….For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Yet, he will also remain in our memories, our stories, our profiles and our timelines. Donald MacKenzie has chosen a digital remembrance service. Now, before I begin, has anyone not attended a digital remembrance service before?”
Around half the congregation raises their hands; a forest of limbs between the phones, all trained on the minister clad in black.
“Excellent. Well allow me to explain. A digital remembrance service recognises that, although it is possible for our consciousness to be recreated in a digital heaven, it is important, nay vital, that humans, and only humans, have the final say on whether the deceased is worthy of their selected digital heaven. Therefore, those like Donald, who have opted to have their avatars uploaded to the afterlife are required to be judged before a human jury – sorry, I mean Digital Mediators – on the choices they made online.”
On cue, ten individuals situated on a long bench to the side of the hall, rise and smile meekly. Their dress is standard funeral attire apart from a distinguishing blue badge with a cloud on it.
“Essentially, they are the guardians of heaven, of Donald’s potential heaven.”
“Now, our first speaker is Donald’s sister Julie, who will present Donald’s chosen heaven. Julie?”
Mid-forties, in a knee length dress with flat shoes, Julie approaches the stand and takes the clicker from the minister. She points it at the screen above Donald’s casket; a modest pine affair, resolutely closed. She turns to face the audience, incredulity spreading quickly.
“As you can all see, Donald chose the set from Love Island series 12, cos he was a teenage pervert stuck in a grown man’s body.”
The cast from Love Island series 12 prance in slow motion across the screen.
“Oh sorry, that should read he was young at heart.”
An orange girl in a bikini is getting out of the pool.
“He was infatuated with that one, Amber was it?”
Donald’s pals in the third-row nod solemnly.
“Yeah, so he figured his heaven would be eternally trying it on with a make-believe Amber. Sorry Zoe.”
Donald’s wife Zoe has turned crimson. An elderly Mediator takes notes, solemnly.
Julie turns to the minister and shrugs apologetically. He whisks the clicker off her and goes to blank the screen but pauses slightly as four twenty-somethings with abs perform lap dances on a patio.
“Thanks… Julie. Well, as we can all see; Donald has chosen his particular heaven and it is not for the Mediators to pass judgement on that choice. No, it is their duty to gauge his online behaviour and decide if Donald can be permitted to join that particular heaven of his or remain forever in the online recycling bin in the cloud.”
A slight chuckle from the crowd, yet the minister doesn’t appear to see the funny side.
“After we have viewed his online history they shall vote. But first, let us listen to his most commonly played song on Spotify. With six hundred and forty three plays since he signed on to the app in 2017, can we all rise for ‘Lose Yourself’ by Eminem. If you’d like to sing along, the words will appear on the screen.”
The guitar riff blasts out from the speakers in the ceiling. Many of the congregation suddenly seem inordinately interested in the plug sockets while a few game pals from Donald’s running club murmur the opening lyrics.
“His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, there’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.”
The lack of vocal support for these brave extroverts quickly subsumes them. The remainder of the five minutes and twenty seconds passes in simmering awkwardness. The Mediators remain seated throughout. With a subtle wave of the minister’s hands, the congregation sits down.
“It does appear Donald was a fan of the album version. Looking at his most common running route, he would often fit in three plays of that song on his lap around Besworth Park.”
A Strava map appears on the screen, his best times, peak heart rate activity and gradual decline of distance as his illness took hold are tracked along the bottom.
“I would now like to invite Donald’s brother Innes to the lectern.”
Innes, a rounder Donald with more smile lines, adjusts the knot on his double Windsor as he takes the clicker and points to the screen with his other hand.
“Not much to add here folks. The format Donald chose ties my hands a bit, I’d love to tell you about my fondest memories of my brother. How we’d pretend to be the Mario Brothers in the back garden as kids, what he said to me the day before I got married, but instead here’s his list.”
