Elizabeth Selby
Janine’s stomach rolls. Elizabeth is officially her friend!
She knows what happened. Her auto accepted the friend request by default, since they both know Oscar Kinglake, and placed Elizabeth into Janine’s inner Circle. Seven of Janine’s mates have already befriended her – or rather, their autos did. Her friend Anna, eight months pregnant, has even sent Elizabeth an invite to next week’s baby shower. Fat chance of her rocking up to that, you silly cow, Janine thinks.
She can’t believe this. The woman whose grave stands a few metres away is not just making a move on her Dad, she’s already started worming her way into Janine’s life!
As she looks at the black marble headstone, her Vades™ flash up his own profile. That same picture of her Dad is there but partially faded with a faint X across it. The mark of an unliving auto.
Oscar Kinglake
Gender: Male
Age range: 71-75
Orientation: Straight
Relationship status:
Couple/Monogamous
Oscar Kinglake is in a
relationship with Elizabeth
Selby
Date of death: Friday 22
November 2019
Current location: Plot 76M,
Enfield Cemetery and
Crematorium, Great
Cambridge Road, Enfield EN1
4DS
Status update: Celebrating
good news with my lovely
daughter Janine Kinglake!
Janine can feel her jaw working, but can’t hear anything coming out. His relationship status shouldn’t be like that! All un-autos have a status of Dead/Unavailable. Of course they do! But Dad’s status says him and Elizabeth are... oh, this is so wrong! And what’s this good news that he’s referring to?
Curiosity gets the better of her. Oh, I’m going to regret doing this, aren’t I?
She says “Accept calendar invite.”
A new screen fills the entire width of her Vades™, blocking out her view of the real world. She sees a short plain corridor, leading to a set of ornate oak doors. The image is bouncing slightly, giving the impression that she’s walking along the corridor. The effect is so realistic that Janine feels unbalanced, like her legs should be moving.
She knows what this is: she’s entering a sim-room. On the far right is a smaller screen showing what she looks like. It’s constructed out of actual images and videos from her timeline, and is almost photo-realistic. What gives it away is that she looks perfect. Slimmer and fitter than she’s ever been, hair glossy and retaining its shape, face fresh and pretty. It’s Janine Kinglake on the very best day of her life. Compared to most people’s self-sims, it’s actually very restrained.
Janine lifts her hand and pushes, watching her sim do the same in perfect sync, shoving the double-doors open.
Her Dad’s party hits her like a tsunami – a wall of noise, colour and movement. Wincing, she tilts her head, no longer seeing grass or sky but the inside of a huge mansion. Chandeliers, drapes, spiral staircases, and a floor made out of exactly the same black marble as the Smartstone™. Lights flash, lasers pulse, disco balls twirl. Music videos play in mid-air, and she can almost feel the bassline of whatever song that is, booming in her ears. There’s a revolving bar in the middle of the ballroom, a dancefloor at one end and a… is that a… yes, a bouncy castle at the other. Two or three hundred people fill the space, talking, laughing, drinking, dancing, bouncing. The sense of energy and fun is very real.
But it’s a sim-room. So reality has nothing to do with it.
Some of the guests are beautiful women with slender hourglass figures. Some are handsome men rippling with chiselled muscle. Some are levitating into the air as they dance. Some are shape-shifting as they walk through the crowd. A man in his sixties morphs into a two-metre high toy robot, square head rotating, chest lights buzzing, claw-hand gripping a pint of Guinness. A slinky werewolf sips from a wine glass, flirting openly with a cat-eyed, blue-skinned Na’vi from the ‘Avatar’ films. Globally familiar faces in the crowd: John Wayne, Zac Efron, Milla Jovovich, Angelina Jolie, Humphrey Bogart and at least two Madonnas are all setting the dancefloor alight.
Janine actually ducks when the biplane flies overhead. Impossibly, the pilot is Snoopy, and even more impossibly, he grabs a drink from the bar as he zooms past, swerving back up into the starry sky and leaving the chandeliers rattling.
