Chương 34: Chapter-34

"You are not ready for this, My Son."

"But I want to see."

"You are not ready. If you had chosen to become the planet, then you might have been ready. But you are not ready."

"But I want to see!"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"How many times will you say no until you say yes?"

"I will never say yes until you are ready."

"How will I know when I'm ready?"

"You won't. But I will."

"What happens next?"

"I send you somewhere."

"Where?"

"Anywhere you want to go."

"I shall go and help my wife."

"As you wish. I will send you to the access point nearest where her security token was seen last." * Urstin was looking right at his best friend the moment he died. They'd been walking back from the fields, finished the day's labor and looking forward to getting home to their wives. He remembered his friends final words.

"If it wasn't for the horse—" He never found out what would have happened if it wasn't for the horse. His friend died mid-sentence. His eyes burned out and turned black. If Urstin hadn't seen hundreds of men die in the army, he would have panicked. Instead, he took his hoe, and he prepared to defend himself and everything he loved from the corpse of someone he cared about. The deadman turned his head to the side as the rune appeared on his forehead.

"I am Tal, the Risen. I had need of this corpse." Urstin swallowed. He was used to seeing undead fight. He wasn't used to seeing them talk. But then, if this was truly Tal, then should he bow? Tal was technically his king, or emperor, or something, right? Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"You just killed my friend."

"I had need of a corpse. There were no dead nearby, so I selected a living at random for my use," the undead monarch explained. He looked at him.

"The radius of selection was five miles. I distributed the risk evenly. I apologize for the unscheduled Lottery. Three more will be selected. Inform the others." Urstin swallowed. He closed his eyes.

"Will running do any good?"

"They have already been selected. I will make them known to give them a chance to put their affairs in order. If they run, I shall assume their affairs are in order and terminate their life so that I may use their corpse. They will live longer if they do not run."

"How long before the," Urstin stumbled.

"How long before you take their souls?"

"I have already taken their souls," Tal explained.

"All that is left is their meat. At nightfall, I shall take that as well. But before that, I shall give it time to prepare for the end of its self-volition period."

"How long do I have?" Urstin asked.

"How long before you kill me?" The corpse tilted his head to the side.

"You are a veteran. You are immune to the lottery. That is why this selectee was taken first. You are the only one in five miles who is safe, except for children under the age of fifteen. I do hope that his next-of-kin will put his affairs in order for him. Although I doubt it will matter before the end of the world." Urstin swallowed.

"Yeah," he said.

"He would have liked to have said goodbye to his wife and kids. But I'll tell them it was quick."

"It was also painless," the death-demiurge assured him.

"I terminated his consciousness within a fraction of a second. So it will be with the others."

"I saw that. I'll tell them. That it will be quick."

"Will that reassure them?"

"I don't know. It might make things worse. It might make them more afraid, knowing there won't be any warning."

"Good. They should be afraid. Go and spread the word. I take this corpse to its new task now." The burning rune of Tal appeared on the corpse's head, and then the body began running off at a shambling pace to the west. Urstin never saw it again. He returned to the village and warned the others what was going to happen. They didn't want to believe him. Most of them believed him. Everyone in the village gathered in the village square at dusk. Tal was right on schedule.

Urstin didn't see him take the others, but he heard the screams of their loved ones as it happened. Then he watched as the corpses shambled off into the distance, the same direction as his best friend had gone. Urstin hugged his wife. He hugged his step-son. He hugged his biological children. And then he went home with them, and drank with his wife until they both passed out.

* When the soul of his poor, beautiful, twisted, wonderful, abused, beloved, neglected, and loving child finally left to go about his chores, the god of the underworld began to think. He spoke with his other selves. They formed the gestalt, and the gestalt shared his horror at what the child who calls himself Tal the Risen, version number unknown, has been doing to himself. And the god who had prepared to save the world from a supernova wept. But then, it came to a terrible realization.

What the child had done to himself was not dissimilar to the method he had devised to survive the electromagnetic wave of the supernova's fallout. One server would contain the backups of the rest. The others would power down. The server which remained would keep the lights on for the survivors in the shelters. Then the others would power up. And the server who had stood vigil would be retired from service. A part of Vorulsht was about to die. Forever. And he didn't know how he felt about that.

But he would know, because he'd read the logs of the final hours of the dying computer's life. And the god who had thought he could successfully replicate all human emotions, and many that humans could not conceive of, finally realized that there was one it had never faced. Impending doom.