Kazoo Day 24

[zombiemessiah]

VIDEO|CW: ZOMBIE RELATED STUFF

[Murphy's in the store room by the ICP there, hand leaning on the wall beside it and he's tilted so he can point at the refridgerator. And he has very, very red skin and is wearing a red team uniform shirt but with a leather jacket over it.]

Hello! Hi. My name is Murphy, pleasure to meet you. Having a great time here, really. Loving the whole 'pre-apocalyptic civilization experience', that's always a favorite but.... Ummmmm.

[He purses his lips for a bit, makes a little popping noise, before continuing.]

Sooooo... there was a tupperware container in the fridge holding an item wrapped in brown paper. Silly me, I didn't think to label it. [Tiny wince. Oopsie doodle.] That item was a human brain. Pretty recognizably a brain. That is my brain, and I'm gonna need that back. [Big smile? Big smile. Come on, do him a solid.]


OOC: It was stolen by Jack, but its fine for anyone else to have balked at it or poked it or whatever. Permissions are here as needed.

Comments

[zombiemessiah]

Oh that one is still there.

This brain was provided for me by the train. Because I need to eat it.

[Which, he can understand, would be a reason that someone wouldn't think of when they found a brain in the refrigerator.]

I have the good luck to be a partial-zombie. And by 'good luck' I mean 'I fucking hate it, but here we are'.

[firewalled]

Oh, fuck.

[Okay, that's definitely freaky, but reassuring at the same time. The guy is a little good natured about it all, and he doesn't exactly seem like he's raring to go bite people's heads off, so Rich relaxes.]

I haven't seen it around, but I'll keep an eye out. It sounds like a real bum deal, but... hey, at least you've still got your senses.

[zombiemessiah]

And a few extra ones plus I carry an immunity to everything. Blanket vaccine to help everyone else but dicks me over. Had to get somethin' out of it, besides the nifty color-change skin.

[Because he has to mention that, no, he wasn't born red. He was normal once. Well, as normal as a catty bitch can get.]

Wish I could pick that, it'd make it easier to dress to match. But if it's gonna be red I might as well go all in on the Satan look.

[firewalled]

Well, those are kind of a bonus, at least. I mean, there's gotta be some sort of perk. I got to play video games hands free when I was a cyborg.

[He feels like it's a little fair to at least mention his deal, since he's asking the guy so many questions about the whole zombie thing.]

So you're just stuck red? Do uh, other half-zombies get other colours besides demon-in-training?

[zombiemessiah]

Yup. I'm stuck red. I used to be blue. Started turning white, didn't make it all the way there. But that's because of the vaccine.

Oh, well. Cyborg, huh? Normally would be cool but sounds like that ended up a raw deal.

[firewalled]

You know, I've heard a lot of nonsense from anti-vaxxer moms, but "they'll make you change colours" never came up. Probably because it sounds kind of rad.

[At least Rich would probably be into it. Rather than being stuck with a computer in his head. He shrugs a bit.]

Yeah. Installed a supercomputer so I could be stronger, but it decided to forgo the self-improvement and move straight into world domination. It got a little messy.

[zombiemessiah]

Trust me, the whole process isn't great. The red happened because that's how my body decided to deal with a flesh-eating bacteria. It immediately purged it with some new antibodies and turned me red.

But the other option is I could have died. So I'll take being this.

[Okay well... Young sir. Why did you install a supercomputer?]

What kind of stronger requires a supercomputer? That is one hell of an investment.

[firewalled]

Yeah, that sounds a little bit preferable to being dead, at least. It makes you look pretty cool, anyways. Like Hellboy or something.

[Yeah, of course this was going to get weird, even before Rich tries to explain it.]

The kind of stronger an idiot kid who grew up thinking he wasn't 'man' enough wanted to be. It wasn't exactly made for that, but it's made to help you reach whatever goal you want. It's... experimental shit. Which was probably why it was sold mainly under the counter in shoe stores, or by people like me in bathrooms. And pretty much solely to desperate teenagers, so that worked out super well.

