Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series

  CEMETERY PLANET:

  The Complete Series

  J. Joseph Wright

  Text copyright 2012/2013 by J. Joseph Wright

  Cover copyright 2012/2013 by Krystle Wright

  Author’s website: jjosephwright.com

  Artist’s website: krystledesigns.wordpress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  I want the world to read CEMETERY PLANET: The Complete Series. If you’d like to share it with your friends, feel free. Just don’t make a material gain off of it, because that would constitute copyright infringement.

  Thank you, J.

  PART I

  1.

  “Your chocolate ice cream is ready.”

  Harvey Crane dropped his kinetic wrench and stood abruptly, slamming his head against the service counter. He didn’t mind. He could have a concussion, for all he cared. All that mattered was the ice cream, the first taste he’d had in weeks. Rich, velvety, dark chocolate. It was all he thought about, all he dreamt about, and now, after hours of tinkering with the printer, he’d get some.

  What he found in the autoserve, though, wasn’t chocolate ice cream at all. He knew from the puke-green color.

  “Mint sorbet!” he searched for someone to register his complaint. “Why can’t that cheap damn DeepSix spring for a decent food printer!”

  Of course, he didn’t expect an answer. Though the food court was large enough to hold two hundred easily, Harvey represented the sole occupant. He was, in fact, the lone inhabitant in the entire structure, built to accommodate a thousand strong, with a visitor center, souvenir and snack shops, several mausoleum levels, a nondenominational temple, a space elevator, and vacuum tube train lines circumnavigating the planet. All that technology, at the cost of trillions, gathering dust on a forgotten world, in a forgotten corner of the galaxy. That’s not what bothered Harvey, though. He just wanted a decent bowl of ice cream.

  With a huff, he tossed the revolting stuff in the recycler and decided, yet again, to make his nightly rounds without having dessert. Nightly rounds which were completely unnecessary. He didn’t like DeepSix much. Cheap bastards. But even this job he felt a little guilty about. Like taking candy from a baby. Nothing broke down. Nothing. Still, it was his duty to check, and double check, so that’s what he did.

  “Welcome to Cemetery Planet,” he strolled into the auditorium, and the three-dimensional projection began with a shot of Earth from space. Then the scene widened past the sun. The narrator continued. “The year was 2525, and Earth was running out of room for its population. With land becoming a scarce resource, cemeteries were no longer a luxury mankind could afford. Thankfully, with the discovery of high speed intergalactic travel via the ionic stream, we were able to relocate every cemetery from Earth here to the Fomalhaut system. Spanning the planet’s fifty-five million square kilometers, the gravesites have been faithfully and respectfully recreated, with no detail spared, all to make sure your visit with your loved one is pleasant and memorable. Please feel free to take all the time you need. All shops are open twenty-four hours a day, and automated to fulfill your every craving. Train schedules are posted in the lounge. With departures every ten minutes, you won’t have to wait long if you miss one. We at DeepSix hope you—”

  “Hope you enjoy your stay at Cemetery Planet,” Harvey mocked the recording. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said to the empty circular theater. “I got news for you! Nobody’s enjoying nothing, because nobody’s coming to visit this damn place anymore!”

  He left the theater before the next show started. Though he was supposed to make sure the whole presentation went off without a hitch, he couldn’t take sitting through the damn thing for the six-hundredth time. He knew the story by heart, so well he could recite it word for word. It worked. It all worked. From the interactive mapping services that told visitors exactly where their departed loved ones were located, to the holomemorials installed on just about every grave, nothing in the entire facility, on the entire planet, broke down. Except the damn autoserve food printer.

  2.

  Four hours later, he had but one task left before his copious down time. He saved the best for last, his favorite job in the plethora of mind-numbing chores—testing the holomemorials. A random affair. Had to be. No way could he personally monitor each and every one of the millions on the planet. So, each night, the computer selected several arbitrarily for him to make a personal visit, some outside, some in the vast mausoleum complex. He didn’t like the space suits. Made him claustrophobic. He didn’t mind the exercise, though the trains and the personal motility devices, or PMDs, did most of the work getting him to the gravesites.

  He always enjoyed the colorful characters, like the dead rising and offering a bit of witty wisdom from beyond the grave. He knew they were just recordings, projected light mimicking the human persona. Still, they seemed so real, and every night a new surprise. Tonight was no different.

  “Hello everyone,” began the first holomemorial Harvey came upon. He stepped on the pressure-sensitive switch, and a man appeared above the headstone. Fifties, black, medium build. He looked like he had money. “Loretta, I love you. And the kids, too…Jeremy, Yolanda, Kelly. I love you all. That’s why I want you to know about the money. It’s in an off-Earth account, with Galactic Bank. The passcode is our anniversary, honey. Don’t worry about where I got the money, just enjoy it. Oh, and, I shouldn’t have to say this, but don’t tell a soul.”

