Dave Is Dead (Again) by Richard Jones

Dave Is Dead (Again) by Richard Jones

“Dave is dead again,” said Audra.

“Jesus Christ, really?” said Leonard, briefly resting his face in his hands, elbows on his desk. “What happened this time?”

“He was hoisting a big column, and he was standing underneath it, and…”

Leonard held his hand up. He had heard the bang, but you always heard bangs in a steel plant. Dave, presumably, had been underneath the column and had not secured the load carefully, both of which were safety violations, a thing Dave was prone to committing.

“How bad is it?” Leonard asked.

“It’s not too terrible. There’s a lot of blood but he’s mostly intact. We’ll get him into the thing, we just need your code.”

Leonard got up. “Fine, let’s do it.”

They’d already put Dave’s body in the NecroSoft 3000 by the time he got there. A trail of blood led up to it from where the column had killed him. His ruined clothes were in the nearby trash bin; you were supposed to have minimal foreign materials when resurrecting someone in the machine. Through the darkened glass, Dave still wore a look of surprised confusion not dissimilar to the look of confusion he had on his face most of the time he was alive.

Dinh, the maintenance supervisor, was waiting patiently by the NecroSoft’s control panel. Both his and Leonard’s codes were needed to operate it; it’s just how the machine worked, for some reason, and as they had to pay NecroSoft fifteen hundred dollars a pop, it was a good safeguard.

Other employees crowded around, as Dave emerging from the machine had become a popular sight. This was the fourth time they’d had to bring him back to life since Dave had come to work at Orange Road Steel just four months before. He was the only person to have ever died on the job there.

Dinh looked irritated. “This is getting a little silly,” he said.

“Aw, Dave’s a good guy,” said someone from the crowd.

“Alright, alright, everyone,” Leonard called out. “Don’t you have work to do?”

No one moved.

Audra, whose HR duties necessitated it, addressed the crowd, saying “This should not be taken as meaning you should ignore safety requirements. The NecroSoft is not a toy and if you’re injured it’ll still hurt and will impact your performance bonus.”

“Davey’s gonna have start paying the company,” chortled someone.

Leonard glared in the direction of the heckler, then sighed, turned to the machine and punched in his code. Dinh entered his own.

The machine began its low, ominous hum. The noise went louder and louder. As the volume reached its zenith, Leonard and Dinh stepped back, nervous, even though reviving Dave wasn’t new. There was a tremendous flash of light from inside, casting shadow throughout the factory, and a blast of steam shot out the top.

The door opened, and Dave stepped out, naked as a jaybird. His co-workers clapped and cheered.

“Oh man, did I have to go in the machine again?” asked Dave, looking around in befuddlement with his dingus flapping around. Audra rushed to wrap a blanket around him. When she did, everyone booed.

“Get back to work,” Leonard said, and he walked back to his office, rubbing his temples.

“Man, that thing was heavy!” said Dave.

& & &

A few weeks later Leonard was pouring himself a coffee in the break room when the lights briefly dimmed. That’s odd, he thought. It was a sunny day, no storms when he’d been outside.

A few moments later, two workers – Tyrone and Jenny – went by the hallway carrying a body that was still smoking. Jenny saw him and said as they went by, “Hey, Leonard. Dave’s dead again.”

“Oh my God,” Leonard said, and he chased them out into the hallway.

In front of the NecroSoft 3000, Tyrone dropped his end of Dave so he could open up the door. His end was the end with Dave’s head, which hit the ground with a sickening thud. “Jesus, careful!” yelled Leonard.

Tyrone shrugged. “He’s not getting any deader, Mr. Jesson.”

Leonard supposed that was true. “So what this time?”

As Tyrone and Jenny started yanking off Dave’s clothes, Tyrone said “He forgot to turn off the power to the brake press and went fiddling inside it for some reason.”

“Why the hell was Dave fiddling around in a machine? He’s not a mechanic!”

“I dunno, boss, ask him when we bring him back to life.”

A crowd was assembling, and Dinh trudged up. He didn’t even say anything to Leonard, he just punched his code in. Leonard did as well. Audra addressed the crowd. “This should not be taken as meaning you should ignore safety requirements. The NecroSoft is not a toy and if you’re injured it’ll still hurt and will impact your performance bonus.” She was getting very practiced at her speech.

The machine hummed and flashed, and out stepped Dave, no longer sizzling, but entirely nude, until Audra got the blanket over him.

Dave said “Whoa! That was crazy… oh, hi, Leonard!”

“Hello, Dave,” Leonard sighed.

& & &

For the next two weeks, Dave wasn’t allowed out on the factory floor. Leonard desperately wanted to fire him, but Audra explained that this would require submitting Dave-related safety incident reports to the Ministry of Labour, which might affect Orange Road’s insurance rates. Anyway, everyone liked Dave. So, instead, Leonard ordered that Dave re-watch every safety video relevant to his job and some that weren’t. Audra lined up every online video they had access to. It only took Dave a week to watch them all but Leonard insisted he watch them all twice.

The first Tuesday Dave was back on the floor, he got himself crushed in the plate bender.

“I don’t even understand how he got himself in there!” yelled Leonard. The crowd didn’t mind. Leonard’s exasperation was becoming a part of the show. Two workers dumped what was left of Dave out of a waste bin and into the NecroSoft 3000. “He’s not even supposed to be working on that machine!”

“He wanted to see what the rollers felt like when they were spinning,” said someone in the crowd, “and he had strawberry jam on his hands so he was sticky.”

Dinh glared at Leonard. “My guys and I are gonna spend all afternoon cleaning other parts of Dave out of the bender. Which is a health hazard itself and a waste of time. Leonard, ya gotta do something about this guy. I like him too and he was fun doing that dance at the Christmas party until he fell off the scissor lift and broke his head open, but come on.”

The crowd, whom Leonard didn’t have the energy to yell at, started to chant “Dave! Dave! Dave!”

Audra held up her hands to them and began, “This should not be taken as meaning you should ignore safety requirements. The NecroSoft is not a toy…”

“THEY KNOW! Let’s just do this and I’m gonna go home early,” said Leonard. He punched in his code.

Dinh punched in his, but the machine beeped. Dinh looked at it, confused, and tried again. More angry beeping.

“What’s wrong?” Leonard asked. “Didn’t we get enough of him into the machine?”

Dinh frowned and began typing away at the control panel. “Got more than half of him in there, that’s all you need…” Leonard and Audra crowded behind him, entirely unhelpfully. At length, Dinh said, “Error code 71, DNA scan notes recommended number of five revivals exceeded for employee.”

The crowd started booing.

Leonard was panicked. This would be immensely expensive. “So we can’t revive him again?”

“No, we can. I can override the warning. It just says it’s recommended we don’t.”

“A recommendation is just a suggestion. Bring him back.”

Moments later, Dave stepped out of the NecroSoft, clad only in his birthday suit, saying “Did I get stuck in the bendy thing?” to the thunderous cheers and applause of the staff of Orange Road Steel.

& & &

 For the next few weeks, things at Orange Road were almost normal, which is to say that Dave’s continued employment was a constant source of low-grade anxiety for Leonard. Audra insisted, though, that Dave was doing better. But the inevitable finally happened on a Tuesday, heralded by a tremendous crash from the loading bay, followed by the familiar sound of the emergency air horn, or “The Dave Siren,” according to a hand-drawn sign someone had posted above it.

Leonard found Tyrone standing over the wreckage of a forklift, which was lying on its side in a puddle of hydraulic fluid and Dave fluid next to a badly dented steel press. “Don’t tell me,” Leonard said.

“He was in a rush to get to coffee break, and stole it. I’d told him he wasn’t allowed near a forklift,” Tyrone said. “So, Dave is dead again.”

“It’s not even close to coffee break!”

“Well, Dave’s not great at telling time,” shrugged Tyrone.

They managed to pry Dave out from under the roll cage. He was significantly flatter than he had been that morning.

Five minutes later, an impatient crowd was gathered around everyone’s favourite subscription-based resurrection device. A few had come wearing DAVE IS RISEN! T-shirts but Audra had made them go change. Dinh glowered at the control panel.

“It’s not letting me just override it this time,” he grumbled, stabbing a finger at the screen. “It wants a multi-step confirmation.”

On the screen, a message flashed in angry red letters: WARNING: SUBJECT REVIVAL COUNT (7) EXCEEDS RECOMMENDED PARAMETERS. NECROSOFT LLC. ASSUMES NO LIABILITY FOR ONTOLOGICAL ANOMALIES. PROCEED?

“What the hell is an ontological anomaly?” Leonard asked Audra, who hadn’t bothered with the speech this time.

“Probably something that affects our worker’s comp rates,” she whispered back. “Just hit yes.”

Dinh, rolling his eyes, had to press the “YES” button three times and type a short acknowledgment before the machine reluctantly started up.

The hum, the flash, the steam. The door opened. The employees of Orange Road Steel cheered like Dave had just single handedly won the Super Bowl.

Dave stepped out, naked and bewildered. He looked down at his hands, then at Leonard. For a moment, his posture was impossibly straight, his gaze clear and ancient.

“Aham brahmasmi! Sarvam khalvidam brahma,” he said, his voice resonating with a strange, deep timbre.

He blinked, and the moment was gone. He gave everyone the happy, carefree grin of a total dope. “Whoa. Was I driving the tippy thing again?”

& & &

The next day, Audra buzzed Leonard on the intercom. “There’s a Mr. Chandra on line two for you. Says he’s from NecroSoft’s Post-Mortem Integrity Division.”

Leonard picked up the phone. “Leonard Jesson speaking.”

“Mr. Jesson,” said a calm, precise voice. “My name is Raj Chandra. I’m calling because our remote monitoring team has flagged a seventh revival on a single subject signature at your facility. A Mr. Dave.”

“Our equipment usage is a private matter,” Audra said sharply on the speakerphone.

“Ordinarily, yes,” Mr. Chandra replied smoothly. “But our recommendations exist for a reason, Ms. Tadesco. Repeated reconstitution frays the tether, so to speak. It creates… discrepancies. You wouldn’t want to keep bothering Yama, would you? Chitragupta keeps very meticulous records.”

“Who?” Leonard asked.

“Er, uh, forget I said that. I mean, we like to help our customers with cost control, and you do understand each resurrection entails a charge for use of our servers,” Chandra said. “Some doors are best left revolving only so many times. To, uh, save money, of course. Thank you for your business. Have a pleasant afternoon.” The line went dead.

Leonard and Audra stared at each other. “What the hell was that?” Leonard finally asked.

“Sounds like a sales pitch for an extended warranty,” Audra decided.

& & &

The eighth death was Dave’s most spectacular. He had been assigned to clean the breakroom, a task Leonard had assumed was impossible to screw up. Dave, however, saw a stubborn grease stain on the side of a large, full acetylene tank waiting to be installed. He decided the best tool for the job was to burn it off with an arc welder. The resulting explosion blew out every window in the office wing and sent the breakroom microwave hurtling across the parking lot. Miraculously, no one else was hurt.

This time, after the buckets of Dave had been dumped into the machine, the NecroSoft 3000 demanded Dinh type a full, case-sensitive code: I_ACCEPT_ALL_LEGAL_AND_ METAPHYSICAL_LIABILITY.

Leonard couldn’t help but notice that many of the rapt spectators were not people he recognized, and he realized some employees might be bringing in friends and family to watch.

“Dave,” the crowd began. “Dave! Dave! Dave!”

The machine shuddered violently during its cycle. Leonard wondered if the warranty was still good. When the door opened, Dave stepped out. He was still Dave, but an improved Dave. His usual potbelly was gone, replaced with the faint outline of a six-pack. His shoulders were broader, and he looked at least an inch taller.

The crowd of workers let out an appreciative murmur. Audra, rushing forward with the blanket, giggled.

Dave looked down at his new physique, mildly curious. “Man, that was a loud bang,” he said. “Did I do that?”

& & &

The reports started trickling into Leonard’s office the next morning. They were small things, at first.

Jenny from shipping stopped by. “Leonard, this is weird, but I saw Dave staring at that vending machine that’s been broken for a month, and a bag of Doritos just fell out. He didn’t even touch it.”

Later, Tyrone came in. “Leonard, do we have anything radioactive on site?”

Leonard, confused, said “Gosh, no.”

“I swear, Dave was kinda glowing a little.”

The final report of the day came from Dinh, who walked into Leonard’s office, sat down heavily without being invited, and stared into the middle distance for a full minute.

“Dinh? Are you okay?”

Dinh slowly turned to Leonard, his eyes wide. “I was on the loading dock. Dave was sitting on a pallet, eating a sandwich. A squirrel ran down a hydro line, climbed down the wall, and scurried right up his leg.”

“Okay…” Leonard said, bracing himself.

“It stood up on his shoulder, Leonard.”

“That’s not a big deal, maybe he had peanut butter or something,” Leonard said. “You know how he wipes his hands on his clothes.”

“And it saluted him.” 

Leonard decided Dinh was just overworked and offered him the rest of the day off.

& & &

The ninth death was almost elegant in its simplicity. Dave, now beloved by the local fauna, had taken to feeding the factory pigeons during his lunch break. On this particular Thursday, he decided to share his sandwich with a bird perched on a high steel beam forty feet above the factory floor. Forsaking the safety of the catwalk, he attempted to tightrope-walk along a narrow I-beam to reach his feathered friend. He was waving cheerfully to his coworkers below right up until the moment he lost his footing. The fall was brief and, for Dave, conclusively fatal.

Standing by the NecroSoft 3000, before a crowd of employees that this time had thought to bring signs and Dave-themed baseball caps, Audra looked unusually troubled. “Leonard, I don’t know about this one,” she whispered to him, watching Dinh’s team load the mangled remains into the chamber. “People are saying he was waving right before he fell. Waving and smiling. That it almost looked intentional.”

“Audra, are you suggesting Dave killed himself just to get a free light show and a new blanket?” Leonard asked, rubbing the spot between his eyes where a permanent migraine had taken up residence. “He’s not smart enough to be suicidal.”

“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” she said, unfolding the blanket, “but I know his self-reported near-miss forms are all in some other language with letters I don’t recognize.”

Standing by the NecroSoft 3000, before a happy crowd now so large it included a hot dog vendor someone had let in, the familiar process began. Dinh’s team had finished loading the remains, and Dinh himself, looking bored, overrode the machine’s frantic, full-screen warning about “Cumulative Soul Degradation.”

The machine groaned, making entirely new sounds. Under the mechanical grinding and electrical hums and cracks, Leonard briefly thought he heard that throat singing sound he’d seen on a documentary about monks in the Himalayas. The door opened, and Dave emerged.

The crowd cheered, but the cheer died in their throats with a collective gasp.

The nudity was the same, but that’s where the similarities ended. He was… perfect. Not just healed, but curated. His skin was flawless, his posture was that of royalty, and his eyes, once a dull, confused blue, were now the deep violet of a twilight sky. He didn’t walk so much as glide from the chamber, his feet seeming to hover a fraction of an inch above the concrete before settling. He looked at his own perfect hands with serene curiosity.

The crowd made an appreciative “ooooooh” sound.

“The fall was instructive,” Dave said, his voice a calm, resonant baritone. Finally, his co-workers burst into cheering and the usual “Dave! Dave!” chants. Audra rushed forward with the blanket, and as she wrapped it around him, he gave her a gentle, all-knowing smile that made her blush.

& & &

The call came the next morning. “Mr. Chandra again,” Audra announced over the intercom.

“Mr. Jesson,” Chandra’s voice was no longer smooth. It was tight, strained. “I’m legally obligated to inform you that your facility’s usage has triggered a Tier 4 metaphysical audit. You are, well, you are fraying end-user license agreement of a human soul… er, I mean, that you agreed to when we installed your unit.”

“What are you talking about?” Leonard demanded, who was already reeling over reports that Dave had cured the receiving supervisor’s gout.

Chandra sounded perturbed. “We’re detecting unauthorized escalations! Reverberations! Your subject signature is drawing attention from entities not covered in your standard service plan! You are creating a significant and frankly untrackable liability on a cosmic scale! For the love of all that is holy and billable, make him follow the safety guidelines!” The line went dead.

& & &

Leonard called a meeting. Soon, he and Audra sat opposite Dave, who was smiling beatifically, a half-eaten honey cruller in his hand.

“Dave, we need to talk about your accidents,” Leonard began.

Dave took a bite of his donut. Sprinkles spilled onto this shirt. “There are no accidents, Leonard. Only the universe correcting its posture.”

Audra slid papers across the table. “Dave, while we appreciate your new focus on personal improvement, your Lost Time Incident frequency is becoming a real bear for our Q3 metrics. I need you to sign this performance improvement plan.”

