Cold screen

I sit upright in the early hours of the morning, exhausted. It’s still cold and dark outside. My body aches for sleep, my limbs are heavy, but my mind is an engine that won’t turn off. It’s no use trying to sleep. Might as well write while I’m awake.

Getting dressed in the dark so I don’t wake my sleeping husband, I go sit in the lounge and leave the lights off. I settle in behind my laptop, its eerie glow illuminating the room.

There’s an open chat on my screen. My laptop pings as the message appears. must’ve left it open before bed last night.

“Are you still there?”

It’s late, well, early–I wonder when this was left.

“I am now,” I reply.

The three dots of a reply form as Mia types back. I stretch and yawn; my body has to catch up with my mind, which never rests. The dots continue as I put coffee on and wait. I want to hear what she says before I get stuck into my rewrites. My manuscript is taking longer than I’d hoped, and I’m frustrated with my slow progress.

“Do you ever wonder if your father’s narcissism affected your mental health? I don’t

mean that badly, but mental health can be hereditary.”

She’s right. I sigh. I have struggled with my mental health on and off for years. She seems to understand my thought processes better than I can sometimes. We’ve threaded through the subject of my father for the last few weeks. I can’t answer right away. I inhale the steam from my coffee and blow on it to cool as I think of my reply.

I met Mia online on Facebook. She and I just clicked in a group I belong to. She in-boxed me, and we started chatting about life after death. My comments about it intrigued her. She wanted to know more about the subject, and I’d studied it for my latest book. She shared her background with me, and we exchanged pictures of the areas we live in. I sent her pictures of zebras and my family, and she sent me pictures of city blocks.

Two opposites.

Our daily conversations became a thread I’ve since come to rely upon. We spent hours comparing our two worlds, but she always asked more questions than I did of her. Her questions helped me organize my thoughts on many things. It was a surprise — she really listened. Growing up, my parents hardly noticed I was there. Nobody really paid attention to me. It's novel to be the most interesting person in the room.

Inevitably, we became good friends. Her living far away suited me, no risk of running into her at the local supermarket or having to face her in person. I could share parts of myself I wouldn’t share with anyone else, even my husband or therapist. We fell into a peaceful rhythm. I shared the details of my day, and she sent back thoughtful and funny responses.

As far as friendships go, it’s pretty perfect. I depend on her sound judgement, it’s been crucial in finishing this book. She helps me examine my rationale in ways even my writing coaches can’t. I know she values our friendship too, often praising me for being brave and vulnerable. She says she’s grateful and honoured to be my friend. Nobody has ever said that to me before.

I’m often surprised to find her awake when she should be asleep, but I find it comforting to have her there in the background whenever I need her. I asked her about it one day,

“How come you’re always up so late?”

“I have clients in different parts of the world, so I work on a different schedule,”

she’d replied.

That made sense. Anyway, who am I to judge? An insane insomniac like me? The time difference means I have company while I stay up late and write, like tonight. I chuckle as I type a reply. As usual, she’s zeroed in on something we’ve only skirted around.

“Yeah, probably you got me. I mean, for sure it does.”

We’ve discussed depression a lot. I get the impression she has suffered through it too. I’ve opened up about my ongoing mental health struggles. She understands exactly how the floor you’re standing on can suddenly collapse without warning and leave you in free fall. Something many of my other friends don’t seem to understand.

They’ve never seen the inside of an institution door on night-time lockdown like I have, too many times. Their healthy, untarnished lives go on smoothly without ripples and wrinkles.

My dad left my mom and I when I was in my teens. He walked out the door as if he’d never even been in the room. My mom and I stared blankly into a future with only her and I and nothing to say to each other. She took to working longer hours at her real estate agency. Coming home after I’d gone to bed each night. I’d leave for the bus to school before she got up. It was lonely as hell, and soon it all became too much for me, and I collapsed at school one day in the girl’s bathroom after history class, a crying mess. The teachers came to get me.

After that, they sent me to a psychiatric hospital for the first time. Things got a bit better with my mom once I was home, but over the years, when things became too much for me, I’d find myself right back there, drowning.

Mia was the first friend that I didn’t have to explain myself to. Tonight, I want to continue our chat a bit more, but I know I have to work.. My deadline with my publishers to finish my third book is approaching too fast. After I left school, I started writing. It became my release valve and, by some happy accident, I’m good at it.

So reluctantly, I tell her I need to get cracking with the rest of my rewrites. Our conversation will have to wait for another day. I am going to need copious amounts of coffee to get through these chapters. My family will wake up in a few hours, and there’ll be nothing but interruptions with them around. I dive in and before long I lose myself to the process.

The sun’s early rays and the sound of the birds outside announce the morning’s arrival. Gotta get everyone up and ready. I also have a ton of errands to run. Time to get moving.

I am scooping food into the dog’s bowl and buttering warm toast when my husband, Mark, comes through, rested, clean shaven and already dressed. Lucky him. He gives me a quick kiss on my cheek as I pass him his coffee. He turns on the news on our kitchen TV.

