Free All the Dead Are Here by Pete Bevan Page A

and may not be one hundred percent accurate, but I can ensure that none of the errors are dangerous. Would that suffice?”
    “We’ll try that then,” said John.
    Cadish was stunned, the meat creature, knowing that the solution would not be perfect, was willing to complete the task anyway! Oh to have such uncertainty, oh to have a wild stab in the dark without calculating the trillions of possible outcomes! Cadish deliberately ignored both linear time and non-linear time, he didn’t want to know what would happen next. It was so exciting. It negotiated with the Nanodes who complained bitterly at the amount of work involved. He promised them a reward for their hard work and loyalty and they agreed.
    John watched the screen intensely as broken glass rose from the floor, millions of pieces coalescing together, forming a white hot ball of glass before stretching out to the size of the window it came from. It drifted back into place, cooling rapidly as it went. A car rolled onto its wheels before the panels buckled out to their former shape, the wing mirror flew in from the left of the image and re-attached itself and it glided gently into the parking spot from which it came. John and Cadish watched in awe as the scene unfolded, in fact, if it wasn’t for the reaction of the people watching the scene it would just look like a film in reverse. After a couple of minutes, the Nanodes reported in.
    “99.14% correct realignment of damage,” reported Cadish, proudly.
    “What about the 0.8 or whatever is left?” asked John.
    “Of the incorrect realignments the most severe is a tree in Idaho which has the DNA of a horse. It will not be a problem... As long as the DNA has no muscle stem cells, of course.”
    “Right,” said John, trying to imagine the horse-tree running free across the plains of Idaho. He shook his head and got back to business.
    “Last thing, Cadish. All the dead are going to rot and cause horrific diseases, can you remove all the bodies? Dispose of them?” asked John. Cadish didn’t answer but on screen all the Zombies corpses instantly bubbled, grew into a sort of small mossy hill then disintegrated into the Earth.
    “Next?” asked Cadish.
    “Next? Well the last thing I think is to return me home isn’t it?” said John.
    “Oh,” said Cadish.
    “What?”
    “It would be unwise, JohnKendall, for your species to know my name / nomenclature / power / existence. I’m afraid you cannot go homeworld,” said Cadish, quite saddened by this turn of events, and the fact that JohnKendall was going to leave this mess a lot less tidily resolved than Cadish would have liked.
    “Cadish. Look up ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘alien abduction’,” said John.
    “Oh,” said Cadish “They will think you are insane/nutty/mad-in-da-heid/not well.”
    “Yes. That is why I’m not going to tell anyone about this.”
    Cadish thought for a while before agreeing. It had considered the possibility of putting John in his subspace Zoo, but felt this would be a bit unkind given all the help - and fun - he had provided.
    “Well, JohnKendall, it has been an absolute pleasure to meet you.” The blade and rod hand shot up and shook John’s hand enthusiastically.
    “Er, and you,” said John, taking care to not cut his fingers on the vicious looking blades and rods that shook his hand.
    “I’m sorry about all that erm, all those erm, well I’m sorry anyway,” said Cadish, and he meant it, it had been quite the strangest visit he had made to anywhere in a long time.
    “Oh that’s ...ok,” said John. Ok? Ok! He had lost his girlfriend and his best mate. God only knew who else and here he was saying it’s ok like Cadish was a seven foot tall body-builder who had spilt his beer in the pub. It didn’t pay to antagonise body-builders and John concluded that Cadish was a lot more powerful than a body-builder in the pub.
    John stood there awkwardly for a moment.”Well then, ’bye,” he said hopefully. He waved his