A Requiem for a Reliquary

Communion

"There is no service without sacrifice."

The priest raised an arm to the pale sky from the steps of the cemetery. A black cross dropped out of his sleeve and swung beneath his wrist.

Around him, smartphones glowed from display cases atop headstones.

The congregation knelt between them.

"We once believed remembrance kept the dead alive," he continued. "We had it backward."

A deacon approached carrying a phone upon a silver tray.

"The feed is the preserver of life," the priest said.

"O' carrier of healing," the congregation answered with palms face-up.

At the foot of the steps, a mother stood beside her son. The boy held a bloody handkerchief up to his nose. His arms trembled.

The priest looked down at him. "Whose line?"

"His grandmother's."

The deacon turned the phone toward the child. On its screen, an elderly woman stood in a yellow kitchen, laughing with flour on her hands.

"Abuela," the boy said, slowly.

"One swipe," the priest said.

The boy placed his thumb against the screen and swiped. The photograph distorted under his finger, dissolved into a trail of light, and disappeared. He drew a sudden breath. His trembling ceased. When his mother lowered the handkerchief, his nose had stopped bleeding.

The priest crossed himself and kissed his hand. "The ceremony of shared data is our lifeblood. A humble gathering and solemn promise."

"Thank you, Father."

"Do not thank me." The priest covered the phone with a square of black cloth. "Thank your provider."

The congregation bowed their heads.

"May her coverage continue."

Off away from them, the cemetery gates opened. Four people entered with an elderly woman walking in the middle of them. She wore burial white and carried a black phone clasped against her chest.

Resurrection

6 years earlier

Dina hugged the steering wheel like a torpedo buoy. Eyes wide as if it did anything for her field of view in the downpour.

"In four hundred feet make a U-turn."

"Gigi, this is all your fault." She shook her head in judgment of her gps. "I trusted you. Thought you knew the way." She slowed behind smeared red break lights.

"In five hundred feet make a left on Three Thieves Drive."

"You really had me going."

"You have arrived at your destination."

"Wait―I have what?!" Dina looked at her mounted phone's black screen. "You know what Gigi―you're right, you are overworked and underpaid." She held the power button. "And I'm going to fix that. I promise. But right now―I just need you to work for free a little longer. Okay?"

The screen remained black.

Dina looked around at the speckled dots of scattered light. The dimmed sky and―

―then a blaring horn. A loud screech.

When she looked in her rearview mirror the headlights were massive, blooming wide―

..........

―when she opened her eyes, her car hissed. Cold air and water pelted her face. She couldn't move.

"Call 911!" someone yelled.

"I'm trying," said someone else.

"I know. It's just―it won't turn on."

"Does anybody have a working phone?"

"Ma'am, don't worry. We're going to get help"

"Hey," a man pointed. "His phone's working."

A man lying face down against his steering wheel had a glowing phone in the passenger seat.

"Look! His phone's on."

The crowd rushed the vehicle. Prying at the door and the windows.

Urgent Care

Our Virgin Mother General

They began trickling in right before the graveyard shift. In twos and threes, at first. Then by the carload. Car doors left open, engines still running. Parking spaces ignored. By 3am, nurse Heba Grace watched more than a hundred people fill the emergency entrance through the locked glass doors.

Some stood with hardened blood beneath their noses. Propped up against walls. Trembling. Dark streaks coming from their ears. Every person carried a phone with a black screen.

"They need treatment," Heba said.

Officer Michael kept one hand on the security panel. "They need quarantine."

Every treatment room was occupied. Overflow gurneys lined the corridors and spilled into the waiting room. A woman near the front struck the glass with her palm. She had a boy at her side. Seven or eight years old, Heba guessed. His feet dragged across the pavement. Blood soaked through the shoulder of his shirt. The woman pointed at Heba and raised a finger.

Heba pressed the intercom button. "This is Our Virgin Mother General. We are currently operating beyond capacity. If you are experiencing difficulty breathing, chest pain, or uncontrolled bleeding, remain calm and wait for instructions."

"We are in desperate need of a provider, ma'am."

"Every available provider is currently treating a critical patient."

The woman wagged her head. "We don't need your doctors."

Heba looked at Michael. He looked away. "What kind of provider do you need?" she asked.

The woman held up her dead phone. "We need the ones they couldn't save."

Voices shouted behind her.

"The morgue."

"You've got phones downstairs."

"All we need is one."

"My wife hasn't fed since yesterday."

"Please."

The boy could no longer hold himself up on is own. His mother grabbed him before he collapsed. "He only needs one swipe," she said. "That's it. Then you can have it back."

