Ever since the premature death of Prime minister Holden fourteen months previous the Party had been struggling. Not just the Party, the whole nation; inflation and unemployment were surging, and the steep decline in the cost of living had provoked incessant civil unrest in the cities. Holden's replacement had attempted to replicate his autocratic, sneering style, but she lacked his panache, despite the brutality of her methods. Across this unhappy and divided nation, those citizens who counted would sigh, cast their gaze to the polluted heavens, and declare, 'how the nation needs a leader like Prime minister Holden now. He would crush this noisy riff-raff, attend to the Party's needs.'

'We don't need a leader like Holden,' was the oft-repeated response. 'We need Holden.' At this point the speaker would typically gaze into the middle distance, and picture PM Holden in his prime, at the lectern, flanked by his trademark two-metre-high flaming torches, hollering about lefties or traitors or protestors, or cracking jokes to the Party faithful about some wretched migrants who'd drowned in the Channel. Oh, how they'd laughed! And how they'd wept, just a few months later, when an unexpected heart attack (suffered during prolonged, frenetic partying) killed the great man, and left him mouldering in a Kentish grave. No, there was only one person capable of saving the United Kingdom- and he would never don the Party colours again.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and on the day of the latest PM's resignation those fourteen months after the tragic event, a committee from the Department of Science arrived at the Cabinet Office with a dramatic proposal. The leader of the group was Dr Francesca Bless, Emeritus Professor of Strange Science at the University of Liverpool, whose reputation had recently been impugned when a letter written by a notable bishop, accusing her of unholy practices, appeared in The Times.

'There have been great advances in Resurrection Science since Prime Minister Holden's death,' said Dr Bless, loosening her starched collar against the summer heat. 'We have been successful in reanimating many deceased animals, including large primates. We are now ready to move to the next level- human beings.'

'Good God,' said the Deputy Prime Minister. 'You mean to say the Government pays for all this...damn witchcraft?'

'Not witchcraft,' said Dr Bless primly. 'Nor necromancy. Great science. There is nothing occult about what we do, Deputy Prime Minister. It's just chemistry, and electricity. What physiological differences exist between a living body and the corpse that succeeds it, post-mortem? Very few. It takes a mere spark, correctly applied, to bring life to those cells again. The only difficulties occur when the body has deteriorated over an extended period. However, in PM Holden's case, he was buried in an airtight lead coffin, and this should have slowed the process of decay.'

'Holden?' squawked the Deputy PM, who was a part-time lay preacher, and a full-time hypocrite. 'You mean to say you intend to bring that old devil back from the grave?'

'I thought that was why we were here,' said Dr Bless, feigning befuddlement. She glanced out of the window. 'I hear the rioters have got as far as Romford.'

The Deputy Prime Minister coughed, adjusted his tie, and glanced at his advisor, Perkins.

'Can this be done?' ventured this Perkins. 'I imagine a human would be very different from monkeys. And he's been dead a while...'

Dr Bless passed the Deputy Prime Minister an illustrated report. 'We expect that Holden's muscles would have atrophied significantly, so we suggest the use of small hydraulic motors in major joints, and a steel ligature, connected to the spinal column, to compensate. The calculations are all here.'

The Deputy Prime Minister leafed through the report gingerly.

'The circulatory system will have collapsed,' said Dr Bless' assistant, 'but we think this can be restored, flushed of all contaminants, and a new electric heart installed for the old. Lungs, liver, kidneys- simple matters to replace. As for the nervous system, the body will be covered by an ingenious new senso-skin, which will perform the same function.'

'And what of the brain?' asked Perkins.

'PM Holden undertook a deep brain scan shortly before his death,' said Dr Bless, 'which recorded the most intimate details of his cerebral structure. What has rotted away can be duplicated through micro 3D printing.'

'3D printing?' gasped the Deputy PM, closing the report. 'You can't be serious! Whatever...thing...walks out of your lab, with its 3D printed brain, it won't be Holden.'

'You're wrong,' said Dr Bless. 'What was Holden? He was his brain, his body, his memory, that's all. Recreate these elements, and you recreate the person, surely?'

'This is a philosophical discussion,' said Perkins doubtfully.

'I don't like these proposals,' said the Deputy PM. 'They're downright ghoulish. And how much will everything cost?'

Dr Bless told them, an estimate. The Deputy Prime minister blanched. 'The Treasury will never agree to that. All for just one man?'

'But just imagine, Deputy Prime minister,' rejoined Perkins, 'if the news got out that we'd had it in our power to resurrect the most popular politician for decades- and we'd turned the opportunity down because of...financial constraints. The British public would never forgive us. It would be the end of the Party.'

'And don't forget about the commercial opportunities if this succeeds,' said Dr Bless. 'The rich need never fear death again.'

The Deputy Prime minister grimaced. 'I'll agree to it. I will need some personal financial incentive, however. If it turns sour, this grisly business might end my career.'