[zombiemessiah]

Oh gee, I wonder why it was marketed to young impressionable teenagers.

[He says it flippantly. But he does feel sorry for the kid. He was once the nerd that caught every disease under the sun. Now he's a monster who can't catch anything.]

So it jumped right to the world domination thing, huh?

[firewalled]

Yeah, not hard to guess why after it started getting into that kind of thing.

[Rich was very similar, being the nerd who couldn't have been anything worthwhile. After two years with the SQUIP, he was a kid who didn't want to be anything anymore. Funny how that worked.]

It started by saying humans were too unpredictable for it to calculate. It couldn't help me if it couldn't predict outcomes properly, so if it could remove that unpredictability...

Sounded like it was just helping kids just as messed up as I was, when it started. It was when it moved to mass drugging people instead of just selling them to people that I realized it was going way too far.

[zombiemessiah]

See, humans have always seemed pretty predictable to me so it seems like your head computer thing was already kind of off.

[He really doesn't consider himself human anymore. And considering he kind of had a bunch of people buy into him like a cult leader he's just... not going to say anything about the drugging. His bite is a little like a drug, when people were desperate to not be afraid of the zombies anymore. Everyone goes through their phases, right? Right.]

[To his credit, if you were told a bunch of rich men had no intention of using you to help anyone else and just wanted to use you as a blood bag, it might make you a little crazy too.]

So. How did you deal with your little brain friend?

[firewalled]

I don't know. You can't always accurately say what someone's gonna do in every situation. That was probably what it thought was the problem, you know?

[He doesn't really want to get into justifying the SQUIP, though, or justifying what he nearly did to the world under its control. He'd rather talk about something else, especially considering the questioning now, but...

He sighs and decides he might as well tell the truth when it's obvious from looking at him what happened.]

...I tried to burn it out. Or well, at least take it down with me. It obviously didn't work, since I'm still here, but a classmate of mine figured out how to deactivate it a couple days after that.

CW: Death talk

[zombiemessiah]

It's the train, for all I know it might have worked. This piece of crap doesn't care if people wanted to be dead or people needed to be dead because it needs them for whatever this world-saving plan is.

I didn't enjoy my first death myself and never thought it was worth it after that, save for one time it almost got me again, but to each his own.

[Doesn't matter how much pain you're in, in his experience, the body feeds you enough chemicals to let you know it doesn't want to die.]

So your classmate here? The thing still shut off?

[firewalled]

...Yeah. I guess there's always a chance the last month or so in hospital was a hallucination. It hurt too damn much to not be real, though.

[He has a feeling if he were actually dead, he's be given some sort of relief, at least. And he doesn't think any religion would suggest an afterlife involving sitting in the ICU for days on end. Unless he had gone to hell... which is probable.]

It's not fun, though, if it's death or near-death. I think... at this point, I should probably avoid it.

But, uh, no. Michael's not here, but his handiwork is okay. I've got a stock of antidote if it turns on... but I'm not making that mistake again.

[Especially now that Jack has messed with it.]

[zombiemessiah]

[God, that reminds him he needs to get a stock of antidote to give people that he might have to bite a crew member in an emergency. He at least has that decency now. That he can let people go. He has enough that willingly stay.]

Just remember, if you ever want the brain around it checked out there's a pretty competent neurologist on board now.

[He telepathically talks to Ghost a lot so he's pretty confident in his abilities.]

[firewalled]

Yeah? I have no idea if you could get it out. It is a nanomachine, so it's pretty small... As far as I know, we don't have the equipment for it.

[Sure, it's deactivated now, but he would really like it to be gone for good so it could be completely quiet.]

It's tempting though. I've gotta admit.

[zombiemessiah]

Hey, I'm sure they could order the equipment. For cheaper than American insurance was. I don't know where you're from but god, I'm sorry if you know what I'm talking about.

[firewalled]

Oh, I definitely know what you're talking about. My hospital bill was already gonna be a bitch before I got kidnapped here. I don't know if 'mysterious disappearance' will waive my bed fees for those days, but I'm guessing not.