XR Funeral

The Parc des Souvenirs Vivants hummed with a quiet serenity. Sunlight filtered through clouds and caught the dew on the perfect rose petals that bordered the main promenade. Each droplet was like a tiny prism, refracting the internal glow of the flora. This was just one park feature designed for beauty and gentle illumination around-the-clock. Even in grief, the goal was to give visitors a breathtaking artistry.

To Pierre, the artistry was merely the stage for the only interaction that mattered today.

He stood amongst the mourners dressed in black at a deliberate distance from the main cluster around the reception gazebo. His father, an architect of green urban spaces himself, would've given a lot of opinions on the park's design, probably some critiques. Pierre almost looked forward to hearing them.

That was why "Digital Dad" was indispensable.

To anyone else, Pierre might have looked unnervingly still, with a blank expression on his face. But beneath the sleek, almost invisible lenses of his XR glasses was his father, Cyril, standing beside him. He looked vibrant and solid, not a day over sixty. His favorite worn tweed jacket was rendered in perfect detail. Pierre could swear he could smell his dad's pipe tobacco, a setting he'd meticulously crafted.

"Bit ostentatious, isn't it son?" his dad murmured, his voice synthesized in his familiar warmth.

His dad's gaze swept the park.

"All this... performative ecology. Your mother would have seen right through the pretense. Still, the craftsmanship on those magnolias is decent, I'll give them that."

"She'd have said it lacks soul, Dad," Pierre responded, already falling into their old rhythms.

The "Visage" system, trained on decades of Cyril’s archived digital life: his sharply written emails, his candid voice logs, his sarcastic social media commentary. This wasn't a sanitized comfort bot. This was Dad.

He heard a sharp hiss of breath behind him; it was an unwelcome intrusion. He turned to see Sarah. Her face was pale and blotchy with a grief that Pierre found frankly excessive. Her eyes, a bright red, were fixed on his glasses.

"Pierre!" she whispered, her voice tight and strained. "For God's sake. He's gone. Can't you just... be here? With the family? This is... it's macabre."

Pierre’s focus remained resolutely on his father's avatar. He increased the opacity setting with a subtle mental command, making his Dad even more solid against the irritating reality of Sarah's presence.

"I am with him, Sarah," he stated flatly. "This is how I'm with him. And to be honest, he's more present than most of these weeping sycophants."

Dad chuckled, a familiar sound. "Your sister was always a tad dramatic, wasn't she? Takes after her mother's side. No sense of proportion," he said with a wink. "Don't let her get to you, son. She means well, in her own overwhelming way."

"It's not him, Pierre! It's a program!" Sarah's voice cracked, drawing a few sideways glances. "You're hiding. Dad wouldn't have wanted this."

"Oh, I think he would have been rather flattered by the technology, actually," Pierre countered cooly. "He always appreciated innovation. And I know exactly he'd want."

"That's right, son. You always got me," Dad clapped a reassuring, high-resolution hand on Pierre’s shoulder. There wasn't any physical feeling from this artificial touch. "Now, I believe the old Professor Claude is about to hold court. Ten euros says his hairpiece tries to achieve escape velocity if he gets too excited."

The AI wasn't flawless. Just yesterday, it had confidently misquoted their family's favorite obscure philosopher and then stubbornly argued its (incorrect) interpretation. Pierre had simply overridden it and entered the correct data. A minor tweak. But this was pure Dad. He couldn't help but giving a genuine smile.

The important thing was the essence: the personality, the comforting, critical presence that made the world bearable. Without it, there was just a gaping void, and Pierre had no intention of looking into that. Not today. Not ever, if he could help it.

There was a slow procession: a river of black fabric which flowed along the winding paths of the park towards the designated interment grove. In front of them was a cluster of genetically sculpted weeping willows, their long tendrils casting a soft shadow. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and the park's signature "Serenity Bloom" incense. It had been designed to soothe, but Pierre found it excessive.

He walked apart from the crowd. His Dad was by his side, his virtual footsteps perfectly synchronized with his own along the pathway.

"Weeping willows, eh?" his Dad remarked, his tone laced with its familiar wryness. "A bit on the nose for a funeral, don't you think? I always preferred the stoicism of an oak. Still, the biomass reclamation rate on these trees is supposedly top-notch. It's hard to argue with efficiency."

He gestured with his chin towards a particularly elaborate memorial nearby: a spiraling sculpture made of polished driftwood and embedded solar crystals.

"At least it's not one of those monstrosities. Sentimental nonsense."

"You always did hate eco-bling, Dad," Pierre smirked. He felt a sense of normalcy, of shared private commentary. That was infinitely preferable to the hushed, sorrowful whispers of the other mourners. Their grief felt performative to him, alien. His connection, right here, was the real thing.

