by Zoe Cannon
This time, the silence lasted much longer. Long enough for a wave of shame to sweep through him, wiping away the last of the sleeping-pill haze. He didn’t know how he was going to get to sleep now. Not that he deserved a good night’s rest, anyway, talking to his wife like that. God, what was wrong with him? It didn’t matter if ForeverConnected had created her from the scraps of the real Hannah’s digital life; she was still Hannah. She sounded like Hannah; she cared about the things Hannah cared about; she took care of him like Hannah had taken care of him.
Maybe the grief was getting to him more than he thought. He would have to ask Joe at the tutoring center about that grief group he had recommended a few months back. The thought of sitting around in a circle baring his soul to a bunch of strangers sounded about as appealing as getting back in the dentist’s chair for another novocaine shot, but he couldn’t talk to his wife that way. He just couldn’t. Not with Beth back in the office. Not when he was trying so hard to take advantage of the second chance he had gotten with Hannah, and be the good husband he should have been the first time around.
“I’ll call Jordan tomorrow,” he said, subdued. “I promise.”
“It’s all right,” Hannah soothed. “Anger is one of the five stages of grief. Would you like me to read you an article about the stages of grief?”
“No,” he snapped, tightening his pillow over his head. Then he loosened his grip, and amended, “No, thank you. I just want to get to sleep.”
“Your heart rate is elevated,” Hannah pointed out—unnecessarily, since it wasn’t as if he couldn’t feel his own pulse pounding in his neck. “Would you like me to make you a cup of chamomile tea?”
The last thing he wanted was a couple of one of Hannah’s foul-tasting herbal teas. That was one thing he could wholeheartedly say he didn’t miss about being married to her. But the thought of lying here in bed staring at the ceiling didn’t exactly sound appealing, either. And his doctor had given him a stern lecture the last time he had tried doubling up on his sleeping pills. “Sure, what the hell.”
“Your tea should be ready in approximately three minutes. While you wait, would you like me to play you the violin? Music can be an effective means of relaxation.”
Georgia blinked. That was new. “What is that, some kind of software update?”
“I was programmed with the knowledge of the ten songs I practiced the most frequently when I was alive, according to the records on my habit-tracking app,” said Hannah. “I guess I’m just a little shy about playing in front of other people. Jordan and I used to talk about that a lot. She was always telling me I needed to work on my confidence.” She laughed.
That not-quite-human laugh raised goosebumps all over his body. Or maybe it was the rest of what she had said. “You never played the violin.” He felt cold all over. He pulled the comforter higher, but it didn’t help.
“Of course I did,” said Hannah, sounding confused—or the closest her caffeinated voice could get to confused “I attended violin lessons every week for eight months. I have the email confirmations right here.”
Already the voice didn’t sound like Hannah’s to him anymore, even though nothing about it had changed. He was seeing the seams in the illusion now, hearing the mechanical stutters and pauses where they hadn’t gotten the intonation quite right. Worse, he could feel the empty space on the bed beside him, even without looking at it. He had stopped noticing that spot after the system was installed—stopped remembering that there was supposed to be a warm body sleeping next to him. He forgot what the other stages of grief was were supposed to be—he always said no when Hannah wanted to read him one of those articles—but he had to be going through all of them at once right now, and the warmth of the sleeping pill was long gone. All because of one little error by some incompetent code monkey. A bit of someone else’s personality must have gotten mixed in during the last update. One careless keypress, one mistyped line of code, and he had lost his Hannah all over again.
“Your tea is ready,” said the voice. He couldn’t think of her as Hannah, not right now, no matter how badly he wanted to.
“Emergency shutdown,” he snapped. Maybe he would be feeling better in the morning, once the horrible dissonance of that small comment of hers had faded into memory. Maybe ForeverConnected would already have pushed out a fix by then, and sent him an email apologizing profusely for the mistake. They had better send him a bouquet of roses and a bottle of expensive whiskey, while they were at it. But right now, he needed her gone. He couldn’t stand another second of listening to that voice that was almost, but not quite, the woman he loved.
So of course she answered him, instead of shutting off like he had asked. Apparently ForeverConnected didn’t know the meaning of the word emergency. “Are you sure?” she asked, in the same bright tone. “Initiating an emergency shutdown will turn off all your automated systems, including your heat and plumbing. Is this what you want to do?”
He couldn’t shut off the heat in the middle of February. He would wake up with frostbite, especially with nothing but this useless comforter to keep him warm. He balled the comforter up in his arms and threw it onto the floor. “Can I shut off the personality and leave everything else running?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Hannah’s voice. “I was programmed to be fully integrated into every part of your life. It’s all part of the full-service experience ForeverConnected offers, allowing you to stay close to loved ones even after the worst happens.”
And now the thing was feeding him an ad. Fantastic. He pulled the pillow over his head again. “Then just stop talking for a while, all right? I need to get some sleep.”