And so, just five months later, Emmanuel Holden was unanimously re-elected Party leader and Prime Minister nearly two years after his death. His first public appearance was to a select three hundred of the Party faithful, and a small group of Government client journalists, at Party HQ in Southwark. As he walked onto the podium- well, more lurched, accompanied by the gentle hissing of the hydraulic motors in his joints- a collective gasp rippled across the audience. Holden was back! Never had the wonders of science been so marvellously applied! Sure, his eyes were a little duller than they remembered, and his skin was more revoltingly slimy than before, and no amount of frenzied grooming or smart tailoring could quite disguise his stiff, unnatural posture- but no one was under any doubt that this was the original Holden. They set down their fans (there was a horrible smell in the room, a mixture of embalming fluid and rotting pork, which everyone was far too polite to impute to Holden) and cheered their hero to the rafters, even after he began speaking. His words didn't really matter, and in truth nobody heard them, as the modulation from his electronic voice box (the original having decayed in his tomb) made them difficult to discern, although the tone lacked none of its old power and authority. Holden was back!

As for the man himself, he hadn't quite got used to the notion of being alive again just yet. He described his state to Dr Bless as akin to being jerked out of a very, very deep sleep, and being troubled by forgotten nightmares long after waking. He felt vaguely frightened by his resurrection but wasn't quite sure why. He was repelled by his rotten body and was particularly upset by the loss of his penis and two fingers from his left hand.

'Don't worry,' said Dr Bless, 'you won't need them anymore. It will take you time to adjust.'

'And I won't have to eat, or drink, or defecate any longer?'

'Of course not. Your life support systems are fully automated.'

'I will miss a glass of fine claret and a steaming dish of roast venison,' said Holden wistfully. 'Can't you fix some way for me to eat again?'

'Don't be silly. You'll have far more important things to do.'

With this assertion he agreed. His year being dead had softened his opinions on those topics that would have enraged him pre-mortem. He tried to explain this to the Party faithful that evening as passionately as he could, but somehow- it could be that damn voice box malfunctioning- he couldn't get his message across. The more he appealed to their humanity, the more they roared him on, until he was quite certain that they were not listening to him at all.

'I've seen death. I've been there,' he implored them. 'For the majority of you there will be no second chances. It's vital for our survival we all unite!'

Of course, he was talking about humanity in general, but the audience's impression was that he was referring to the Party and its particular caste. He tried to correct the error, but his voice box cut out, the crowd bellowed and surged, and he was swept away by security.

During the after party, he met his wife, Sharon, now remarried to a famous media baron, who she clung to like a floundering swimmer might hang onto to a lifebuoy. 'My, this is embarrassing,' she said, fluttering her fan pointedly. 'Well, we all move on, Manny, in our own ways. You'll always get good press from us. Glad you're back.'

His son Peter, who had, since Holden's passing, launched a political career of his own, gave his father no more than a cursory wave from the far side of the room before turning away to converse darkly with his entourage. This made Holden sad, as he'd loved his son once.

That night, even though he didn't need to sleep, Holden was troubled by terrible dreams. He felt as if he was being crushed by an infinite weight in a world of immeasurable heat and darkness. He sprang from his bed, terrified, his senso-skin quivering on full alert. His rotten teeth chattered in his skull. He couldn't go back there, at least till he'd told the people what they needed to know.

The following evening Holden was scheduled to make an address at a public meeting in Battersea. The five hundred strong audience had been selected by ballot and included some of his most fervent supporters. Unbeknownst to his handlers, Holden had decided this was where he would make his plea. He had to let people know how he was changing. As he staggered onto the stage, assisted by Dr Bless and Perkins, the audience fell expectantly silent. The good doctor had adjusted his voice box and linked it to the hall's sound system, so that every word would be clearly heard. As ever, the twin silver torches crackled either side of him.

It wasn't until five minutes into his speech that Holden noticed his audience becoming restless. His simple message of universal tolerance, born of an understanding of our limited time on Earth, didn't seem to be going down well. It appeared that they would rather listen to his old hits, those angry appeals to their worst instincts. But the rueful revenant pressed on, determined to show them their folly, to explain to them the horrors that lay beyond the grave if they didn't change their ways, horrors that he was only beginning to become reacquainted with.

Dr Bless, who had been watching the whole performance, testified afterwards that the offending object, a glass bottle, had been thrown from the front of the crowd. When it hit the nearest torch, she said, it dislodged a cinder which leapt across stage and ignited upon PM Holden's highly oiled, highly flammable senso-skin. How could she have known that Holden would burst into a column of flame within seconds, and that by the time the fire officers had arrived, only a pile of blackened bones and buzzing motors would remain?

Those who swept up the stage later reported that a peculiar smell lingered long afterwards. Not quite the fearsome stink Holden had emitted before, but something else more esoteric; a fragrance that a poetically inclined cleaner later described to the newspapers as the odour of tragic regret.