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Once upon a time there was a woman. Only she wasn't a real woman. Oh no. Cindi Mayweather was a cyborg. But she wasn't an evil cyborg. She'd known some evil cyborgs, of the world-conquering variety. But that wasn't her.

So she was sitting around one day when there was knock at the door. (Fortunately it was just one knock, rather than four.)

She answered the door, to find a puppy. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

The puppy barked.

Cindi leaned down to pet the puppy and look around to see who had dropped it off when suddenly she realized that it was around the time humans had lunch, but the sky was pitch black.

Her sensor readings were showing that it was already a little cold, and getting colder faster. So she picked up the puppy to keep it warm. She went inside her house to grab a blanket and some food for it. Cindi also put on her practical shoes.

Then she strode out into the world, to find the cause of the darkness. Her first thought was, of course, that it was an asteroid. However, seismic activity seemed to be at normal levels, so she thought of other options. Like heavy cloud cover. Or a very large flock of birds. Or maybe it was just that her visual sensors were malfunctioning.

She rebooted them, but they still showed darkness. And there was the whole matter of the dropping temperature.

Cindi was still pondering when the puppy barked and squirmed. In her surprise, she dropped him and he went running off.

She followed him.

As she chased him Cindi suddenly realised that she hadn't named the puppy. She was reduced to chasing after him, shouting "Puppy!"

It would have been confusing (and possibly embarrassing) if anyone else was about. But they weren't, so it wasn't.

She tried shouting other things (like George, Fredrick, Lamppost and Sven) but the puppy didn't respond.

So she gave her vocal cords a rest, and just chased after the puppy instead.

When Cindi caught up with the puppy, he was barking at a man. A man! She'd found another person.

Cindi started to say something to him when she heard him muttering. She increased the input to her audio, until she was able to make out that he was saying "Braaaaiiiiins."

"Can I help you?" Cindi asked.

"Braaaaiiiiinnnns" he repeated, louder, so she quickly turned down her audio input again.

"I believe they're inside your head," Cindi said. "But I have no first hand experience with that."

Cindi had by this time started a search inside her database (but as she hadn't installed Google desktop it was taking a while). (It wasn't available for her OS yet.) What she got back was a rather strange definition. "1 originally, a snake-deity of or deriving from West Africa and Haiti" it said. Cindi was a little confused, because she couldn't see why her database would return this.

Then her database returned another part of the definition: "2 a tall mixed drink consisting of several kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice." And there was part 3, but it said very similar things to definition 1: "3 a soulless corpse said to be revived by witchcraft, esp. in certain African and Caribbean religions."

But then her database returned an article from Wikipedia, and it all began to make sense, for it said some things about zombies, and a fondness for eating brains.

Cindi was fairly certain that she was safe, for she didn't have organic brains, and she'd like to see a zombie try to eat her synthetic ones.

The puppy did have brains (even if the zombie didn't seem presently interested in them) so Cindi scooped him up and set him behind her, and then she turned to face the zombie again. "Explain what circumstances led to your current situation," she said.

"Braaaaiiins," the zombie said.

"I think quite the opposite," she said.

And then she began to think. She glanced at the horizon with her ultraviolet visual sensors and she saw many more zombies.

"Hmmph," she said, and picked up the puppy to return to her house.

Cindi locked the door and barred the windows, though the zombies didn't seem to be in pursuit of her. They did, however, smell, and Cindi would rather close the windows than have to turn off her scent sensors.

Then she went into her workshop (of course she had a workshop, all decent cyborgs had to have a workshop) and she began to tinker. She ran a series of (non-invasive, of course) tests on the puppy, and on herself. And she began to build more synthetic brains.

When she thought she had a working model, Cindi went back outside, turning off her scent sensors and switching over to UV vision. (She left the puppy in the house, where it would be guaranteed to be safe.)

Cindi retraced her steps until she was at the zombie she had met before. "Hello," she said to it.

"Braaaaiiiins," it said back.

"Okay," Cindi cheerily said, and she went a-tinkering and inserted the synthetic brains into the zombie's head.

When she was done she stepped back to admire her handiwork. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

The zombie turned man blinked at her. "You don't look like my psychiatrist," he said.  "It's not your job to pick at my brain."

Cindi grinned in triumph, and returned to her lab to synthesize more synthetic brains.

She spent most of the day working on that, only taking a couple of breaks to play with the puppy. When she was done, and she had distributed all the brains she took a deep breath, and she switched off her UV vision.

"Oh dear," she said, for it was still dark.

Then she thought to check her internal chronometer (she had a fob watch, but the chronometer was much more accurate and efficient, so she couldn't remember ever opening the fob watch) and found that it was a perfectly reasonable hour for it to be dark But she couldn't help feeling that something was wrong.

The next morning, the sun had not risen.

"This is very bad indeed," Cindi said.  "What ever shall I do?"

She had asked the puppy (he was the only one around), but the puppy did not give her an answer.

"I think I shall name you Sven," she said, and the puppy barked and wagged its tail, so Cindi knew he had been listening. He just didn't have an answer to her question.

So Cindi took out her mobile and scrolled through her contact list, wondering who would be able to help. She was giving up hope and thinking she'd have to find a way to solve this problem by herself when she got to the L's.

"Adam Lambert," she muttered to herself.  "This just might work."

She hit the dial button, and he answered.

"Adam, you need to save the world," Cindi said.  "I already did it yesterday, it's your turn now."

"You didn't ask for my help with it yesterday?" Adam asked. He sounded hurt.

"I'm pretty sure you were a zombie," she said.

"Ewww," Adam said. "So tell me, what can I do that has nothing whatsoever to do with rotting flesh?"

"You need to sing the darkness away," Cindi said.  "I will help." (For, you see, Cindi was quite the singer herself.)

"Oh," said Adam.  "That sounds like it could be fun."

So they did so.  And the darkness vanished.

Afterwards Cindi invited Adam over for tea. She introduced Adam to Sven, and he squealed over it and threatened to steal the puppy away from Cindi.

She didn't let him.