CUT TO:

EXT. 12TH STREET CHAPEL PARKING LOT

The Aggressive Protester from earlier, the one standing on the truck, is gone, but a small group of chanting people have since filled his space. Shelly is standing next to the bed of the truck, waving her sign.

SHELLY

Software can’t feel!

Programs aren’t real!

A single reporter, who traveled all the way from the Times Mail in Bedford, talks to the elders loading orange bibles into an old car. Shelly seems distracted. A thought settles on her face, bending her brow into a bow that lets a worried prayer fly.

CUT TO:

INT. HANNAH’S BEDROOM

Hannah is sitting on her bed. The lights are out in her room, and we can see that the program she was working on has crashed again — her computer monitor is spinning, spinning, spinning. You might think she was asleep, but when the afterversion of her father speaks from her phone beside her, Hannah opens her eyes. She rubs the tears from her cheek and lets her hand linger above the phone as if she can’t decide whether or not to turn it off.

PAUL

You’re doing awesome, Han. It’s not your

fault at all. It’s mine. I should have

fought your mom to get you out of

Mitchell before you got all rotten —

genius girls like you should live where

you can thrive. It would be so easy,

Han, and I could do it for you,

just like that. You wouldn’t even have to

take a breath or lift a finger.

BACK TO:

INT. 12TH STREET CHAPEL

Smoke continues to pour from the candles, obscuring the stage more and more and giving the scene a sense of magic all abracadabra and hocus-pocus. Something truly religious is about to happen. Dirk watches intently with the other kids, their eyes seemingly glued in their sockets.

MR. KIDDERMAN

(with all the airs of a

colorful ring-master)

That’s it!

Jeff and Lisa Johannessen smile shyly and the crowd becomes even more transfixed than it was before. Even the shuffling feet and adjusting of clothes grows quiet, and you can clearly hear the protesters shouting through the thick walls in the heavy silence. Mr. Kidderman laughs with joy, or maybe relief. A boy beside Dirk shivers in anticipation.

MR. KIDDERMAN

(with principal)

Now — let’s say hello to our friend RJ.

A bright white light and a fine blue writing, which was barely visible, and which Jeff Johannessen had been manipulating as the ceremony progressed, both disappear from the screen of the tablet. A void gapes in their wake — you can see the reflection of the CROWD OF PEOPLE in the emptiness — but soon the empty screen is filled by the enigma of a floating face. Delicately, like an electronically perfect doll, the afterversion of RJ smiles at the crowd. A hushing doubt grips the room.

CROWD OF PEOPLE

(speaking in unison)

Hello, RJ.

RJ

(in an unearthly simple

midwestern way)

Hey there.

RJ winks. His charisma is suave and rat-packish in a way that people who claim to have known him will tell you it never was before. You almost expect him to light a cigarette. What harm would it do him now? The blue background behind him shimmers like an unpolluted Mediterranean sea free of yachts, cruise ships, Greek myths, etc., all confined to the white shores of the tablet’s edge.

RJ (IN TABLET)

Please, I

would appreciate it if you

all came up at once and paid your

due respects. You can download

me immediately after

if you link your phone to the tablet,

and I will be available for

download on Hereafter later.

A thumbs-up appears in the tablet’s text line under RJ’s face, and Mr. Kidderman steps off the stage with the Johannessens. RJ is running the show now. The students rise from their seats as a mass that disturbs the settled smoke above their heads and sends it reeling in wheels and swishing cats-tails of blue mystery. Some of them have only seen dead people in the app before, and now is their chance to see a real body and to marvel at the living face floating in the screen beside it.

Dirk rises with the students surrounding him. Together, they form a wobbly line of leaning people leading to the open casket. It moves quickly. People grimace for a moment at the body RJ left behind, hurriedly and a little disgusted at the formality of it, or maybe turning their noses at the artificially clean smell, before they move towards the tablet. RJ greets each one with a kind hello and invites them to press their phones to the screen. They do. Their phones vibrate in their hands after receiving the new life, and when they turn it over — there’s RJ smiling back at them.

The students, once they have their friend in their pockets, go skipping by the mourning parents. But you might understandably question how grieved Jeff and Lisa Johannessen are. Jeff especially seems delighted, and in the brief lull of activity that comes as each passing person pauses to consider the look of peaceful rest that a mortician has placed on his adopted son, Jeff talks to the face floating in the tablet about sandy black volcanic beaches, afterversion friendly cruise activities, and what good the ocean air and sunlight is sure to do them both. After the kids say their bit about how thankful they are for RJ, mostly speaking to Lisa, they parade out of the church and disperse into the town.

Dirk walks with the rest of them up to the casket. When his turn comes, he looks down at RJ. His gaze lingers. Maybe he remembers a moment since forgotten, when Shelly brought RJ over with a group of friends. Maybe they were even introduced. Something about the plastic quality of the face in the casket demands an everlasting memory as a token, and Dirk seems to struggle for one. He rubs the screen of his phone through his pants, and Flori sets it buzzing. Dirk has lingered too long. He turns to the Johannessens and speaks to Lisa.

DIRK

I wish I could’ve helped.

LISA JOHENESSEN

I’m sure you did —

JEFF JOHENESSEN

(interrupting)

We tried

the best we could, and it’s all that we could do.

A beat passes. Lisa seems to melt like one of the candles surrounding them.

JEFF JOHENESSEN (CONT’D)

(talking to RJ floating in

the tablet)

Apparently they’ve rigged some way that we

can spend a day in the spa together. I bet

your mom would love that more than anything —

it’s been so long since someone treated her

like that — all mudbaths, real messages, the works…

Lisa smiles apologetically, and Dirk turns away from the Johannessens. He starts down the corridor created by the pews and the lurching line of people, but, maybe it’s the chemical smell of the body in the casket, or perhaps some vision, maybe a spirited illusion, you would have a hard time saying what, but something has its hooks in him like the perfumed tendrils of a supernatural jellyfish. Dirk finds it difficult to breath — you might even think he was having an anxiety attack. He manages to make it back into the foyer, and he stands there, leaned against a glass wall, taking deep breaths in the abundance of light. From in the lobby beneath the cool air of the fan, breathing the fresh air deeply, Dirk stares back at the candle-flickering dark room where rainbows leak through hidden windows and dance with the dead. The tablet at the end of that far room glows like a light leading through the proverbial tunnel to heaven, or hell, or maybe somewhere in-between.

While Dirk stares into the room, a man, the Aggressive Protester from before the funeral, who now stands at the front of the line near the casket, screams in the church like a banshee.

AGGRESSIVE PROTESTER

I won’t let you make another one like him —

not my son! — not another monster!

The man delivers a windmill punch to the tablet RJ is floating in, cracking the screen and sending it flying across the room like a shooting star. Mr. Kidderman runs after its glittering form, but the Johannessens stand transfixed and staring. Jeff looks like he might laugh. Everyone watches intently, as if a new part of the funeral, perhaps something like a post-credit scene that sets up a sequel, is about to begin. The Aggressive Protester takes the hand of the boy in the casket and holds it up for everyone to see.

AGGRESSIVE PROTESTER

(as if waving goodbye)

This is your boy.

Two athletic kids in letter jackets break the lull of the moment with a bit more violence than necessary. One athletic kid drags the Aggressive Protester to the ground, leaving RJ’s pale hand to hang outside his coffin, and the other boy grinds a knee into the Aggressive Protester’s back, pinning him with spinal pop. The smoke settles.

It all seems finished and over with until Lisa Johannessen begins to sob. Jeff puts an arm around her and tries to coax her to stop. He probably tells her to remember that in a couple of quick hours they will be on a cruise — and not to worry. The cruise probably even accommodates Hereafter passengers. There will be loads of games us living people can watch our afterchildren play. You can even bet on the games, if you want to! But you don’t have to. It will be fun, it will be different, and we will feel alive…

Whatever Jeff says, he can’t calm Lisa. She builds up speed and magnitude until she’s heaving sobs that shake her frame and threaten to rip off the flowers stitched across her dress. Suddenly animated, she breaks free of Jeff and strides to the protester, leaning down towards his shining bald head like a fish teasing towards a hook.

LISA JOHANNESSEN

You ruined everything.

We were all so happy, and you ruined it.

Mr. Kidderman pulls Lisa away. He hands her the tablet. It looks the same besides the shining crack that splits RJ’s face in two. RJ smiles at Lisa, assuring her that everything will be alright while she sets him back on the stand.

RJ winks delightfully and the students start passing through the line again. Their phones buzz like bees. Someone starts playing Amazing Grace on a harmonica over the loudspeakers. Mr. Kidderman stands with Jeff and Lisa in a corner, discussing the future, and and Dirk turns unbelievably green. He starts to sweat. The foyer is suddenly too close to things too personal, and he leaves the church in a hurry.