Donald’s most visited websites are ranked first to ten, with volume of hours and minutes listed beside each one. BBC Sport is top, with 2223 hours 17 minutes. Next is the Daily Mail, with 1586 hours 30 minutes. Twitter is a close third then YouTube. The majority of the crowd seem distracted by number five though – PornHub. 905 hours 16 minutes. Nine hundred and five hours? There are mutters peppering through the auditorium. Coupled with his orange Amber fascination, a picture is beginning to take shape. “I thought he was happily married?” whispers his niece to her husband. Zoe, Donald’s wife, is calculating how 905 hours and 16 minutes can be divided into sordid little eight-minute chunks. Her regret at allowing this ceremony to go ahead is overwhelming. The Mediators are a scratching scribble of pencils on paper.
“Of course, Donald did have a charitable side.” Interrupts the man in black. “I’d like to invite one of his running club buddies Sandy to the stand.” Clicker handed over to a lean man in glasses with bad skin.
“We, er, ran for charity a few times, raised money for bowel cancer one time actually.” An empathetic glance at Zoe. “However, we now need to take a look at his Just Giving activity.” Sandy steps awkwardly to one side – is he distancing himself from proceedings? Screenshots of donations made with comments made by Donald start to appear; Eighteen in all. £25 to Carol Easterby on the 6th March 2020. ‘Good luck with the half Carol, we know you’ll smash it! Donald and Zoe.’ £10 to Angus Snodgrass on the 17th June 2016. ‘Abseiling is the easy bit! Next time try climbing up first! Good luck, Donald and Zoe.’ And so on. A total amount of all donations made forms in the bottom right – £380. People crinkle their chins and nod solemnly to each other – a respectable if not spectacular total. “However,” the minister bows his head, “Although these donations were made under Donald’s account, if we take a look at the account information…” He wafts his non-clicker hand towards the screen. Bank details and a card appear; the digits are replaced with X’s but the name of the account remains – Zoe A MacKenzie. The room inhales. The scribbling stops. Even his sister looks disappointed. Donald was a skin flint.
***
Donald clicked the top right corner and exited the simulation. The algorithm wasn’t working in his favour. Itsyourfuneral.com was relatively new but impressively thorough. It took his loved ones, friends, hell even the minister – processed their social media data and recreated them in his funeral scenario. The Digital Mediators were represented by a mean of responses harvested from all previous juries. All his online activity was fed through the site and a very believable and no doubt accurate depiction of how his service would play out was replayed back to him – all for £399 (with 10% off for quoting a code -RUN2WIN – from one of his favourite podcasts). He hadn’t even finished his own ceremony but knew the money had been well spent.
Wind rattled the bins outside. He didn’t have long. The doctor said he wouldn’t see winter again, which meant he had two months, give or take (he was inclined to hope for give) to set his online record straight. If he wanted to be on Love Island 12, if he wanted Amber’s sultry gaze teasing him for eternity, sun dappled palms and inflatable flamingos in the pool, he had two paltry months to sanitize a life’s worth of low-level online malfeasance.
First thing first – sort the charity stuff. Donald scanned Instagram to see if any pals were training for a marathon. Three of them were, posting detailed stories of them looking miserable and red in a field, or miserable and red in a park, or miserable and red in their garden. Two of them had handles for cancer charities that he swiftly clicked on and made very generous but not unfeasible donations to. A couple like this every week and he’d be absolved for any previous skin-flintery.
Pornhub needed bumped. He worked out he had 1464 hours left, if the doctor’s prognosis was to be accurate. There was no point wasting any time on the sites already ahead of Pornhub on his chart so he ensured tabs for the bottom five were kept open and sporadic activity was maintained on all of them. The congregation may be curious to his sudden obsession with making losing bids on eBay, a desire to follow storm cycles on accuweather.com, a fascination with box office takings or an enthusiasm for left-wing news but decisively they’d not know of seedy little Number 11 on his chart.
