There were no ghosts on the moon, she told herself.
A temporary event tent on the moon’s surface made her edgy. The roof and sides were some sort of clear mylar, although it was too bright inside to see the stars. There were three dozen people inside, all dressed in black and gray, all seated in a square around the casket, with the combined wealth of a medium-sized country. Some were wiping crocodile tears off their cheeks. Some were crying real tears. Her seat was the kind of uncomfortable folding aluminum chair one expected at a funeral. One designed to prod and poke to keep people painfully awake. The floor was thick, made of a white canvas-like material, and open to a hole in the lunar dirt where the casket would be lowered in a few minutes. The hole was open to bare regolith, therefore, so was the tent. She didn’t understand what stopped the air from seeping out. They were all one pinprick away from rupturing this contraption and getting spaced. But they’d been here an hour, so it obviously stayed sealed, although that thought didn’t placate her jittery nerves.
Jin, her deputy and number two, told her not to worry about security. He’d take care of it, he said. Of course she worried. She was still the chief. She was responsible for the safety of everyone here. She was never off duty.
Nothing about this funeral was her idea. Greg, her brother, didn’t like it either. But it was Jerry’s choice to make, and he’d written it all down in explicit detail. So here they were, sitting in front of his casket, which was about to be lowered two meters into a lunar grave, listening to a pastor drone on about the afterlife, while images of people suffocating roiled her mind.
“How you doing?” Greg asked. She’d only seen him wear a suit a handful of times. He was sitting to her right. He’d slicked his hair with some sort of product and looked good in his gray jacket and navy blue tie.
Fuck you, is how I am doing, she wanted to say, and beat on his chest until she’d exhausted her rage, like the old days, then he’d pull her into a brotherly hug.
She looked around at the crowd. “Lets get these people out of here.”
He took her hand and covered it with both of his. His hands were like bear paws and buried hers. “You know as soon as we get out of here,” he said, “you will have to spread ‘em wide. Make sure they pucker up and get both lips in there.”
She laughed, feeling a tear squeeze out. What Greg meant was that half the people in the tent were here to pay their respects to Jerry. The other half were here to be seen kissing his granddaughter's ass. The ass of the colony’s sheriff, and the wife of the Chief Medical Examiner, Rae. Her ass.
“My cheeks are not open for business today.”
“You say that like you have a choice,” Rae whispered, squeezing her other hand. Rae was seated on her left, wearing a long-sleeved black dress, with a deep plunging neckline shaped like a tawdry smile and studded with rhinestones. Her auburn hair flowed down her back, to where her bra strap would be, if she were wearing a bra. Rae overflowed the neckline. She noticed Kate eyeing her cleavage and flashed a flirty eyes-up-here smile and squeezed her hand again. Rae didn’t need to ask how Kate was, because she’d already seen the tears. Last night, and the night before that.
The pastor finished his sermon and paused. Kate stood. She knew what he would say next, so she interrupted.
“Greg, Rae, and I would like to thank everyone for attending. It means a lot to us. We would like to invite you all back to the wake”
She cursed herself. There was a time when she wasn’t so political. She wanted to blurt out, go fuck yourselves. Some of you hadn’t spoken to Jerry for years. But Rae was watching, so she plastered a fake smile across her face.
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The pastor locked eyes with her. She’d interrupted his flow. But she couldn’t look at that casket for another second. And she wanted to be alone for the next part. Greg called it the unveiling.
“At the wake, There will be an opportunity for sharing. We would love to hear your memories of Jerry.”
Actually, no, she’d rather they shut the fuck up and eat their salmon and ribeye in silence, paid for by the estate. Data technicians had already scavenged social media for every moment of Jerry’s life, and uploaded them to a server. Millions of hours of video, audio, social media posts, and images. Everything Jerry ever said or did, turned into a data ghost.
The pastor nodded and waved people towards the exit. She waited, holding hands with Greg and Rae as the crowd filed out.
When everyone was gone, including the pastor, Greg said, “Should we turn it on?”
“No. We should never have allowed this.”
“It was in the will. We’ve been over this.”
“You’re the executor, Greg, you could have overridden—”
“That’s not how it works, Katie.”
“Kids,” Rae said. “Let’s not. What’s done is done. We may as well see the final result.”
“It’s not the same, Rae. Just because they programmed millions of hours—”
“I know its not the same. But its a living memory, and a lot of money was spent, so let’s see it.”
“Why are you for this?”
“Do you remember your mom? I mean really remember her?”
“Yes. Well, no not really. That was twenty five years ago.”
“If they could do this for your Mom, would you?”
“They can’t. Her work files are still classified for another hundred years. Her personal files were wiped a long time ago.”
“But if you could?”
Kate was silent for a few moments, thinking about it. Rae was pointing out organic memories fade. Someday, Jerry would just be a vague feeling rather than a sharp memory.
To Greg she said, “Play it. Let’s see it.”
Greg retrieved a small remote from his jacket pocket and clicked it. A hologram appeared above the casket. Jerry’s head, twenty years younger, with a horseshoe of gray hair and spectacles.
“Hello Kate. Good to see you. Hello, Rae. Hello, Greg. Where am I?”
There were no ghosts on the moon, but if there were, they’d look a lot like the holographic talking head of Jerry above the casket.
“We went with middle age Jerry?” she asked Greg.
“It’s what he wanted.”
“Damn right,” holographic AI Jerry said. “This is my gym era. I am stacked and jacked.”
“This is not how he talks, Greg. They must have screwed up.”
“Apparently, he had a different personality on social media.”
“Who doesn’t. Christ, we’ve resurrected Jerry the troll?”
“Don’t talk about me in the third person,” ghost Jerry said. “I am right here.” Ghost Jerry looked around the tent. “Where are we anyway? It looks like we are at a wedding.”
“Your funeral.” Kate pointed to the casket below holographic Jerry’s head.
“What happened to me?”
“Pancreatic cancer.” To Greg, she said, “Are we going to have to explain this to it every time?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ve seen enough,” she said. “Let’s get to the wake.”
Rae interjected, “I want to ask him a question.”
Kate shrugged.
“Jerry, were and when was the first time we met?”
A disembodied hand materialized and pointed to Kate. “Am I allowed to talk about it in front of her?” Ghost Jerry winked at Rae.
Rae smirked. “I’m satisfied. I like him.”
Kate thought she knew how Jerry and Rae met. The two of them had worked cases together, long before Kate met Rae.
“Hang on, Rae. I thought you met Jerry on a corruption taskforce?”
“Let’s talk about it at the wake. It’s a funny story.”
Kate looked at Greg. He shrugged. “I’m hungry.”
She waved for Greg and Rae to exit the tent first. Greg clicked off ghost Jerry, then he and Rae stepped out.
She took one last look at the casket. After her parents died, Jerry had raised her and Greg. She had hundreds of memories of Jerry that were never recorded. The AI was not Jerry. It was a holographic ghost, and a confused one at that. Like most people, Jerry had many sides. Different faces, one for each situation or relationship. A human would understand context. A human would know which side to show. Like the fake people at the funeral moments ago, showing their fake smiles. Ghost Jerry was also fake, but in a peculiar way. It was a mashup of all of Jerry's personalities.
Still, AI-ghost Jerry was eerily similar. And interactive. The engineering brochure said AI Jerry would last a few hundred years. She’d need to ensure its batteries were periodically charged. As Rae pointed out, memories fade. Ghost Jerry was better than talking to an unresponsive gravestone, she supposed.
She zipped the tent closed on her way out.
There were no ghosts on the moon, she told herself. There were no ghosts on the moon, so humans had to make them.