Goodbye for Now (24 page)

“This is Dashiell Bentlively. How can I help you?”

“This is Marisha St. James,
Times of London
. As I was saying to Ms. Maxwell, your company is being accused of profiting off people’s pain, sickness, sadness, and death.”

“As opposed,” Dash said, “to pharmaceutical companies, big tobacco, the military, hospital administrators, funeral homes, casket purveyors, obituary reporters, oncologists, chocolate makers, florists, manufacturers of those crinkly gowns without backs, most lawyers, scrubs distributors, cemetery owners, the NRA, life insurance providers, health insurance providers, mercenaries, weapons manufacturers, SUV manufacturers, defense contractors, vampire movie makers, vampire book writers, vampire TV producers, popes, roller coaster builders—”

“Roller coaster builders?” Marisha St. James interrupted.

“Reminding you that you only live once. Reminding you that life is short,” Dash explained. “In any case, if making money off of death is exploitative, we’re in very good company.”

Then the church-sponsored press moved in. Naturally less attuned to earthly technological developments, they took longer to start paying attention and find their angle, but once they did, they held on and would not let go.
Believers Monthly
called Meredith’s phone at four o’clock one morning to wonder whether she was worried about sending people to hell.

“To where?” she said sleepily.

“Hell.”

“Who is this?”

“A good question, ma’am. Whose calls are you taking these days? Jesus’? Or Satan’s?”

“Thank you, I’m not interested,” she mumbled and tried to hang up.

“We aren’t selling anything but salvation, ma’am. You are the one who’s peddling one-way tickets to a fiery damnation.”

“To where?” Meredith asked.

“Hell.”

She covered the phone with her hand and shook Sam awake. “The Christians are on the phone. They want to know why we’re sending people to hell.”

Sam took the phone from her.

“This is Sam Elling. Please don’t call us at home anymore. I’m hanging up.”

“I wouldn’t, sir. We have six thousand subscribers, many of whom preach the word of the Lord to impressionable folks who want to know why you’re sending them to hell.”

“How are we sending them to hell?” Sam sighed.

“By removing the threat of it. Our parishioners are sinning because they don’t see any reason not to because there’s no eternal damnation after death because there’s no death.”

“We haven’t done away with death,” said Sam. “People still die.”

“You’ve invented immortality, son. And now you’re literally playing with fire.”

“I haven’t and I’m not,” said Sam. “Everyone dies. What their loved
ones do with them afterward has nothing to do with them. If they were going to hell before, they’re going there still.”

“And you’ll keep them company, son, because you’re going there too.”

This guy was clearly off message. But
Christianity Today
had real concerns.
Christianity Today
was worried about people’s souls.

“We understand that you’re helping people say goodbye, and we think that’s very noble,” said Terry Greggs over coffee with Meredith and Sam and Dash who had finally concluded that safety in numbers was the way to go when possible.

“Thank you,” said Meredith. “And thank you for noticing.”

“But the American Christian Clergy Association is concerned that you’re putting words in people’s mouths by speaking for the dead.”

“But they’re dead,” said Dash.

“Dead, yes,” said Terry, “but not gone. Their souls don’t die. Pretending they’re gone isn’t helping anybody. They probably don’t like you making up words for them either.”

“I’m not making them up,” said Sam.

“What makes you think so?”

“I have an algorithm that figured it out. What makes you think they don’t like it?”

“Same way. I have an algorithm that figured it out. Jesus’ love equals eternal life.”

“I don’t think that’s an algorithm, strictly speaking,” said Sam.

“I think you’re missing the larger point here,” said Terry.

“What a coincidence. I think you are too,” said Sam.

The Mid-Atlantic Council of Mediums, Allied Ghost Hunters LLC, Madames Dee, Esmerelda, and Jan, and TheyRAmongUs.com all sent e-mails objecting to RePose along similar lines, but these were easier to ignore. The 957 religious leaders who signed a petition demanding that they stop RePosing because God didn’t like it? That was more alarming.

“We have to officially put Meredith in charge of PR and publicity,” Dash said later during Notte Della Pizza. Penny was having a bad day and had elected to stay home. Jamie was having a good day and had elected to go hiking. Dash was therefore violating the no-RePosing-during-Notte-Della-Pizza rule. He was violating the unspoken no-irritating-Meredith-during-Notte-Della-Pizza one as well.

“Why me?” she whined.

Dash pointed with his fork at Sam. “Geeky software engineer. People will assume he’s inarticulate, antisocial, unemotional, and impossible to understand.” He turned his fork on himself. “Fabulously hot and complex Hollywood insider and mysterious outsider. Intimidating and likely lying to you. But you,” he finished, aiming a piece of pizza at Meredith, “kind, sweet, caring, emotional, non-manipulative but easily manipulated yourself. Perfect.”

“He just called you a wuss,” said Sam.

“Since when is sweet and communicative and empathetic a bad thing?”

“Since you started damning people to hell,” said Dash.

“Half the Christians are mad that we’ve invented immortality and gotten rid of the dead. And the other half are mad that we’ve forgotten immortality and ignored the dead,” Sam complained.

“You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” Dash observed. “That’s why we need better PR.”

Sam concluded that whoever first coined Dash’s point that all publicity was good publicity was overstaffed and probably very bored. The press, almost all bad, meant a lot of things, but very quickly the only one any of them had time for was the deluge of new users. Well, would-be users. They’d been smart enough to keep the exact location of the salon private, but they’d not been smart enough to keep anything else private—their names, where they went for coffee and out to dinner, what section they liked at the ball game, their dog park of choice. All of that had seemed somewhere between sweet, incidental, and beside the point when Meredith had told it to Jason Peterman, but now they found themselves recognized places, cornered at coffee, accosted while having a beer or picking up dog poop. Some people echoed the reporters: How can you use people’s pain? Who are you to speak for the dead? You’re stepping on Jesus’ toes. But most of them would place a tentative hand on Sam’s arm or Meredith’s shoulder and whisper what Eduardo Antigua had that very first time: I hear you have a service. So many wanted in. The number of people
who had lost a loved one was heartbreaking, said Sam. The number of people who had lost a loved one was everyone, said Meredith.