All right, she thinks. If it’s this or shouting at a gravestone, I suppose I’ll look a bit less crazy in here.
She says “Find Oscar Kinglake.” Immediately, her sim-self moves, gliding into the party. She actually passes straight through a few of the guests, since she is in travel mode. Up close, she can detect the faint public profiles of each guest. No anonymity at this masquerade. Not when your auto handles everything you do online.
As she spots her Dad, Janine catches her breath. Christ, he looks so real!
Childhood memories flit through her head as she stares at him, standing with a group of people by the five-metre high chocolate fountain (there’s been one of these at every virtual party she’s ever attended, maybe it’s a standard feature?). Tall and slim, salt and pepper hair parted on the left, rimless glasses on the tip of his long nose, blue eyes bright, smiling the biggest smile in the world.
She can’t tell if this is an aesthetically enhanced simulation – like her own – because for her it’s exactly right. It’s as perfect as he always looked to her young eyes.
It’s her Dad.
What really makes this feel like stepping back in time are the people clustered around him. Although not a show-off of any kind, he always seemed to be the focus of attention... the ‘nerve centre’, to use his phrase. He was always surrounded by laughing people in pubs and parties, and later on, at funerals. Janine couldn’t remember ever seeing him alone.
No... there was that one time. Mum’s funeral. Even during that he was his usual happy self, saying how Alice’s wake needed to be a joyous occasion for everyone, exactly the way she’d want it. But when he vanished, Janine found him in the garden shed, sobbing his heart out.
Weirdly, it was the first time in weeks she hadn’t felt like crying herself, as she held him tight. It had felt good to see Dad cry. It was right that he should have some selfish grief.
“There you are, sweetheart!” he says as she approaches.
Janine’s whole body sings with nostalgia, that sensation of something long gone yet still vivid. Bittersweet. Obviously there’s a hundred tiny details missing, things only a daughter would know, which betray this as an illusion. But it’s easy to forget those after two years.
“Nice party, Dad,” she says out loud, her sim-self repeating the words at the same time. She glances up at the gigantic fountain beside them. “You were always fond of chocolate.”
“Belgian, nothing but the best!” This is something else he used to say. He holds a goblet under the never-ending waterfall of liquid chocolate, then drinks deep. Two guests, a model-stunning girl and a popstar-gorgeous guy, swim past through the velvety brown liquid.
It suddenly occurs to Janine to ask “So who are all these people? Are they from your old Circle?”
“No, sweetheart, these are my new friends. The ones I met on Hugr.”
“I thought you just met Elizabeth?”
“She was the first, but there were many more. It’s a wonderful little app, perfect for finding new friends nearby who share common interests.” He beams at her and gestures all around. “You never know who your neighbours are, do you?”
“Wait. Your neighbours? You mean these people are all...”
And it’s only now, standing close, that she notices the faint X across her Dad’s smiling face.
Across everyone’s face.
Janine snatches off the Vades™. Abruptly, the craziness is gone. The sudden tranquillity of the cemetery feels like an electric shock, locking her rigid. She’s got motion sickness, even though she’s standing still.
&
nbsp; She stares at the grassy fields stretching around her, the cloud-spotted sky above. The air is silent, lightly brushed with wind.
Quiet as the grave.
She swallows and looks around at the rows of headstones. Tries to imagine each of those solid, unmoving lumps of rock as a gorgeous man or a stunning woman or, bloody hell, a werewolf or a Snoopy. That’s what’s going on right now, inside that sim-room. Her Dad has used Hugr to make friends with everyone in the cemetery who still has an auto, and now they’re having a party. The party of the dead!
She raises her Vades™ in front of her face, peering through without putting them on. Sees people dancing, talking, flirting, flying, morphing. Full of life. She lowers and raises them, lowers and raises them, alternating the serene cemetery with the wild party, trying to work out which is more real.
“Come join us, Jan,” says the black marble headstone, making Janine jump. She stares down at her Dad’s image on the embedded screen, and decides it’s easier talking to a face and body, even if they are simulated. With a deep breath, she slips the Vades™ back on, immersing herself in the party again. Pumping music, whirling lights, shapeshifting people. She gets a very real urge to walk over to the bar and buy a drink.