These measures did well to cover tracks and obtain an even footing, but if a congregation was to be swayed in his favour, he needed to do more. In the simulation, Zoe spent much of the service looking appalled. It wasn’t a good look to have your wife appalled at your funeral, especially when the focus of this was directed at you, the deceased. Donald knew his choice of Love Island 12 as a final resting place would always represent a speed bump of disappointment so it was perhaps useful to get this out of the way early in the service and then build up from there; earn that even footing then surge on past affection, fondness and even a tentative foothold on love. It had been there once and the Mediators needed a taste of this.
He checked Twitter. Zoe had a profile but her only activity on this was through the school page. He checked every avenue just in case. Deviations of her name, tweets of her friends and colleagues that she might have commented on, celebrities he thought she liked and might have at least retweeted. Nothing, not a ripple. Perfect. He googled ‘messages of love for my wife’ and clicked on the top site from which 101 ‘love quotes’ could be procured. He copied and pasted these into a word file and saved it as 101.MOL.DOC in an inconspicuous file labelled ‘Admin.’ No time like the present, he thought, dropping the first quote into a tweet and personalising it carefully: ‘There is no charm equal to the tenderness of your heart. Love Donald, your husband.’ He paused, added the word ‘adoring’ to precede husband and hit the blue button with the quill on it. Then the stroke of genius; he linked his twitter to Tweetdeck (a program that Nigel from the running club used for his marketing job) and scheduled these proclamations to be posted every day at 6pm. Just before tea time.
Feeling more cheerful, Donald was about to address the matter of Eminem being played at his funeral when the quill gave him pause for thought. What about his account? He hadn’t let the funeral simulation run to his social media profiles, there’d been no point. It only took a moment to realise his mistake.
There was a tweet.
A tweet from over four years ago. It was easy to spot because he wrote so little on Twitter. It was a platform for watching others argue and cast venom at each other, then appropriate their barbs for anecdotes with the running club. One of the few times he’d pressed the quill was on the 23rd March 2020. It said, ‘I can’t run now because Boris says so? Mental. One FLU Over the Cuckoo’s Nest more like.’ It had two likes and a reply from someone he didn’t know calling him an idiot. ‘You are an idiot.’ It said.
Donald smiled. It was a simpler time before the virus. He could still make jokes (quite good jokes he thought) and he wasn’t to know what the leaders of his country weren’t to know either. After the vaccine, fingers were pointed and pitchforks were sharpened. Anyone who’d been slow to react to Covid-19 was castigated, ostracised and hung out to dry. Leaders ousted, governments toppled, news outlets destroyed, whole companies ripped to shreds. By now, four years later, it was a commonly held imperative that all healthcare guidelines were to be followed to the letter in all areas of life. This was so prevalent that to even acknowledge one had maybe doubted medical advice at the outbreak in 2020, was social suicide. The ink of the quill had dried alright. This tweet needed scrubbed.
The bins rattled again. Donald got to work.
***
“Ashes to ashes, like to like…
“Ashes to ashes, like to like. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Yet, he will also remain in our memories, our stories, our profiles and our timelines. Donald MacKenzie has chosen a digital remembrance service. Now, before I begin has anyone not attended a digital remembrance service before?”
A few hands towards the back of the room go up hesitantly.
“Then I suggest you read the information pamphlet in the pocket in front of you. Next to the Holy Bible.”
The minister, a thin woman with a long neck, glances at the screen on the lectern. “I see we have a number of speakers today so I won’t take much of your time.” She opens her hands and takes in the large display screen behind her. “This is the window we will look through today. Some of us to remember. Some to celebrate. And some” – she motions to the bench at the side “-To judge.”
The bench does not rise. They look brow-beaten, the badges worn heavy with reluctant duty.
“Our country bestows these ten souls with the burden of judging a man’s life. Not so much as gatekeepers to his chosen heaven but as an incentive to us in the land of the living. To lead fruitful, compassionate lives. To be kind. To be loving. To treat others how we would like to be treated. They will watch and listen today and to paraphrase Matthew 12:37, by their words Donald will be justified and by their words Donald will be condemned.”
In her robes, Zoe thinks, the minister resembles a kindly vulture, picking at the scraps of a religion no-one else in this room believes. Her head bobs slightly as she paces serenely across the stage.