Sarah appeared beside him, her face still tight.

"Pierre, remember that time Dad took us up to the old-growth forests in the Ardennes Restoration Project? You got lost following that rare skipper butterfly?"

Pierre barely noticed her. Dad had walked over to a nearby synthesized rosebush to criticize the pruning.

"He was so worried," Sarah pressed on, her voice wavering. "But then he found you and he wasn't even mad... just relieved. He held you so tightly."

"The man was a botanist, Sarah, not a saint," Pierre corrected, still mainly focused on the avatar. "And I recall that he was rather annoyed I had wandered off and missed his grand lecture on symbiotic fungi."

"She's romanticizing again, Pierre," his Dad chimed in. "You were a damn nuisance that day. Nearly gave your mother an aneurysm. Though, I'll admit that skipper was a rare morph. Good eye, son."

"This isn't about a butterfly, Pierre!" Sarah's voice cracked with frustration. People nearby were beginning to look. "This isn't about him! It's about remembering him, properly. You're locked away with that program, pretending he's still here. It's not healthy! It's denial!"

"And your public weeping is healthier?" Pierre shot back, annoyed. "This is my way, Sarah. He's right here with me. I'm experiencing this with him. It's a more fitting tribute than wallowing."

He tapped his temple, indicating the Visage lenses. "He would've appreciated the elegance of the solution."

"Precisely, Pierre," his Dad nodded wisely. "It's about managed experience. Why endure unnecessary emotional squalls when one can have a sleek curated experience? Your father, the real me, understood the value of having control."

He then gestured at the ground.

"Speaking of understanding, look at this substrate. They're using a fungal network to move nutrients evenly across the entire park. Advanced stuff. Remember my lecture series on subterranean ecosystems? I called it 'The Unseen Kingdom'. Most people just see dirt, but there's a whole world under our feet."

Pierre focused on his father's words. The familiar cadence of his academic enthusiasm was a welcome anchor. The complex science was a shared language, a comfortable space.

They reached the willow grove, where mourners had already gathered around the simple ceramic pod which rested by a plot of rich, deep earth. A former colleague, Professor Émile Durand, a man whose verbosity Cyril often lampooned in private, stepped forward to give a eulogy.

As Durand began his rather florid speech, praising Cyril’s "visionary contributions to ecological urbanism", Dad leaned in conspiratorially to Pierre.

"Oh, here we go," the avatar muttered with a smirk. "Durand. The man who could rival a thesaurus. Five minutes in, and he'll be comparing my modest green-roof research to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I bet you he will use the word 'paradigm' at least three times."

Pierre struggled to suppress a snort. It was so perfectly Dad. He felt a pang of something that might've been warmth, or perhaps just the absence of the acute coldness that gripped him since... since. Durand droned on, but Pierre was barely listening. He was caught in the comfortable, cynical bubble he inhabited with his dad. He was far removed from the shared grief that surrounded them. The real world, with its messy emotions and final goodbyes, felt distant and irrelevant.

Eventually, the professor's eulogy wound down.

"Cyril Leger has not left us. He has merely become part of the eternal ecosystem he cherished so much," he finished, letting that last platitude hang in the air like that smelly incense. Two attendants in discreet gray uniforms moved to the side of the ceramic pod.

The hushed anticipation, the finality of the moment, sliced through Pierre’s carefully constructed cynicism. The witty marks from his Digital Dad now felt thin, almost brittle. This was it.

As the attendants prepared to lower the pod into the waiting earth, a raw panic clawed its way up Pierre’s throat. The dark, rectangular void in the ground seemed to expand, threatening to swallow everything. He felt his breath stop. He was suddenly aware that his father was truly, irrevocably, about to be sealed away. His carefully maintained composure started to fracture.

He needed relief. He turned desperately back to the XR construct he'd poured all his focus into.

"Dad," he choked out, the word barely a whisper.

He needed something more than witty banter now. He needed his father.

The avatar shifted from his cynical smirk to a more compassionate expression. The AI, perhaps sensing the spike in Pierre’s biometrics, accessed a different part of the personality archive. The change was subtle, yet profound.

"Pierre," his Dad said, with the steady tone Cyril used for moments of genuine gravity. "It's alright son. It's just a vessel."

But Pierre was shaking his head. A tremor ran through him.

"No, it's... you're leaving," he could no longer maintain his denial.

"Physically, yes. That part is over," his Dad said, his voice gentle yet firm. "But look at me, Pierre. What did I always say about energy? About information?"

Pierre struggled to pick out a specific phrase as his mind raced with a cascade of memories.