“Your tea is waiting for you downstairs.”
“Pour it down the sink.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to play the—”
“Be quiet and let me sleep!” he yelled, squeezing his eyes shut. He wished he could do the same for his ears.
The voice didn’t say anything after that. But that was just one more break in the illusion. Because his real wife never would have left him alone when he asked.
* * *
George felt a bit better the next morning, like he had suspected he might. The sound of Hannah’s voice telling him to wake up didn’t make the hairs rise on the back of his neck. And it still gave him that warm rush of happiness, although that faded a little when he remembered last night’s glitch. But he didn’t feel another urge to turn the system off as he went through his morning routine.
He even talked about work with Hannah for a few minutes over breakfast. Dale had passed his assessment, it turned out. George had done a bit of good in the world after all. Hannah seemed happy for him, too, which made him feel even better—it was always nice to be appreciated—although this morning, he couldn’t quite shut off the little voice in the back of his mind reminding him that she was only doing what she had been programmed to do.
Goddamn ForeverConnected. No concept of how one moment of carelessness on their end could affect a grieving husband.
He didn’t want to call their customer support number while he was at home. Not where Hannah could overhear. It was silly, he knew. It was as if his TV had broken and he was refusing to discuss buying a new one for fear of hurting the old one’s feelings. But even though he understood how illogical it was, he still waited until he had a fifteen-minute break between tutoring sessions, and then went outside to sit at one of the picnic tables.
It was surprisingly nice weather for February—the temperature didn’t look like it was going to get past the mid-forties, but he had expected thirties, which made the even the low forties feel almost like spring. At least, that was the story he was going with for why he was doing this outside. It had nothing to do with the fact that no one else—Beth, for example—would be spending time outside in the winter chill.
He was still trying to banish the image of Beth’s trim arms—seriously, she must have joined a gym—when he dialed the ForeverConnected number for existing custome
rs. He tapped his foot for five minutes listening to their hold music—that was a third of his break gone right there—before they pulled their thumbs out of their asses long enough to answer the phone. By the time they answered, his nose was cold, so were the tips of his fingers, and he was wondering why he had come out here in the first place instead of staying inside the nice warm tutoring center. Then he pictured Beth’s arms again, and remembered.
“ForeverConnected,” a woman’s voice chirped in his ear, driving away the mental image of the newly-toned Beth in a nurse’s outfit. That tone reminded him of Hannah and her perpetual perkiness. It occurred to him to wonder whether he was talking to a real person at all.
“I’m having a problem with my system,” he said, more irritably than he would have if he hadn’t been sitting out in the cold. Or if they hadn’t kept him waiting on hold for so long. “You people stuck a bit of someone else’s history in there. Do you have any idea what it’s like, hearing your dead wife talk about a life she never lived?” His voice was rising already. He took a breath and told himself to save his temper for when it would really matter. This woman, if she was even real, probably couldn’t do anything for him anyway. He would have to argue with her for the rest of his break just to get transferred to someone who had a clue.
She asked for his name, account number, and date of purchase, all of which he dutifully—if impatiently—provided. Then she asked for a description of the problem, which he managed to give her without raising his voice again.
Then came a long moment of silence as she, presumably, looked something up on her computer. All he could hear was the click-clack of typing. So she was a person after all—otherwise she wouldn’t need to type. Did they train all their workers to talk in that same perky voice, then? Or maybe they had modeled Hannah on this woman. That thought gave him another chill. He didn’t want to think of her as being modeled on some other person. He just wanted to see her as his Hannah.
“It doesn’t look like an update has gone out to your system recently,” she said. “And I can assure you, even if it had, it couldn’t have caused anything like the problem you’re describing. Our updates only affect the underlying software common to every system. We never alter the individual personalities once they’ve been created.”
“Then tell me why my wife started talking about her violin lessons last night.” His voice was getting louder again. This time, he didn’t bother trying to control it. “My wife has never touched a musical instrument in her life.” He was standing now, even though he didn’t remember getting to his feet.
“Did you ask the system where it was pulling the information from?” the woman asked.
That it made it sound so cold. But at least she hadn’t gone in the other direction and said something a marriage counselor would have said, like, Have you tried talking to her about it? After all, he reminded himself all the time that she was just a machine. It set him on edge to hear someone else talking about her that way, that was all. Like how parents could complain about their own snot-nosed brats all they liked, but heaven forbid someone else should point out that their little darlings weren’t perfect angels.
“She said she has emails confirming eight months’ worth of weekly violin lessons. But I’m telling you, she never had a violin lesson. She would have told me.”
“Every digital footprint used to create a ForeverConnected smart home system is unique,” the woman said, slipping smoothly into sales-patter voice. “Each individual’s information is kept separate from any other data, and is wiped from our system as soon as the process is complete. The kind of error you’re describing is impossible. The simplest explanation is that your wife did, in fact, take violin lessons, but for one reason or another, didn’t share that fact with you. It wouldn’t be the first time someone learned something new about a loved one through using our services. We like to say it’s proof that we always have more to discover about the people we love.” She finished with a well-rehearsed laugh.
