Ever After

* * * 

The hologram lit up and Matilda was first to start crying.

Her mascara was not waterproof. She made it herself from a special recipe of organic blueberries. Purple lines traversed her high, marble cheeks. Such an unsightly show of emotion forced a loud sigh from Nina, who pursed her lips, clenched her jaw, tightened her pelvic floor, and stiffened into a majestic look of distaste.

Children of indeterminate age were running around laughing, their traditional clothing at odds with the fun they were having chasing each other. The adults looked on and let it be, in honour of the deceased, who liked to encourage chaos at formal occasions.

Next came Anette. She was a diminutive, perfect creature with fierce eyes and an uncompromising expression. She did not age, nor had any intention to. As she walked in, no one noticed, her steps too light. But her smile shone resplendent, amplified by an intensity disproportionate to her size. Anette was the only one who wore a hat. She was the last of the greats, before the rest became forgettable.

There was a short collective gasp as Lucille entered the congregation. Without taking any notice of anyone, she scanned the seating arrangements looking for the wives and girlfriends row and sat down next to Nina, even though Nina was standing. Lucille looked up, first at the podium, then the hologram, and people shuffling in corners. “Am I in your will?”, she asked his likeness, disturbing Matilda’s sobs nearby. “You shall have to see”, he answered, at which point Lucille put on a pair of sunglasses and hid her eyes behind them. Nina stiffened even more, and turned into a statue.

The hologram was a source of much debate. Although it was no different than the argument they had over which photo to pick for the loading screen on the ceremony app, everything about this hologram was precarious.

His was a second-generation program, the kind that could respond intelligently in a conversation, but the privacy settings were still intricate and no one was quite sure how to configure them safely. In the end, the public toggle was set to ‘Basic’, which meant that the image could only respond within the limitations of the early home assistants - without humour, or anything that wasn’t officially factual, like dates.

Matilda protested, without any sense of irony, that ‘Basic’ was inauthentic to his spirit. “Tilly,” to which Anette declared in a tone that could easily be mistaken for condescending, “saving consciousness is about those who are left behind. It’s we who want to remember the memories.” She put her hands on Matilda’s shoulders and looked into her eyes with a mock mournful expression. “Imagine if someone asked this thing ‘did you fuck Nina before or after Tilly had the baby?’ and getting the real answer”. Thus the matter of the setting was settled.

Back in the hall, the hubbub, made ever more resplendent by Anette’s smile, was interrupted by a scream. Varvara, a beautiful six-year old from beautiful parents, was left holding Grandpa Gunther’s bionic arm.

He was known as Grandpa not because of his grandchildren - he didn’t have any - but because of his age and increasingly reconstituted body. Using a dongle in his pocket, he unclipped the limb with his good arm (“good”? the bionic arm was stronger and had AI skills!). This was a prank he played on all family occasions with children he thought were of ready age. The scream went quiet as the arm got reattached with a click, and the girl’s wails turned into sniffles.

Grandpa Gunther dipped into his pocket again and passed her a bar of chocolate. She looked at it hopefully, but then pursed her lips and stomped, “This is not planet-friendly” and ran off. He shook his head with a smile, and moved on to another cluster of crowd, satisfied.

It wasn’t the most preferred way to die. It wasn’t a malfunction of the autonomous vehicle algorithm, crashing into some unexpected obstacle at high speed. Or the pill, custom-concocted by ex-FSB operatives in Dubai from a herbal formula that promised longevity but did the opposite. It wasn’t ayahuasca, from which he came out so enlightened as to move forward in life with even greater hubris. It wasn’t the unnatural blonde whose name no one remembered but still she somehow knew where and when to show up, from maybe a sex game gone wrong. None of that, which would have fitted into an appropriate self-image. It was a coma from a fall during those freak cold snaps, at the wrong angle.

The family - sister and brother who had power of attorney by law - held onto hope for a very long time, grateful that their parents weren't around to witness something that disappointing. The hospital staff were puzzled by the identity of their patient who seemed to receive an endless procession of visitors. The majority of them women in various degrees of anger, they would throw a look of disdain, sorrow, or delight during the bookends of their arrival and departure. No one was indifferent, and they all came back for more as if hoping for a different outcome each time. And each time nothing changed. He was dead inside.

