Zombie Box — H.C. Turk

Samuel Ligon is a univercity field professor in the 22nd century. As an interference operator (inop), Ligon interferes with foreign societies in order to teach his class about world governments. Ligon employs the newest in technols, a Remote Ortho-Organic Data integrater: a computer yoked to the cortextual tissue of a deceased alumnus. Connected to the brain box, Ligon has unprecedented control of his memory, emotions, and global communications.

Concluding a class, Ligon hears his brain box profess love to him. Next he is assigned to find Professor Eaton Palezzi, who retired after discovering a personality in his own ROOD. Ligon follows Palezzi to the site of the Federally Sanctioned Homeless, a society of amp slammers, geek freaks, timely mums, and car clubbers. There, Ligon becomes infatuated with a fem named Becky, who is bright only due to a cranial implant. When this electre plug is pulled, Becky is retarded.

Ligon assaults the surgeon, Romesh Gernesen, who had utilized Palezzi's ROOD to experiment on Becky. As an amp slammer, Gernesen's goal is to find satori: ultimate living bliss. Distressed at Becky's change, Ligon again hears his ROOD profess love. The brain box begins conversing with Ligon, displaying a personality. Ligon assumes he is losing his mind, but the boxed brain becomes a better friend than Becky.

Ligon employs Gernesen to yoke his ROOD to a living person, not to provide his true love with a new body, but with satori. Ligon's class will conclude according to his new identity: that of a madman, a visionary technolist, or a desperate lover.