What's Next?

A meeting was called of those who had, as far as any could recall, been regarded as the best brains on the planet.  All those great thinkers, or, at least, their descendants, gathered together in one giant meeting room to try and figure out what was left.
    Every idea that had ever been imagined had been thought and attempted, and not just attempted, but pursued doggedly to the point of exhaustion, just to make absolutely certain that the idea wasn't just a fanciful notion, but, those ideas that hadn't been made reality people had to - after decades of trying - finally give in and admit that they were merely flights of fancy.
    So where did that leave us?  Seventy two years ago the last new idea had been realised, it was a teleportation device, but it was limited to transport matter on this planet and this planet alone, only via a single pod-to-pod transference, and, to teleport oneself, was one of the most singularly painful experiences any human could wish to put themselves through.  Furthermore, the human at the other end, whilst retaining all physical attributes of the initial self, lacked the memory - or "soul" if you will - of their pre-teleportation counterpart.  Whilst matter could easily be zapped to and fro, living matter never retained its neurological qualities, and the scientist reponsible for the machine was taken to court for having essentially murdered the souls of a number of his peers.
    But that was it, that was the last invention, that was the last idea, and people ummed and ahhed, racked their brains, incapable of coming up with something that hadn't been done before.
    People turned to speculative fiction, hoping that creative imaginations might feature some long forgotten concept that could propel the human race forwards into its next glorious era.  But, no, most speculative fiction had already informed the progress of science - as much so as the reverse was true - and eventually the two had cancelled one another out.
    We had hover cars, jet-packs, cloning, life-like virutal reality video games, all types of sex toys, space travel (but no means of sustaining human life out into the far reaches of the universe), new energy sources that had allowed us to keep our world powered once the oil had run out, cures for previously incurable diseases, plastic surgery so good you couldn't tell the difference, nano-technology, prosthetic limbs controlled by the brain, everything.
    All we were left with was depression, a sense of utter hopelessness.  Why had we done all this?  That's what people kept asking, and it was a futile question, because nobody could answer it.
    People argued that life was not a puzzle that had to be solved, it was merely a coincidence, just as we were the chance creation of circumstance so too were our creations; inevitable off-shoots of our own being.  Though these people were surprised that we had managed to beat the extinction of our species and find ourselves in a creative cul-de-sac first, they had - optimistically - hoped that either nuclear war or the death of our sun would have occured first.
    Some said that the eradication of our species was probably a good idea, that perhaps the only way to move forwards would be to start over.  People argued that the planet Earth was not some etch-a-sketch that could be shook and re-doodled upon, that the remnants of all human progress would still scar the surface no matter what and it'd be a deliberately idiotic measure without even taking into consideration all that genocide.
    Others were more patient, believing that inspiration would eventually come, that there is - at least - one great idea yet to be had and this time of creative stagnancy was precisely the right gestation period for such a thought.  Whilst less patient people turned to religions of various shades, from the merely worshipful to suicide cults.
    But it wasn't the awkward and clumsy segregation of a soceity bereft of ideas that rankled the most, it was the lack of entertainment, people had become dulled by the derth of new literature and music and film and games, everything just seemed so samey, so 'done'.  There was no way to surprise anyone anymore.
    People had tried raising their children to be as ignorant as possible, but popular culture was so vast, so prominent - much like the impact of the human race itself - that it was impossible to avoid, and closeting someone from it only made their desire to know all the stronger, their hunger greater and their come-down, once they had filled up and got bored, all the harder.
    For seventy two years people had kicked their heels, shuffled around, waiting for something new and there was nothing.  The malaise had convinced people that their jobs were pointless, and, indeed, many of them were.  This is a planet that had no place for advertisers, marketing executives, thinktanks, policy departments and such like.  Nor, as things wore on, was there a place for professional footballers, actors, musicians, writers, comedians, chefs, fashion designers and their kind.
    With nothing but boredom people began to pull at the threads of the ideas that had formed the basis of our society.  Money lost all value surprisingly quickly, people were more willing to exchange food or skills, even without keeping a record of what was 'owed' them.  As long as you were nice people were eager to help.
    But not everyone was nice, people rushed to assume control, seeing an Earth left unchained and ripe for the swiping.  But there was such a sense of detachment that threatening to take away someone's life no longer had the same impact that it once did, and imprisoning somebody offered little threat, with the prisons that had been created quickly forming a sense of community just as charming as that outside the prison walls.  These new wannabe dictators found themselves floundering like a fish plucked from the sea.
    Because freedom was the next concept to blur, as everyone accepted that nobody had chosen to be born, nobody had chosen what form their life took, how they looked, what ailments afflicted them, and at the core of most people was a desire to be accepted, to get along with others, to be good.  People had realised that no matter where they found themselves after their birth they had immediately become a prisoner, embroiled in some system that they had had no part of forming and could do very little to rattle the walls of their cage.  Most people had just accepted things for how they were and tried to do their best within the confines of that.
    Greed had to be eradicated, and this was easy now that everyone knew there was nowhere else for the human race to go from here, no whispered secret that only those with everything could aspire to achieve.  Instead, the only secret that the powerful had had previously was the knowledge of their own flimsy hold on the billions beneath them.  If anything, ideas and innovation had to keep occuring for the population at large to be distracted, because without the latest gadget or gizmo people would get restless.  Ultimately, the powerful had tried to stagger human progress as much as possible once they saw things drying up.
    They had hoped that maybe people had faith in them, but faith - they realised - is a by-product of fear.
    So, after seventy two years perhaps the world was shook like an etch-a-sketch, but it was not totally erased.  Instead, like a centrifuge, that which was necessary had clung on, shown its real importance, all the distractions that had dazzled the human race drifted ignominiously into obsolesence.  Leaving a simple, almost unconscious, structure, one with a stronger core than the flimsy have/want culture that had sunk its claws in over centuries of misguided progress.  These were not naive times, they were truly enlightened, and now devoid of the burden of having to wonder "What's the meaning of life?" people were finally free to truly enjoy it.