“Online behaviour has become synonymous with who we are, yet it is my view that the comments and videos we post represent just another version of ourselves. Just as others see a distortion of one’s true self, the internet is a broken mirror that reflects, exaggerates, falsifies, vital components of our identity. In this year of our Lord, 2025, I realise I may be turning the wheel in a dry bed, but I think it important to realise that what we are about to see is not a fair or valid reflection of one man’s life.”
Silence.
“I want you all to close your eyes. Don’t worry, we won’t be praying. Just do it. Close your eyes.”
The congregation are slow to react. There is a ripple of compliance emanating through the crowd from Zoe, who is keen to get on with things. They close their eyes.
“You want to see something that Donald saw? You want to see something with his eyes? This is as close as you’ll get ladies and gentlemen. No filters. This is a shared experience.”
She leaves a long theatrical pause. She is sure the Mediators have not joined in, just as before. The congregation don’t let the peace linger. They want to see Donald’s history and eyes start opening as soon as she stops talking.
Donald’s sister Julie shuffles up and introduces Love Island 12 to an assortment of snickers, groans, shrugs from some and tuts from others. Everyone rises to Donald’s favourite song, Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. A couple of the Mediators struggle to think of a more likable choice of song for a funeral. The top ten sites are remarkably staid, with a surprisingly late flurry of activity on eBay for a dying man. A steady trickle of applause accompanies the charitable donations. Zoe smiles uneasily at the daily (and very punctual) messages of love she wasn’t aware of on Twitter. She returns sympathetic smiles with a practised nod.
The vulture returns to the stage.
“And it is up to me to finalise things, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t fret. I’ll be brief. Donald’s own social media platforms were rarely updated, which I think conveys a man more interested in the world of the living than that online. His Facebook profile picture was from 2011 for instance.”
A picture of him holding a koala bear appears on the screen. He looks a bit smug.
“He only posted a handful of running pictures on Instagram, which show a keen member of the local running team. A healthy, sociable man.”
Nods all round. Love Island 12, and Amber, beckons.
“His tweets, apart from his daily declarations of love in his final weeks, were non-existent. A clean profile if you will. Possibly too clean. So clean in fact, that the late membership of the local library appeared strange, especially for someone who lists their favourite book on Facebook as ‘Mr Rush.’”
The purple Mr Man’s triangular profile is on the screen.
“Although no books were taken out according to his library tracker, he did log in the computer there on five occasions.”
The Mediators lean forward. This is what they’ve been waiting for. This is what everyone’s been waiting for.
“From here, we can see he purchased some software that would permanently delete unwanted tweets. It was a very thorough program, ladies and gentlemen. Whatever Donald had to hide, has remained hidden. And that’s where it will remain, for this is not a criminal investigation. Who am I to suggest Donald was running from something?”
Another of her pauses.
“Which now you mention it…”
The hall is haunted with silence. The soft snap of the clicker reverberates like a rifle.
“We will leave Donald’s social media and take a look at his favourite hobby. Running.”
On the screen is Donald’s Strava running route around Besworth Park. Dates flash up along the top. 24th March 2020, 25th March 2020. 26th March 2020 and so on. On each day, two separate running sessions are logged; a clockwise series of laps followed by an anti-clockwise set five to six hours later. The information takes time to sink in. The whispers start at the periphery and gravitate to the centre of the front row, where Zoe sits stunned. He took two runs during the pandemic. Every day. As the dates move into April, other running routes appear, some several miles from Besworth Park. Some of them, clearly a drive away.
Donald’s sister gasps through her fingers, “He drove to the beach? But that was forbidden!”
The Mediators don’t need to deliberate. Amber will be lonely in heaven. Heads start to turn from the minister and the coffin and Zoe starts to feel warm. Eyes and pitchforks are honing in and it isn’t even her funeral.
Didn’t she know about this? Didn’t she wonder where the car was? Where was she when this was all happening?
She nodded sharply and thought to herself that when she got home, she better delete Tinder.
Caught With My Rants Down 