I Can’t Live Here Anymore

The robot was laughing a bit too loud. It didn’t bother anyone else, they were laughing too. Some were flesh-and-blood, some were avatars of family members who couldn’t make the ceremony in person, and some were memorations programmed to echo the laughter of dead relatives. Only one was completely artificial, and it wasn’t the robot.

The laughter continued much longer than the joke deserved. The quiet, tension, and awkward expressions that preceded the joke had provided extra fuel to launch it on a ballistic trajectory that would soon crash it back down to the ground. One of them didn’t laugh at all. Her father wanted this to be a ‘joyful goodbye’ and Abigail didn’t want to bring down the mood, but she couldn’t laugh when they were so near the end.

She knew her brother’s laughter was forced. The robot had always been such a dutiful son. Abigail was grateful her father had Howard and his wife, the ‘normal’ ones. The ones who could laugh and cry while facing this horror.

“My last gift, the last thing I have to give, is this body,” Truman’s eyes were fixed on Abigail. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, that would make this too real, too soon. “And the timing is perfect, since my son and his lovely wife are in need of one for their child.” He winced as he turned from his daughter to his son, “You came in the mail, at least most of you did. You can’t send off for one of these though, can ya?” He knocked on the side of his own head with his knuckles. The room broke into guffaws and howls. “How the time zipped past. I built you for about a year before I became hopelessly stuck.”

Abigail had heard the story of her older brother’s creation many times. She truly adored it, even if she doubted some of the details. In fact, she’d told her own version to her own friends in the years when people used to be curious about synthetic people. She stood up and went to the buffet while the tale continued. Their father told it better when he could tag-team the telling with their mother, who was just about to enter the tale. A friend of a friend (one of the details that was always shifting) recommended her for IT support in assembling Howard before he even had a name. Her fee? Dinner and a movie while the robot’s final updates downloaded.

And then came the years of learning, marriage, upgrades, and then Abigail. Pregnancy made them realize that they already had a son. Even if he wasn’t blood-of-their-blood he was the product of their hands and their hearts. The world was changing, as it always does, and they were some of the first to officially declare their robot to be their child.

They rushed to do it before she was born, so Howard would never feel like an afterthought. But, would he accept his little sister? Would he be jealous? Would other people call Abigail their ‘real’ child?

Truman made it sound hard and Howard never said it was easy. It didn’t matter to Abigail, she grew up with a robot for a brother and loved and hated him as much as her friends loved and hated their siblings. Or maybe she loved him more than most. But she never questioned it, not that she remembered.

This time, the story was different. Omitted, their mother’s ‘metamorphosis’ through body modification, bionics and drugs. She’d faded from their lives years before she’d finally disappeared. Digital privacy laws prevented them from ever finding her again. Abigail didn’t think enough of the mother she knew was left for that to matter. In this telling, Truman simply said his ex-wife had ‘moved on’.

Added to the tale, Delaney.

Not Abigail’s step-mother. She thanked God for that small favor. Truman’s girlfriend was a new beginning that had led him to a terrible end.

Truman finished the story of their lives, “Thanks to Delaney, I realized I could move on too, and leave this gift to my grandchild.” There was polite applause and a few calls of, “Hear! Hear!”

The gathered friends and relatives needed a break after that long and emotional speech. They spread out, refilled their plates and cups, mingled.

Truman motioned to Abigail’s arm as if she should take his arm. She didn’t and they walked side-by-side onto the balcony.

Abigail said, “It’s a nice gesture, but you could just buy them a body. They aren’t that much now.”

“I have to do something with this one. But, I do only have the one to give. So, I’m leaving you a larger share of the estate.”

“It’s not about the money. I’ve talked to Howard and we’re going to share it all, doesn’t matter what you bequeath.” Her voice went up on that uncommon word.

“Now, you can’t hold it against the… child,” he’d almost said ‘baby’. The intelligence constructed from Howard’s mind and his wife’s DNA and emotions would never be a baby, but would need a lot of care and attention as it integrated and matured. “I know it will be my body, even after they reset it, but—”

“No! Dad, please! That won’t bother me. I know lots of re-homed people. I even dated one.” Abigail smiled at Truman and he relaxed a bit, “I want you to be here for us, for Howard’s son. He needs a grandfather.”

“He will have one. And an Aunt that loves him.”

“He has two more of those, but that doesn’t mean I can abandon him,” Abigail knew her voice was too loud and tense. She took a few breaths and closed her eyes. “Why can’t we visit you there? How do you know it’s like they say it is?”

They’d been over this ground several times. Trod it down flat. Truman dodged the questions, “You’ll have the memoration I’ve prepared.”

“Uh. That thing.”

“It’s not really for you. It’s for yours, when you, I mean if—”

Abigail said, “Yeah,” which meant ‘stop’.

“You could bring it to things like this?”

She gave her father a frustrated, confused look that said, Don’t you know me? There’s no chance I would bring that thing to a family reunion.

“Just, keep it. Please.” Truman sighed and tried to change the subject, “Your mother made her own escape. If I stayed, I’d come apart so much harder than she did. The world is so different now. You know, she’s the last person I ever touched.”

“What about Delaney?”

Truman turned away, looking out over the garden below. “Not yet. Not until we’re on the other side.”

“The other side of a firewall? All digital? How will that even be touching?”

“You don’t know what you’ve lost. These privacy bubbles, the damn laws.”

Abigail raised an eyebrow. That was amongst the strongest language she’d ever heard her father use. “I’m not defending it, but that’s how it is now. People voted to keep it, after.” She shivered and hugged herself, “I can’t run away from the real world if that means losing my family. How can you? How can you leave your body, upload, and call that a better place?”

