The second-to-last funeral to ever be held was an international affair. Professor Chae-Won Hoon had been something poorly described by any single label. A hero, a saviour, a celebrity, a messiah, a witch, a devil, a troublesome and brilliant woman. So said the news reporters, the articles, the headlines, and the thousands of small ceremonies in halls, in schools, in chapels and in laboratories around the world.

Carlos had been given an invitation - a ticket! - to attend within the college chapel where her closest remaining family and friends would mourn. So had Austen. They traveled and arrived together, as they had often of late. They agreed, as they walked in, that the chapel, whilst magnificent and located in the heart of an academic Meccah, seemed the wrong place - Chae-Won had been deeply atheist. She had even been anti-theist, if one listened closely to what she actually said.

An academic - chancellor of something, doctor of something else - started a long eulogy. Carlos hated it. To him, Chase-won had been driven, precise, polite, and often somewhat stiff, even grim, even after years of acquaintance. The passion that drove her had generally been hard to discern in person. To have her positive traits listed alongside her accolades by this youth for people to just hear rather than have to discover seemed perverse. An indulgence for those who had not put in the time.

What was more, Chase-Won the woman he had known from old had been gone for many years before her body’s death. It dulled the instinct to mourn now.

After the ceremony (se-REM-on-ee, said his brain, with Freddie’s voice) was over, he and Austen wandered to the adjoining exhibition space. The college had not held a simple wake for the over-one-hundred mourners present; instead, since the date had been known in advance, some bright spark had gathered students, academics and professors and put together a research conference. The attendees left the chapel straight into a poster hall. Refreshments were provided.

“Oh, it all goes over my head, but isn’t this one beautiful?” said Austen some time later. She was looking at an electronic poster displaying a detailed map of one corner of Spain. A rainbow of colours slowly shifted over the topology. Around the sides, a key indicated the different colours were representative of different patterns of birdsong in different species; one could tap the poster to hear samples. Carlos glanced at the title: “Evidence of cultural exchange in birdsong between different species of thrush in Galicia, Spain; stability and shifts over five decades”.

Carlos grunted in approval.

“Certainly a way to spend your time,” he said.

“Oh, stop grousing!”, Austen laughed, swatting him on the arm. “I think it is a good way to spend one’s time! It’s art, isn’t it, how they worked it all out and made it pretty to see like this?”

They moved on. Other posters and titles slowed their steps through the hall: “Natural language model synthesised poetry is distinguishable from human using deep neural networks”; “Trends and themes in the naming of potentially-habitable planets”; “Applications of interventional bionanotechnology in more sustainable energy generation”.

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After a time, Carlos found himself talking to a youth, one of the scientists loitering next to their creation and providing short presentations of the work, like a market salesman pitching his poster’s ideas. The boy was arguing that his automated analysis of what words people wrote on the internet in years past showed something about fundamental changes in how people thought pre- and post-Eterna. He was wrong, and Carlos was letting him know.

“So you have found that people use different words. So what, though, eh? Why is it different to every other time people have used different words? It happens all the time; has happened all the time.”

“I would argue, sir, that it is the particular changes in the words. You can see that the usage of words about reasons, morals - simple ones, “bad”, “good”, “why”, “purpose” - they all increased in the years that Eterna was becoming more known. There is a shift in the lexicographical corpus of concern.”

Carlos laughed at the phrase.

“OK, but you have only shown ten words here! And only ones which agree with you! I lived through those conversations, and let me tell you, we said “mouse” a lot as well - they were just relevant to what we were talking about at the time. Nothing fundamental, just… circumstantial.

“And “fundamental changes in people” - but you have only showed English words! Are they more purpose-driven in South America, too, or just the North? Is your ‘lexicographic corpus’ global, eh? Or just English speaking? Show me that - show me that this word change is different from what happened around, I don’t know, from some other important invention; that it is everywhere, and sustained; and it is specific to only these words, and maybe I’ll believe my thinking really changed.”

“I can’t do the first of those,” said the boy tightly. “There are no other inventions of the same importance since records began.”

“Well, I think you had better get thinking then, as you are a bit stuck!”

The young man looked as he had swallowed something unpleasant. He looked back at his work for a moment, pained, before turning to face the ancient who had been disparaging it.

“Well, what would you do from this point then, Mr De Leon? Change track? Do something else?”

Carlos was taken by surprise for a moment - both by the realisation that this youth had recognised him (and why shouldn’t he have, with the kind of person he was, at an event like this?), and by the sudden bitterness of the reply.

“No! Change track? I said get thinking, not give up! It’s damned interesting to think about, what you have here - you just don’t have it yet.”

The conversation continued. The long-retired journalist gave advice to the rookie sociologist, not all of which would be taken. They parted ways, both somehow happier for having argued - one to continue work which he would without any doubt improve in the future, and the other to rejoin his friend.

Carlos found Austen finishing another conversation, with another young person, who scuttled off before he reached the two of them. Austen gave him a sunny smile as their eyes met.

“Oh, they are interesting, the kind of people Chae-Won liked to spend time with, aren’t they? So many ideas, so many wonderful things they make, and are making. And what a lovely way to remember her.”

Carlos snorted.

“Yes, I suppose so.”