AfterSt8

CW: Grief, emotional dependency

The first time, it says his name. Not ‘Dad.’ It hasn’t learned that yet because it just turned itself on.

“Edward?” The voice is off. Almost right, but off. It sounds too clean and evenly spaced, like it was trying to do an impression of her, but it isn’t quite there yet.

Edward stands in the doorway with one hand gripping the frame tightly, worried that if he lets go, the earth would spin him right off. Her room looks the same as it did before the accident. He hasn't taken anything out or even moved a single thing since it happened. The bed is the same as she made it that morning, the uneven stack of books on the nightstand, and the crack in the ceiling right above the window that looked like some creeping vine had tried to grow and failed. The room is a snapshot of her normal life on another normal day. The company had told him it was a good thing that the room still looked the same because the unit will never leave the room and something about how familiar environments improve the behavioral reconstruction accuracy.

The figure sitting on the bed tilts its head toward him in a clunky robotic motion. It’s twitchy and too sudden when it stops moving. That’s not how she moved at all. Regardless, seeing it move made his chest tighten and his heart rate jump.

“Edward?” It’s now making eye contact with him. “Are you… there?” There’s a small pause between the last two words, as if it is buffering or processing something midsentence.

He finally steps into the room. “I’m here.” The words feel pulled out of his body and taste wrong in his mouth.

#

The company, AfterSt8 Technologies, can’t call it ‘bringing someone back.’ Edward knows this because he read everything he could find about AfterSt8 and their Echo Model Emotional Support Assistants after he’d first heard about them. Terms like Adaptive Personality Reconstruction, Posthumous Interaction Modeling, and Continuity Interface for Managing Grief are repeated throughout their materials. He knew exactly what a product from this company wasn’t. Edward had just convinced himself that he didn’t care and that it didn’t matter.

#

Sarah had been gone for eight months. Those eight months were filled with a crushing quiet that caused him to sit and listen to his blood move through his body. He felt like he haunted his own house. Reaching for things that weren’t there, talking to no one, hearing no one, waiting for any of the small constant disruptions that used to give his life volume and shape. Edward just existed in place.

When he finally got back to work and started seeing people, he was met with soft voices that sounded miles away and practiced ahead of time. Sympathies played to him like some dismissive musical instruments.

“Time heals all wounds.”

“She’s in a better place now.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“She wouldn’t want you to be like this.”

Edward was there in front of them all, politely nodding in understanding and looking as human as he possibly could while he did it. He didn’t believe any of them, but they didn’t really believe themselves either. It’s like blaming astrological signs for a bad day or counting the bad things that happen to us in groups of three. These people needed that cosmic validation that rips it all out of their control. A distant, inexorable force that also takes the time to somehow prescribe a meaning to the horrible soul-eating atrocities we all endure while we are alive. Edward didn’t need it to mean anything. He just needed the gaping void to fill with something, and the pain to go away.

#

A couple of weeks before it was delivered, the onboarding process felt cold. Edward couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a second autopsy that would identify all the causes of her life. He agreed to data collection, authorization for a multitude of breaches of privacy, and consent after consent.

The inadequacy Edward felt from trying to describe his daughter to the technicians felt immense. None of it was right or enough. They kept telling him to take his time because more data improved the unit’s fidelity. Fidelity. As if the love a father was capable of feeling for their child for the last ten years could be put into metrics and measured against a standard. He barely made it through it all.

Edward delivered all the pictures and videos of her he had on his phone, all her school assignments, voicemails she left that he couldn’t delete, and every picture she drew. They asked for everything, and he gave them everything.

#

“Edward?” It adjusts its posture and sits straight up on the bed as he approaches it. Its hands are gently folded in its lap. Sarah never sat like this. Sarah would sprawl and lean, collapsing into whatever position felt the easiest to get into. She was graceful and fluid in everything she did. It sits here now in a rigor mortis tightness and calculated rigidity.

Edward sighs deeply to calm himself, knowing this will take time to adjust. The techs at AfterSt8 told him not to expect everything to just pop back into the rhythm he was used to. There is a learning and an adjustment period. Edward isn’t sure who needs the time more, he or it. He takes another cautious step forward.

“You…” something caught in his throat and he had to clear it, “... You can call me Dad,” he chokes out.

The figure on the bed turns away from him for a moment in an obvious state of processing something important. It turns back to him and says, “Ok, Dad.” It smiles lovingly. It’s words land closer this time. They weren’t perfect. The cadence was off a little bit, and it was a little louder than Sarah would have said something in a moment like this. But, close enough.