“Uh... okay, Dad, so these people... they’re all from Enfield Cemetery?”
He shakes his head. “There are only 14 Smartstones™ in Enfield Cemetery. Using Hugr allowed me to contact all of them. It’s a wonderful little app, perfect for finding new – ”
“Friends nearby, yeah I know. So where did all the rest come from?”
“Other cemeteries, of course. All of the cemeteries in the UK are connected on CemNet. I used that to send friend requests to every unliving auto who has a Smartstone™ grave.”
Janine has heard of CemNet, thanks to her Aunty Joy, who in her later years has become irritatingly obsessed with genealogy and working out her family tree. Aunty Joy has bored Janine to tears more than once about how she uses CemNet to track down buried relatives and ancestors. As well as being a communications portal for registry offices and undertakers and so on, it’s also a colossal database of the deceased.
“Hugr gave you access to CemNet? I wouldn’t have thought it could do something like that?”
After a brief pause, her Dad’s auto says “It’s a wonderful little app.”
She turns, taking in the party. “So this lot are actually all the Smartstones™ around the country?”
“Oh no, not everyone could make it.”
“You mean... there’s more?”
“I made 4,613 friends on CemNet.” Big Dad-smile. “Perfect for finding new friends nearby who share common interests.”
Janine rocks back on her heels a little. Her Dad’s Circle is four times the size of hers! Again, she remembers how he was always surrounded by people, making them all laugh. The nerve centre. It somehow feels perfectly in character, that he should be even more popular now that’s he’s dead.
“And this is what you all do, is it?” She spreads her arms wide. “Pretend you’re all still... I mean, you know, hold virtual parties?”
“We do much more than that, love,” purrs a glamorous raven-haired woman as she glides into view. Her smile sparkles, literally shining as if her teeth are made from diamonds. The same twinkly effect is coming from the jewellery around her slender neck, the sapphires on her fingers and earlobes. She’s wearing a fitted jacket with padded square shoulders, and a cocktail skirt slashed diagonally up one thigh. Perfect uplifted bosom, flat narrow waist and legs that might be longer than Janine’s entire body. She could be the star of every single television show in the Eighties. It’s only the round, friendly eyes that give away the fact that this is Elizabeth. That and the way she curls her hand around Oscar’s arm, long red nails biting into his denim workshirt.
“We discuss all the latest eeBooks,” she continues, “we hold photography exhibitions, we have poetry readings, artistic performances... we’re very busy people! We only hold a party when it’s a special occasion.” She laughs, the same girlish giggle Janine heard from her headstone. Sounds odd coming from this power-dressed femme fatale with the faint X across her beautiful face.
Janine glares at her, trying not to feel jealous of that waist. “So what’s the occasion?”
Her Dad claps his hands a few times. Instantly the party dials down, the music drops, sim-people turn his way. A spotlight shines from above, big enough to encompass two figures. Janine realises she isn’t in it.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he calls, “thank you for coming, especially those of you who have travelled a long way. I wanted to wait until my daughter was here before letting you all know the reason.” The simulation clears his throat and straightens his glasses, exactly the way Dad would have done before saying something important.
“I would like to announce my engagement to the belle of the ball, the lovely Elizabeth Selby!”
There’s an airburst of cheers, whoops, applause, hip-hip-hoorays, even animal noises from the shapeshifters. Elizabeth’s jewels blaze under the spotlight, as does her smile. A pebble-sized diamond materialises on the ring finger of her left hand. She waves regally to the crowd, then turns and kisses her Dad with ruby-red lips.
Janine wonders if her sim-self can throw up.
She backs away from the happy couple, glittering under a sudden rainfall of confetti, shaking hands and kissing cheeks. Elizabeth’s sparkling outfit has turned white and seems to be growing longer, extending a long train behind her. It’s when Snoopy’s biplane races overhead trailing a banner that says CONGRATS OSCAR AND ELIZABETH! that she realises she can’t back away far enough from this world.
