He was jolted by a sudden flare of colour. His vision adjusted and he stared out across a vast expanse of rolling grassland, dotted here and there with sumptuous habitat domes. He was surprised by the clarity of the vision: the panorama of greensward and cloudless blue sky was as real as the latest holographic images. He felt as if he could reach out and actually touch the grass before him. His father had obviously gone to some expense to obtain the very best programming software.
“Joshua! Is that you, boy?”
His father’s voice—recognisably his father’s voice, but changed, deeper of timbre, confident—sounded in the ear-piece of the glasses, coming from behind him. His heart set up a steady pounding.
He turned and stared, shocked, at the image of his father. He was no longer the skeletal old man on the bed—not that Bennett had expected him to be. But, also, he had not expected to see this apparition from the past. The image of his father was as he had been thirty years ago, in his seventies. Tall and balding, thin-faced and stern, he stood with his hands behind his back, staring at his son with unspoken censure.
“Joshua, answer me for mercy’s sake!”
He found his voice at last. “Dad.”
His father peered at him. “It’s sometimes hard to tell who’s wearing those damned glasses. They’re supposed to scan a likeness of the user’s face direct to the site, but they’re none too accurate. The rest of the programming works like a dream, though.” He gestured around him at the rolling greensward. “What do you think, Joshua?”
“It’s great, really great.” Seeing his father here like this, an apparition from his boyhood, Bennett felt like a six-year-old again, dominated by the presence of the man he had always secretly feared.
“I’m pleased you decided to visit at last. Where the hell have you been, boy?”
“I’ve been working, Dad. I work, remember?” He stared at the face of his miraculously rejuvenated father, and the memories flooded back.
“I suppose that smarmy creep Samuels has filled you in?”
Bennett nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”
His father gave him an intimidating glare. “And I take it you have no objections to granting your consent.”
Bennett swallowed. “No. No, of course not.”
His father sniffed. “Thought not,” he said, and then, more to himself: “You always were amenable to reason.” He gestured Bennett to follow him as he set off at a brisk pace across the grass.
Bennett recalled how to use the VR glasses and tipped his head forward. His vision seemed to float across the ground in the wake of his father.
“I have something to show you, Joshua,” he said over his shoulder. “Over here.”
They approached the nearest dome and paused before the semi-circular plinth of steps at its base. His father lodged a foot on the bottom step and regarded Bennett.
“Do you know where we are, boy?”
Bennett stared at the dome. “I don’t recognise it…” The dome was like hundreds of others he saw every day when on Earth.
“I don’t mean the dome, you numbskull. This!” He flung out a hand at the greensward. “This site. Do you know where we are?”
Bennett shook his head. “I give in,” he said. “Tell me.”
His father gave a broad grin. “This is Heaven, boy. Take a good look round at Heaven.”
His mouth was suddenly dry. He could only stare at his father. He wondered why he should be so shocked that, this close to the end, his father had finally lost his reason.
“What do you think, Joshua?” he laughed. “Now just you wait until you see who I’ve got…” And he turned and shouted into the dome. “Mother! Come out here—look who’s come visiting!”
As Bennett stared, the hatch opened and his mother—or rather a version of his mother in her fifties—stepped from the dome. She peered down at Bennett, her face scoured of pleasure by years of fundamentalist belief, and shook her head. “Josh? It doesn’t look like Josh to me.”
“How did you do that, Dad?” Bennett asked.
His father laughed. “A simple bit of programming, boy. A simulacra circuit built up from all the vid-film and holograms I took of mother over the years.” He paused, then called again: “Hey, Ella. Look who’s out here.”
“No…” Bennett said to himself. “Please, no.”
As the diminutive figure of his sister skipped from the dome and sketched a wave his way, Bennett felt a sudden pang of jealousy. Over the years he’d had Ella to himself in the memorial garden, had built a relationship that was as exclusive and private as it had been in reality all those years ago.
“Hi, Josh. I’ve been playing rockets in the lounge. Want to come and join me?”
He found his tongue. “Some other time, Ella, okay?”
She beamed. “Sure,” she said, smiling down at him.
“Had the simulated identity hologram from the memorial garden copied years ago,” his father explained. “Always intended to use it in my VR module, just never got round to it till now. Still, better late than never.” He laughed. “Cute, eh?”
Bennett stared up at the image of his sister, aware that this copy could have no memory of their conversations over the years. This version of Ella’s ghost was a cheap imitation, with no knowledge of him and his pain.
He shook his head, as if to clear it. They’re just programs, he told himself—all of them, just expensive holographic projections and complex memory banks.
“So you see, Josh, you see what I’m going to when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil!”
“Praise be to God,” his mother carolled.
“Amen to that!” Ella responded.
Bennett closed his eyes, blanking out the tawdry concoction of his father’s private Heaven.
“Now Josh and me need a few private minutes together, mother. Joshua…”
When Bennett opened his eyes, his father was beckoning him away from the dome. Compliant, eager to get the conversation over with so that he could re-enter the real world, Bennett followed.
His father halted and turned to him. “I’m glad you’ve agreed to let me die, Josh. I’m an old man and I’ve had enough. I just want out. You’ve seen what’s awaiting me…” He stared back at the dome, and a smile softened his features; then his gaze snapped back to Bennett. “When you get back, tell Samuels to go ahead with the process. And tell him—this is important, boy—tell him that I want to stay in here while he’s administering the drug. You got that? I don’t want to be dragged back to that antiseptic room and the wreck of my shrivelled body. Do you understand, Josh? Tell Samuels that I want to die with dignity.”
Bennett nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
“I knew you would, Joshua.” His father nodded. “Goodbye, son.”
Bennett regarded his father, wanting to say something final and fitting, but the words were impossible to find. He reached out a hand, intending to shake, before remembering that he wasn’t equipped for tactile sensation in VR. His father just stared at him, realising his son’s mistake. The impasse seemed fittingly symbolic of their life- long relationship. Bennett sketched an embarrassed, inadequate wave, and quickly ejected himself from Heaven by pulling the VR glasses from his face.
The sunlight in the small hospital room dazzled him, and when his eyes adjusted he found himself staring at the shrunken body of his father. In the drawn, collapsed face beneath the glasses he saw the merest lineaments of the man he’d spoken to in the VR world. From time to time the thin hands fluttered, and his lips twitched in a grotesque parody as his father smiled in Heaven.
“Mr Bennett?”
He looked up. Samuels was staring down at him.
“I know, it must have come as something of a shock.”
Bennett shook his head, clearing it of the visions. “I told him I agreed with his wishes,” he said. “Are there forms I need to fill in?”
For the next couple of hours, as medics prepared the apparatus to administer the lethal injection, Bennett was introduced to his father’s legal representative and chaplain, who murmured platitudinous condolences and assured him that it was for the best. He signed a raft of various release forms, waivers and other legal documents,
