Pilot was bored.

He looked up to where Snippy crouched against the broken slab of concrete, back turned, watching the street up ahead through the scope of his rifle. Pilot hated being sent on missions with Snippy. All he ever did was boss you around. "Pilot, don't touch that, it's toxic." "Get down from there Pilot, it's not safe." "Pilot, call it off! Pilot! IT'S EATING MY LEG!" He smiled fondly remembering this last adventure. There was at least a bit of fun when he could bring Photoshop.

Today it had been nothing but "Be quiet, Pilot!" for the last half-hour.

He had occupied himself by drawing with a gloved finger in the dust. He had already drawn Photoshop and some of her worm friends, and a boat and a tree and a crashed car and an aeroplane soaring high above… and standing on a hill with the sun rising behind him was the Captain, watching over his scribbly and oddly-proportioned domain. Now he was adding more detail to the Captain's uniform, tracing a tiny star above the peak of his hat. He began to hum softly.

"Pilot, shhhh!" at once Snippy turned his head to silence him. Pilot glared at him, then returned to his drawing. He drew Snippy, goggle lids turned up in anguish as he disappeared into the jaws of the biggest worm. He added some limbs sticking out of the creature's mouth at random angles for emphasis.

Snippy, meanwhile, was thinking.

There were two corpses standing at the far end of the street. Corpses in the sense that they were dead – well, mostly dead – but these particular corpses did not seem to have been informed of this fact and they had an aggravating habit of walking around.

They were old ANNET users, brains extinguished just like everyone else when the bombs fell. But something had, for want of a better word, reanimated them, provided a small electrical charge which had jolted the little blue headbands – and by extension, the neurons to which they were connected- back to life. The power plants had fallen into disrepair along with the whole infrastructure of the city but Gromov theorised that if these individuals had fallen out in the open, a lightning storm could have provided the necessary power.

How horror-movie could you get?

The devices retained only vestiges of their former programming, compelling their hosts (now functionally brain-dead) to buy, buy, buy in a vain attempt to fill the yawning emptiness of a futile, meaningless existence under the Good Directorate's crushing consumerist regime. They wandered over the city, unsleeping, not allowing even their lifeless state to interfere with their search.

There was probably a message in that somewhere.

Right now, Snippy was not concerned with the philosophy of the situation. He was thinking about survival. A few close encounters – close in every sense of the word – had taught him that they were not amicable to other life forms; he wasn't sure what the imperative was that drove them to pursue, to hunt, to grasp, but somehow it made sense. Even while more-alive, those connected to the ANNET system - which included, eventually, everyone - had this inexplicable wish to assimilate you, plug you into the grid, watch your every thought, keep you where they could manage you and millions of other citizens without the hassle of personal contact.

He recalled the meetings he had had when they first brought the system online and found that it did not work on him – it hadn't surprised him, things always seemed to find a way to go wrong where he was concerned, but he hadn't realised that it would be such a big thing. There had followed endless scans, neuropsychiatry, medical exams and probing questions about cranial trauma suffered during childhood. There was none; the scans all came up normal and the evidence suggested his brain was perfectly healthy, but that annoyed them all the more. They seemed determined to find some defect so they could "fix" him or draw a line under him for good. They were increasingly angry not just at the situation but at him, as though he were expecting special treatment, being purposefully difficult. They proposed exploratory surgery; he refused. And so he remained in a dead-end job, perpetually tired and unable to afford sleep, with bizarre and terrible recurring nightmares and constant headaches from the transmission towers. And even now they were still after him, still reaching out for him to take him into their loving dead hands and plug him into their network. He had no desire to find out what would happen if they succeeded.

Beside him Pilot had begun to murmur as he drew in the dust. "Pilot, shhhh!" Immediately Snippy regretted his outburst, realising he had made far more noise than Pilot with his gentle crooning. Why the hell did people use "shhh" to mean "be quiet"? Sibilants are the loudest noises there are. The aviator gave him a look filled with hate before returning to his scrawling.

He considered his options again. Two wasn't a problem. He could easily take them out from here; what he was worried about was the noise. Deeply devoted to the concept of social contact, presumably terrified of being left alone with their non-thoughts for even a few minutes, and lacking a signal strong enough to carry great distances they always travelled in groups, and the report from his rifle was sure to attract more. These others would be nearby and Snippy didn't want to risk choosing the wrong street to get out of the area; there were too many hiding places and a seemingly deserted street could easily become a death-trap with the makings of an instant horde emerging from ruined doorways and lying in wait behind piles of debris.

But he was running out of time to wait and discern the best escape route. If approached from behind they would be in plain sight. And he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep Pilot quiet.

This was the result of something I tried to write from Pilot's perspective, but it ended up jumping around a lot, hence the astonishingly lazy title. Exciting adventures to come. Well, mildly interesting adventures, anyway.

And I know that's a very - let's say dubious, for the sake of the rating - explanation of the ANNET-zombies, and that it makes no sense whatsoever, but I wanted something other than mutants. Everything's better with zombies! But you can pretend they're mutants if you have some kind of mutant predilection. I'm not going to judge you.

Out loud.