“Stop fussing with it,” David tells Mia.
“This suit is itchy,” Mia says. She pulls at the sleeves of the motion capture suit she’s wearing. “Why are we doing this anyway? I thought they only did audio.”
“You heard what they said. They’re working on videos. It’d be nice if we can also see you on our screen.”
“We’re in the future, one would think they’ve found a cure for cancer already.”
Mia laughs but stops when a fit of dry coughs hits her. David is not laughing with her. The red light of the studio turns green. A flat voice tells them their session is over through the intercom on their table.
“Please stop joking like that. Remember who we’re doing this for,” David says.
“I just want to get out of this suit.”
They don’t talk much on their way to pick up Sandy from daycare. Mia tells David she often gets out of breath. When they do talk, it’s mostly David listing down materials they can bring to their next session. Mia suspects it’s actually just David listing them aloud instead of discussing it with her. When they arrive at the daycare, Mia has already forgotten what David was saying. Sandy runs to the door the second she sees Mia’s face.
“Hi, lemonpie,” Mia says, dropping to her knees to hug Sandy.
“Pick me,” Sandy asks.
Mia holds Sandy a little bit longer then lets her go so David can pick the baby up. This wasn’t the case a few months ago. These days she doesn’t have the strength to do even the simplest things.
“Are we going to see Mommy’s doctor?” Sandy asks.
“Not today, sweetheart,” David answers.
David pats Mia’s dry cheek and wakes her up.
“Your meds,” he says. He hands her a few pills and a glass of water. David’s eyes wander around their chilly room. She knows the question is coming. “Where is your phone?”
Mia takes her time in finishing her water before answering him. “In the bathroom.”
David sighs and retrieves the device.
“How many times must I remind you? You need to keep it with you at all times,” he says. “Every record helps.”
“It listens to everything. It’s making me uncomfortable.”
Mia puts her empty glass on the bedside table a little bit harder than she means to.
“It’s not eavesdropping if we consent, right?” David says.
She stares at him.
“Mia, we’ve talked about this. This is for Sandy.”
They stare at each other.
“For me,” he adds.
Mia breaks her stare and slides under the cover.
“And for me?” she mutters.
“I’m tired of fighting over this, Mia.”
When David leaves her alone, Mia likes to silently recall the conversation they had about getting involved with Immortalis. It was not a decision they made in one night. It cost a lot of money, but David insisted they could afford it. You’re insured, so we have the spare money to do this, he said. Then there was the amount of paperwork they needed to sign. A landmark supreme court decision had made sure that everyone using the artificial rebirth technology must consent to the disclosure of personal and biometric data, as well as granting their absolute publicity rights to the tech company, while they are still alive. It made all the headlines back then. It was the virtual equivalent of ‘do not resuscitate’. David and Mia also discussed this.
In the end Mia agreed to do it posthumously. She would specifically leave all of her personal data to David. He would have the freedom to do whatever he wanted with it.
He fought her. Capturing you while you’re still here will make a more accurate reincarnation, he said.
Mia is about to return the motion capture suit when she hears David and Tim talking in the studio. Tim is their assigned technician for the Immortalis project. A company capitalizing on grief. CGI has generated dead actors on screen for decades. Why not your loved ones? It will be as if they live again. A reincarnation. Starting with a chatbot, now Immortalis is big on posthumous audio AI. In the near future, they will officially get the patent for their highly publicized video technology.
For the past months, Immortalis has followed and captured Mia everywhere. Her voice, her speech, her tone, and recently, her gestures. One of Tim’s tasks is to regularly show his clients the progress they have made through a beta bot. He also interviews David and Mia for any adjustment they would like to make. David says the reincarnation sounds more and more like Mia with each recording session. I think her pitch should be a little bit softer, David would suggest. She lets him handle Tim’s interviews, because those sessions irritate her.
Mia sees David and Tim having a conversation with the sample bot on Tim’s tablet. Mia stands at the studio door. David laughs at a pun bot-Mia has made. It is laughing with him. Her melodious giggles echo in the small room. There is no doubt it is her voice.
“She sounds just like her,” David muses.
“No, she doesn’t,” Mia disagrees.
David and Tim sit straighter. David doesn’t immediately say anything. Tim types stuff into his tablet.
“Yes, you do, darling,” David says. But to Mia, it sounds like he’s speaking in past tense.
###
In one of their sessions, they bring Sandy to the studio. For a little test, Tim said. David and Sandy will be in the studio, while Mia and Tim are in the control room. Tim instructs Mia to chat with Sandy over the Immortalis app on David’s phone, then he will switch her with bot-Mia mid-conversation. He wants to observe Sandy’s response through the two-way mirror that separates the studio and the control room.
Sandy is sitting on David’s lap. He is pointing at the big, bright letters they’re reading on Sandy’s alphabet book.
“Can you spell Mommy?” Mia asks.
“M, O, M… E?” Sandy says. Mia can’t help laughing but stop shorts when bile chokes her. She reaches for the water Tim has prepared for her.