"Never... it's never truly lost," he managed, the words getting caught in his throat. "Just transformed."

"Exactly," the avatar affirmed. "This body, my vessel, did its work. It housed me. I got to walk with you, argue with you, and build with you. Now, it returns to the cycle. That's the ecological bargain, the one I always said was the most honest deal in the universe."

As the pod began its slow, silent descent into the earth, Pierre felt a profound wave of sorrow so immense it was nearly physical. Tears, hot and unexpected, welled in his eyes. His moist eyes blurred the perfectly rendered image of his father. He was feeling the colossal weight of his loss, perhaps for the first time without the buffer of cynical detachment.

"But I don't want it to transform," Pierre whispered, feeling a raw grief. "I want you."

Digital Dad reached out and for a moment, Pierre swore he could feel a pressure on his arm.

"And I am here, Pierre," the avatar told him, with a synthetic empathy. "Not in that pod, not anymore. But here,"

He tapped his own temple, then gestured towards Pierre’s heart.

"I'm still here in the memories we built. In the arguments that sharpened your mind. In the love that still connects us. That doesn't go into the ground, son. That is the information, the energy, I always talked about. And that, you carry with you. It's your inheritance."

Pierre stared at the descending pod and the rich earth that would soon cover it. The avatar's words didn't erase the pain, but it seemed to sculpt it, to give it shape and meaning beyond absence. He was crying openly now. Silent tears streamed down his face, but the terror was fading. In its place was a deep, aching sadness. It was a grief that felt vast, but also shared. His artificial father was guiding him into the heart of his own sorrow, and in doing so, helped him to bear it.

He watched until the pod settled at the bottom of the grave. Dad stood silently behind him in the XR space, a comforting, unwavering presence. The cynical armor Pierre had worn was shattered by the simple, profound act of saying goodbye.

A young sapling was carefully planted atop the site. It was a species of hardy, fast-growing Parisian Elm their father had helped re-engineer for urban resilience. The finality was absolute, but the profound sorrow Pierre felt was now tinged with an unexpected serenity.

He didn't switch off the Visage glasses. Digital Dad remained beside him as a steady presence in his XR periphery. As the small crowd began to disperse, offering hushed condolences, Pierre continued to stand there and stare at the freshly planted elm. He felt an acceptance, a quiet acknowledgment of the cycle his father had so often lectured about. It wasn't the cold, intellectual acceptance he'd tried to feign earlier, but something deeper.

Sarah approached as he stood there, long after the rest had drifted towards the reception area for quiet remembrances and cold tea. She hesitated, then sat beside him on a curved stone bench that faced the new memorial. For a long moment, they were silent. The only sounds were the gentle, programmed rustling of willow leaves and the distant hum of the city beyond the park's acoustic barriers.

"I was worried, Pierre," Sarah said finally, her voice soft. "At the graveside, when they lowered the pod, you seemed so far away. And then..."

She trailed off, searching for words.

"You seemed to just break. But not in the way I expected."

"He wasn't a distraction, Sarah. Not then. When it really hit, it was like Dad himself, his real wisdom, came through. It guided me. It felt like he was really there, helping me understand how to actually feel it, how to say goodbye without shattering. It wasn't about not feeling the pain. It was about feeling it with him, with his strength, one last time... in a way I could actually process."

Sarah furrowed her brow. She looked at the new tree, then back to Pierre.

"So the avatar actually helped you grieve? It didn't just block it?"

"Today, it did," Pierre answered. "It channeled it, accessing the best parts of him. His essence, when I needed it most."

It sounded strange, even to him, to rely on a digital figment.

"I know it's not him, but it's an echo, a powerful one."

A long silence settled between them again. Sarah picked at a loose thread on her dress.

"I still don't fully get it, Pierre. This tech-mediated grieving. Honestly, it scares me a little. What happens if the program glitches, or when the memories it's built upon aren't enough?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "But today, it was what I needed."

Sarah nodded slowly. A faint, tired smile touched her lips.

"Everyone grieves differently, I suppose," she conceded, a quiet approval of her brother's technology. "Dad always said people find their own routes up the mountain."

She let out a long, deep sigh.

"I'm just glad you're... well, not 'okay', obviously. But you're here. You look more here now than you did this morning."

She reached out and took his hand. Her grip was warm. Solid.

"Let's go get some of that awful tea. We can toast to Dad's terrible taste in ceremonial beverages."

Pierre felt a genuine smile return. He squeezed her hand, feeling her kinship. Dad's avatar remained a silent, supportive presence in his periphery. Yet for the first time all day, the real world and the real person beside him felt more substantial.