Their subtle, tasteful website’s sign-up was totally overwhelmed. They’d taken a you-have-to-know-to-know design approach after Dash’s argument that underground and mysterious was the way to go, but now everybody knew, so they took the sign-up down entirely. They couldn’t even almost keep up with demand. Dash was nervous too about Courtney Harman-Handler’s claim that they’d had undercover users infiltrate the service. Sam’s argument was that it didn’t matter. RePose couldn’t be faked. If a user hadn’t really met the threshold—and it was high—of communication with a loved one, the projection wouldn’t render and wouldn’t work. Whether their motivation was love or investigative reporting, their DLO had to be L’d indeed to work at all. Dash’s point was that they still didn’t want saboteurs spying on users, infiltrating the system, and failing to honor the code: What happened in the salon stayed in the salon. Or: dead men tell no tales … except to users in good faith.

Then Marisha St. James called back.

“Your company is being accused of exclusivity,” she told Meredith.

“I thought our company was being accused of profiting off death.”

“Yes,” said Marisha St. James, “but only among the privileged.”

“Isn’t it better to profit off the privileged than the poor?”

“It’s better not to profit off of anyone’s exploitation, don’t you think?”

“There’s no exploitation. We’re providing a service.”

“A very expensive service.”

“I’m not sure I see why that’s a problem. We wanted to limit our numbers so we could give everyone the service they deserve. Demand is high. We have significant costs. The software is groundbreaking and incredibly complex, and it hasn’t been easy to develop, perfect, or maintain.”

“Death used to be suffered universally,” said Marisha St. James. “Now only the poor must mourn. The rich have their loved ones forever.”

Dash had a list for that one too of services available to the rich but not the poor. Sam’s point was more like death had never been universal or classless. But the newly officially-in-charge-of-PR Meredith instituted a scholarship and sliding scale and felt a little bit better.

Everything hard was falling on her shoulders. Sam got to do what he had always done—lower head, ground feet, engineer software. Dash got to
do what he always did too—schmooze and smooth the way and shake the hands and pat the backs and make sure that what happened behind the scenes kept happening. But Meredith was a little out of her element and a little out of her head. She was good at it, but it took its toll: being berated by mysterious public watchdogs, interrogated by journalists, threatened by clergy, scolded by everyone with a website or an opinion column. Someone started a Meredith Maxwell Wants to Bring Back Hitler Facebook page. It had 2,657 fans by the end of the first week. She became the public face of RePose. And it was such a beautiful, vulnerable, loving face, it was easy to prey on, easy to make hay of, easy for the haters to hate. Sam stroked it as it cringed with nightmares, as it struggled to keep its eyes open during breakfast, having gotten so little sleep the night before, as it creased with worry and something else—guilt maybe, fear. We are helping people heal, she insisted to everyone who asked. We are giving the gifts of second chances and one more times. But she started to doubt too. To Sam she said maybe it isn’t fair, maybe it isn’t helping, maybe it isn’t honest. She said maybe we are exploiting taking advantage abusing corrupting. Sam said you have such a good heart. Sam said think how happy you were the first time you talked to your grandmother.

She started chatting with Livvie most days. At first her grandmother was puzzled why Meredith was calling so much. But then the projection learned and normalized it. It still couldn’t answer her more philosophical questions, but it did a not half-bad job, Sam thought, of trying.

“Oh Grandma,” Meredith said one day. “Aren’t there people you’d give anything to talk to again?”

“I wish your mother would call more often,” said Livvie, one of her themes.

“I mean someone who’s dead,” said Meredith quietly.

The projection had to think about that one for a while. “I miss your grandfather,” it finally came up with.

“Right?” said Meredith. “Wouldn’t you want to see him, talk to him again if you could?”

“Of course, dear,” said Livvie. “And also you. I miss you too. You and Sam should come visit me for a couple weeks.”

“I wish we could, Grandma,” said Meredith tiredly.

“But let me guess. You have to work.”

Meredith nodded mutely at the camera. Neither one of them sounded like they believed this anymore.

“That’s okay, baby,” Livvie sighed. “At least we can chat. It’s not the same as being together, but I love to see that beautiful face.”

“Exactly,” said Meredith. “That’s my point exactly.”

“I would like to see you in person though.”

“I know, Grandma. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. You were just trying to help. I forgive you. Talk to you soon. Bye.”

Meredith hung up and looked at Sam. “What the hell was that?”

“That happened once before,” said Sam. “The very first time. Eduardo’s very first time with Miguel.”

“Why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. It’s a weird programming glitch. For some reason the projection suddenly starts offering up vague absolution in response to your saying sorry. It’s like it’s stopped talking to you and instead switched over to emilypost-dot-com. I don’t know what triggers it.”

“That’s really weird. I didn’t mean sorry like that anyway.”

“I know. And usually she does too. I’ll look into it and figure out what’s going on,” Sam promised.

Meredith buried her face in her hands. “This isn’t helping anymore anyway,” she said.

“Isn’t helping what?”

“Isn’t helping me not miss her. She can’t help me with what’s really wrong.”

“Could she ever?” asked Sam.

“I don’t know,” said Meredith. “Maybe only in person. Maybe this isn’t any good.”

“It was never meant to be forever,” Sam said. “It was only meant to be a way station between devastating grief and letting go.”

“Since when?” she asked.