Free Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series by J. Joseph Wright Page B

face became immense when he got to the interactive cemetery plot map room, the image filling the gigantic projection screen. And every time she appeared it was the same thing—smiles and giggles and breathless anticipation.
     
    When he made it to the mausoleum complex, her bubbliness evaporated into startled disbelief. Her mouth dropped open and she ceased all sound, except for when she finally squealed in ecstasy when Harvey winked at her, setting the elevator to level three. Lea’s level.
     
    “Did you?” was all she could say. The elevator’s indicator rang at the correct level, and Harvey rolled his PMD out toward section C-6 and all she could say again was, “Did you?”
     
    He remained mute, smiling a stupid smile. Finally he reached her grave and pressed his palm on the interface. The once dormant electronic control panel lit up with a series of gentle tones and cobalt blue graphics. It was her holomemorial.
     
    “You did!” she squealed. “You fixed it, didn’t you?”
     
    He remained quiet while making a few last second adjustments. A diagnostics check. A system debug. Then it was ready. He tingled with excitement.
     
    “Harvey! Answer me!”
     
    “I thought you might like to get out of that stuffy computer for a change. You know, stretch your legs,” he rested his hand over the startup icon. “What do you think?”
     
    “What do I think ? I think it’s an amazing idea!”
     
    “So you’re ready to try this?”
     
    “Absolutely,” she said immediately.
     
    “Are you sure, because I’m not one hundred percent positive this will work. It might be dangerous. You might get lost in the conversion process or—”
     
    “Harvey!”
     
    “Okay,” his breath was shaky. Pressing the icon, he watched as Lea’s image faded from the wall monitor and, at the same time, a flood of scattered light, fractured and frail, shot out of a small opening on her headstone. The beams coalesced into the dimension of a person. A woman. A beautiful, five foot six inch goddess. Long black hair. Not large yet not petite, with enough curve appeal to satisfy any desire. When her striking gray eyes met his, in that snapshot in time, all he wanted was to hold her, and when her life-sized, three-dimensional presence came into full being, that’s what he intended to do.
     
    What she said next erased those intentions, and replaced them with a sudden shot of anxiety.
     
    “Hi, everybody,” Lea stood tall and waved. “Family and friends…maybe even people I don’t know. God, I don’t know what to say on this thing. This is kind of morbid, actually. I mean, if you’re watching this right now it means I’m dead.”
     
    “Lea?” Harvey waved his arms in front of her oblivious eyes. Nothing. No response. No reaction. Nothing.
     
    “I just want to tell future generations a little about what it’s like to live in the 21 st century…”
     
    “Lea!” Harvey yelled over the nonresponsive projection. It was lifelike. It had dimension and depth. When he touched her shoulder, he felt resistance, a feature of the hologram he found wonderful yet still a little unnerving. She looked real. Felt real. But she wasn’t real. She was a recording, a digitized facsimile made hundreds and hundreds of years ago. And the more the recording played on, the more he realized, like his earlier pessimistic prediction, his companion seemed lost.
     
    “Lea! Where are you!” he hurried to the wall computer. Nowhere could she be found. Nowhere could she be heard. Not even as an apparition or a wisp of ethereal haze or a twinge of cold on his cheek. Nothing. And when he called out for her, he was calling out for something inside of himself. Calling for that part of him that perished at the very thought of her being gone forever.
     
    “Lea! Come back!”
     
    “Oh, Harvey,” he heard laughter, boisterous and alive. “You’re so gullible!”
     
    Lea’s hologram met him with a sparkling smile, her dazzling personality