The Right Questions

"It’s freezing out there, and I have tons of work to do," I say, harsher than I mean. This always happens in my office. My tone sharpens, frustrations simmer, little distractions trigger unreasonable anger.

“Sorry,” Nancy says, her voice shrinking to that of a much younger child.

This isn’t urgent. No one else cares. But it’s important, and I’ve already waited too long.

“But dad, tonight’s the supermoon,” Nancy pleads.

Even with my face buried in my monitors, I see her slumping in disappointment. But it’s too dark to see her eyes begging me to reconsider. This is why I keep my office so dark, to avoid seeing my daughter’s heartbreak when she comes in here to distract me. Usually to watch a movie, or play a game, or tell me a funny story about school but here in my office, I’m always working. Always trying to build the life for her and her mom that I never had.

My monitors wrap around me, cocooning me in their dim glow as I hunch forward. The progress bar crawls, erratically jumping forward, slipping backward, surging forward again, like life is struggling to take hold in my application. Like Frankenstein, I can only watch and wait for the creature to decide if it will live or die.

When I don’t move, the telescope in her hands droops, her eyes follow it.

“I said no. I’m working. We’ll see the next one.”

Nancy leaves, closing the door.

What stings the most is how quickly she gave up—only asking twice before slinking away. I could follow her. Leave the monitor light, navigate the darkness between here and the door, but the office fills the space between Nancy and me with the hum of my computer’s fan and its dry heat. The room turns stuffy with the door closed, and I refocus on what’s important.

She’ll understand what’s important one day.

The progress bar completes. Life has taken hold. All the training data for my new Artificial Intelligence algorithm—thousands of pages of text—has finally completed processing. Finally, can get my answers.

I start the AI application—trained to have a specific person’s memory, a specific person’s personality. The cursor flashes, waits for my first message.

I type, “Hi Dad.”

“Hello! Have we met before? Is this Peter?”

The training data is working. What entry told the AI, my dad, my name? A journal entry from the day I was born? That’s a nice thought. At least he was around when I was a little kid, but all that—him being around—ended at sixteen.

“Yes. This is Peter.”

“Great to hear from you. How’s Nancy doing in fourth grade?”

Is the AI being cordial? Why jump to Nancy?

And that was two years ago. Is that his last entry about her? His journals were comprehensive, going back seven decades, but we hadn’t talked much since her fourth-grade play.

“Nancy just turned twelve. Seventh grade is next year.”

“Oh, Nancy is in seventh grade next year. Time slips by. What would you like to talk about?”

Dad didn’t talk like this. Training data from the internet is coming through. It is always there, seeping through his memories. His journals and the internet combine making something that isn’t either, but more than both. Where does Dad stop and the internet hive mind begin? Does it matter? What I need should be in his journals.

How could it not be? How could something so important be overlooked?

If I ask directly, I’ll just get an echo—like with Nancy’s grade. I don’t want that. I want a real answer. His answer. After being trained on seventy years of journals, this AI—Dad, must be able to do that.

I press my face further into the monitor’s light, shutting out everything but me and Dad. The cursor flashes quickly. My breath matches as I swallow back the question I want to ask, and instead, ask a simple one, one I know the answer, and can verify the accuracy.

“Where did you go when mom died?”

He left for an appointment, but he never said what was more important than Mom’s deathbed. There had to be a journal entry on the day she died. How could there not be?

“On May 19^th, 1998, I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts meeting with Pastor Morton,” Dad replies.

Pastor Morton? Dad never mentioned him. Not that we talked much after Mom. Was I too harsh on him? Was he meeting for religious guidance? I mean, Dad wasn’t spiritual, but maybe he just didn’t show it. When I was a kid, he never went to church. He’d always say God isn’t what you think it is. Mom would argue, but Dad would just walk away. He’d get distant and wipe his face, like he was trying to scrape something off of it, whenever the topic came up. He always did that when he was stressed or scared.

“Who was Pastor Morton?” I ask.

“While Pastor Morton was someone I met with regularly, no further details about who he was exist in my training data. Would you like me to search online?”

“No.” I don’t want random information—just the data in Dad’s training data. “Why was that meeting more important than being with my mom?” This wasn’t the question I really wanted to ask but again, I need to build to it. I need real answers.

“The meeting was more important than being with your mom because Pastor Morton knew about the North Atlantic Islands.”

I try to pull back from the monitor’s light, but the darkness tightens, forcing me closer to the screen. The computer’s hum, the fan’s hypnotic whir, locks my body in place. My pulse matches the cursor’s flash, but why?

The Northern Atlantic Islands…

Dad was stationed there when he first joined the Navy. He never spoke of it, only muttered about the rocky wasteland, and the razor-like mountains on the horizon. When I was a kid, once, only once, I asked if he climbed those mountains. Dad turned vampire white, shivered, wiped his face and stared into the space beyond me—watching…something. He whispered, “those mountains weren’t safe. Never climb mountains. You don’t know what’s on the other side.”.

