The WhatsApp of the afterlife

The first message arrived on a Sunday morning at 8:04 a.m. IAIA Rosa: "Put on a cardigan, it's getting chilly!"

Martí rubbed his eyes. Not because it was early or because he was nursing a serious hangover, but because Grandma Rosa was dead. Buried two years ago. With a mass and absolutions. He stared at the screen, thinking that maybe his cousin Albert—who worked in "cybersecurity"—had played a bad joke on him. But after a few hours...

IAIA Rosa: "Take the pizza out of the oven. It's burning, damn it!"

Martí ran to the kitchen. The oven was smoking. The pizza, black as guilt. A joke with a sense of smell? No. It was impossible. Too sophisticated, even for his cousin. Within a few hours, things got out of hand. The dead started writing to everyone. And they didn't just chat. They gave their opinions. They monitored. They gave advice.

Tieta Carme (1932-2015): "Is this sofa new? I liked the old checkered one better! LOL."

Some found it endearing. Others, a terrifying epidemic. New WhatsApp groups began to appear:

MARTÍ FAMILY (with the late grandmother Angeleta and the late uncle Franciscu), All Saints' Day Dinner of the Graupera family (living and deceased), Niche 4 ever(thisIt was just dead people chatting with each other.

The groups were bustling with activity. The dead shared memories, made dark jokes, criticized the current government: "Better than Franco's, but not much more!" And from time to time, they offered a very personal message like the ones Martí received.

IAIA Rosa (1942-2020): "Your grandfather and I argued a lot because of you. And I'm sorry if I told you you'd never do anything good. I said that because I didn't like that you wanted to be a musician and I wanted you to eat hot food every day."

Avi Pere (1939-2018): "Play the guitar again, kid. Don't pay attention to the loudmouth from your grandmother, damn it!"

Martí, who had been secretly composing songs, ran to pick up his guitar and began writing a song about his grandparents. "My grandparents never went to Cuba..."

Two days later, a statement from Meta clarified everything: "A server error has reactivated old profiles synchronized with neural data stored in the cloud. A failure in the integration of a new artificial intelligence has generated this anomaly. We are working on it." Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta/WhatsApp, personally apologized officially and took the opportunity to launch a new paid feature: "Keep in Touch: Talk to your loved ones for only €9.99/month!"

The new feature was a resounding failure. Once you paid, it was no longer any fun! Meta's stock plummeted within a few days.Keep in Touch quietly disappeared from the Apple Store. Servers returned to normal, profiles were automatically closed, the deceased went silent, and WhatsApp once again became a jungle of parenting groups, cat GIFs, and seven-minute audio clips.

But one night... Martí had already turned off his phone. He was lying in bed, his pillow cold and his eyes wide open, and then, subtly, he noticed a single, gentle vibration: a notification with no clear sender, just a message:

IAIA Rosa: "Whatever the Sukemberk gamarus says, I'm still here. And I'll never leave you, casum dena! Good night, child."

Martí stared at the screen, smiling through his tears. He didn't respond. There was no need to. And for the first time in a long time, he slept like he did when he was little, on Grandma's couch, with a flowery blanket and the smell of onion soup.