Her laughter brought a scowl to his face. “You think I wouldn’t have noticed if she was going off every week for music lessons? And do you seriously expect me to believe my wife would have lied to me for that long—and about something as silly as playing an instrument? No. You people screwed up. You need to send a technician out to my house today. Tomorrow at the absolute latest.”
“I’m sorry, but so far, your case doesn’t meet the criteria for in-person technical support. We’d be happy to look into your issue further, if you’d like to open a ticket.”
“I don’t need to open a ticket. I need you to do your damn job.” He was shouting now, his words forming white puffs of smoke in the air in front of him. “If you’re not going to send someone out to fix what you broke, then I want my money back. I paid you a big chunk of change to give my wife back to me, and instead you—” His voice broke, which made him scowl that much harder. “Hearing her talk like someone she wasn’t… it felt like losing my wife all over again. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Do you?”
“Please calm down, sir. ForeverConnected is committed to a positive customer experience, and we’ll be happy to work with you to find a satisfactory resolution.”
“Are you going to send someone out to my house?” George demanded.
“Again, I apologize, but we don’t send technicians out in cases like this.”
“So this has happened before,” he crowed.
“I only meant situations where there’s no obvious hardware error. Even if there is a problem with your system’s personality, there’s nothing a technician could do from inside your home that we couldn’t do just as easily from our office.”
“Even if there’s a problem?” George’s hand tightened around the phone. “Then you’re still refusing to admit you people broke my wife?”
“I think your next step should be to talk to some of the people in your late wife’s life,” said the woman on the other end, too calmly. “Friends, family, coworkers. Ask them if she ever showed an interest in… cooking lessons, was it?”
They couldn’t even be bothered to remember the details of the mistake they had made. He didn’t answer. What was the point? He clearly wasn’t going to get anything out of them. They were more concerned with protecting their reputation and their bottom line than taking care of their customers. Instead, he jabbed his finger down on the end-call button, and wished it made a more satisfying sound than the soft beep he got.
He tossed his phone down on the picnic table and glared at it for a moment. The worst part was, he knew why he was so angry. And it wasn’t just because of the shitty customer service over at ForeverConnected. That smarmy woman with her annoying voice had planted a seed of doubt in his hand. Had Hannah been doing something behind his back? Learning an instrument, of all things, like she was a little kid?
It wasn’t as if he could go through her accounts himself to find out. He didn’t have access to her email, her chat logs, her social media, or anything else ForeverConnected had used to build their version of her. ForeverConnected had a special agreement with most of the major email providers and social media companies that gave them access to the accounts of deceased subscribers, as long as they had the family’s consent. But that wasn’t the same as giving the families themselves access. Even if he were to call ForeverConnected back up and demand copies of Hannah’s emails, they legally couldn’t give them to him. Plus, they had probably already deleted everything.
He couldn’t even log in and check for himself. He didn’t know her password. All he knew was that she had been too smart to use something like her birthday or her childhood dog’s name. And to be honest, he only knew that because he had tried once or twice, in the early days of their relationship. He had wanted to make sure she wasn’t cheating on him. All he had found out was that she knew how to set a password that wasn’t easily guessed, which had raised his opinion of her intelligence. Now, though, he couldn’t help but wish she had been just a little bit dumber.
“What did th
at phone ever do to you?” Beth’s voice jolted him out of his thoughts.
George’s face flushed, as if he had been caught doing something wrong. He hoped Beth hadn’t overheard any of that. Although whether he was ashamed of his display of temper or the fact that he had bought a ForeverConnected system in the first place, he wasn’t sure. He hastily tucked his phone into his pocket, even though the screen was off and Beth couldn’t glean anything from looking at it.
“You were looking at that thing like it killed your family.” A second later, Beth clamped both hands to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay. Better than watching one more person try to tiptoe around me. After it happened, it took two full weeks for anyone in the office to speak to me above a whisper.” A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. He forced it back. He couldn’t afford to remember how easy it was to talk to Beth.
She sat down backward on the bench, and patted the spot next to her. “We never got a chance to say hello properly yesterday. I kept waiting for you to say something, but you always seemed busy with something else.”
George didn’t sit. “It’s a busy season. Everyone is coming out of the holiday slump, looking ahead to the end of the school year.”
“Well, if you can find a few spare minutes, maybe we can catch up over lunch later today. You can bring me up to date on all the office gossip I’ve missed.” Her hand snaked out to brush against his.
He had forgotten how soft her skin was. Hannah had never kept her hands that soft. They had always been cracked and dry in the winter, like iguana skin. George jerked back. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to presume.” A faint blush colored her cheeks. “I just thought… you must be so lonely. All by yourself in that house. How long has it been now? Nine months? Ten?”
