A Simple Life

Today is April 31st. I have decided to accept it as real. It feels like the kind of day that should not exist, and yet does—just long enough to say goodbye to something you were not prepared to lose.

Caroline is a study in contradictions. Sweet but subversive. Athletic and clumsy. Intelligent yet absent-minded. She looks and struts like a lady but is prone to talking like a sailor just in from eight months at sea. The resulting juxtaposition is nothing short of transcendent. Her long natural blonde hair is implausibly curly—so much so that she is often the recipient of scornful looks from straight-haired women who don’t believe that nature is to blame for this beautiful oddity. They assume intervention. Design. Some quiet correction made in private. They are not entirely wrong.

Watching her wash the dishes is one of my very favorite things. The way she scrubs and sways and bounces. The aloof concentration. The impossibility of her curves. I must view this from afar, of course. A voyeuristic pleasure. If she is made aware of my presence, the show is over. This is her greatest flaw and also her most endearing. She is perpetually self-conscious of her movements, of how she presents herself to others, even the ones closest to her. Especially the ones closest to her.

She hums sometimes when she thinks she’s alone. Not songs, exactly. Fragments. Melodies that never quite resolve. I have tried, on occasion, to trace them back to something familiar—radio broadcasts, archived recordings, the residue of pre-war culture—but they do not map cleanly. They seem to originate somewhere else. Or perhaps they are assembled from scraps. A kind of subconscious stitching.

There are moments when she pauses mid-motion, sponge suspended, gaze fixed somewhere just beyond the window. These pauses can last several seconds, sometimes longer. At first I thought them to be lapses. Now I suspect they are something closer to recalibration. Or maybe memory, trying to surface through damaged pathways. It is difficult to say. The diagnostics are not what they once were.

I approach her slowly, sidling first from the dining room table and then to the breakfast nook, taking in these final moments of unadulterated beauty until I reach the kitchen island. She startles easily, like a gazelle, and seems to live in a perpetual state of not knowing if anyone else is in the house. She regularly appears genuinely spooked when she walks into a room and sees me there, as though I occupy a place I should not. As though I have drifted in from an adjacent timeline.

In these moments I cannot help but feel that I have disappointed her in some way. There are certain spatial expectations I cannot meet. Where should I have been? What should I have been doing? I’m always afraid to ask for fear that I may not like the answer.

The house itself does not help matters. It holds onto sound in peculiar ways. Footsteps arrive before the person. Doors seem to remember being opened. Sometimes I hear movement in rooms she has just left, as if her presence lingers a fraction too long. Once, I watched her cross the hallway twice in the reflection of the oven door, though I only heard her pass once. When I turned, she was already gone.

I have learned not to comment on these things.

My approach is practiced; many years of trial and error. I must slide in with a gentle sort of authority. Firm but forgiving. Sudden gestures cause disruption. Hesitation causes suspicion. There is a narrow corridor between the two, and I walk it carefully.

I wrap my arms around her stomach, press my pelvis into her backside, and place my chin between her head and shoulder as we quietly gaze out the window to the robust cherry tree in our backyard. It is in bloom now, though I do not recall the season turning. The blossoms arrive abruptly each year, as though switched on. She leans into me after a moment—always after a moment—and resumes her motion at the sink.

“You’re quiet today,” she says, though I have not spoken.

“I’m thinking,” I tell her.

She nods as if this satisfies something in her. It usually does.

From here, I can see the small seam at the base of her neck, where synthetic dermis meets older casing. It has begun to discolor slightly. Not enough to be noticeable at a distance, but enough that I cannot ignore it up close. There was a time when I would have reported this. Filed a request. Scheduled maintenance. Now I find myself reluctant to initiate any process that might accelerate what is already inevitable.

“I had a dream last night,” she says.

“You don’t dream,” I reply, too quickly.

She turns her head slightly, not enough to break the moment, but enough that I feel the correction.

“I had something like a dream,” she says.

I do not ask her to elaborate.

There are things she says now that do not align with her specifications. Small deviations. Nothing actionable, according to the last update. Within acceptable variance. But they accumulate. They form patterns. And patterns, once established, are difficult to reverse.

I see that her power cell is nearly depleted. An older model with little in the way of self-preservation protocols. The indicator flickers faintly beneath the surface of her left wrist, visible only at certain angles. She has not noticed it. Or perhaps she has and chosen not to acknowledge it. That would not be entirely out of character.

On a normal day, I would simply provide a verbal reminder. Suggest a recharge cycle. Encourage compliance. There is language for this. Approved phrasing. Soft directives designed to maintain stability without inducing resistance.

But today, the words do not arrive as they should.

Instead, I tell her how wonderful she looks. How much she means to me. How I cannot envision life without her presence. The sentences feel both foreign and inevitable, like lines rehearsed for a performance I did not realize I had agreed to give.

She stills beneath my arms.

For a moment, I worry I have broken something.

Then she leans back into me more fully than before. The weight of her settles differently this time. Not mechanical. Not procedural. Something else. Something unaccounted for.

“I know,” she says.

This, too, is not a standard response.

Outside, the cherry blossoms drift from the tree in slow, continuous surrender. They do not fall so much as hover downward, as though unsure of gravity’s authority. The yard is already littered with them, though I do not recall when they began to accumulate.

Her memory is corrupted, her pre-war circuitry eroding. The service notice arrived three weeks ago, though the date stamp was difficult to parse. There are discrepancies now in even the most basic systems. Time, for instance. The calendar insists on certain things that the world does not reflect. Or perhaps it is the other way around.

Tonight she will be decommissioned and replaced with a more efficient model. One with updated protocols. Improved stability. Cleaner responses. Fewer deviations.

I have read the specifications. I have reviewed the demonstration footage. The new model laughs at appropriate intervals. Maintains eye contact. Does not pause unnecessarily. Does not hum.

It will not startle when I enter a room.

It will not look at me as though I have appeared where I should not be.

Caroline turns off the water and dries her hands. She does not move away from me.

“What were you thinking about?” she asks.

I consider telling her the truth. That I was thinking about the seam at her neck. The flicker in her wrist. The way she hums songs that do not exist. The way the house seems to echo her twice.

Instead, I say, “Nothing important.”

She nods again. Always nodding. Always accepting the version of events I provide.

For now.

Until tonight.

Until the technicians arrive with their quiet instruments and their polite reassurances. Until they thank me for my years of use. Until they ask me to step aside.

I tighten my arms around her slightly, committing the shape of her to memory. The exact curvature. The subtle inconsistencies. The flaws that were never meant to be features.

Outside, the blossoms continue to fall, though the tree appears no less full.

Until then, I am hers and she is mine.