Night Of The Living Living

Edgar woke up, well, he's not really awake, but he's not in that state where his eyes are shut and the world is dark.  No, now he's in the awake state, the one where he gets up from wherever he was before - very rarely a bed these days - and begins his day.
    A regular day for Edgar involves shuffling around town, sometimes shuffling into buildings, but, if the weather's ok, he'll shuffle around the high street and into the park, maybe sometimes along the promenade.
    There are lots of other shuffling people shuffling past him, but he doesn't recognise any of them, beyond the fact that they're shuffling as well and occasionally they'll groan or murmur towards one another, almost as if they're saying hello, not that Edgar knows why he'd say hello to anyone, or knows anyone to say hello to.
    In fact, Edgar doesn't even really know he's Edgar, and the only reason anyone would ever know he's Edgar is because of the name badge he still has hanging from his work shirt.  But, quite why anyone would ever need to know his name is another question altogether, as nobody that Edgar shuffles by every day is capable of reading that name badge, let alone forming the sounds to utter the word Edgar.
    But, despite all of that, Edgar, as much as he was capable of doing so, had become distracted by someone uttering a familiar sound.  It had a certain lilting, sing-song to it, and was high pitched, in stark contrast to the bassier groans and whimpers he was used to encountering.
    "Uhhhwuuuhhh!" it brightly sang, slowly drawing Edgar around, his head twitching trying to place the location of the noise.
    As his ear became more accustomed to the repetition the sound began to take shape: "Uggwurr... Egggwurrr... Edggwwwwurrr... Edgar... Edgar... Edgar..."
    Edgar blinked his dry eyelids, lolled his bottom lip from side to side and moaned.  He began toddling towards the sound, it was coming from down a slip road leading off of the promenade onto the beach.
    With increasing eagerness, or perhaps just the slope's gradient forcing him to up his pace, Edgar reached the lower walkway and twisted his head, seeking the next repetition of the word, that strangely familiar word.
    "Edgar!"
    There!  It was coming from a tunnel leading towards a public convenience.  Edgar shuffled ahead, pressing on into the darkness, not able to be the type of person who might be cautious about this sort of thing, because Edgar had lost any real personality a long time ago.
    Suddenly, Edgar felt different, he felt smaller, and his body wasn't working in quite the way it had been a moment ago.  If Edgar had really been able to realise what was going on, Edgar would have noticed that he was being restrained.
    He swung his head from side to side, like a dog trying to bite its own elusive tail.
    If he had been able to see what was restraining him, he would have seen a person dressed in a welding mask and leathers, with thick black leather gloves, a leather apron over their leather jacket and leather trousers, tall leather boots, and duct tape wrapped around every conceivable join from sleeve to cuff, neck to head.  If anything this person looked less like a person and more like a sentient sofa.
    If he had been able to understand what this person was saying he would have heard this conversation:
    "Do it!"
    "I don't know if I can..."
    "You have to."
    "Why?"
    "Wh - Because you said you would!  Plus I'm the one wearing all of this, it's not like I can... Just do it, will you?!"
    "Oh, but, it's so... he's so... I... urgh... I don't know if I..."
    "You know it'll be ok once you do it.  You've seen me do it."
    "But, he's all... yucky..."
    "They're all 'all yucky', just do it!"
    "Ooooooo."
    "Do it or I'll let him go."
    "You wouldn't!"
    "I might!"
    "It's doubtful."
    "DO IT AND STOP CHANGING THE SUBJECT!"
    "Oh!  Hmph... Fine... Just don't look at me whilst I do it..."
    "Fine."
    "Are you looking?"
    "No..."
    Stepping in front of Edgar was a young man, late-twenties, dressed much more casually than his friend, though he was gripping a baseball bat in his hands.  However, once he was in front of Edgar he let the baseball bat fall to his side.  He took a deep breath, ran one his hands through his dirty blonde hair, licked his blush pink lips, leaned forwards, his eyes wincing, and kissed Edgar on the mouth.
    It was a long kiss, lingering, sensual almost and Edgar was dumbfounded, he blinked and looked about himself, unable to quite understand what was occuring until finally this man pulled away and Edgar said:
    "What the Hell are you doing?!"
    "See, it worked," the leather sofa with his arms around Edgar beamed, and Edgar understood every word.
    "Oh my God," Edgar exclaimed suddenly, hunching over and retching, "What's that smell?!"
    The leather sofa and the young man laughed and high-fived as Edgar dry-heaved.
    "Oops, sorry," the young man said leaning down and placing a hand on Edgar's back, "that smell, um, that's you old chum."
    "It's me?"
    "Your clothes will probably smell a bit like, well, like rotting flesh."
    "Good God, why?"
    "Because that's what's been in them for the past, well, five years at worst I'd reckon."
    "Why am I wearing a dead man's clothes?"
    "Well, because up until," the young man checked his watch, "one minute ago, you were a dead man."

