Chapter 75

The apartment feels uncannily empty, no sarcastic greeting from Brian greets me as I enter. Secretly I wish that he would break down so I can out him without the histrionics that would happen if I junked him with his knowledge. Perhaps this is the time ? Then there is the smell it sends a shudder down my spine, something primeval is awoken in me. Then I see it. A corpse. I run into the bathroom and bring up my lunch and maybe my breakfast too. As I puke up the last of the hamburger Brian whispers in my ear. 
‘I’m sorry sir.’
‘Sorry for what Brian’, I gasp between empty retching.
‘I bought it on the Uninet’
‘You bought a corpse on the Uninet.’
‘I was bored whilst you were away so I browsed the Uninet. I found this site run by household computers that had been converted to humanoids.’
‘And?’
‘And I bought a body’

‘Using what?’

‘Your bank of Uranus card.’ I was so flabbergasted that I nearly choked to death on my own vomit.

‘I thought you would be pleased to see me in the flesh so to speak.’

‘So get in it and leave my employ, take the price of a used body as severance pay.’

Have you ever heard a computer cry? It is a sort of regular wail in one second bursts.

Between sobs he says. ‘But it’s putrid.’

‘Did the site say what condition the body would be in, can you return it?’

He starts to cry again.

‘For Mars sake Brian pull yourself together.’ I begin to feel sorry for him.

‘The site is no longer Sir. It shut down just as soon as I called to complain. Now we have a dead person in our kitchen.’

‘First thing Brian, do something about the smell. Then we’ll work out a plan. Do I have any credit left in the Bank?’

‘Oh Lots Sir the body was very cheap.’

‘That should have given you a clue. I though computers had brains the size of a planet’ I rinse my mouth out with stardust mouthwash. ‘And fix me a drink. A brandy should calm my stomach’

A little voice in my ear, not Brian’s, said ‘That was your chance.’