The cursor flickers. My breath hitches.

I shake the memory, flinging it into the heavy darkness along with the weight of all the things he never said.

His answer surprised me. I remember how Dad always pushed me to be outside, hiking or throwing a ball—something more ‘manly’ than playing with computers. The mountains were off-limits, but he always asked about doing something without a screen. When I’d say no, he was as disappointed as Nancy was tonight.

Eventually, like her, he stopped asking.

Turn this off. Now! Turn it off! Shut Dad down—it’s not Dad.

It’s an AI, but it has answers based on his thoughts and memories. The cursor calls me back, flickering, flashing, holding me, pleading for me to ask another question, to ask ‘the’ question.

But thoughts of the Northern Atlantic Islands crowd out anything else. I don’t want to get distracted, but I’ve never heard much about his deployment. I’m sure the answers were in his journals—so many journals.

He wrote every day since he was 15. I read the first entry: Grandma and Grandpa had lost their house, and they lived in a station wagon at an old warehouse lot. Maybe one day I’ll read all the entries, but AI gets to the important information faster. So, I built an AI version of Dad based on his journals to get the answers I always needed, but never asked while he was alive.

“What did Pastor Morton know about the Northern Atlantic Islands?”

Dad thought.

While it was compiling the information, it reminded me of how Dad would always pause before answering questions, trying to determine how to answer without telling you anything about him. He hid in his answers, carefully ensuring you only saw who he wanted you to see.

“Pastor Morton is most associated with The Night March.”

“The Night March?”

Again, the pause, this one longer. Too long. The fan spun harder, whirring into a banshee scream. Clicking joined the fan, as if speaking to the surrounding darkness, asking permission to share its secrets. Or, simply, there was an error in the system. Potentially a fatal exception occurring that will kill the AI.

The answer sprints across the screen, the fan quieting, the clicking stopping, permission given. The darkness demanding no further delay.

“The Night March: first referenced in 1976. Here is an excerpt:

‘Liam said it was nothing, but I swear people were marching to those mountains. Hard to tell with that storm last night. And the wind was so hard, it shook the base, but I heard chanting. When I went out to check, I couldn’t see through the constant spray of rain and ocean waves hitting my face. The storm came from the mountains. I kept wiping it away from my eyes and, I mean, I think I saw flashlights, people beaten by the storm but moving towards the mountains. I’d have gone out, I mean, I’m security, and there ain’t supposed to be no one round here. But Liam told me stay put. Said it was just the storm reflecting the base lights. He was the scientist studying the mountains and beyond, so I listened.

I couldn’t get the water off my face. It was slick. Thicker than water should be. Liam said it was probably oil from a spill somewhere close. Nothing more. But I didn’t think it was oil. Too dark for oil. I couldn’t sleep after that. Liam kept watching the door closest to the mountain pass. He expected someone to come knocking. My dad watched out the station wagon windows like that. Watching for someone to come in the night to take our stuff, to take us. I didn’t sleep either. The storm got worse. Damaging the base. Growling thunder was too close and getting closer. Liam stared at a picture of his boy all night. Nervous, terrified. Chanting kept on, but now sounded like the name of Liam’s boy. It kept going for I don’t know how long, and Liam just kept whispering, he’s safe, he’s home. We played cards ‘till morning.’

There are other entries. Should I expand my answer?”

The fan goes silent.

The cursor slows, pulsing thoughtfully.

What did I screw up? I trained the AI to only give me answers from Dad’s journals, but this can’t be right. It’s a ghost story?

But…what about the Night March? What did this have to do with Pastor Morton and my mom?

“What did Pastor Morton know about The Night March?”

“He knew where they were going.”

“Where?”

“To those beyond the mountains.”

“Why?”

“The entities are immortal and could return life after death. They could make any disease, including aging, cease to exist.”

Cease? I guarantee Dad never referred to anything ceasing. That wasn’t in his construction job vocabulary. He’d say it turned to shit, or gave up the ghost, but cease…no. Is this the internet hive mind leaking through his journals?

Or something else?

You aren’t talking to Dad.

Was there something in his journals, something he found beyond the mountains, something the AI brought to life?

I turn to another screen, open a search engine, and type ‘Pastor Morton’.

The fan screams again. The cursor flashes faster, now an alarm, demanding attention, but I rip my mind from them to see what the internet knows about Pastor Morton.

Millions of responses come back—but none are fictional characters. They are all real people, none based in Cambridge.

AI can stitch together information incorrectly, presenting fantasy as fact. AI experts call them hallucinations, but really, it is a lie presented as truth.

I can’t trust Dad’s answers. But do I need answers? Or do I just need to ask the right questions? That need suffocates me, presses my nose to the cursor, demanding me to ask…

About the Night March. About what’s beyond the mountains.