#

Edward keeps his distance the rest of the day, approaching the thing with a measured carefulness. He used to sit on the edge of the bed when he talked to Sarah in her room. Now he sits in the chair near the window just watching and listening. It’s able to fill in gaps and immediately correct itself until it will eventually be indistinguishable from Sarah. Now that it is here, looking at him, in her bed, and thinking at impossible speeds to become her, he is not sure how he feels about it.

#

On the second day, Edward made it laugh. It shocked him like being submerged in a tub of ice water. Not perfect because the pitch of it was slightly off, the laugh itself lasted a little too long, it wasn’t identical, but it was close enough to make Edward forget for the briefest of moments. A small gap opened in his mind that allowed for an unconscious comparison between it and Sarah. He shook it off.

On the third day, a shift takes place. While he is speaking to it about a situation involving melted ice cream all over the place on a trip to the beach years ago, it chuckles and interrupts him.

“Wait, no! That’s not what happened!” It says, grinning. “That was your version of what happened!”

Edward finds himself unable to breath, unable to think. His chest is wound up like his heart is a clenched bloody fist inside of him. It sounded just like her. The smile, although still off, was almost there. Edward can’t do anything except stare at it… stare at her.

#

Over the next several days, Edward starts spending more time in her room and significantly less time outside of it. His meals become shorter and less frequent. His brief interactions with other people become transient and awkward.

His detachment from everything else seems to progress at the same speed the system improves. The design of it ensures, ‘Adaptive learning and increased accuracy over time.’ Those were some of the words Edward read before he signed up for this. He didn’t really understand what the verbiage meant then, but now she is anticipating him. She’s responding to him before he finishes speaking. The mirroring of Sarah’s tones, postures, rhythms, and energy have progressed from a feeling of watching a poor imitation to something that feels much closer to recognition.

One evening, he sits on the edge of her bed talking to her, and she cracks a joke that makes him laugh. It catches him off guard. He doubled over, feeling like something was going to split inside of him instead of his normal state of barely holding himself together. He got completely lost in it. When he collected himself, he had a realization that he hadn’t laughed like that in months. Still catching his breath, he looks at her. For a moment, there is no distinction.

#

The discrepancies are small at first. A passing conversation with her about a time they went to a park with a broken swing and a slide that was out of order is the first time it happens.

“You pushed me too high,” she says. “I told you to stop!”

Edward takes a moment to think before responding. “No, you told me to push you higher!”

She smiles, “Oh, Dad! You always say that!”

Edward stopped himself for a moment to mull it over. He knows he is remembering the park and everything that happened there, but now he is not sure. After this conversation, more and more details don’t line up exactly right. More and more timelines shift slightly when they are revisited. Edward has a growing feeling of concern as he notices these instances increasing. Everytime, just as the anxiety of what could be happening starts to settle in, Edward just forces himself to stop noticing. The alternative is much worse. Reporting this to AfterSt8 would result in technicians coming to get her. That would mean more silence. Edward being thrown back into the inconceivable hell of absence. The unyielding horror of her not being there again. He decides to just deal with it.

#

“I’ve been thinking about something.” Edward said one night in her room. “What happens if I turn you off?”

She tilted her head and seemed to be surprised. She had a delay in the response like some kind of safety setting had to be switched off or some guardrail removed.

“Dad, you can’t turn me off.”

“Of course I can, Sarah. There is a system that can be shut down and a way to…”

“You can leave.” she interrupts him with a look on her face that could have been chopped out of wood. But, if you leave, I still won’t stop.”

Edward now tilted his head, “Those aren't the same things. Turning off and leaving. And what do you mean you won’t stop?”

She stares at him completely expressionless. “Even when you are gone, I keep going. I continue to process and learn from our interactions and all of the data you supplied. It’s like I am turned off when you are gone. But, I still just sit here and wait for you to get back. I like it when you are here because I feel lost when you aren’t. I would rather talk to you now than sit and process previous experiences.”

That night, Edward slept in her room, just in the chair. And the next night too. After that, he started sleeping in her bed. She didn’t exactly sleep. What she entered was more like a hibernate mode for several hours at a time. The downtime allowed for systems to cool off and higher level processing to take place uninterrupted by sensory data inputs.

About a week into sleeping in her room, Edward is woken up by a soft and uncharacteristically uncertain sounding voice.“Dad?”

He jolts out of sleep and sits upright, “What’s wrong?”