The family’s decision to switch to Artificial Consciousness, or AC in modern parlance, was straightforward. Humanity long hoped to unshackle itself from the zero sum game of life and death, and AC procedures were becoming popular amongst the wealthy. Laws were relaxed and holograms became like mixtapes, a creative interpretation of the deceased's own will and what was acceptable for posterity. The morality and ethics of these programs - or were they really beings? - was a minefield. Only social commentators, poets and those who scored high on conscientiousness understood the entanglements of hologram culture. But those people were naysayers, luddites, and so didn’t belong in the present future.

A few days before the ceremony, a small collection of people, known as the chosen ones, assembled for the consciousness download, or CDL. The lovechild of a seance and a politburo meeting, the procedure required attendees to sit in a boardroom that would have made the producers of Minority Report proud. The marketing team of that particular ‘AC boutique’ (because every undertaker was now a tech business) proudly inscribed on its walls, “They had 80,000 thoughts a day. We make each of them count.”

The scale of the privacy problem remained unsolved, despite vast sums of venture capital pouring into AC startups, each promising to find a better way to be remembered. The dilemma could have been solved with replicas, but the chosen ones found the trade offs freakish. They could have purchased two, three, four holograms - one for each household with its own version of him. The family could have had theirs, Matilda could have had hers, Nina another, Anette too (“Oh no need”, she waved the suggestion off). Lucille was too broke.

The holograms were the price of a vintage car, not to mention the running costs. Multibuys made no sense. Besides, as Nina reflected, what would you do with all these things as more people died? Where would you store them? The cupboard, a box? Does switching them off become habitual, or does one get used to being watched by rechargeable ghosts? Widows loved the holograms, and the advertising was touching - always on the lawn smiling and watching grandchildren play - but what do you do when there are multiple widows, multiple lawns and multiple versions of the truth?

A young female assistant with a strong Spanish accent, made harder to understand by her chewing gum, asked if the family wanted to buy the SIM cards and the chat app profile, to enable the continuous conversations with the AC entity. She wore tight black jeans and a black t-shirt. At the front, it said “Feelings”, at the back it said “Thoughts”. These t-shirts were also available for purchase.

“He will call you, video chat, message”, she said lisping. Chats with AC entities were much like normal social interactions - virtual, asynchronous, and never-ending. Many behavioural science experiments and game shows proved time and again that people forgot they were talking to an AC, and not a human who was long gone.

Matilda of all people was tempted by this purchase. She missed being asked how she was feeling today, but it was difficult to know in advance if an automated deepfake app wouldn’t achieve the same dopamine hit as the more advanced AC interactions. Even Matilda, for all her emotional existence, knew that she was responding to a chemical reaction in her brain, and that continuing with that peptide addiction would cause more harm than good. She listened to Anette’s advice and didn’t do it.

The chosen ones decided that, just like a leaving present from one of those 20th century office jobs, the social network would run a collection for one premium hologram (extra high definition and configurable settings), with the family making up the rest. Despite storage being infinite and its cost negligible, it was the curation that took all the effort and cost. The family needed to preserve a story of respectability with a hint of raucousness, but not the other way round.

All adult scenes containing sex, violence and drugs were deleted by default unless permitted by the people featured in those memories. Under the laws pertaining to human consciousness (animal consciousness for pet preservation had different rules), the chosen ones still had the right to override the deceased's memory snippets if it was deemed damaging to the reputation or mental health of the surviving party.

“Holy shit”, said Colin, the brother, as a memory flashed by on screen, and Nina squinted her eyes with another deep sigh. “I did say cremation was so much simpler”, she whispered. By the time the CDL was finished, no one spoke.

Anette broke the silence after some time. “No regrets”, she declared, tapping her manicured fingers on the table, although the little fingernail on the right hand was beginning to chip. She reached for her bag and took out her shiny lipstick to distract herself from wanting a cigarette, even though she never smoked. When things began unravelling in her life, he was nowhere to be seen. After some disappearing acts and silent treatments, he returned with a divorce petition. She wondered what those scenes looked like in his head.

Throughout her marriages (she had two), Anette specialised in sweeping generalisations - such as “no regrets”, or “it’s important to practice acceptance”. After a brief detour into self-actualisation, she liked phrases like “living in alignment” and “the authentic self”. Over time, she decided that this wasn’t for her, so she committed resolutely to hedged hedonism. The kind that allowed absolution for one’s inability to function in relationships at a nice retreat in Tuscany, in all its photogenic splendor and with a discreetly packed vibrator, where a team of toned and well-dressed people educated her on how to express feelings and accept imperfection, while eliminating toxins and toning her body. Such innate appreciation of beauty was the reason why Anette got to choose what he wore for the hologram and in what font his name appeared on the app.

