Funeral

When the messages started flowing at that rate, most people in the neighbourhood were made aware that something out of the ordinary was taking place. How could it be that something like this would be happening? Surely, a mistake!

People were getting surprised, astonished, you could hear the gasps of shock all over Lime Street as the news was being passed around, word of mouth, brain mod electronic signals, even some e-mails were sent! Nobody had sent a bloody e-mail for over a decade, it was a miracle it worked at all.

Somehow the chatter was consistent. Someone had died. Natural causes, people whispered. Since death had been erradicated since the Healer uprising in 2046, this was an anomaly. The Agency sent a mod bot to the location, to investigate the body, people shuffled around and let the mod bot through.

The mod bot hovered over the bed of the deceased. Male, born around 2000, which meant he was over 90 years old, name code scrambled, the mod bot impatiently informed HQ. Quickly scanning for vital signs, noticed the regeneration mod was not functioning, the mod bot informed, it was nowhere to be found at all. Someone took it out from the deceased, now a victim, the mod bot scanned the incision wound on the side of the man’s temple. The mod bot informed HQ this was now a scene of a crime.

The Agency sent a team of med bots and quickly put the body in a transport drone to HQ. A detective bot started to scan the property, while curious punters were trying to gather some clues from the scrambled comms link – no one had died on Lime Street for many, many years.

So it was decided. A funeral will take place. After all, that man who never spoke to anyone, that man who would be heard screaming and breaking stuff in his dorm at crazy hours, that man who no one knew his name, who would occasionally nod in recognition or blatantly ignore people, and who would never switch his brain mod gear on for public scanning, this man had died on Lime Street. And a funeral and a wake should be had, a street event. And people would drink, and people would eat and nod to each other, and whisper and shout, and laugh and cry, all because it was a death, a death in Lime Street.

There was no body, there were no relatives, no coffin, no cemetery, nothing was left to do, those ceremonies had become obsolete, even the deceased dorm was repossessed the following morning. The Agency never explained properly what happened, no newscast was published at all.

A street party was hastily organised, and everyone joined in, and drank and sang old songs, and ate and had a good time.  It was the least they could do to honour the poor man.

No one died in Lime Street, but if they did, it would not be without a proper farewell.

Esta obra está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional.