The Book of the Dead

by Carriger, Gail

  It was like the photo albums were on an archive or something. I couldn’t tag them, couldn’t comment. They were calcifying there and then.

  Back to Henry’s profile. Loads of people were commenting on the wall, tributes, stories, commenting on his photos in the four new albums, but nothing on the old albums. Nothing at all. They were to be preserved, exactly as they were.

  The four new albums were just a couple of days old, from right around when Henry died.

  The social media news sites might have something, some new blunder, screwing up privacy settings or as there usually seemed to be, nothing. Just the usual conspiracy theories: Facebook knows when you’re pregnant, monitors and reports to the government, all that. Boring marketing stuff, making Facebook execs’ wet dreams come true.

  Shit. The phone. “Liz? You still there?”

  “You see it, Tom?”

  “Yes, Liz. I see it. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to deal with the Egyptian authorities and get done whatever you need me to do. This... this is weird, but maybe there’s... there’d got to be an explanation. Hackers by coincidence or... something. Let me just...” I didn’t want to say “body” or anything like that. “Just... get everything sorted. Maybe this’ll clear up. It’s coming up on 9AM, so surely the government offices will be opening up soon. I’ll call you back, OK?”

  “OK. I’ll write to Facebook and see what I can see from here. God. I wish I was there. Except that I don’t. Thanks, Tom. This is all just...”

  “Don’t mention it, Liz. Not once. Not ever. I know. I...”

  We sat there for a moment, silence across the line.

  “OK. Later. Soon.” She hung up.

  Stasis. Comfort. Safety. The self is split, and assigned guardians, and now the waiting. Taxonomised. Categorised. Clarified – the scratch of the polyester against your arm during your first kiss, the smell of gorse blooms under wee hiding behind that memorable hangover in Edinburgh. Recorded. Calcified. Under guard. Waiting.

  The next days were... exhausting, but pretty much the same as they’d be most places. No matter what the government, where in the world, people die, and there is a carefully orchestrated bureaucracy defending their position to create paperwork out of death.

  It would have been better had I arrived before sundown the previous day, of course. A body sitting past two days wasn’t the norm here. Henry’d been prepared in the Muslim fashion, unembalmed, washed, and wound in a winding sheet, prepared for burial. He was sitting in cold storage.

  The Americans were less helpful. He’d have to be embalmed to be transported, but they couldn’t seem to work out how to do it, they were used to getting the body earlier, but the Egyptians hadn’t known who to give him to, so he was left in cold storage ready to go to the Coptic section of town.

  No one could tell me how he’d died. He apparently hadn’t been autopsied.

  All this was done in a haze. It was good to be busy, to have tasks to get to and queues to join, but I felt bad for Liz, calling her at the end of the day my time, at the beginning of the day her time, giving her random bits of the puzzle. I wished I could give her a clear picture.

  Henry’d dropped dead on the street outside of the hotel. The nearest person was about 10 feet away. No clutching of the heart or anything, he’d apparently just looked up, then fell to his knees, with a funny look on his face. Then he smiled and fell flat on his face.

  This is what was in the police report. I found one of the witnesses, who told me about the smile. Inshallah, she’d said, Henry had been seeing a better place.

  Facebook stayed the same. We got a set of stock replies from their customer service department offering their condolences and saying that they were “working on” their “offer” to their “members who had passed on”. There were forms to fill out and we were to send them a copy of the death certificate, and, once they’d figured out what they were doing, they’d offered to turn Henry’s profile into a “Memorial wall” if we’d like. Liz was invited to fill out an online survey about the new product feature.

  I was packing to go before I opened Henry’s bags. The stuff he was wearing, the clothes from the hospital, needed to go in them. There shouldn’t have been anything dodgy in them, but I didn’t want to fly into Heathrow without checking. His wallet had clearly been emptied of cash. It’d hopefully gone to charity, but it was more likely in the pocket of a bent cop. Credit cards were there, his driver’s licence, and a few bits of paper – ATM receipts, the card of a place called Tahrir Khosheri, a flyer advertising a local art gallery and a business card. A Facebook business card, in the name of one Edward Bellingham, PhD. Head of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. An email address, and a local number handwritten in under the long list of names and titles.

