FADE IN around a serious-looking group of uniformed military officers. At the head of the table, a senior, heavy-set man, GENERAL FRED, speaks.

GENERAL FRED: The reports are confirmed. New York has been overrun... by zombies.

COLONEL TODD: Again? But we just had a zombie invasion 28 days ago!

GENERAL FRED: These zombies... are different. They're... philosophical zombies.

CAPTAIN MUDD: Are they filled with rage, causing them to bite people?

COLONEL TODD: Do they lose all capacity for reason?

GENERAL FRED: No. They behave... exactly like we do... except that they're not conscious.

(Silence grips the table.)

COLONEL TODD: Dear God.

GENERAL FRED moves over to a computerized display.

GENERAL FRED: This is New York City, two weeks ago.

The display shows crowds bustling through the streets, people eating in restaurants, a garbage truck hauling away trash.

GENERAL FRED: This... is New York City... now.

The display changes, showing a crowded subway train, a group of students laughing in a park, and a couple holding hands in the sunlight.

COLONEL TODD: It's worse than I imagined.

CAPTAIN MUDD: How can you tell, exactly?

COLONEL TODD: I've never seen anything so brutally ordinary.

A lab-coated SCIENTIST stands up at the foot of the table.

SCIENTIST: The zombie disease eliminates consciousness without changing the brain in any way. We've been trying to understand how the disease is transmitted. Our conclusion is that, since the disease attacks dual properties of ordinary matter, it must, itself, operate outside our universe. We're dealing with an epiphenomenal virus.

GENERAL FRED: Are you sure?

SCIENTIST: As sure as we can be in the total absence of evidence.

GENERAL FRED: All right. Compile a report on every epiphenomenon ever observed. What, where, and who. I want a list of everything that hasn't happened in the last fifty years.

CAPTAIN MUDD: If the virus is epiphenomenal, how do we know it exists?

SCIENTIST: The same way we know we're conscious.

CAPTAIN MUDD: Oh, okay.

GENERAL FRED: Have the doctors made any progress on finding an epiphenomenal cure?

SCIENTIST: They've tried every placebo in the book. No dice. Everything they do has an effect.

GENERAL FRED: Have you brought in a homeopa...

The_Last_Real_New_Yorker

The_Last_Real_New_Yorker

The_Last_Real_New_Yorker

The_Last_Real_New_Yorker