What features would a smart tomb have?

Some light explorations into how technology could improve the user experience of a final resting place.

Perhaps, as a start, it could detect when friends or loved ones of the deceased come into proximity. They would download and install an app on their phones, create some sort of account, and the app would communicate with the tomb.

What would the tomb do in response to their approach of loved ones? Maybe it could emit a warm glow or hum. Something earthy and welcoming, as if to say, I’ve been waiting for you.

What else could the app do? Perhaps, after the visitor has logged in, there might be a button for her to pay her respects to the deceased. Pressing it would, um, make the tomb gurgle happily or hum contentedly, and also increment some sort of counter somewhere like one of those website hit trackers. Since April 14, 2020, visitors have paid 307 Respects to this tomb. It occurs to me that perhaps an appropriate design for the Pay Respects button could involve the letter “F”.

And maybe if it detects unwelcome presences, such as vandals or grave robbers, it could instead emit loud and grating screeches, obnoxious alarm bells, to alert nearby custodians of the cemetery to its impending desecration.

Well, if we’re going to give it the ability to produce arbitrary sounds, we may as well outfit this house of eternal repose with a speaker system. Then it can literally say, “Welcome back. I’ve been waiting for you,” or some other customised message, configured by the decedent or their estate. “Thank you for paying me a visit. Please stay awhile.” With enough foresight, the message could even have been pre-recorded by the deceased.

If the deceased did not have the decency to think of pre-recording messages for their future gravesite visitors, not all is lost. Modern speech synthesis is scarily realistic. Trained on voice recordings of the late departed soul, an AI could synthesise messages tailored to each visitor. (“Welcome back, Marisa. It’s been a while.”)

Well. Now that we’ve brought AI into the picture, we can also imagine the content of the messages being tailored to each visitor, based on how the deceased knew them in life. Strangers or mere acquaintances could get a documentary-style audio tour of the deceased’s life (“When I was twenty-four I began a copyediting job at the Sawyer Brook Gazette, where shortly thereafter I met my first husband Charlie.”). Those whom the deceased knew closely might instead get something directed to them personally (“How dare you step foot in my tomb, Charlie. You and that bitch can burn in hell.”).

Hmm. So far our vision for the smart tomb has only involved audio. The obvious next step is to incorporate video elements as well. Screens on various surfaces of the sepulchre. Interior and exterior. Slideshows of photographs of the deceased. Video footage. Holograms, if we’re feeling futuristic.

And these, too, could just as well be interactive. Among all the static memories gently flashing by, there could be sections of the screens where visitors could speak with AI-reanimated versions of the dearly departed. Just as though they were really there. Until the AI begins to hallucinate or something.

Well, if we’re going to go that far, this thing may as well be a fully fledged computer, with its own operating system. Developers could port their software to run on tombOS, and with some sort of user interface, maybe on the coffin, visitors could browse the web, open Maps and the Weather, put on Spotify, play Angry Birds, whatever.

You could play Doom on a tomb.

This being essentially a collection of large screens and speakers in a public place, it’s inevitable that some corporations are going to want to buy ad space on it. The estate of the decedent could sell ad spots in order to recoup the cost of the tomb, or settle lawsuits, or whatever.

And then the sepia-tinged vignettes of the dearly departed, running along beaches as a child or dressed for high school prom or waving awkwardly at the camera at an office party, could coexist with Squarespace and Temu ads barking at full volume. Annoying tower defense minigames could pop up at arbitrary points during the slideshows, and the bereaved would have to complete them in order to continue communing with the fallen in peace. The AI-reanimated holographic avatars could occasionally drop in a good word for NordVPN.

But perhaps the most useful feature of a smart tomb would be the notification system. What notification system? you ask.

Well.

July 14, 2027. Your phone buzzes. It’s Tombly, the app you downloaded for Auntie Linda and Grandpa Bertie’s smart tombs when they died. Activity detected in Linda’s tomb. Activity detected in Albert’s tomb. It just keeps going. Everybody else in the cafeteria is getting notifications too. You open up Tombly and check the security cam footage. What in fresh hell? You glance around nervously, your coworkers meet your panicked gaze, and across cites, countries, continents, it dawns on everybody at once.

The zombie apocalypse is here.