The final image standing on stage looked relaxed and bemused, observing the ceremony - or should it be a celebration? - from a comfortable distance of being translucent and mute, except for moments when a curious child struck up a brief conversation before running off again to play. Once in a while, probably when the program refreshed itself, he would take off his glasses, pretend to polish them and put them back on - in a habit the chosen ones deemed most typical. “He never wore glasses,” said Nina days before, but she was overruled. Apparently he did and her information was outdated.

Who got to make the speeches was another debate. Once again, Matilda made an emotional plea that she wanted the world (ok, the congregation) to know how much she loved him and what a special, loving and attentive man he was. “Oh please”, Nina interjected. Anette, betraying her cowardice, rolled her shiny eyes and declared that she didn’t have anything to say, and, glancing with pity at Matilda, purred that it was always the most inappropriate people who volunteer to speak at events. Fidgeting with her hair, making herself temporarily imperfect, Anette proposed, “I think Lucille should do it.” “I’ll do it”, said Nina sharply and took a sip of wine. “We need to find a kid too, but not his children”. She didn’t elaborate, but this time no one disagreed. Matilda suggested a meditation and everyone scurried off.

Fast forward tonight, and after Nina finished her speech and received polite applause - including from the hologram himself - nephew George, Varvara’s elder brother, stood up on stage with the deep embarrassment of a lanky teenager forced into doing something his parents promised to pay him for. With a jittery voice more to do with the task rather than the loss, he spoke about a time when he and the deceased were flying a drone that landed accidentally in a swimming pool, killing a small dog that happened to be in it. The muffling amongst guests concealed a confusion typical of such situations - whether to mourn the dog, or to support the teenager. Grandad Gunther cut through the discomfort by banging his bionic arm on the table, shouting “That’s my boy!” without specifying who, and the room relaxed.

In the middle of George’s speech, Lucille clambered on stage and walked up to the hologram. Her leather jeans covered strong legs that could have walked confidently had she not been drunk, and her hands clasped onto her crossbody bag more to keep them from shaking than to hold on to it. She came close and his image recoiled, like it would have done in real life. The guests gasped and George stopped mumbling, relieved that he was upstaged but that he would still get his money. He knew that his uncle had many relationships - often at the same time - with women described simply by their hair colour. But George’s modern upbringing prevented him from being fascinated by the complexity of these relationships, and this scene only confirmed to him that when it came to women, he was hoping to keep it simple in future.

“You always needed to attack first”, Lucille threw her bag at the image, just at the point when he was cleaning his glasses. The bag just went right through it, and she started sobbing, a deep, piercing sob that had no filter. “You needed to attack first so that you didn’t get hurt.” Lucille stared at the crowd, at no one in particular and without expecting a response. Even Matilda stopped her whimpers and started nodding in sympathy. “What is this? A competition for drama?” Nina protested. “Of course", whispered Anette who by then was standing next to Nina and smiling at the spectacle. “Just one that I don’t choose to participate in”.

Anette said that without a hint of contradiction, and stepped onto the stage with a drink to bait Lucille away. Those who were paying attention - and let’s face it - Anette got a lot of attention - would have noticed how she flashed a subtle smile at all the people below as if to say “Yes, really. He really did file for divorce.”

The assembly of family, coterie, the lovers who mattered and the lovers who didn’t, was the final cloud upload ceremony, or CUC. No one ambitious, certainly not the technorati, did funerals anymore. The idea of committing a body to earth was for spiritualists and conservatives, neither of whom the deceased favoured (with the exception of Matilda, who was hot, and even hotter when high).

The idea of merging one’s own mind - defined as knowledge, memories and feelings - with the collective human consciousness had the unmistakable symbolism of being *up*loaded into a higher realm of elite existence. Existing these AC entities did in perpetuity. Academics and data historians were always discovering new ways of splicing the anonymised data to draw conclusions of social trends, although always with the caveat that it was still the collective consciousness of the elite and not the masses. There was even a thriving industry for non-fungible tokens based on notable people’s specific memories, especially the moments of decisive inspiration, elation or famous accidents.

Coders continued to take over not just the world but life itself. The humanists, the priests and the shamans were replaced by “AC engineers” called ACEs. They generated special keys on the blockchain to authenticate the upload, and to ensure the integrity of the information on the SIM card if one was purchased as backup. There was usually a countdown, like for rocket launches, but the whole process was smoke and mirrors. These ACEs were invited to ceremonies for the fanfare and symbolism - they could have easily pressed all the buttons from home.

