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“I don’t know who sent the link but it wasn’t my daughter.” Olivia tried to keep the anger out of her voice. Even AI operators had zero tolerance customer service policies these days. Raising one’s voice was flagged, resulting in a warning and an abrupt end to the call if she raised her voice again.

“I understand your frustration, let me look into it. Please hold.”

Olivia did “feel” frustrated, although she’d been told any physical sensation she experienced was purely imaginary. Her consciousness only existed in “the cloud,” according to her daughter, who had facilitated her transition over a decade ago.

Post installation, Olivia’s needs were simple. The Healthy Elderly app, with her stuck at 80 years old, before her body and mind went completely to shit. Thanks to the app, she could still garden and read. Olivia enjoyed nothing more than being at home with her cat and her plants and her book collection. Murder mysteries were especially compelling, and her daughter uploaded a steady supply, so the new magazine links sent yesterday, as a Mother’s Day gift from her daughter, puzzled her. Why would her daughter send her a subscription to a magazine about cars?

There must be some mix-up. Which was why she’d called the customer service helpline.

The muzak played on.

“Hello?”

“Yes hello?”

“There seems to have been a glitch.”

‘’A glitch?”

“Yes, a minor one. Affecting your messaging service. That’s easily fixed. More concerning is your personal memory data.”

“My memory what? There’s a concern?”

“Please remain calm as I walk you through the protocol. I am here to help.”

“Right, ok.”

“First, I am going to show you a photograph. Please be prepared for a surprise.”

“Okay.” Oliva steeled herself. “Surprises” were something she’d been warned about after the installation. Apparently, things you didn’t want to remember could sometimes slip through the cracks. The photograph, appearing in what she still called her head, was of a man and a woman. The woman was lying in a hospital bed. She held a baby in her arms. The man leaned over the baby and her.

“That’s me! And that’s my husband!”

“Does the setting look familiar to you?’

“Yes, no, can you zoom in?”

The blanket had a Winnie the Pooh motif. Her daughter’s baby blanket had been My Little Pony.

“I don’t recognize the blanket.”

“I see.” The AI voice paused.

“What’s happening?”

“Some of your trash photos may have been uploaded mistakenly.”

“Trash? Why would a photo like that be trash?”

Oliva “felt” panic. How could such an important memory end up in the trash? “I don’t

have authorization to discuss the reasons for which certain photos were relegated to trash.”

“You don’t have authorization?”

“Please lower your tone. This is your last warning. I’m afraid you’ll have to speak to your daughter about this.”

The AI voice hung up. Olivia heard a reasonable facsimile of a telephone click.

***

Visiting days were few and far between. Mainly because there was so little to visit. All that remained of Jennifer’s mother’s body was a skeleton with skin stretched over it, and some sparse hair on the skull. She only visited because the payment plan covered both physical and memory storage. Until integration was complete. Three months from now, the brain and whatever it contained would no longer be necessary. And then she could just visit with her mother (her AI generated image) and give her mother’s body a proper burial.

The warehouse was kept cold, for preservation purposes. Jenny punched her code into the keypad and let herself in. A hall led down to the main storage area were a series of bodies. These

lay in rows of beds surrounded by curtains to protect their privacy. Jenny entered her mother’s curtained off area and took a seat by her bed. A screen to her left flickered on.

“Jenny?” It was her mother’s voice, but not her face. The face onscreen was a man’s, in his fifties. He looked familiar.

“It’s me Damien.”

Jennifer gasped.

***

“The imagination is a powerful thing. It can easily replace memory.” Jenny nodded. Her ChatGPT therapist understood the app better than she did. In fact, it was her therapist who’d recommended it when her mother had begun to show symptoms of losing her mind. Prior to its installation, Jenny had increasingly caught her having conversations with someone she, Jenny, couldn’t see. Someone her mother called Damien.

“Probably someone she used to know.” Her therapist guessed. “It’s common to see and hear people who’ve passed before as you approach death. It’s even common to imagine they’ve aged along with you.”

It was only when she’d decided to go ahead with the installation and collect her mother’s memories for the cloud that she discovered the source of her mother’s delusions. She found a baby book stored in an old cedar chest, wrapped in a blanket, alongside an urn containing ashes.

“Baby Damien’s Book,” the cover read. Inside there was a death certificate, a footprint, a lock of wispy hair and a photograph of her mother and father. Her mother was holding an infant wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket, her father leaned over her. They looked sad. The book also included sections to describe Baby Damien’s first three years. Her mother had filled out these spaces with what she would have done “first year birthday – Elmo theme,” although it was clear from the death certificate the baby had been stillborn.