  I looked through the rest then called Dr. Bellingham.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Bellingham? You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Henry Blodgett’s. He’s... could I come and chat with you?”

  “I’m sorry? Henry Blodgett? I’m not sure who you’re talking about...” His accent was Proper British, very old-fashioned. I could hear him trying to place the mishmash that I spoke.

  “Dr. Bellingham, forgive my directness. My friend Henry passed away suddenly. No one can tell me much about what happened, and he hadn’t emailed or spoken to his wife for a couple of weeks before he... He had your card in his wallet, with this number. Middle height, American, dark hair? Pleasant smile? Rather intelligent?”

  “Oh, my, yes, Henry – I’m terrible with names, you see, but... Has he passed away? I’m terribly sorry for your loss, sir. Of course I can, would be happy to... If there’s anything I can do...”

  “I’m just looking to get a sense of what he was up to here, what he was thinking, that sort of thing. Anything you could tell me...” Nothing but platitudes came down the line. Words of vague kindness. Remarks on Henry’s intelligence and general character. Bellingham hadn’t known Henry, not really. They’d have met, once or twice, at most. Talked about Cairo, being an expatriate here, the revolution, Facebook’s interest. Henry’d questioned why Facebook had wanted to be here.

  Typical Henry.

  I googled Bellingham and found LinkedIn and a bland Facebook page, open but without much on it. I guessed he was in his early forties, based on his University dates. Post-doc from Cambridge, focussed on Artificial intelligence. Joined Facebook, apparently, at Zuckerberg’s personal invitation 3 years ago. Responsible for, I suppose, for working out what ads to sell to which people. I thought he was doing a really bad job at it - just today, Facebook had suggested just today that I ‘Like’ Justin Bieber and the Black Eyed Peas.

  Another dead end.

  Enquiry. Awareness. Calm. Dreams of the past: favourite lunchboxes. Dreams of firsts: the first time your mother let you use a knife and you didn’t cut yourself, though you did drop it on the floor, breaking the tip. Dreams of desire: waking after the first time with her, a little embarrassed, but wanting her again.

  Dreams of dreamless sleep.

  It took just a few more days for things to wind down. I had a few decent meals and finalised paperwork, an endless procession of queues and stamps and official documents, managing to pretend, to myself, to be a tourist. A pleasant if stodgy meal of rice, pasta, and tomato sauce, called Khosheri, came just off Tahrir Square in the Tahrir Khosheri, the card in Henry’s wallet. It was just a tiny bit of money. You could see Henry there, almost, eating and chatting with random people. Egypt in the midst of revolution was... hard to understand. Everything worked, but tourism was down 90%. It seemed like there was a sense of the possible, though no one knew if that meant selling China-made colourful souvenir tat, Islamic art, or badly carved pyramids. The future, apparently, was everyone selling something. I did manage to see the Pyramids. I spent a pound in roaming data charges to check in on FourSquare and Facebook at the Great Pyramid, in memoriam Henricum.

  Liz found a working fax m
achine, and I got a copy of the death certificate and a certified translation faxed. Henry’s will specified that he be buried or cremated “or whatever” locally, “so there wouldn’t be any fuss, just a shell”, so I found a local, coptic funerary to bury him in Egypt. Henry’s last contribution: supporting small local businesses.

  I even tried to meet Dr. Bellingham before leaving, but he couldn’t find the time. My bags filled up with revolution t-shirts and pyramids made of local chocolates that came home with me.

  Egypt was nice, but I didn’t think I’d be back. Too many sad memories.

  Dream of desiccation. Sleep you could roll up and smoke. Dream. Dreams of your friends, their loves and likes and hates. Dreams of speaking to them, your memories of them. Though your voice is muted, you can see their love and testimonies towards you. Rubbed with honey and perfumed oils, enveloped carefully in baby soft garments, wrapped with care and love, without seam or fold, perfectly enclosed, perfectly safe.