“It will feel real, they guarantee that. And I have 48-hours to come back if it’s not for me. That’s the law.”

“You trust Delaney? You trust the government to guarantee that? The same government you think is violating your ‘right to touch’? You won’t even be a body there.” Abigail didn’t let her emotions run away with her this time. She said it quiet and kind.

“Why would any of you here want a body? You don’t know what to do with one anymore.”

Three chimes rang in the main room, the signal to gather for the transfer. Truman shook off the anger and smiled at his daughter for the last time. He tried to lean forward to kiss her forehead. She panicked a little, despite her invisible privacy shield, and took a step back.

Truman’s smile vanished. He straightened and nodded, pressed two fingers to his lips then held them out toward her at eye-level, the new, permissible sign of affection.

******

Three hours later the detective arrived at the house. Truman’s empty body laid in the middle of the second floor solarium where his family and friends had seen him off. It was connected to machines to keep it functioning and monitor it until the return period had expired. Then it would be taken to ‘reset’. The body renewed to last another fifty years. Truman’s tattoos, scars, and facial features erased so that Howard’s son could choose his own.

Delaney’s body laid next to Truman’s. Abigail had placed a scarf over that body’s face, carefully, so it could still breathe.

Abigail sat next to Truman’s body, holding her hand just above her father’s, not close enough to activate the shield. She couldn’t bring herself to touch him even now, when it was technically legal. Tears streaked down her face.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry for your, um, well, pain.” The detective entered the room and Abigail rose to greet him.

“So, you don’t think my father is lost?” Abigail asked.

“Maybe not. He received the message. The other realm was required to confirm that.”

“Then why hasn’t he come back?” She caught his eyes with hers, probed them for any sign of deception.

The detective gave her an amused grin that said, Hey, that’s my job. He dropped the inscrutable inspector act. His face was honest as the day is long when he said, “He’s probably embarrassed he was scammed. These recruiter daemons are getting really tricky. And with bodies so cheap these days… Just give it time.”

Abigail nodded, “What happens to ‘Delaney’?”

The detective looked down at his data device, “Oh, the daemon. She had a lot of names, sorry. Been looking for her for a while before we got your tip.” He closed the device and met Abigail’s eyes again, “Well, you can keep her body. It was purchased legally, so that’s part of the reward.”

“I already have one.” She smirked. He smiled. “But I’ll keep it on ice. My brother may want a daughter next. And the daemon?”

“We trapped her just as she was transferring!” He beamed and bounced on his toes as he pulled a disc out of his jacket pocket, “Only you and your father know. I can imagine it upset him to arrive… there alone, but we’d have deleted her if she had already uploaded. That might’ve been a worse shock. This kind of scam, the daemon might stick around for a few weeks until her algorithms track down another mark. So, this was probably the best outcome for him, honestly.”

He tapped the disc. Delaney’s face—at least the face she had used to scam Truman—appeared as a hologram above the surface. It was an attractive face, but not ‘stunning’. She appeared to be older than Abigail, but that was probably part of the scam—anyone could appear to be any age after a reset or modification.

Abigail avoided the holo-daemon’s eyes as it tried to search their faces. “What if my father doesn’t come back? Can we take any action against the company?”

“Unfortunately, they haven’t broken any laws. The recruitment bonus is legal, even if it doesn’t have protections against these illegal daemons. I’ve heard there might be a class-action suit though.” The detective handed Abigail the disc. Delaney’s eyes swung from the detective’s face to Abigail’s and back again in confusion.

Abigail still didn’t look at Delaney’s eyes and held the disc away from her body, “What am I supposed to do with this? Is it safe?”

The detective was half-way out of the solarium and looking at his data device as he walked, “Yeah, it’s fine. You caught her, so she’s yours. You could try to trace the programmer, sue him for damages, but the department doesn't have the resources for that.” He stopped and turned back to her, “Oh, it can’t hear you—no speaker or microphone. And the code is wrapped in a data-shredder, so any attempt to remove the daemon will erase it.”

“Um, okay,” Abigail turned it over to look at the power switch on its base.

The detective shrugged and said, “You can smash it if you want to.”

With that, he walked out of the room and down the stairs.

Abigail shook her head and walked in the opposite direction. She went to a pocket door set in the back of the room and up the stairs inside.

The finished, a-frame attic was a shrine to her parents. All of the photographs and holograms she couldn’t bear to have on display downstairs she had arranged here, carefully and chronologically. They led up to her mother’s abandoned hope chest. Her father’s memoration sat on a wooden tray on top of it.

The face of her father, the same face that last looked at her just a few hours earlier, smiled at her. This memoration was in a frame, favoring his left side and the green dragon tattoo on his neck. He never liked his 3D images and chose this angle as the default, but the image did move. It could speak, interact, it remembered everything that Truman wanted it to.

Abigail shook her head at it. The memoration looked confused. She put the disc the detective had handed her on the tray next to it and left.

When Abigail shut the door to the attic, Truman’s memoration turned and smiled at the daemon’s hologram. His soft, patient eyes, the eyes of a grandfather, waited.

Delaney looked at the image of Truman. Her eyes were those of a trapped animal. They pleaded, silently, for Truman to save her.

Memorations were always programmed to wait, wouldn’t speak unless spoken too. Delaney’s face convulsed. Her eyes watered and, before a tear could form, her mouth opened into a voiceless imitation of a scream.

Truman’s memoration smiled and nodded.