bobdylan5

Self-Diagnosis
By Michael S. Walker

The zombie sat down at his computer monitorhe had put it off long enough. Stiffly, and with one rotten green finger, he typed his search word in the box at Google.Com:
Self-Diagnosis. Maybe there was someone on the Internet that could help him with his uhh...particular problem. As he slowly typed, he could see his face reflected in the mirror that hung over his deskthe few strands of hair remaining on top of his head, the eyes hooded and glazed over. At the side of his neck was a large gaping wound, now brown and congealed and, although it didnt hurt anymore, the zombie was certain it could stand some medical attention. Actually, the wound was now the least of his worries. The fact that he seemed to have no heartbeat and was now feeling a constant craving for ummm certain taboo food substances had him very worried. It was too bad that he had absolutely no medical insurance at all. If he did, he would have made it to a hospital immediately. But he didnt. This was the best that he could do.
He finished typing and hit enter. Thank God he did have a high-speed Internet connectionit saved a lot of time. Immediately the results of his query came upthere were 6,000 web pages containing the term self-diagnosis. He was beginning to feel a little better already.
The zombie clicked on the first hypertext link that he saw. It was for a site called E-HELP ME SELF DIAGNOSIS.
Good, he gurgled as the site came up. Black bile came out of his mouth and dripped all over the keypad. Another distressing symptom. Something really had to be done.
The site was arranged in such a fashion that a patient could diagnose his illness in two ways. One was to click through a list of possible symptoms arranged by letter. The web page that he was on was already set at symptoms beginning with the letter A. Slowly, very slowly, he scanned some of these symptoms. Abdominal acheyes, but that could be attributed to hunger for...oh, best not to think about that right now. Abdominal bloating...he looked down at his stomach, barely covered by the tattered remains of a Blue Man Group tee shirt. Yes, there was a little bit of that...but he wasnt extremely worried about it. Best to move on to the next symptom. Abdominal cold feeling...yes, but he felt cold all over his body, not just in his abdomen alone...
The zombie shook his head. This could take forever. He decided to move on to option Bperhaps that would prove a little more helpful. There was a tiny graphic of a human body at the top of the page and a hypertext that read: Identify The Part Of Your Body Where You Are Experiencing Problems. The zombie moved the computer mouse around and clicked on this link. Several seconds passed, and then a much larger depiction of the human body materialized. There were little hypertext signs arranged around it, pointing to various parts of this two-dimensional rendering. Each sign was labeled with the name of the corresponding part: head/neck, mind, muscle, upper limbs, breast/thorax, abdomen, pelvis/hip, bone, joint, skin, lower limbs...and at the very bottom a sign that read: whole body. The zombie looked at this diagram, his black mouth hanging open. What to choose, what to choose...That seemed to be another symptom of his progressing illness: it was becoming increasingly difficult to make decisions about things. Finally, he opted for the whole body tag. That seemed to about cover it.
When the zombie clicked on this tag, another series of symptoms came up. With increasing frustration, he looked these over. Chest pain and congestive heart failure. Well, sorta. The zombie put his hand over his chest for the 100th time that day. Nothing. His heart had definitely failed. But that still didnt seem to fit the bill. Endolymphatic Hydrops? He didnt even know what the hell that was, so he skipped it. Failure to thrive...Yes, that was it! He was definitely suffering from a failure to thrive. The zombie gratefully clicked on this link.
An eternity seemed to pass as the page tried to load. Come on...come on... the zombie thought, tapping his rotten fingers on the table top and trying very hard not to think of ummm food. Give me something to work with here.
Finally, the page loaded. In the middle of the screen was this message:
Were sorry. In order to use this function, your computer must have Cookies enabled. Please go to your Internet Options first and turn on this function.
The zombie brought his fist down hard on the computer table, actually breaking the wood. In the process, the index finger of his right hand fell off and a dark viscous blood started to flow all over the table and drip on to the floor.
Bad...bad...bad... the zombie gurgled. More bile came out of his mouth. The zombie rose unsteadily from the swivel chair he had been sitting in, and shambled out into the hallway of his former house. Damned if he was going to give out his private information to any more computer companies, no matter how bad this thing was. He was just going to have to live with it...er, deal with it. He started toward the stairwell, trying with all his might not to think of the rosy ample flesh of his next-door neighbor, Bill Brasky.

The End.