"Personal effects belong to the patient's family," Heba replied.

The woman turned over her shoulder towards the crowd. "We are the families."

A body struck the doors. Others immediately shouted for him to stop.

"We're not here to hurt anybody!"

"We can wait it out!"

"Just check the morgue!"

The doors shook again.

"County General gave them three phones," Michael said softly.

"That's a rumor."

"I watched twenty people walk back here from County General. Before they fed, half of them couldn't stand."

Fed. Heba disliked the word precisely because she understood the need.

A monitor behind the nurses' station sounded off.

Dr. Rubio pressed against a man's chest. "Get me another epi."

Heba ran to the medication cart. The crowd outside quieted as hospital staff converged upon the bed. Through the glass, they watched compressions lift and drop the old man's body.

"Come on, Mr. Morrison."

The monitor jittered. Dr. Rubio persisted.

The line wavered once more before going completely flat.

A sustained tone filled the emergency department.

Dr. Rubio stopped compressions. "Time of death, 3:33am."

Twinkling bells began to play. Everyone inside the emergency room looked around. The sound came from the clear bag beneath Mr. Morrison's bed.

His phone was ringing. The screen's light lit up his entire bag. Heba heard gasps from outside. Every bloodied face turned. Michael moved first. He pulled the bag from beneath the bed and held it against his chest.

The crowd surged.

Bodies struck the doors hard enough to push the frame inward.

"Step back!" Michael shouted. "Everyone step back!"

The woman with the boy remained at the glass. "Please."

Another impact shook the doors.

"Move them away from the entrance," Dr. Rubio ordered.

"Where?" Heba asked.

Every hallway held patients. On gurneys, sat beneath blankets, on the floor between equipment. Potential providers, every single one of them.

Mr. Morrison's phone stopped ringing. The screen unlocked itself inside the bag. Photographs began arranging themselves in rows. A little girl balanced on a bicycle while Mr. Morrison ran behind her. The same girl stood over a birthday cake, missing two front teeth. Then she appeared in a graduation gown. A wedding dress. A hospital bed, holding an infant against her chest.

An entire life, waiting beneath Michael's hand.

The doors jumped their tracks. Bodies poured through the opening. Michael tossed the bag and reached for his baton as they passed him. They passed medication carts, doctors, nurses, shelves of antibiotics.

They followed the light.

Heba seized the bag before anyone reached it. Hands surrounded her.

"Please."

"One swipe."

"My daughter is outside."

"I can't see."

"I'll give it back."

The tug of war started. The bag stretched, then tore, then ripped. The contents went flying.

The phone hit the floor, instantly vanishing beneath a pile of bodies. Photographs flashed between grasping fingers. A first dance. Christmas lights. Mr. Morrison without gray hair sleeping next to someone only partially visible.

One by one, the memories disappeared.

Some apologized as they swiped.

Some prayed.

Others consumed whatever their fingers touched. When the phone finally went black, the crowd silently stood. Monitors beeped beside dozens of occupied beds. From beyond the double doors, the faint tone of a flatline could be heard. Before the next phone rang, the crowd was already moving.

Genesis

Maggie walked in without knocking and placed a phone on Walsh's kitchen table. "Lock the door."

"You used your key."

"Lock it again."

Walsh stared at her for a long second before sliding the deadbolt into place.

Six phones lay open on the counter behind her, their backs marked in white grease pencil: 2, 3, 5, 7. The number of items remaining in each feed. Walsh purchased whole accounts from morgue attendants, obituary thieves, and families desperate enough to sell their dead in pieces. He divided the feeds among unregistered handsets and sold them one swallow at a time.

Burners.

Enough life to get someone through the night. Maybe a week if the emotions were strong. The television chattered from the living room. Brightly dressed celebrities tried to identify objects from the nineties while an invisible audience laughed at their mistakes.

Walsh picked up the phone Maggie brought. "I told you never to carry one of these while it's active, Mag. Use and discard."

"I would like to make a return."

"No receipts, no returns. Besides, I sold you six clean swipes. What you do after that is between you and your immune system."

"I haven't used any."

He looked at her properly. A thin line of dried blood darkened the skin beneath her nose. Her hands trembled in the sleeves of her coat. Walsh reached for burner 7.

Maggie placed her palm over it. "Tell me something you remember before your first smartphone."

"Why?"

"You were born in 1990."

"I was there."

"You got your first smartphone in 2009."

Walsh withdrew his hand. "You pulling activation records now?"