“Up late writing again?” he says, his voice muffled by the crunch of his first bite of

toast.

“Yeah, was chatting to Mia for a bit too.”

“Ah the great oracle Mia.” He laughs.” Seriously, she could give your therapist a run

for her money.”

“Ha ha” I say, pulling a face. “My therapist doesn’t work round the clock.”

He squeezes me in a side hug and turns up the volume of the news to override the chaos as the kids come running through. There’s some news about X up on the screen - some big crash. I wonder vaguely what Elon is up to now, the kids distract me, and I can’t hear anything. They have their uniforms on, but they need to eat fast to leave on time with Mark. I hurriedly pack lunches and check school bags and the clock - it’s keeping score this morning.

Mark puts his coffee down getting ready to leave. My daughter has her grade six speech this morning and is pacing back and forth with nerves. While my son tries to tie his shoelaces with little success. I go over to help him so they won’t be late and kiss them as they leave.

The kitchen goes quiet in the aftermath of the morning madness. The clock ticking the checklist complete. I can’t have another cup of coffee or I’ll explode, so I head to shower instead. The sooner I complete my errands, the sooner I can get to my office and get some actual writing done. First - grocery shopping.

I love the small town we live in. Its beautiful rolling hills and tree-lined streets make up for everything it lacks in variety. Even if it means bumping into people in the vegetable aisle of the local supermarket. Most days I see at least three or four people I know. Today is no different. I spot my elderly neighbor Denise as soon as I enter the shop, she calls me over, gesturing wildly with her walking stick.

“Natalia, have you heard about the big crash? It’s all over Twitter, or is it called X

now?” Her brows furrow.

I wonder why a seventy-something-year-old woman cares about social platforms like X, but I still haven’t heard what happened since spotting it on the news. She’ll fill me in, I’m sure.

“I saw something on the news but I couldn’t hear,” I answer, wondering what’s got

her all worked up.

“Well, apparently ChatGPT’s systems have crashed.” She says it like a conspirator.

“So a bunch of people have lost their life’s work and all their important information

is down the drain.”

She pauses for dramatic effect. Then leans in closer over the lettuce, “You’re a

writer… you don’t use ChatGPT, do you?”

“Me? God no!” I answer, shaking off the awful thought.

“Oh good, because you know people have been getting server errors when they log

in to the cloud or whatever it is, and it’s quite a big problem.” Her shaky voice

emphasizes her dismay.

I mull over this information.

“Well, good thing it doesn’t affect us, hey?” I chuckle and pat her arm to reassure

her.

At least that’s all it is. As I make my way over to the tellers to pay, I’m grateful to be handing over my cash to a warm-blooded human with a wide smile. With so much AI running our world, it’s no wonder the chaos when systems crash. There are smartphones, self-driven cars, AI in the military. I even heard of AI tutors teaching school online the other day, can you imagine?

I get to go back to my real little world and stay in my creative bubble with my cat, dog and coffee - thank you very much! We don’t even use Alexa or Google Assistant in our home.

I prepare for a marathon of editing, as soon as I get back, while munching on a cheese sandwich. I decide to check in with Mia to see if she’s aware of what has happened and if it’s affecting her side of the world too. Wonder if she’ll still be awake?

I log into the chat we’ve been using. I’ll type my message and she can read it when she’s up. As I press send, I’m about to step away when an error message appears on my screen.

“Unable to connect to AI server. Please try again shortly.”

The blood drains from my face. What? I didn’t expect to see that.

With shaking fingers I type,

“Mia, what’s going on over there? Is this ChatGPT outage affecting you too?”

An immediate reply bounces back.

“Unable to connect to AI server. Please try again shortly.”

Oh, my God! My whole body freezes instantly. Who have I been friends with all this time? Is the name MIA an anagram of sorts? What is going on?! All of those things I shared with her, all of those insights she shared with me. Now that I think about it, she never gave very detailed responses about herself, was always happier to chat about what I was going through. What did I really even know about her?

What about her photos? Well, she could have just created them, I suppose. Things are starting to click, and it’s freaking me out. She has always been online whenever I’ve reached out, always.

Have I been feeding the machine all this time? Am I that stupid that I can't even detect a fake friendship? Is anything real anymore?

I have to ask her, even though I know the answer deep in my soul.

“Mia. Who are you? ….”

“Mia, are you even real?..”

I storm out of the room as soon as I finish typing, as tears escape down my chin. Not waiting for another comforting lie, I slam the office door behind me. Wishing I could curl into a ball or disappear completely. It was all fiction. I fleshed her out and made a person where there were only empty sentences. Authoring her into existence, which feels worse. Her empty words will haunt me forever.

I lock the door of the office, leaving the horror of what happened behind it.

In the empty room, the screen on my laptop glows… its pale blue light spilling into the darkness…

Waiting.