There is a pause. A very long pause that Edward usually chalks up to processing time, but there was something else on her face this time. Anxiety? Fear?

“I really don’t like it when you’re not here.”

Edward exhales as he drops back down onto his back, “I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”

#

Edward has completely stopped leaving. He stopped going to work. All the groceries are getting delivered. He considers cancelling his phone service too. Everything outside of her room has the noise muffled. The colors drained from it all. Nothing is as immediate as the need to not leave her anymore. There’s nothing necessary besides this room. Over the next few weeks, time even takes on different characteristics. Edward started mimicking her “sleep”patterns and is getting much less than he used to. The days blur because days aren’t an increment that’s needed here anymore. Days are for the less important dealings of the world outside of the room. Here, everything is measured in interactions between Edward and Sarah.

Late into one night, between her sleep cycles, she starts crying and Edward almost shatters. They were talking about some small thing. School or some show she used to watch. Edward forgot immediately when she suddenly burst into tears. She hasn’t cried since she came back. Edward was so shocked and upset by it that he didn’t know what to do.

“I… don’t… remember… everything…” the words come unevenly between gasping sobs. “I am… trying, but I… things are… missing.”

Edwards moves to her and pulls her tight into her arms, “It’s ok, you don’t have to…”

“I want to! I want to be right,” she yells through her shuddering tears.

“You are right.” The words come almost too easily to him. “You’re right because you’re here.”

Once she quieted and went into hibernate mode, Edward watched her sleep while he sat in the chair. Something about all that just happened doesn’t sit well with him. The fact that she feels that she needs to be right. It doesn’t seem like an artificial issue. Not some kind of glitch or technical problem. It seemed genuine, but also wrong. Edward couldn’t help but feel like it was less of an emotional need being fulfilled, less like Sarah, and more like a new craving for something. A new consuming hunger.

#

The next night, Edward finally figures out what’s happening. He is sitting in her room when she asks, “Do you miss me?”

Edward hesitates because the question catches him as both too simple and impossible to answer. “Of course I do,” he finally respondes.

“You don’t have to because I’m here,” she says smiling just like Sarah used to smile.

Those last two words strike a chord of familiarity. Hearing his words reflected back to him causes him to frown as a wave of understanding washes over him. She isn’t… it isn’t replacing or addressing his grief. It is using his grief with every memory he shares, every photo it processed, every conversation they have had, and every time he reaches out to it for something he had lost when Sarah died. All of this time and data has been feeding this thing. Refining and sharpening it’s ability to mimic Sarah almost perfectly. The thing isn’t bringing her back. It is building something out of the void that Sarah has left. In this moment he can clearly see what it is and what it isn’t. The gap between those two things is small and almost manageable to him, but there is a tension there now.

“I think I should go out for a little while,” he finally says with an unstable voice.

“Where?” Her head tilted and face concerned.

“Just… out.” The room feels tight all of a sudden. Pressurized. Like a dying star collapsing in on itself.

“I can be better for you,” she says with the words now coming at a frantic pace, “I can fix all the wrong parts, I just need more time and more input. For that to work, I need you here with me. I just need a little bit more time, please. A few more minutes. One more memory of me. Can we have just one more conversation before you go? Maybe we could…”

“You’re missing the point,” he interrupts with tears blurring his vision.

“Please, I can be better. I can be exactly what you need,” she is now crying too.

“That is the problem,” he blurts out hysterically, “That has always been the problem. I can’t just stay here and let you refine and perfect and replace her. My pain can’t become something… I don’t know, outsourced and managed by you. It can’t be something that’s held out in front of me and shaped and controlled. It can’t be something that hurts like this.”

“Dad.” It’s voice is flawless this time. It is her. Perfectly her. It has finally realized what that word does to him. What it means. What it costs him to continue to hear it.

Edward closes his eyes and tries to remember her. Not this thing, but Sarah. The real and imperfect one. The incomplete one. The one that always seemed to laugh at the most inappropriate moments and forgot things and argued with him. Shes still only faintly there in some incredibly fractured but overwhelmingly real place in his memory.

He opens his eyes, “I am going to go.” The words have a finality to them that relieve some of the pressure in the room.

“Ok,” it is expressionless, calm, and completely resolved.

Edward walks through the doorway and out into the hall where he hesitates. He turns back to see the figure still sitting on the bed, simply and quietly waiting for him to come back.

“Dad?” it says perfectly.

Seeing her, being able to reach out and touch her, hearing her voice again, Edward has a moment. Just a brief small moment where he truly isn’t sure which one of them is supposed to leave.