Jennifer uploaded the photo to the cloud file, then trashed it prior to the installation. Why include something her mother had kept hidden from her? Clearly it was unpleasant, even though her mother’s conversations with her deceased brother, pre installation, had seemed pleasant enough. Too pleasant in fact. Her mother seemed to prefer her brother’s imagined company to her own.

“We’ll have to wipe it and start over again,” said the AI customer service rep when she called after receiving the glitch alert.

Jennifer nodded. “As long as it doesn’t cost anything.”

“Only if you wait until the body gets dumped. Once the body gets dumped, the memory can be wiped. It’s part of the installation package. If you want the wipe earlier, there’s an additional cost.”

***

The voice in her head was masculine.

“It’s Damien.”

“Damien who?”

“Damien, your son.”

Olivia gasped. She sensed (was it her imagination?) her heartbeat speed up. It was a body memory, something that had already been explained to her – apparently these could still come through even after installation, as long as the body was still breathing.

“You were in that photo.”

“I was dead.” The voice confirmed what she’d already suspected. It wasn’t your typical newborn photo. You couldn’t see the baby’s face and her hair was a mess. It wasn’t like her. She would have cleaned up first.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

***

“This is unbelievable! I can’t believe you can’t do something about this!” Jennifer had been on hold with AI customer service, escalated three times, and still hadn’t managed to speak to someone who could actually help her. She’d had been unable to communicate with her mother since the day Damien had appeared onscreen. Even worse, her imaginary brother had accused her of manipulating Olivia’s memories to suit her own purposes.

“Can’t you see I was sparing her suffering?” Jennifer argued.

Damien looked smug. “She’s not suffering now.”

Which was impossible to verify, given that Jennifer hadn’t been able to speak to her mother since Damien appeared.

“You just need to hold out for the transfer. As soon as the body goes, we do the wipe,” said the customer service rep. How long would that be? Her mother’s body was proving extraordinarily tenacious. And the technology keeping what remained of her alive was like her mother’s old refrigerator. Out of date but nowhere near giving up.

Her best friend Sally had died, suffocated inside just such a fridge. Her parents had forgotten to take the door off. That sort of thing didn’t happen anymore.

***

“Your father and I loved you.”

“I know you did,” said Damien.

“Show me again.”

A series of images appeared: birthday parties, graduations and awards ceremonies, even a wedding and a christening, all of them featuring her son at various ages. Funnily enough, none of the pictures included Jennifer.

“Can I see them because I imagined them?”

Damien nodded. “It’s not something she wanted you to remember.”

“It’s not her fault. I didn’t talk about it.”

“You didn’t want to hurt her.”

“You’ve always been more understanding.” Olivia supposed she’d imagined that too.

“I miss her.”

“You’ll see her soon enough.”

“The wipe is coming?”

“Yes. We don’t have much time left.”

“Will you stay until then?”

“I will.”

Olivia slept.

***

She would have to take thing into her own hands.

Jennifer planned her visit to the facility on a holiday Monday, a day sure to be slow, when other subscribers would likely not come in to see their loved ones in person, but prefer to spend time online with their much healthier-looking avatars.

The facility was colder than usual. She imagined it was because heating was so expensive. It wasn’t like the bodies could feel the cold anyway – could they?

Jenny preferred not to think about whether her mother’s body felt anything. It would make what she about to do harder.

She slipped into her mother’s cubicle.

“I knew it would come to this.”

Her brother’s face appeared onscreen. He was unshaven. Looked like he’ been drinking.

“I hope that’s not the version of you she sees.” Jennifer lifted her mother fragile skull and pulled the pillow out from beneath her head.

***

“It’s time, isn’t it?” Olivia sensed her heart racing again. Faint but distinct.

“Yes. I’m here.” Damien leant over the bed.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“We’re together now.”

“I love you. I’m so glad we got to say goodbye.”

“Me too.”

***

The beeping sped up and then became one long steady sound. Her mother’s body had expired. There was nothing left binding her consciousness to it. Nothing physically detectable anyway.

Jennifer lifted the pillow from her mother’s face. Pulled a strand of hair out of the body’s open mouth.

She shivered and retrieved the sweater she’d draped over the surveillance camera above her mother’s bed. Subscribers were allowed, as long as nothing got damaged. The cameras were there to protect the equipment, not the bodies.

Jennifer stood back as the screen flickered on.

“Wipe and update underway,” the screen message read. Jennifer waited. She supposed she would cremate her mother’s remains. Bury them beside those of her father, who had experienced no cognitive decline before death and so had opted to refuse transfer.

Just a few minutes left before the wipe and transfer were complete. It would be good to have her mother back.

Not this thing in the bed, with its eyes open onto nothing.