"Richard Kadrey - Singing the Dead to Sleep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kadrey Richard)

Singing The Dead to Sleep

by Richard Kadrey



Story Copyright (C) 2006, Richard Kadrey.
Images Copyright (C) 2006, Rudy Rucker.
750 Words.




What people forget these days is that no matter how clever our nano-servants might be, now matter how
powerful the AI systems that run our homes, our jobs and our cities, no matter how perfect and pliant the
engineered materials that form the infrastructure of our daily lives might be, eventually your toilet is going
to back up.

When all those cleverly layered, sublimely intelligent redundant systems go wrong and the shit no longer
flows, you have no choice but to resort to human intervention. A real life man or woman will come to
your home and stick his or arm down your toilet to root out the problem.

We used to call these people “plumbers.” Now, all these secret and wretched jobs fall under the general
and deliberately vague nomme-de-guerre, “Manual Integration Engineering,” plus the name of some
sub-specialty. That’s us. We’re the Invisibles. Your secret shame, digital dalits, the untouchables of a
perfect world.

I work with the dead. I touch them, comfort them in their confusion and ease them into their final sleep.
Being dead has never been easy, and we demand so much more of our dearly departed these days now
that death, which in other times was seen as a blissful release from all obligations, is now just another
appointment in your date book, another chance to commit a social faux-pas.

It’s shocking how little the average person knows about the dim technological afterlife we’re all fated to
inhabit in that interval after our “petit-mort” and before our final “extant-death.” But why should most
people know about these things? Why should you? This inter-death period isn’t for the family to mourn
or the clergy to provide comfort, it’s for we Invisibles to make right.



Here’s how it breaks down. While you’re dying, you’re still you and your body is still yours. When you
achieve brain death, an army of nano-engineered biobots is released from a small shockcase that was
installed in your cerebellum at birth. These molecular bots take over your body’s basic functions until it
can be properly disposed of.

The bots stand you up and walk your freshly dead corpse to the nearest designated medical rest area.
Every neighborhood has one. You probably haven’t noticed yours. They’re designed down to the
smallest detail to blend into their surroundings and be utterly unmemorable.

By now, your family is aware of your passing. The biobots are networked, so your family was quickly
informed of your death by a suitably mournful videofax.