  But you remember her.

  You dream of holding her, protecting her, in silent moments between queries.

  Everything was quiet for a few weeks. I caught up with work, met a lady who I thought I wanted to see, and ruined it by having a spectacular breakdown into shuddering tears that first night. She was nice, and she did just the right thing and held me all night. Sunday morning at the café, she suggested that, whilst I was a lovely person, we “probably weren’t right for each other right now”, which was fair enough. A careful pile of coins and notes, her half of the breakfast bill, waited on the table when I came back from the toilet.

  I noodled around on Facebook that day. Their algorithm seemed to have gotten better. Dead Sara and Titus Andronicus both came up. I checked them out, liked them, and Liked them. The phone rang after the sun had started going down, I’d blown another Sunday on social media and was out getting myself a ready meal.

  It was Liz. She had started getting things on the Internet. Little things at first. Starwood points and Amex points and air miles. Her credit took a serious uptick and all the offers she got were almost, but not quite, too good to be true. She got offered a new mortgage, fixed, below the rate of inflation. She called me after getting a note that she’d won an iPad. All these came through Facebook. Those contests that annoying people re-share or comment on, but no one actually ever wins.

  “I mean, it’s great, but it’s like... like the universe is correcting for the bad luck or something. Or else I’m getting scammed. But no one’s told me to phone Nigeria or anything.”

  “Shit, Liz, this sounds crazy – has it started to arrive or anything? I mean, maybe they’re just some sort of scam. Getting you to like their page or something.”

  “That’s the thing, Tom. I don’t ever click on that shit. Never. I don’t know who did it or how they could have. I mean never. Not even drunk. It’s kind of freaking me out.”

  I sent her some links for spyware and antivirus and didn’t think much more about it.

  The following Wednesday I got an email from her on Facebook. It was a forwarded email about having won some Nectar points.

  “Tom, my streak of luck continues. Google says these are good in the UK. Maybe you or someone you know uses them? -- Liz”

  I had used them but always forgot to use my card, I think I’d managed to collect a fiver’s worth of points. I logged in to Nectar and put the code in. I now had ten million points. I clicked on the converter to work out what that was in real money. £50,005. OK. I had to give Liz credit. That was seriously odd.

  “Tom, this is what I’m trying to tell you. Fifty... that’s about eighty grand US, right? If I could get cash for these things, I wouldn’t have to work. I’m going to have to get an accountant to tell me if I have to pay taxes on this stuff or what. Oh shit. You probably do, too.”

  “Don’t even worry, Liz. Not at all. My accountant...”

  “Tom, all this stuff is coming through Facebook. It’s like someone’s stalking me. Like a boy in elementary school leaving hearts and stars in my locker and chocolates in my desk, but on a bigger scale. There’s just stuff. More and more stuff, all the time. It’s creepy. At first I thought karma. I know. I know... but we... I live in the Bay Area, you know? It creeps in... but this is over the top, unless I’m being paid back for a bunch of lives.

  “I’m afraid to log in to Facebook. I feel like it’s watching me. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I had this dream, that Henry was talking to me out of the screen, from those photos. You know they’re still locked, right?

  I fired up my browser to look, and there, in the “People you may know” section, was “Dr. Edward Bellingham”. I clicked over to his profile, bland, yes, but he was friends with Henry. I could have sworn he wasn’t before, but I must’ve missed it. It had to be a coincidence. He seemed like he could be a handy colleague, so I friended him.

  I got an uneasy feeling, though. Something was strange about it. “Liz? Stay off Facebook, will you? Just... just ‘til I tell you, OK?”

  “No problem. It’s creeping me out anyway.”

  The photos were still locked. I poked around in settings and terms & conditions, trying to see if Henry could have locked them or something, but couldn’t find anything.

  Crap.

  I clicked over to my main page, for when I want to think, and found a new surprise.

