the scalpel bends over the woman and, as delicately as a surgeon, an artist, he begins to cut her eyes. He cuts tiny, tiny slivers - thin as a fingernail-paring, and as short across - from her eyes, as she screams and screams. He does so slowly, carefully, unhurriedly.
There is no blood. There is nothing sane left in her screams - she has passed into the madness that prolonged terror brings. There is nothing I can do. He cuts and cuts. Tiny shavings of her eye fall away, tiny pieces of my soul. She screams and screams and screams and I wake up, echoing her screams into the waking world.