  Harvey stepped off the switch, laughing so hard he fogged up the glass inside his helmet. The hologram folded in on itself and vanished before the message was complete. He didn’t need to watch every second. Just needed to verify it was functional. Good one, he thought. Not the juiciest he’d seen, but good. As he boarded the train again, he wondered if Loretta had actually come to visit her husband and saw that message. That burial site was over a century old, and people had stopped coming fifty years ago.

  He checked several other sites that night, just like every night. And, just like every night, he rode the train from location to location, sometimes for hours, circling Cemetery Planet, lifeless and forbidding, a perfect home for an unending landscape of graves. The place was old enough. Over three hundred years old. But most of the entombments were much older. Some from the early twentieth century, even earlier. He once saw a marker, crooked and cracked, with hand carving in limestone dating back to 1859. Considering it was now 2851, a relic like that made him shudder with reverence.

  Waiting for the train to make its next scheduled stop, he loafed away the time in his favorite seat, center row, center aisle, on the upper balcony. It gave him the best view out the transparent tube. If he ever wanted to make a scary movie, he’d make it here. In the rounded observation deck, the scale of the planet hit home in full panoramic detail. Tombstones in every direction, across slowly rolling slopes, intersecting and crisscrossing into the horizon. All shapes and sizes and designs. Simple slabs dominated, and in the sections reserved solely for the armed services, white crosses, flags, and memorabilia packed the scenery. Spreading across the planet’s surface, saturating every centimeter—a complete blanket of the death markers.

  He tried not to think about the fact that, lying under each grave, was a body, decomposed beyond recognition, still and stiff, bones and teeth and hair and dusty, tattered garments—the costumes of the deceased. He made a game of it, memorizing the markers. The largest was a multi-tiered obelisk built upon a white-columned temple. There were others nearly as tall, shrines, statu
es, spires. Most were normal, granite blocks, understated yet proud, beautiful in their way. Together, though, one after the other after the other, in a vast sea of stone slabs and crosses and edifices of tribute, the effect upon Harvey was a deep sense of dread.

  Up ahead, a vacuum tube intersection sliced a swath through the headstones, the only break in the otherwise never-ending necropolis. The train sped so fast, if Harvey put his head up a little, the tombstones became a wheatfield, acres of farmland like he’d seen in movies. The bright, starry sky provided enough illumination for him to see off into the vastness of the terrain, but he chose not to look too far, for fear of spotting his own grave somewhere out there.

  After kilometers and kilometers of graveyard, the main visitor center came into sight, a massive building made of exotanium and reinforced glass. It was the end of the nightly outdoor rounds, but that didn’t mean he could relax. He still had a few dozen units in the mausoleum complex to status-check. Not every grave had a holomemorial, which was a damn good thing. From the countless sites outside, along with the indoor vaults, there were millions upon millions of final resting places. So many, he never saw the same one twice in the almost twelve Earth months of his contractual stay.

  He sank in his seat as the magnetic tracks released their energy and the train settled onto solid ground with a Thump! which never failed to startle him no matter how many times he rode. Glad to have his wildly uncomfortable spacesuit behind him for the night, he stepped onto the PMD and let it take him into the main concourse, past the visitor intake center, through the food court, the information and mapping area, and on into the mausoleum complex.

  Tonight’s random assignment was indistinguishable from any other night. Only the faces and the names were different. The stale catacomb had a sterile sheen, thanks to the constant work of the cleaning bots, and he raced from one name to the next in the labyrinth of disinfected death, the vaults blurring into anonymity. Always the same. Every hologram worked to perfection, every message, bland and boringly similar. “I love you all…thanks for visiting me…you know I’ll always be with you…until we meet again.” There were some interesting variations, but the main messages were the same, and, though he’d seen it all, they touched him in a way. Touched him in that nobody ever came around to see them anymore.

  3.

  At half past six in the morning, finally and thankfully, he came to the end of his nightly rounds. It was his time now, and he seized the PMD’s control bar, taking it out of auto-mode, steering for mausoleum level three, section C-6, row fifteen, number nine hundred and thirty—Lea Hamm.

  He squeezed the brake and shifted his weight, putting the PMD into a sliding stop in front of Lea’s resting place. With a palm against the sensor, her infoscreen came alight and an elegant tone signaled the hologram’s startup sequence. It took less than a second, a process of reflected light and diffused color, blending into a gorgeous combination of sight and sound, a true vision of loveliness. Lea. Dark hair down to her waist, a hint lounging over her left shoulder with the tranquility of a lazy summer afternoon. Her smoldering gray eyes trapped him with their clarity, their depth. To say her other features were flawless would have been superfluous, but true. The hologram burst to full power. Her three-dimensional, life-sized image became as realistic as an actual person, and, standing before Harvey was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. Only one problem. She was dead.

  “Hello, Harvey,” she smiled and his heart fluttered. She tilted her head. “You seem upset. What’s the matter, can’t get the chocolate ice cream to work again?”

  He giggled silently. She knew him better than he knew himself. It was his fault. He’d installed an upgrade in her programming, an application called Intuitive Intelligence, and it had revolutionized hologram technology. Harvey didn’t know exactly how it worked, he just installed it, and watched the miracle take place. I.I. allowed Lea to learn and develop over time, just like a real person, and she was getting smarter by the day.

  “How’d you guess?” he said.

  “Someday you’ll get that food printer to work.”

  “That day better come quick,” he looked at her expectantly. “They’re shipping me out pretty soon.”

  She lost her smile, yet he could tell she tried to keep a brave face. “How-how soon?”

  He paused, then, forced a response. “Not sure, really. There’re some contract disputes with the replacements, but, if things go smoothly, I might be outta here in three Earth weeks.”

  “Three Earth weeks?” her eyes traveled a zigzag pattern to the floor. “Three Earth weeks,” she looked back up at him. “How long is three Earth weeks?”

  He had to struggle to keep in his laughter. Sometimes she was like a child. Still learning. Still discovering the world. It made him sad he had to go. The only reason he was sorry to leave that desolate place.

  “What’s so funny?” her lower lip quivered. “You think it’s funny you’re going to leave me here all alone?” her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. It was a hologram, yes, but it looked so real, and acted real, too. He couldn’t help but let the sorrow germinate in his stony heart.

  “No, no. I—”

  She rushed and folded him in her arms. The tactile sensation gave him the shivers. All holomemorials were equipped with ultrasound actuators, which simulated human contact quite well. This though, was something else. Something more. Lea was a projection of light, refracted and bent and distorted to create a realistic image, not a solid shape with mass. He knew that. He knew it was impossible for a hologram to embrace him, yet for one fleeting second, when she first clutched onto him, he swore he felt it for real.

  “Don’t go, Harvey!” she sobbed. “Don’t go, please.”

  Harvey’s head swirled with confused excuses, contrived responses, reasons for his departure. He had none. No ingenious answers. Most of all, he had no answer for Lea’s sudden outburst of emotion.

  “But-but you knew this was coming,” he told her. “We’ve talked about this before.”

  “I know, it’s just I…I guess I finally realize what it means,” she penetrated him with her steamy stare. “You’re leaving. You really are leaving.”

  He felt lightheaded, overcome by sensation—her rosy perfume, her soft, cool skin on his. He tried to speak. Words failed him at that moment, when only her sorrow occupied his mind, only her loneliness resided in his heart.

  “I’m sorry,” deprived of a response, she turned her back and steadied her voice. “I don’t know what came over me. Of course you have to go. You’re not like me. You don’t belong here.”

  “I…” his conflicted mind struggled for a reply. “I’m not leaving for…for a while yet. We still have time.”

  She faced him and exhaled. He felt her breath on his wrists, her programming was so realistic. Smiling, she said, “We’ve got three Earth weeks.”

  He challenged her to their favorite game, Chess, and she accepted. Despite her listless demeanor, she still managed to dominate, winning eight games to two. She didn’t say another word that night about his leaving Cemetery Planet.

  4.

  For the next several days, Harvey went about his normal routine, making the rounds in the visitor center, checking the auditorium playback, running diagnostics on the mapping system, riding the maglev tube trains and checking gravesite holomemorials. Things never seemed to change. All operational systems functioned flawlessly, all except the damn autoserve. Chocolate ice cream must have had some unattainable chemical ingredient.

  Lea showed no further signs of anomalous emotional behavior. After some time digesting the matter, Harvey surmised it was a side effect of the learning algorithms, a sort of growing pain as Lea’s Intuitive Intelligence advanced. He knew it was a machine, yet felt sorry, even a little guilty for installing the application.

  After a short time, though, it became but a memory, and he considered the matter behind them, until the night he got a strange repair call.

  “Check,” he released his
rook, confident he had this one in the bag. She only gave him a wry smile and kept her eyes locked onto his. Without looking, she slid her knight into support position for her queen.

  “Checkmate.”

  “What!” he studied the board frantically, certain she’d been mistaken. But she was never mistaken. “No way!”

  She giggled as a buzzing alarm sounded.

  “What the…” he checked the message on a nearby terminal, in shock. In the eleven Earth months on that planet, the alarm hadn’t gone off once. “What the hell could this be?”

  Holomemorial malfunction. Immediate action required. Zone 12. Section G-5. Row 1119. Plot number 574342-0. Maglev train waiting for your departure at gate 3.

  “What’s it say?” she sounded nervous.

  “Hologram malfunction.”

  “What kind of malfunction?”