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.

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.

robhu