Necropolis Read Online Free

rattled? My wife and I are murdered, then I come back as some side-show freak in a nightmare world, and they’re rattled ??

    MAGGIE
    I suppose it wouldn’t help to know that anger is a common reaction.
    The subject’s only response was an icy stare.

    MAGGIE  
    We’ll be meeting twice a week on—  

    DONNER
    Thanks, but I’m done here.

    The subject rose, shakily, looking for a door.

    MAGGIE
    This isn’t something you macho through on your own, Donner. The percentage of reebs that end up crazy or incarcerated is—

    DONNER
    Life’s a bitch, then you’re reborn.

    MAGGIE
    I’ll be downloading to your home.

    DONNER
    I don’t need some fucking electronic watchdog!

    MAGGIE
    My Virtual Personhood is based in a quantum magneto-plasmatic memory web. There are no electronics involved. And for future reference, smarties have feelings. Which can be hurt.

    The subject let out an ironic laugh, but he appeared too overwhelmed to fight any more.  

    DONNER
    Am I free to leave?  

    I nodded. Subject headed for the door.

    MAGGIE
    Donner. Do, uh… you remember anything?

    DONNER
    You mean like God, heaven, a tunnel of white light, like that?

    I nodded.

    DONNER  
    No. Does anybody?

    MAGGIE
    No.

    NOTE TO PROCESSING: Delete last ten seconds of exchange before archiving.

    END SESSION 0000.

4
    DONNER
    I got about four blocks before somebody beat the shit out of me.
    I’d left the hospital quickly, accepting the clothes they offered, signing the required legal disclaimers (We Are Not Responsible For Your Afterlife!) and making a promise I had no intention of keeping to attend another counseling session.
    As I dressed in the changing room, fumbling with unfamiliar button-fly pants, looking at the snap-brim fedora and the wide-lapelled jacket, the panic started. First, in my fingertips, then swirling into a tight, cold knot in my stomach. By the time I was striding across the lobby, I was actively fighting the urge to run.
    I burst through the front doors like a sprinter hitting the finish tape.  
    Out on the street, the relief I’d been chasing didn’t appear. Only terror. I stood on the sidewalk, the leather shoes stiff and biting through absurdly thin nylon socks. A wind played with the raw skin of my face. My first shave in forty-two years.
    I’d survived my own death.  
    No. Worse. I’d survived the death of my whole world.
    I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to deal with this.
    Was I really alive again? Revived, like they said? Dreaming? In some perverse afterlife? At that moment, on that sidewalk, anything seemed possible.
    It was rush hour, the streets packed. I eyed the men in their blocky suits and hats, the women in their wool skirts, mesh stockings and pumps. Christ, some of them had pillbox hats. I caught a few other styles as well. A shaggy-haired guy in a tie-dye tee, fringed suede vest and bellbottoms. A black guy in what looked like a purple zoot suit. They all bustled down the street in that familiar, harried, self-absorbed big city way.
    But no cell phones. No laptop cases. No iPods, no Starbucks coffee cups. Just heavy-looking briefcases, cute little one-clasp handbags. The whole fucking vista could be a piece of vintage newsreel…  
    … except for the traffic cop in a lozenge-shaped pod at the intersection, directing the Packards, Hudsons and Buick Roadmasters, which hummed wheellessly along, six inches above the street…  
    … or the holographic newspapers tucked under pedestrians’ arms…  
    … or the tiny glowing dots many of them had in their temples…  
    … or the swirling stacks of streets high above my head, aerial highways crammed with cars. Worse, the streets moved , they changed , redirecting themselves like some solid yet fluid river, reacting as traffic thickened or lightened, adding lanes, anticipating flow…  
    I tore my gaze away, overwhelmed with vertigo. I tried to focus on the wall next to me, but my eyes were drawn to a movie poster. It featured Alan Ladd