Ellie Dixon

Kaboom

The next morning, me and Sophia were woken up by Dad and Carol. We got dressed before walking into the kitchen where everyone else already was. "Aye, there's the sleeping princesses. Took you guys long enough." Jacob commented.

"Girls take forever to get ready." Carl commented.

"Okay, I'm going back to bed." I started turning around but Sophia took my hand and dragged me to the table. Everyone laughed at us as I sat down groggily. I looked over to Glenn. "Glenn, you look worse than the walkers outside." I said and everyone laughed causing him to groan. Jacqui was by his side and comfortingly rubbing his back.

"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing-" Dale started.

"But you will anyways." Edwin nodded.

"We didn't come here for the eggs." Andrea agreed.

We went back to that big room with all the computers. "Vi, playback TS-19." Edwin told the computer as the biggest screen in the room turned on.

"Playback of TS-19." Vi replied.

"Very few people ever got a chance to see this." Edwin turned to us. It showed us some form of X-ray of a head.

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked.

"An extraordinary one. Not that it matters in the end." Edwin confirmed. I went over and stood by my dad, leaning my tired body into his side as he put his hand on my shoulder. "Take us in for EIV." Edwin ordered.

"Enhanced internal view." Vi stated. 

The computer zoomed into the brain, everything was blue and there were glowing lights. "What are those lights?" Shane asked.

"It's a person's life... Experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring... All those ripples of light, is you. The thing that makes you unique. And human." Edwin responded.

"You don't make sense? Ever?" Dad questioned.

"Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death." Edwin replied.

"Death? That's what this is? A vigil?" Rick interrogated.

"Yes." The doctor was staring at the screen like it was amazing. "Or rather the playback of a vigil."

"This person died?" Andrea asked. "Who?"

"Test subject nineteen." Edwin answered. "Someone who was bitten and infected and volunteered to have us record the process... Vi, scan forward to the first event."

"Scanning to first event." The computer repeated.

The computer changed to still an X-ray view of the side of someone's head, so we could see the brain. At the stem we could see this black goo like stuff, it slowly spread throughout the brain. "What is that?" Glenn asked.

"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands haemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs." The person was fidgeting a lot, their mouth kept opening and closing before they stopped moving all together and the brain went fully black. "Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be... Gone."

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked Carol.

"Yes." Carol responded with a head nod, before grabbing her daughter's hand.

"Daddy." I looked up to him, I'm not sure what I wanted, I was just scared of that happening to anyone.

"Come here." Dad picked me up, so I wrapped my legs around his waist and rested my head on his shoulder.