I turned the fan on high and did my best to cope with the changes. While I waited for the dog to contact me again I searched DeadWeb for pictures of those people preserved in peat bogs, for purely prurient interest, of course. When you're dead, you settle for a different kind of porn. Scarabs crawled in and out of my bandages. An irregularly shaped window containing a canine face popped up on my screen and refused to be minimized.
"DogStar, I haven't heard from you in a while. I got so much to ask you."
"Bogpeople? Smum, is this what you call research?"
"Heh, well, I thought I'd learn about my culture. Or something. Hey, I installed this card that the Swedes sent me and my computer got really hot. I'm a little worried."
"Don't worry about it. Unless there's a fire. Then, worry about it. Fine. Let's gets some stuff done. Where did you put your canopic containers?"
"Uh, coptic containers, wos that?"
"Whatever you put your organs in when you went through mummification. Remember, the instructions in the kit told you to store them?"
"The instructions were kind of sketchy, they were in old Norse or something, but I've got them in the fridge."
"Go get em."
I'm more than happy to have dogs go tell me to fetch stuff. "Alright." I shlumped off to my fridge that still had some moldering food that I wasn't interested in eating now that my guts had been sucked out.
"Here they are." I held them up to the light. It didn't look anything like what I put in there.
"Open the jars. They should be ready."
My bandages kept slipping on the jars, but I eventually got them open. "Grar! They smell something horrible."
"Good. They've been undergoing fermentation-cybernutization."
"Should I toss em out?"
"No! Don't even think of it. I haven't brought you all this way just to see you throw out your only chance."
"Why didn't you tell me before how important this was? Good thing I haven't cleaned out that icebox in 2 years, or they'd be in the Hyenaville landfill by now."
"It's not like you're my only client. I got transmigrators, more than one mummy, dozens of zombies-- zombies are always big--"
"One day you'll tell me what your job is."
"I'm a facilitator. Look, you're going to need what's in those jars. They are a kind of data storage. Keep them nearby at all times. They don't have to be refrigerated. And why are you so squeamish? Look at you. Sitting around in the same bandages you had on last time I called."
"So this rotten crap is a computer?"
"It is a sort of device, an organic device, genetically linked to you. It communicates with the Bjornix operating system on this computer."
"But there aren't any cables."
"Doesn't need them. Your old Cranium 586 now throws off all manner of electromagnetism, most of it meaningful to stuff around you. Like those scarabs, they take all their orders from this system. Good, we just got verification of system integrity. I'm uploading information to them now."
"OK, and now my brains and liver are soaking in information."
"No, not your brains. Your brains went out the waste tube. You don't need them."
"Why not?"
"Too many preconceptions. Your old brains would just slow you down."