So, Edgar's new acquaintances told him all about the time he had missed.  Firstly, they asked Edgar to recall the last thing he remembered, really clearly remembered, but there seemed to be a long foggy gap in his recollection.  Eventually he dredged up a memory of going to meet his girlfriend June at a cafe, but didn't remember what they talked about.
    "When was that?"
    "It was... in the Autumn sometime...?"
    The leather sofa, whose name was Brian, nodded, "Autumn five years back I would say, probably late October actually, because people thought it was a Halloween flashmob or something for a while."
    The young man, Ken, laughs, "Yeah, a lot of the people who survived to begin with were actually dressed up like zombies, y'know, because they saw the mob and wanted to be part of it!"
    "Yes, but," Brian's tone and expression, now visible since he'd raised his welding mask, were impenetrably serious, "a lot of innocent people got killed because they were just dressed up as zombies also."
    Ken sheepishly toed the ground, "I know, but you kind of have to see the funny side now."
    Brian shook his head, turned his attention back to the still bamboozled Edgar.
    "So," Edgar asked, "you're telling me there was a zombie apocalypse and the entire human race was brought to the brink of extinction?"
    With very little regard for the magnitude of such a sentence, Brian and Ken responded at once; "Yep."
    "Good God!"  He let it all sink in, and then looked up to his new friends; "How did you survive?"

It turns out that only Brian had survived, and he had rescued Ken via the same method that Ken had rescued Edgar, and the two of them were part of a small alliance endeavouring to turn the population back into regular people and not the shuffling corpses that roamed listlessly about hungering for brains.
    Edgar was, naturally, rather curious as to how they had discovered that a mouth-to-mouth transfer of bodily fluids would turn a zombie back into a generally-accepted-to-be 'normal' human.  At this point, both Ken and Brian became sheepish.
    "Look," Ken began, "we live in a modern age, we're not that sheltered to certain people's... um... perversions..."
    Edgar's face contorted.
    "Well,when things started there were people who weren't so dismayed at the outbreak of the undead, people who perhaps were drawn to them sexually, y'know, even before the 'un' part of the name was introduced."
    Edgar held the back of his hand to his mouth.
    "Well, someone saw one of these underground zombie movies and... saw y'know, it happen... the, er, the kiss of life as it's become known."
    Edgar exhaled, trying to wash the pictures from his mind.
    "I know it's not to everyone's tastes, but, look, it happened, we found out, and now you're alive again, so, it's not such a bad thing, right?"
    Edgar weighed it up in his mind, it did feel nice to be able to weigh things up in his mind again.
    "So, what's the plan?" Edgar asked.

And so, the three of them set off together, their intention to gradually reawaken members of society and restore human civilization on a planet that had become gradually ravaged by brain dead monsters.