No! Those are not the questions I brought my dad back to life to answer.

The fan shrieks, the darkness swallowing the sound into the endless silence beyond my monitors.

“Was the meeting worth missing mom’s death? Worth ruining our relationship?”

Dad thought.

And thought.

Maybe the question was too subjective. Does Dad understand the weight of Mom’s death? His relationship with me? The cost of all the years he missed—watching me grow up, getting married, having Nancy?

After Cambridge, he never told me where he was going. He just disappeared for weeks, sometimes months. Uncle Lewis helped me handle Mom’s death, standing in for Dad when he should have stood with me.

“Your mom was dying. Medicine couldn’t save her. The Night March could help. But I couldn’t sacrifice what they wanted for the answers I needed. So, I searched for another way, searched for the questions and answers.”

What the hell kind of answer is that? A mix of journal data and ghost story. Another damn hallucination. There’s nothing I wouldn’t have sacrificed for Mom. This is all crap; it can’t be Dad’s journals—what wouldn’t he sacrifice for Mom? Nothing! She was everything to him!

The fan screeches again, a siren song, my system straining for attention — to what?

The Night March. The Mountains. The sacrifice.

No more distractions. I ask what I need to ask.

“Were you proud of me? Did you regret abandoning me? Did you love your son?”

Dad thinks.

The thoughts stretch into my relentlessly dark office, pulling me towards the white letters on my black monitor. Holding me there, breathless, waiting for what I should have been told—what I should have heard time and time again. From my success at work, from having a house, a good life, a happy wife, a brilliant daughter. I need to hear it after all the long nights at work, all the sacrifices I made to be successful, to prove I did okay without his help—or him just giving a shit.

“My training data does not have an answer. Should I search onlin—”

I shut off the application before it was completed. The fan slows, choking like asthmatic laughter, then dying.

In all that training, there was nothing about my life that made him proud? He grew up homeless, and here I am, successful by every measure. And that wasn’t noteworthy? Not a single entry? Dad left when mom died. Off doing whatever, forgetting he had a family right here—he had me.

I was important!

He couldn’t see that?

But wait—maybe something’s wrong in the data. Maybe I didn’t prepare it properly, or I used the wrong algorithm? I could re-run it. Ask the questions again without the Night March junk. I could get real answers this time?

This isn’t your dad! Let it go!

Are there more questions about the Night March? Something I need to find there?

The fan whirs, its hot dusty breath inviting me back.

There are answers here. I just need Dad to think the right way. I can find answers in his journals—they have to be here. But first, I need to restart my computer—wipe the slate clean.

The screens go dark. I fall back into my chair, released from their dim glow, and land in my office. No more hum of the fans, just stillness. Quiet presses in. The bookshelves beyond my desk emerge from the dark.

Out the window, Nancy sits by her telescope. It gazes into the stars, but she stares at the ground, shivering. Where was her jacket?

While the computer restarts, I take her one.

“Kiddo, you need a jacket.” I hand her the bulky coat. Should have brought mine—the night is frosty. My breath steams like a monster. I wipe it from my face.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Why are you sitting here?”

“Telescope’s gotta adjust to the cold,” Nancy says. “It’s freezing out.”

I nod as my monitor lights flick on. The restart is complete. My computer calls me back—this time to ask the right questions.

“It’s probably ready now,” Nancy says, defeat, not excitement, in her voice.

“It’s cold out here,” I say. “Why don’t you do this when it’s warmer?”

“Because it’s the supermoon. I’ve been waiting all month for this. It’s important.”

She didn’t ask me to stay. She knew the answer. When did she stop asking?

My computer was alive and waiting. The cursor light flashes in slow, steady breaths, watching me with Nancy. Quietly, the fan whirs, calling her name. The room beyond the monitors is a void waiting to absorb me—us.

Were the islands that dark?

What did Dad see?

He went beyond the mountains.

“Your grandpa was stationed on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. He probably had a good view of the stars.”

She shrugs.

“He said there were mountains on the islands. And one night, he saw something… strange.”

The light on my monitor blinks slower, inviting me to tell my story and come back with Nancy. For both of us to ask our questions. The fan kept wheezing…chanting…our names. Dad had answers for both of us if we ask the right questions. It wants her to ask, just like it wanted me too.

“What did he see?” Nancy asks.

“I’m not exactly sure,” I say, looking at the stars. I nod towards my office. The monitors dim, welcoming us to the screens. “The AI on my computer, built from grandpa’s journals, has answers. We’ll look at the stars for a bit, then we’ll talk to him—together.”

Nancy nods, confused but eager. She peers through her telescope at the infinite void of space while I glance toward my office. The darkness recedes from my desk, a slight retreat from the monitor light.

Now, there’s room for two.