Dave picked up the pen. “The vessel must adhere to the patterns of the vessel’s world. For now.” He signed his name. It wasn’t his signature; it was a complex, beautiful, and oddly disturbing sigil. He stood up, gave them both his serene smile, and asked, “Is it chili day?”

& & &

Dave’s tenth death was clearly deliberate. His only task was to sweep metal filings near the electric arc furnace. The morning crew watched, silent, transfixed and hopeful, as Dave calmly swept every last particle into a neat pile, dumped the pile over the edge into the 2500-degree crucible of molten steel, and then gave a cheerful wave to Tyrone before hopping in after it. He was a cinder before they could pull him out.

Leonard ran to the scene, staring at charcoal briquette that was once, or arguably still was, Dave. “That’s it,” he breathed. “No more. We are not putting this into the NecroSoft. We’re calling the police!”

Audra was already there, flipping through a thick three-ring binder. “I can’t authorize that, Leonard,” she said, not looking up. “Policy 7B, clearly states all on-site fatalities are to be processed through NecroSoft channels. I’ve checked. There’s no work instruction for ‘employee sublimated into fundamental elements’. We have to follow procedure. Think of the paperwork. It could affect our next third party safety audit.”

& & &

The crowd was assembled and was now at least twice the size of Orange Road’s official employee count. The accounting department were all blowing on vuvuzelas. People were waving cardboard cutouts of Dave’s face.

“Leonard, it’s not working!” Dinh yelled over a strange humming sound. “We vacuumed up as much of him as we could, but the machine won’t start! The screen just says, ‘INSUFFICIENT PARADIGM TO PROCESS SUBJECT.”

Just then, Leonard’s cellphone blared. The caller ID said NECROSOFT-URGENT. He answered.

“Mr. Jesson! Raj Chandra! Do not, I repeat, DO NOT initiate the reconstitution sequence!”

“We can’t!” Leonard shouted back. “It won’t let us!”

“Thank God,” Chandra breathed. “We’ve detected an E-Class soul-state singularity! My technicians are almost there! Don’t touch anything!”

“Technicians?” Leonard asked.

“Our best team! A senior Ontological Engineer and two Metaphysical Compliance Adjudicators! They’re the only ones certified for this! Just keep the machine OFF!”

A triumphant cheer went up.

“Dinh, what was that?” Leonard yelled.

“Got it!” Dinh replied. “Just had to reboot it in safe mode!”

“NO!” screamed Mr. Chandra, a sound of pure, corporate-shackled terror. He devolved into a string of curses in a language that sounded ancient and terrifying before the line went dead.

The whole plant began shaking. The lights flickered, casting strobe-like shadows. The low hum of the machine had become a sound that was half celestial choir, half tectonic plate shearing in two. The sunlight coming in the upper windows became diamond-brilliant, alien. The crowd wasn’t cheering anymore. They were cowering, shielding their eyes.

The door of the NecroSoft 3000 didn’t open. It turned cherry red and melted into a shimmering puddle on the floor.

From the swirling heat and blinding light within, a being emerged. It was impossibly large; what now stood before the awestruck staff of Orange City Steel was larger than the machine itself, larger than any man, forty feet tall. It had the rough, familiar shape of Dave, but with six arms, and not precisely solid and corporeal, but a mass of shimmering energy. Its eyes were twin quasars, and atop its head, a hard hat forged from pure, solid light pulsed with power. The very sight of the god-Dave began to drive Leonard beyond the limits of sanity.

The being raised a glowing hand. All the steel beams and girders in the factory groaned, twisting themselves into the shape of a vast, intricate mandala that covered the entire ceiling. The few remaining DAVE IS RISEN T-shirts burst into harmless, silvery flames.

The demigod, the entity, the thing that was once Dave, turned its cosmic gaze upon them. Its voice was the cacophony of every safety siren, every grinding gear, and every star born in the universe, all speaking at once.

“I have entered this mortal dimension to cast the judgment of performance review upon all in this realm,” the pratighati-deva said. “Close thy eyes with holy dread, for I am become Dave, destroyer of worlds!” The mighty figure smashed through the far wall as employees scattered. The Lord of Destruction and Judgment then tripped over someone’s Ford Explorer, fell down, said “oops,” and got up to continue the apocalypse.

“This will affect our performance bonuses,” Audra told Leonard.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Richard Jones 2025

Image Source: Death Of Marat (painting) photographed by webplastic