Nina’s chauffeur was late arriving with tonight’s ACE. Which wasn’t a problem for anyone involved - the drinks flowed freely and the food was ample. It wasn’t easy to procure real meat in honor of the deceased’s love of eating dead animals, but there were still caterers specialising in “Retro Foods” loaded with environmental fines. The real problem was the battery. The processing required to render the image in high resolution - and to maintain its consciousness - still chewed up a lot of energy, and sometime mid-evening the hologram had to be switched to mains electricity.

When the ACE finally showed up, the hall had long returned to the noise and commotion from before the formalities started. Exchanging glances with Nina, who looked annoyed if not impenetrable, he shuffled on stage with a handheld remote. He shook hands with the hologram for extra effect so that the audience was weirded into paying attention. Not everyone had experienced a CUC before, and just because Lucille’s bag went right through the hologram’s head earlier, it didn’t mean that the visual illusion of shaking hands with a digital dead guy wasn’t possible. It was, with the right setting.

The lights dimmed, the display lit up. The countdown started and the hall went quiet. Except for the kids, who were tired, bored and sugared up - the perfect combination for a parenting showdown. There was a rogue game of chase involving three preschoolers and an adolescent without any signs of letting off as it involved some kind of conflict too. The final act of the CUC only added to their hyperactive tension. The large display flickered some lines of code mimicking status updates - fake but believable - and when the time came to agree to the privacy policy of “commit to universal consciousness library”, the audience held their breath. There was a loud thump, followed by tears, swearing and an error code on screen. The hologram switched itself off and the ACE started muttering that it’s never happened to him before and that all he wanted to do today was go home early.

The congregation went wild with panic and excitement. Now the hologram was dead too. What happened? A kid tripped over the lead. Really? That would do it? Seems too banal. What is this, 1997? It wasn’t charged enough, it just died. What did that mean, how much of the code got lost? Was there a backup? Of course there was a backup. Was his consciousness uploaded already? Was all this just one final stunt? Remember the shredded painting at the Banksy auction? That was a stunt too… “Lost his mind, hey”, quipped Grandpa Gunther, ever ready. So many questions, few qualified people to answer them.

The ACE was sweating and cursing under his breath. Lucille thought that that would make a great dramatisation for a show when she got back to California. Her creativity always kicked in in that middle stage of alcoholic intoxication. She thrived in the creative layer between delight and depression - the trick was to know how to stay in that middle. Matilda stood in shock and couldn’t quite understand the technicalities of what just happened for her to label her feelings. In that present moment, there was nothing to do other than to be with the uncertainty.

At the back of her car, Nina sat back and opened her bag. She took out a black box the size of a jewellery box and opened it. It was the backup. She looked at it contemplating how small it was and yet capable of holding a lifetime of garbage and beauty - the human mind, one in which she was featured prominently for years. There will be immense joy stored in there, the kind that’s difficult to describe in words to people who haven’t experienced it. She wondered how it would be filed, technically. Under “joy” or “love”, like in a library, or by rating - 1 to 10 where 10 is crazy in love. Or maybe alphabetically by name, under hers.

Nina stared at the traffic, but her thoughts diverted her back into memories again, the darker ones. Her own consciousness, she thought, will feature a fraction of his. And their two children. Her version of the same events, the fights, the fucking and the flowers. So it went on - a network of interdependent lives flavoured with entirely subjective perspectives. How anyone could trust such unreliable data as collective evidence for anything other than a snapshot of bias, was delusion. Collective delusion. She better remember to write into her will not to download her mind, and give her body to science. “Stardust”, he used to say. “I want to be turned into stardust”.

“Nonsense”, she answered out loud speaking to an imaginary energy while still examining the chip. “I want to be immortal” Her phone registered that last request, and a gentle female voice inquired if Nina wanted to turn it into a reminder for Monday. She kept getting startled by this new “thought to task” feature (just released, really too early). She hissed a terse “No!” and shook her head.

The car pulled up into the hotel’s crescent forecourt, when it started to rain. Nina’s chauffeur stepped out with an umbrella and held it over her as she got out.

“Good evening, madam. Do you have a reservation?” A man designed and dressed to look nondescript smiled at her with practiced indifference. Nina contemplated for a moment to say something cutting, but knew that Anette was already waiting for her inside with a bottle of pink Ruinart. With a light snap of her fingers, she flicked the chip card by the wayside, looked behind her, then at the doorman and, even though she couldn’t quite bring herself to smile, said, “I do”, and walked through the revolving doors.  

***