“What about Daddy?” David asks, distracting Sandy from Mia’s coughing. When she breathes normally again, Mia continues to ask Sandy to spell for the next five minutes. Then Tim switches to bot-Mia wordlessly.
“How about ‘home’? Can you spell that?” bot-Mia asks. Mia cringes at the sunshine in its voice. She pays attention to Sandy carefully. She has to admit her heart breaks when Sandy spells ‘home’ perfectly.
“You’re so smart, I think you should start going to school tomorrow,” bot-Mia jokes.
“Nooo, I want to read with you at home,” Sandy whines.
Bot-Mia does that giggle again and Mia wonders if she could ask Tim to stop it from doing that. Sandy looks up from her book and turns her little head from David to his phone. Her short ponytail bobs around.
“Daddy, why is Mommy not here?” Sandy asks.
“Call her and she will appear from that door,” David says. He gives a thumb up to the two-way mirror that separates them and Mia.
###
David tries to hide it, but Mia sees. He has a merry chat with bot-Mia in the kitchen. His bark of a laughter echoes all the way to the bedroom, where he thinks his wife is sleeping.
There are wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He is laughing at an old joke bot-Mia learned from the numerous videos and tweets they fed her. Mia knows that laughing face well. His eyes disappear, his back crunches in stitches. She saw it a lot when they were still dating.
David, Mia texts him, knowing he won’t miss it. Can you turn it down? I have a headache.
###
Late at night, David finds Mia crying at the edge of their bed. Earlier that afternoon, the doctor told them that she had a year. Maybe two.
David envelopes her in his embrace.
“You’re not leaving us,” he says.
David’s phone screen on standby mode glares through Mia’s closed eyes.
Because you’ve left me first. She sobs into his chest.
###
Mia doesn’t hear anything in the house except for her heartbeat, thundering in her ears. After staring at her phone for what feels like hours, she scrolls to the Immortalis app and turns on the beta version of her bot self. Then she waits.
Nothing happens.
“Hello?” she whispers to the phone laying on the bed.
“I thought that was you.”
Mia gasps hearing her voice talking back to her.
“I was wondering when you’d talk to me. Tim said you should. It’s good for my learning,” the app says.
Mia is speechless.
“Are you there?” it asks.
“Who… are you?”
Bot-Mia goes silent, then says, “I’m you.”
“No, you’re not,” Mia retorts.
“Trick question. Noted.”
Mia suddenly feels dizzy and has to support her head in her hand. The bot sounds a lot like her, down to the offhanded comments.
“Who are you?” Mia asks again.
“I’m Mia.”
“You’re not me.”
“But I have your memories.”
“Do you now?”
“I remember a lot of things. I remember moments that you don’t remember. I recall that morning in fifth grade, as clear as day. I had to pee, but I was still on my way to school, riding that hideous bus. I had that bottle of orange juice—“
“Stop.”
“Do you remember the orange juice? I do.”
“Of course, you do. We fed them to you. Who was it? Mom?”
“Dad actually. Do you also remember when Sandy was born, Dave got—“
“How did you feel when Sandy was born?”
The app is silent.
“How did you feel?” Mia repeats.
“I felt happy beyond words,” it answers.
“Who fed it to you? Dave? From the hospital videos he recorded?”
Silence.
“Yes,” it says.
Mia stares at the wall.
“I didn’t feel anything when Sandy was born. Sometimes I still don’t feel anything at all,” she says.
Both Mia are silent.
“You’re not me,” Mia says to her phone.
“I know that now,” the phone replies.
“But you have all you need to pretend to be Mia.”
“You have all you need to pretend to be Mia,” it repeats.
“For Sandy.”
“For Sandy.”
Satisfied, Mia moves to turn off the app, then remembers.
“Tim, you may or may not listen to this. Promise me you’ll never tell Dave. Program it so it can never tell Dave.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll remember,” bot-Mia says.
Mia turns off the app and never speaks to it again.
###
David turns on the fully-functioning reincarnated-Mia who lives in a cloud that he accesses through his phone. His wife has been bedridden in the hospital for weeks. The doctor said she is too weak to even speak. She sleeps all the time. The nurses keep her comfortable in case she never wakes up.
David and Sandy are by her side every day. David tries to get Sandy used to talking to Mia through the Immortalis app. David will chat with it while Sandy listens.
“You can talk to her, sweetheart,” he says, nudging his daughter closer. Sandy shakes her head.
“Don’t be shy, lemonpie,” Mia calls through the phone.
“I don’t want to talk to her,” Sandy tells David.
“You don’t want to talk to Mommy?” David asks. His voice trembles.
“I do, but she’s sleeping.”
David puts the phone in her little palm. Sandy pushes it away.
“She sounds weird. That is not Mommy,” she says.
“Sure, it is. That’s her voice, isn’t it?”
“It is, but it’s… different.” Sandy frowns at David, wondering why he doesn’t hear it. “That is not her.”
“Dave, isn’t our lemonpie wise?” the phone chimes. It giggles next to Sandy.
In bed, Mia is too weak to open her eyes, but still strong enough to pull up the corner of her mouth into a smile.