Sadie straightened out her finest blazer, running her hand over her front to smooth any wrinkles. Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing.
In 2...3...4...5 and out 2...3...4...5.
She’d done this spiel a thousand plus times but sales had been down recently and Jack, her sales manager had been crystal clear about his expectations for today's seminar. 65% capture rate.
In 2...3...4...5 and out 2...3...4...5.
The music on the opening video was beginning to swell to its climax which meant Sadie was almost on. In 30 seconds the projector screen would lift slowly and a soft blue light would wash over her. She was definitely feeling the pressure, today more than any other day. If she didn’t reach her signing quotas...her eye snapped open and she shook her head hard, as if to knock the thoughts out of her brain. She honestly couldn’t stomach the consequences of failure. Not now.
In 2...3...4...5 and out 2...3...4...5.
Let the light of the positive outshine the darkness of the negative, she reminded herself. Each seminar was a little different but Sadie could count on the same basic types of people occupying the plush seats in the auditorium. Many of them would be sick, probably terminal. Naturally their loved ones would be sitting with them, hands clutched in loving, if atypical, support. A good number would be those who recently experienced the passing over of a loved one. There was a better than zero chance that said loved one was currently sitting in The Pit with a handful of others, blank eyes staring, mouths slightly agape. The remainder of Sadie’s audience would be comprised of a few folks who wanted to volunteer to join the ranks of The Quiet, a few enterprising people hoping to procure a few of The Quiet for entrepreneurial purposes and a tiny handful of perverts who wanted their own Quiet for darker, far more disturbing reasons.
The screen shuddered and began its ascent. She lowered her chin to her chest and closed her eyes.
In 2...3...4...5 and out 2...3...4...5.
The stage lights dimmed and that cool blue glow illuminated her face. Lifting her chin slowly, she kept her eyes closed. Just as the theme music hit that final, thunderous chord, she snapped her eyes open and let a smile spread slowly across her face. She had found that a small amount of drama always helped amp up the crowd. Deep breath and...begin.
“Everyone deserves their happily ever after. At EverAfter Technologies, we make sure it is just that.” Sadie strode purposefully forward and the lights warmed to a bright white, illuminating the iridescent threads of her deep blue suit. The clack of her frightening tall stilettos echoed through the chamber.
“At one point in human history, death was the end. Friends, family members, and lovers were released to that great beyond, alive only in distant and fading memories. Those days are blessedly behind us. Since The Great War, our loved ones are no longer compelled to leave us for the cold embrace of death. Now when age, accident or illness takes their consciousness, their person still remains with us to comfort, protect and serve. It truly is...a happily ever after.” Sadie let her hand rest on her chest with her head bowed slightly. In her periphery, she saw a couple on the first row exchange a loving glance. The gentlemen reached up and pulled the women’s bandana wrapped head close, planting a kiss on her forehead. Her face was gaunt but her expression soft. The exchange looked so familiar, so universal. Sadie let her own face soften in response, the corners of her mouth drifting upward into a kind smile.
“Surrounded by those who loved them most in First Life, our loved ones become The Quiet. Do we not owe it to them to be sure that their experience as a Quiet is safe, secure and dignified?”
She took another few steps toward the edge of the stage. The screen lowered down behind her to display images of the products and services EverAfter Technologies offered.
In 2...3...4...5 and out 2...3...4...5.
“EverAfter Technologies specializes in Quiet Care equipment and services. Our team of experts will provide personalized training for the First Lifers as you adapt to life with a Quiet in your Home. This includes a series of custom commands to be sure your Quiet responds to you and you alone. We’ll provide you with all the necessary treatments to preserve and protect your loved one, including our patented and award winning Skin Leathering Treatment and our much-celebrated Life Masks and Joint Pin Systems.” Images of thin, modern plastic apparatus flashed on the screen behind her.
EverAfter had massive lines of things to hide the inevitable decay of someone who has passed over. It was all designed to keep The Quiet looking as normal as possible. The rules of death may have changed, but the science of decomposition had remained pretty steadfast.
Naturally, Sadie would never say the words decay or decomposition in front of a client. Hours upon hours of market studies indicated that those words were almost instant-turn offs for buyers. Intrinsically the average consumer understood it was inevitable that their loved one would would start to decompose after death (another word that was simply not said in a working environment). But using such clinical words was a fantastic way to pull a potential client out of the romantic moment Sadie and the other members of the sale team had carefully crafted.
Her audience captured, Sadie began her carefully constructed, dutifully researched litany on the many aspects of the EverAfter Quiet Care family of products.
