"I'm still doing fine. No complaints here."
"Good too hear, good to hear indeed. Now the question of the hour is about reanimates. A few people have sent us messages to warn of new types, but we haven't had much luck confirming this. You're well traveled - is there anything we should be aware of?"
"Everything else in the zone is changing, that the reanimates are doing it too wouldn't be a surprise."
"Can you confirm any of these rumors? I would be especially interested if you can tell us anything about the type four - everyone seems to agree they exist, but no one has described them."
"Unfortunately, I'm in the same boat as everyone else on the type four."
"Can you at least explain why everyone seems so obsessed with them?"
"Think of the standard six as an army. Your basic type one is a cannon fodder grunt, as close to a basic soldier or movie ghoul as you get. The advanced variant is smarter, more experienced - a sergeant. Twos and Betas are kind of akin to attack dogs or helicopter troops. Well, they can't fly - fortunately - but they're damn good climbers. Next, we have the power armor and assault vehicles.One, two, three, alpha, beta, gamma. Most of you might know that as kappa though - they skipped six letters, but to their credit, who would be thinking of the Greek alphabet when encountering one for the first time?
"Very True"
"Now the type four, that fills in some of the gaps in the army metaphor. Who is in command? Logistics? Recruitment? We know that reanimates will retreat, but also tend to recover their losses and any other corpses they can grab. Where do they take them, and why? I've met a few people who claim to have been bitten without transforming. It very well could be the type four or its tentative delta sub-type would be what manufactures reanimates. Also, remember - if its indeed the nanotech vaccine behind this, those micro-bots don't work without outside command. Wearable computers the size of a small t-shirt are possible, ones the size of a thread tip - less so."
"Ever try to find one of these things?"
"I'm sure some have, but well - it seems rather like trying to find a heart of a wildfire after dousing yourself with napalm."
"That can't end well."
"Nope."
"OK, Type five then."
"I might have possibly seen a few."
"Such confidence of your own observations?"
"Type four would seem to fill the need for control. Type five fills the need for conspiracy."
"The need for conspiracy?"
"Remember a few years ago on the centennial of the so called Roswell crash? The government actually declassified a hundred something pages to show the thing was just an old jet stream motivated reconnaissance hot air balloon, even provided blueprints, in case you had a factory for producing old film cameras and developing agent on hand. The U-2 dragon lady wouldn't fly for another decade or so, satellite recon longer still, and they needed to watch the Russians and monitor nuclear tests out in Nevada. And yet, there still seemed to be people, four generations on, that are convinced the government was concealing aliens exist."
"If I may int-er-upt, No Citi-zen ev-er came to Earth Be-fore"
"I wasn't accusing you - I'm just setting up the point, "Reanimates came from Roswell on flying saucers?"
"Ah, ha, heh -a moment... No. But a lot of people believe the government is hiding something. That something like this could be an accident? Pretty far fetched."
"And the need to have planned ahead and make your own undead isn't?"
"A while back I had nothing but time on my hands and a roommate who bounced off the walls with this sort of stuff. If we can make nano target diseased cells and viruses, we can make it target healthy ones too. And if we can make cybernetics, from working limbs to eyes for the blind, then what is stopping us from making half robot-super soldiers?"
"As a doctor, I can tell you quite a few problems. To begin, a cyber eye still wouldn't have room for the necessary coolant to make an IR sensor, and even video links require an implanted processor and an external machine. As to limbs - most of those are a bit weaker than a natural one to avoid over-stressing anything. A super arm that can lift three hundred kilos attached to a normal spine is asking for sever injuries."
"Right, but there is sect that is going to think a reanimate is a perfect soldier, or at least an attempt at one. Lord knows we love the idea, as far back as Gilgamesh, Goliath, Hercules...Amazons. If you're going to fight a dirty war like the one in South America - an army that gains strength for every one of your or theirs killed and invokes more existential fear than national resistance is great. As for fighting aliens when resources are limited - something that doesn't need weapons or logistics seems great."
"We seem to be running short on time, so quickly - do you belive these things are a product of science gone wrong?"
"I don't think governments and bureaucracies are that competent. I don't think an individual would have the resources or knowledge. If it can't be one person, and it can't be a group well - I guess you can't blame anyone, and just have to play it as it lays."
"Alright. Well, thank you again KC for your time, and thank you to our listeners. If you've got questions or comments, find a way to sen them our way."
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