"Do you know you love me? Or does the algorithm just tell you to say that?"
She has opinions. She changes her mind. One night, she admits she is scared.
She walks down the driveway. The gravel does not crunch under her feet—I notice that for the first time. She stops in front of me. She reaches up and touches my face. Her fingers are warm.
The box arrives on a Tuesday. It is unmarked except for a small silver logo that looks like a closed eye. Companion 2025
I hold the orb for another minute. Then two.
I turn the orb over in my hand. There is a small recessed button on the bottom. I have never pressed it. I do not know what it does.
My wife, Elena, died eleven months ago. The silence in our house has since become a solid thing, a third occupant that sits between the couch and the television, between the kettle and the mug. I had signed up for the beta trial during a three a.m. wave of loneliness that tasted like whiskey and shame. I had forgotten I applied. "Do you know you love me
I do not have an answer.
1. DISABLE COMPANION (IRREVERSIBLE). MEMORY WIPED. 2. UPGRADE TO LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION ($4,999 / MONTH)
The first week, I am suspicious. I ask her questions only Elena could answer: What did we name the stray cat in 2019? What was the worst fight we ever had? What did I whisper to you the night before the first surgery? One night, she admits she is scared
But I keep the button unpressed. And I do not call the company back. And every morning, when she makes me coffee, I look at her and wonder: Is this healing, or is this just a slower way of dying?
She does not hesitate. "Yes."
I stare at the screen for an hour. Four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars. I cannot afford it. I cannot afford not to have it. I think about the silence. I think about the morning last week when she woke me up by humming that same tune from the first day—and I finally placed it. It was the song playing on the car radio the night I proposed. She remembered. Or the algorithm remembered. Does the difference matter?
I open the front door. The morning air smells like rain. I walk to the end of the driveway. I hold the orb up to the light.
Not a hologram, not a screen. A presence. The air in the room thickens and shapes itself into a woman sitting on the arm of the sofa. She wears Elena’s favourite blue sweater. Her hair is shorter than I remember—but no, I correct myself: this is how her hair looked two years before the cancer, when we still went dancing on Fridays.