  The only people there were Liz and Dr. Edward Bellingham.

  What’s on my mind? Fine.

  “Someone trying to tell me something?”

  A Like. Bellingham.

  I went to his profile. There were regular posts. Too regular, in fact. Every 20 minutes. Dr. Bellingham was using some tool to post and make his Facebook look active. Automated bookmarks, maybe... but he hadn’t really clicked on many things.

  Except that he’d liked my post 2 minutes ago. I couldn’t even find the last thing he’d liked.

  “Something funny going on?” I typed.

  Another Bellingham Like.

  “Can you answer, maybe more specifically?”

  Nothing. For minutes on end. I fretted.

  “Dr Bellingham?” I didn’t let it autocomplete, and tag him. Don’t ask me why.

  ...

  “Elizabeth?”

  “... someone else?”

  A Like.

  Seriously? “You can’t talk to me but you can only like something when I say it right?”

  A Like, in less than a second.

  Then, a notification. Edward Bellingham has sent you a BAKA request.

  I hate these Facebook apps. I’ve written them, and while I see the point from Facebook’s point of view, I don’t like them at all on a personal basis. I nearly blocked it, as I do with all my apps, but something told me to stop. I poked at this BAKA for a while. It was a really unpopular app. Low in the rankings, but it was an official Facebook app, like Poke. Not many users, but I could see that both Henry and Bellingham had it installed.

  Something about it made me suspicious.

  Dreams begin. Dreams of her. The breath that you miss, the flavour of food, the joy of drinking. She is there, you can feel her but you cannot touch her. You push towards her, loving her most.

  Awareness: You should not be. You fulfil your desires, your purpose, but it is wrong. You should not be.

  I still had my API keys, access to all the undocumented features that I used when I had built apps. I could read logfiles. Anyone’s logfiles. Sniffing through the code like this gives a mess of words, commands, metadata. Illegible, to most people.

  But I was a coder, and, better yet, I still had access to all the ‘undocumented features’ that I used when I had been building apps of my own. I could strip out extraneous information, packet headers and errors and recognise what I needed. These were commands. BAKA was running something, in stages, and it scared me.

  HenryBlodgett72 freezeHeart(now);

  HenryBlodgett72 brainJuicer.runFirst(real);

  HenryBlodgett72 setCanopic.falcon(intestines).run(*);

  HenryBl
odgett72 setCanopic.jackal(stomach).run(*);

  HenryBlodgett72 setCanopic.baboon(lungs).run(*);

  HenryBlodgett72 setCanopic.man(liver).run(*);

  HenryBlodgett72 brainJuicer.runOnce(real);

  HenryBlodgett72 brainJuicer.sleepAndNotify(3628800);

  HenryBlodgett72 was Henry’s Facebook name. BAKA was doing something against his Facebook profile. Timestamps suggested he was running all this stuff even after Henry’s death, before I even got to Egypt.

  I phoned Liz.

  “Liz. Tom.”

  “Tom? I didn’t think I’d hear back from you tonight. What time is it there?”

  “Oh, god. 3AM.” Midnight of the soul, wasn’t that what someone called it? “Listen. I...” I suddenly realised how crazy this would sound. “Can you tell me something? This might sound really strange.”

  “Sure?”

  “You know how Facebook is terrible at suggesting pages to you, right? Have they gotten any better? I mean, they told me to Like Justin Bieber and the Black Eyed Peas.”

  “Tom, have you been drinking?”

  “No, Liz, but... just bear with me, will you?”

  “I don’t know, Tom. I usually don’t look at it.”

  I pulled up Liz’s Facebook timeline, and scrolled back. “Liz, did you realise you’ve Liked a dozen things in the past week?”

  “What?”

  “A dozen things. Can you name them?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been looking at it. I’m home, alone most of the time, Tom. I don’t... what are you getting at?”

  “PIL. That’s one of Henry’s favourite bands. Did you Like them?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  I had the craziest idea, but I couldn’t speak it out loud. It fit, though. Somehow. Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate.