Sam sniffed, or Dill
did, Harold couldn't tell and besides, why would a zombie need to
sniff in the first place? Did olfactory senses work after the flesh
began to decay? “Must be nice to have a kid.” Ah. Dill, then.
“Yes. Never expected
to.” Harold gave his daughter another kiss before Gillian took her
away again. “Is there no possibility of you salvaging something
from your body to procure an offspring?”
“I can't see it, can
you? I've been dead for a week. Haven't even had a wank since then.”
“I...er...I'm sorry?”
Harold winced. “Perhaps you could foster an immortality in another
fashion. Invent something enduring, perhaps? A sub-atomic particle or
theory about the value of string holding the universe together.”
“Or something about
dead cats in boxes not being dead at all but being undead.” Jasfoup
thumped him on the shoulder. “That'd be one in the eye for
Schroedinger. Most of the people quoting the uncertainty principle
don't understand it anyway. Making a third state of matter possible
would be another nail in the old bugger's coffin.”
“Actually, I have
made something astounding.” Dill half-smiled. “Well, Sam and I
did, anyway. A super-computer capable of accessing any piece of data
in the world. It's almost sentient.”
“Almost?” Harold
shared a glance with Jasfoup. “Don't tell me. You called it
Skynet.”
Dill laughed aloud.
“Nothing so prophetic. We called it Orias, after the demon of
shaping destinies.” He shrugged. “It has a particular system of
processors that Sam devised. We thought we'd call it the Far-Shaw
engine.”
“After the novel
about changing destinies?”
“No, after our names,
Farthing and Trubshaw.”
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