Credit: Veer Images

Outside the boxlike walls of the apartment, test sirens wailed the noon hour.

So. Morning was gone, no income to show for it, and Kevin would be home for lunch all too soon. Serani flipped to the last page of the yellowed paperback, ran her finger across the connect-the-dots mildew spots, and savored the last words…"it is a far, far better thing I do...."

The rest she recited in her head, by heart. She sniffed the realpaper deeply before replacing the worn tome on the waist-high wall of books which lined three of the four edges of their five-meter studio-cube.

Five credits worth of Kona-style coffee had grown cold by her elbow. She tossed it into the recycle chute, cup and all. The resource credit panel above the hatch registered plus three for the contribution.

Still, their balance remained precariously low, two or three days at best, and she'd spent the entire morning with Dickens instead of working, instead of contributing her own intellectual property to the world. Living this close to the edge sucked.

She ignored the growl in her stomach. Kevin would be home from the flix at two, wanting a decent lunch as soon as he registered his review. Well, she'd better have some IP points to show for her own day. She touched her readpad and tapped straight into the new novel posts.

By habit, she scanned only the top of the heap, uploads only moments old. As long as her review made to the top ten, early bird getting the worm and all that, the intellectual property points would add a decent margin to their resource credit balance. Pay for supper, at least.

Serani was a quick reader. Inside a couple hours, she'd have her typical fair and funny review posted, and her regular fans would be alerted. With over four thousand subscribers to her reviews, she was bound to get a credit surge. Still, probably not enough to buy Kevin a sparkling present. Tomorrow was the third anniversary of their domestic partners contract. So far, so good.

Precious seconds ticked by while she looked for an opening that stood out above the dreck. She gave the would-be authors five sentences to hook her or she moved on. Her subscribers appreciated her tight standards for a good read. That's what they paid her for, after all. Two IP points a hit for book reviews. Yes, here. This one was promising. And short.

The woman placed her hand on the detective's desk. It remained there as she paced the room, flakes of skin dropping from her slender calves to the dingy brown office carpet.

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice," she said, her voice soft and moist.

"When did you say you were murdered?" Bensen asked. Damn. He didn't remember her calling. He searched his desk for a notepad, hoping he had scribbled a name. She looked fresh for a zombie, maybe only a week in the grave. The trail would still be warm.

"This morning," she answered. "He came from behind. I never knew what hit me." She lifted her hat, revealing a mass of tangled hair, skull fragments, and severely rearranged grey matter. Soil sprinkled the oak desk. "He musta had the grave ready."

When the readpad chimed the quarter hour for the sixth time, Serani was halfway through her review. In brief: less dreadful than most, a memorable hero - the detective with short-term memory loss - and a clever handle on dialogue. Plus zombies. They always went for zombies. She was out 10 resource credits to download the novel plus one RC to post her review. With today's IP-RC exchange rate hovering around 120, she hoped to be profitable within half an hour. To title it now - something to pull in the casual skimmers as well as her subscribers: "Hot zombie or cold case?" Yes. That would do.