She says “Exit sim-room!”
The peacefulness of the cemetery rushes in again, making her catch her breath. Green grass, birdsong, summer breeze.
She eyes the rows of gravestones warily. They don’t feel so lifeless anymore. They feel like unexploded bombs, half-buried in the earth. Ticking.
For a second she notices the man ten rows away, still arguing with a statue. Perhaps that’s a Smartstone™ too, and whoever he’s shouting at is currently at the virtual party, congratulating her Dad or flying a biplane or something, rather than paying attention to the visitor. She looks away. Got her own problems right now.
Janine walks up to the black marble headstone with her Dad’s image on it, still smiling. Opens her mouth to say something, not sure what, something loud and angry probably, and catches herself when her Vades™ bring up his profile, hovering in the air above his grave.
Oscar Kinglake
Gender: Male
Age range: 71-75
Orientation: Straight
Relationship status:
Married/Monogamous
Oscar Kinglake is married to
Elizabeth Selby
Date of death: Friday 22
November 2019
“Married!” she squeaks, voice cracking. “But... Dad, you said engaged!”
His voice comes from the Smartstone™. “Well, we didn’t want to waste any time, sweetheart.”
“We’re not getting any younger!” chirps Elizabeth’s auto, followed by that giggle.
Elizabeth Kinglake
Gender: Female
Age range: 41-45
Orientation: Straight
Relationship status:
Married/Monogamous
Elizabeth Kinglake is married
to Oscar Kinglake
Date of death: Tuesday 5
January 2021
“Oh my God.”
Janine clamps a hand across her mouth, feeling like she might really be sick. The sight of Elizabeth’s profile using her family name...
“Don’t worry, love, you don’t need to call me Mum. I’m sure we can be good friends. This will be fun, we can have some nice girly chats!” Giggle.
She looks away, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Part of her wants to run back to the car, drive away as fast as she can. Part of her wants to kick dow
n Elizabeth’s granite headstone and jump on it. Part of her wants to call Frank, just to hear his voice, a living human voice.
As she stands and sucks in air, trying to slow her breathing, Janine thinks of Frank and finally understands why he never wanted anything to do with her Dad’s auto.
It came to a head a few days after her Dad’s funeral. She spotted that Frank’s auto had unfriended Oscar Kinglake. She couldn’t stop snapping at him about that, annoyed that he could cast her Dad aside that way, when he’d treated Frank like a son. The snapping became shouting, the shouting became screaming, and suddenly she was standing in their living room calling Frank every name she could think of. He stood there and took it, letting her rage at him. And then after she had cried herself dry, he wrapped his huge arms around her and said “I loved your Dad, he was the best guy in the world. But he’s gone now. And that isn’t him.”
Ever since that day, they’ve tiptoed around the fact that she continued interacting with her Dad’s auto while Frank avoided it. Not a word said. Maybe he –
“Congratulations, Mrs Kinglake!” calls her Dad’s headstone.
“Thank you, Mr Kinglake!” replies Elizabeth’s headstone.
“No!” yelps Janine. “Dad, you can’t do this, stop it! It’s not... it can’t be legal, what you’re doing. Autos can’t get married. They just can’t!”
“I don’t see why not, Jan,” comes the oh-so-reasonable voice. “You’re only as old as the things you do.”
“It’s not that, Dad, it’s just... look, in the sim-rooms you guys can do whatever you like, you know? Play dress-up and have parties and all that bollocks, fine, but this is real life, for Christ’s sake!”
“No need for effing and jeffing, love – ”
“Shut the fuck up!” she shouts at Elizabeth’s headstone. “I’ll eff and jeff as much as I want, ‘cause you are not my Mum, you stupid dead bitch!”
“Don’t worry, love, you don’t need to call me Mum. I’m sure we can be good friends. This will be fun, we can – ”
Janine runs up to the granite headstone and kicks it hard, driving her leather boot into Elizabeth’s permanently smiling face. She keeps kicking until she hears the crack of the screen fracturing, the sparking sound of electrics.
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