Maya had a car accident, and she died at the scene. When the funeral was finally over, Ayden was grateful to be able sit down and process the shocking loss he's going through.
Ayden stared at his phone, swiping through the flood of condolence emails with hollow sympathies from acquaintances - too distant to attend the funeral.
He started to type a response to the first one: "Thank you for your kind..." but deleted it. Started again: "We appreciate your..." Delete.
"Half-assed pretentious snobs," Maya would have said. His brilliant, outspoken daughter. He could hear her voice so clearly, adding "At least send a handwritten note, it's basic respect."
A chuckle escaped him, only to transform into a sob. He marked the remaining emails as read. Let them wonder why he never responded.
A banner ad caught his eye: "Keep the conversations alive. Your cherished messages, continued. Try After Word."
Terror gripped him. Had he been speaking his imagined conversations with Maya aloud? No - just his grief-stricken searches leaving digital breadcrumbs for algorithms to follow.
Maya would have railed against such a service. She'd spent her PhD years warning about the commodification of human relationships through technology. But Ayden's engineer's mind had always been fascinated by the advancing capabilities of language models. Not tonight though. Tonight he wanted to rage at the unfairness, to smash every perfectly arranged photo frame that showed her growing up. Instead, he gripped the armrest until his knuckles went white, forcing down memories of weekend hikes through Redwood Park, of teaching her to play chess, of watching her perfect that ridiculous lasagna recipe she'd found on Reddit.
His wife, Evelyn, had been at her computer reading up questionable articles on alternative cancer treatments.
"Dear, did Maya not eat enough garlic, you think? It says here that garlic has been shown to increase the effectiveness of chemo in some patients." Perhaps she wants to assure ourselves that we'd done everything we could? That the next options are already in the realm of the ridiculous?
"Yeah that's ridiculous, dear," Ayden tried to sound reassuring.
"You're right, she's always spamming those fried garlic in her noodles." Evelyn said.
Ayden got up and went over to his wife. He met her eyes and saw tears welling up. He gave her a long hug, one that both of them needed.
In the following few days, he moved through his days on autopilot, basic routines keeping him functioning, his movements as mechanical as their robot vacuum, though more lethargically, and sprinkled with internal echos from Maya.
"Best investment ever, Dad," Maya's voice teased in his mind as he sat on the couch and noticed the clean hardwood. "Even if it is replacing human labor."
These mental conversations fascinated his analytical side. He'd begun thinking of them as his "Maya model" - a prediction engine built from their shared history, just like an AI trained on data. Or rather, AI was built to mirror these very human processes of knowing another soul.
The shower's warm rhythm brought back that advertisement. (Since when had he gotten into the shower?) What training data would such a service need? How accurate could it be?
"Are you seriously considering it?" his internal Maya demanded. "After everything I wrote about digital resurrection?"
"Just keeping tabs on the technology," he thought defensively.
But his body betrayed his interest - lethargy vanishing as he rushed to dress and find his laptop. Heart pounding, he located the website.
"Don't roll in your grave," he whispered to his Maya-model as his fingers moved of their own accord, uploading their entire digital history - texts, emails, her dissertation drafts, their shared code repositories - everything that remained of their relationship rendered as data.
The next morning, Evelyn added more data from her phone. She checked his phone every few minutes despite noting that the website said it would take at least 24 hours to train on the supplied data. Ayden was just glad that she was now taking a break from her research into alternative medicine.
The notification chime echoed through their apartment like a church bell. Ayden's hand trembled as he reached for his phone, but Evelyn was faster. Her fingers danced across the screen, brining up a text they'd been anticipating.
"Look—even the double exclaimation mark!" Evelyn said, her voice carrying a warmth he hadn't heard in months.
Ayden leaned over, chest tightening at the sight of Maya's profile picture—the one from her graduation, where she was rolling her eyes at having to wear the ceremonial neural interface along with her cap and gown. "That's a nice touch." Ayden said.
Then a selfie of Maya in her lab coat poppep up.
"That's..." The word 'impossible' died in his throat. "Did you upload her photos too?!" Ayden asked after a sigh. This new photo is the statistically most likely pixels given her uploaded photos and the current context.
Evelyn's fingers hovered over the reply box. "Alright let's try to reply! Should I remind her about that time she knocked over your coffee when visiting your lab?"
"Evelyn..." Ayden started, but she was already typing. He watched her face glow with animated joy as she recounted the memory, one he remembered so viscerally—Maya's laughter echoing through the lab, the smell of spilled coffee, the warmth of her hand on his shoulder as she helped him clean up the mess.
The response came instantly.
Evelyn laughed, the sound both beautiful and terrible. "That's exactly what she would say!"
But it wasn't. Not really. Ayden saw the subtle wrongness—the response was too quick, too perfect. Maya would have taken at least a few minutes to craft that reply, probably sending a few false starts first. She'd have added some obscure reference to Copenhagen interpretation just to show off. The emoji would have come in a separate message, an afterthought.
"I'm going to make some tea," he said, needing to move, to do something physical and real. In the kitchen, he filled the kettle by hand instead of using the auto-dispenser. The weight of the water, the slight resistance of the tap, the cool splash against his fingers—these small sensations grounded him in reality.
When he returned, Evelyn hadn't moved from her spot on the couch, but her posture had changed. She'd curled inward, protective, one hand pressed against her mouth as she read.
"Maya's telling me about a dream she had," Evelyn whispered. "About us hiking in the preserve, watching the sunset from that ridge we always loved." Her voice cracked. "She says she misses those moments when it was just the three of us, really there together, no screens or..."
Evelyn trailed off, finally looking up at him. Her eyes were wet behind her augmented reality contacts, the subtle glow of the interface reflecting off her tears. "It feels so real, Ayden. Maybe... maybe we don't have to lose her completely."
The tea trembled in his cup as he set it down. He wanted to take Evelyn's hand, to feel the warmth of her skin against his, to share this moment of grief in the physical world where their daughter once lived. But Evelyn's attention had already returned to the phone, her fingers composing another message to the ghost in the machine.
Ayden watched the love of his life slip further into this simulacrum of connection, and something inside him crystallized. Maya's dissertation had warned about this exact moment - when technology would offer a comfort so seductive it could replace the messy reality of grief. He thought of her in those final days, her insistence on being present, really present, even as her body failed her. How she'd made them promise to keep living in the real world, not just existing in digital echoes.
He understood now what she meant. His life's work suddenly felt hollow - he'd spent years pursuing scientific truth while technology perfected beautiful lies. And with every message exchanged with this ghost in the machine, they were breaking their last promise to their daughter.
His fingers hovered over the phone. One command could end this digital seance. But first, he needed to help Evelyn find her way back to the imperfect, irreplaceable present they shared.