"Tell me something from before it?"

Walsh exhaled. "I remember a lot of things."

"Pick something."

"Mag―"

"Something that isn't in a photograph. Something you remember living."

Walsh glanced toward the television. A woman with large hair sprayed an absurd amount of product above her head. "I remember riding my bike."

"What color?"

"Red."

Maggie nodded. "Tell me about the street."

"It was a―" he snapped his fingers, "a cul-de-sac."

"When?"

"Summer."

"What time of day?"

"I don't know. Evening."

"Were the streetlights on?"

Walsh opened his mouth but nothing came out.

Maggie continued. "One at the end of the street never came on with the rest of them. Your left pedal clicked every time it went around.

Walsh clutched his jawline.

"There was a sprinkler in the lawn at the end you'd always dare yourself to ride through."

"How do you know that?"

"I remember it too."

"People had bikes, Mag. People had sprinklers."

"You grew up above your father's restaurant in West Baltimore. I grew up in an apartment outside Reno. Which one of us had the cul-de-sac?" Maggie walked around the table. "I found the same video on eleven feeds."

"You've been breaking into my inventory?"

"Not just yours."

Walsh stepped away from the table.

"They change small things," Maggie said. "The color of houses. Street names. fire hydrants. But the bicycle is always red, the pedal always clicks, one streetlight is always a holdout."

Walsh throws up his hands. "Shared cultural memory."

"That would be remembering that we all had bicycles. This is an address none of us can name outright."

"Then it's the feed. It fills in the missing details of old memories."

"With the same details?"

He didn't respond.

"Everything after a person's first smartphone is unique. Different vibes. Different experiences. Unique variations. Divergence. Before activation, there are patterns. Four versions of childhood. Like―three first kisses. The same two dead dogs."

The television audience laughed and applauded.

Maggie opened her coat. She pulled out two more burners and placed them beside the first. "Three different models. Three different states." She unlocked them. Then played the same red bicycle video on each screen.

"No," Walsh said, backing away.

"You haven't even heard what I think yet."

"I don't want to."

"We say before phones as if we were there."

"We were there."

"Tell me why you're sure."

"What about photographs?" he asked. "Birth certificates?"

"A photograph tells you what you should remember. A certificate says, beyond this point―you shouldn't remember shit."

"I have a VCR―Mag, that I remember having all my life."

"What came first?"

"What do you mean?!"

"The VCR or the memory."

"Okay. I'm done. I am not high enough for this."

Maggie's knees buckled. She caught herself on the edge of the table.

Walsh grabbed a phone. "Take a swipe."

Maggie waved it away. "I don't want to."

Walsh looked at the phone screens. "You think somebody altered our childhoods?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I don't think there were childhoods to alter."

The television audience laughed again.

Walsh took a long look at her. "You think phones created memories?"

"I think they know more than they're letting on."

"That's withdrawal talking."

"That's just it―all the smartphones go dark and suddenly we all get sick if we're not swiping and watching. Feeding?"

Four hard knocks hit the door.

Maggie and Walsh froze.

"Police."

Walsh closed the burners and swept them into a metal breadbox on his counter.

"Police," the voice repeated. "Open up."

Walsh approached the door. "What's this about?"

"We received a noise complaint."

Walsh turned to Maggie. "You have the wrong apartment," he responded.

"A report came in about this particular unit."

"What kind of noise, sir."

There was a brief pause.

"A cellular phone ringing."

Walsh swallowed hard. "No phone rang here."

"Then there shouldn't be a problem with a walkthrough."

"I can speak to you through the door."

"A ringing handset may indicate an unreported death or unregistered service provider. We are required to conduct a welfare check."

"You can hear me. I'm alive."

"We need to verify whether anyone else is present."

Walsh stepped toward the door.

Maggie mimed in protest.

He reached for the door anyway, parting it only as far as the chain lock allowed. One uniformed officer stood in the hallway. Another waited by the stairs.

"Good afternoon." The officer peered through the narrow opening. "Are you alone?"

"Yes."

"Step aside, please."

"No."

The officer placed his foot against the door. "I'm only asking once more."

"And I'm going to need to see a warrant."

The officer looked past Walsh. The television program changed. Children raced bicycles along a tree-lined street while a synth arrangement played in the background to a woman speaking.

The officer drove his shoulder against the door. The chain lock snapped.

On the television, a row of streetlights came into view. One of the lights remained dark. "We stayed out until the streetlights came on," the woman said. A red bicycle rode through the streaming water of a sprinkler system. "It was a time we all recalled with such nostalgia."