In a future where everyone’s immortal, murders are easy to solve after the victim wakes up. But when dead bodies stay dead, unending life gets complicated for Detective Harry Sordido. We here at Mothership Zeta very much enjoyed Marina J. Lostetter’s future reminiscent of Hitchhiker’s Guide and hope you do too. “Imma Gonna Finish You Off” was first published in Galaxy’s Edge magazine, January 2014 and aired in Escape Pod episode 501, narrated by Alasdair Stuart, on July 28, 2015.
Imma Gonna Finish You Off
by Marina J. Lostetter
On the examining table lounged a body. It was an unremarkable body–rather wrinkly, with an inordinate amount of hair in all the wrong places and too few clothes for most people’s liking, but otherwise nothing to write your congressman about. The only thing special about the body was that it was dead–a problem that Detective Harry Sordido hoped would resolve itself quite soon.
“Will he just get on with the coming back to life already?” Harry huffed, checking the glowing numbers embedded in his left wrist. With his right hand, he patted his ample, middle-aged girth. “He’s not the only victim I’ve got to question today.”
“I’m not sure what’s the matter with him,” said the medical examiner, lifting the dead man’s wrist between two thin fingers. “He should have let out a nice scream-of-life by now.” He let the limb flop back to the sanitary paper.
“What do you think it was?” asked the detective, “Accidental? Experimental? Purposeful? What do you think he died of?”
“You’ll have to ask him to be sure. He was found out on the sidewalk. No indications of violence or a struggle, but he does look a tad flaccid.”
“Ah, disgruntled lover, then.”
“No, I mean on the whole. Like he’s been wrung out.”
They both stared at the body for a long while.
“You don’t think he’s really–?” began Detective Sordido.
“It is starting to seem a bit permanent.”
“That’s impossible! No one’s really died for damned near a millennium.”
The examiner shrugged. “There’s a first time for every eventuality.”