Just a few years after the dead began refusing to die, a lowly lab tech by the name of Kaitlin O’Halloran had stumbled upon a quick-acting tanning agent that prevented the skin from falling off. Public Health standards had already been enacted requiring corpses to be embalmed. Shortly after passing over all corpses were pumped full of flexible resin, thoroughly securing the internal organs, but until O’Halloran’s discovery a decade ago it had been next to impossible to keep a Queit for longer than a couple of weeks. When the Skin Leathering Solution hit the market, sales had soared and EverAfter Technologies was born. Quiet Care was all the rage with O’Halloran and her ever-expanding team of researchers and sales experts leading the charge.
After the Skin Leathering came the Life Masks. Created from images taken during The Quiet’s First Life, a life mask was basically a 3D printed bucket shaped vaguely like a human face that secured around the neck, with screens cleverly hidden in the construction so the Quiet could still see to function. This resolved almost all of the ugly and frankly disturbing issues that leathering the skin of the face and head had created in the early days.
Sadie continued her pitch with the perfection of consistent and constant repetition. Joint Pins to retain full mobility plus 24-7 maintenance assistance for unexpected
detachments ... Passing Over plans to “guide the journey from First Life to Quiet in comfort and peace” ... After Care to lay a loved one to final rest...every aspect was covered. She even touched on the purchase of an unclaimed quiet for business ventures though most of the logistics of that would be covered in the One on One consultations immediately following the Seminar.
“A veritable second lifetime of possibilities lie ahead with EverAfter Technologies,” Sadie exulted cheerfully. Realistically The Quiet have a functional shelf life of about a year before decomposition fully consumed the body but Sadie applied the phrase “our engineers conservatively estimate you can enjoy three to five years of life with a Quiet by your side.”
It wasn’t a lie exactly. Technology to further preserve the Quiets was developing at an astounding pace and three to five years wasn’t out of the question in the future. But the folks sitting in that auditorium didn’t want to hear that an investment nearing the half a million mark was only going to buy a year. They needed to hope that death wasn't the end. They needed to hear that they wouldn’t have to let go of their loved one, work force or plaything until they were damn well ready to do so.
At the conclusion of her presentation she enjoyed the applause that always sounded a little tense, understandably fearful. Even after three decades since the concept of death was reframed, the unknown was still a terrifying concept for most. The dead didn’t quite die anymore and unless you or a loved one were facing imminent death, the average person tended not to think about it. That aspect of the end of life had not changed in millennia.
After The Great War and the now infamous mutagenic weapon failed in the most spectacular way, most people had adapted to life with the Quiet ever present, but always at a distance. You’d see a Quiet shuffling around behind a family at the grocery or spot a few of them hauling things around at a construction site, but they were someone else’s problem. The people in Sadie’s auditorium were seriously faced with or considering taking a Quiet into their homes or businesses.
The outro video began as Sadie walked off stage. Upbeat music accompanied smiling families surrounding their beloved Quiet, decked out in Life Masks and Compression Clothes. She stripped the microphone from her head and handed it to the tech silently. Her job was only half done but Sadie was utterly spent.
In 2...3...4...5 and out 2...3...4...5.
For the next three hours, Sadie set aside the commanding presence of her stage person and assumed the role of “the face of EverAfter.” She’d quietly slide into consultations and smile reassuringly at frightened prospects, pushing pens into their hands as their consultants downplayed just how much their signature was going to cost them. Once all the signatures had been acquired and next steps explained, Sadie glanced at her tablet to see a 75% conversion rate this session. Goddamn, she was good.
Home in practically no time at all she let her bags fall to the floor the minute she crossed the threshold. Dave, her husband of a mere 3 years, was standing in the foyer, just where she’d left him this morning.
“Hi, sweetheart. Pick those up for me, will you?” Dave obliged and picked up the bags. As he righted himself, Sadie noticed his left arm just a little slack. “Oh, baby. Your shoulder Joint Pin needs to be tightened. Come here and let me fix that for you.” Dave obeyed, wordlessly shuffling over to her. She cranked the butterfly nut down by hand and made a note to more thoroughly tighten that later this evening.
“How was your day, love?” She addressed Dave’s Life Mask and smiled at the perpetual toothy smile she had selected. Dave, of course, didn’t answer. He never did. Sadie couldn’t wait to get her hands on the Voice Prompter. It was EverAfter’s latest endeavour in Quiet Care and her sales this evening would determine if she would get to be on the first line of testing for the program. The Quiet would be quiet no more. She missed his voice more than anything. Even a computer rendered emulation of Dave’s voice would be better than nothing.
“Mine was great. Another seminar went extremely well. Great turn out. Go get my pajamas, will you?” Dave turned to obey her command. Cancer was such a cruel fate but Sadie would forever be grateful for the extra time she got with Dave. Tomorrow, if she was lucky, Dave would be able to say he agreed, even if she was the one who told him he did.
Disclaimer: This is an original short story by Gwenna Laithland. Any similarities to real people or events is purely unintentional. All rights reserved. No one may repost this story or any part of it for commercial or financial gain without authorization from the author.
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