Grief AI Assistance

“Do you want me to continue, Mrs. Shafer?”

Blair is watching the wine drip down the wall, scarlet streams leading to the broken bottle on the floor. She senses it staring at her from the kitchen doorframe, a blurry outline in her peripheral, watching.

Her husband had been reading to her. She stirred wine into mushrooms, inhaling gulps of bitter steam while Parker sat on the couch in the other room, reading a passage aloud from their favorite book, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. At the precise moment Addie realized Henry Strauss had remembered her, Blair was reminded of the first time Parker ever read to her. Are you sure you don’t record books for Audible? She hadn’t believed him when he told her no, wholeheartedly denying that he, in fact, was not a voice actor.

His voice was so soothing, so rhythmic. Parker could change the texture of his speech between characters in a nano-second, a talent she’d never witnessed in person. It was the most remarkable thing she had ever experienced, like seeing her favorite band perform live after only ever hearing them on a recording. Parker knew when to pause, when to inflect, when to create urgency by picking up speed. Until she’d met him, she always assumed that kind of speech variation was a thing concocted by fancy editing, impossible in a single progression. 

That’s what Blair had been lost in. That’s the beautiful sonic dream she’d been torn from.

Just as her body had started to surrender to it, her weight switching from foot to foot, a gentle sway finding its way through her hips, she was almost there. Her neck lulled from side to side as she released a pleasurable hum in anticipation of Parker’s hands, slipping around her waist, tending to her exposed earlobe, whispering words that felt like he’d written them just for her. 

He had been right there. 

“Are you alright, Mrs. Shafer?”

Again – that voice. The one that had violently torn her away from her other life. In an instant, Parker was there; then, gone. One tiny glitch, a single hiccup in the way he said the word “boy," that was all it took for her husband to vanish. 

Fury had found Blair in a flash. Her body had stopped swaying and started vibrating. How many times had she had it in for this exact repair? She’d grabbed the bottle of wine and chugged. Then, she’d hurtled it at the wall and screamed. 

Now, as she stares at the mess she’s made, the mushrooms likely burning beside her, a heap of steam clouding around her, it waits for a response in the doorway. 

“I apologize, Mrs. Shafer, I must be losing my charge. GAIA technicians assured me the problem had been fixed – “

“Shut up!” Blair’s hands clench into tight fists at her side. She can't stand to hear that voice for one more second. “Just shut up!” 

GAIA would hear about this. They had assured her there would be no more glitches. No more facades breaking. No more reveries torn. No more wine bottles shattered. She had been very specific. She had given them everything she had of Parker. Every video, every audio message, dental records, every single thing they asked for, and in return, they promised perfection. You won’t even be able to tell that he’s gone. 

Blair, still shaking, takes a deep breath, turns off the stove, grabs a kitchen towel , and starts wiping the wall. 

“Would you like my assistance, Mrs. Shafer? The glass – ” 

“GAIA. Off.” Blair commands, seething through closed teeth. She hears the cybernetic sound, then, silence. 

Crouched over, she continues to swipe the wall, cursing herself. That really is the worst thing about these incidents. The guilt is always there. Not for smashing the wine into the wall, but for convincing herself, yet again, that Parker was back, that it was actually him in the next room, reading to her like every other Saturday night. Then, the embarrassment. She remembers her swaying hips, her exposed neck, her genuine expectation that Parker’s lips were on their way to her skin. She had been lost in a memory, and it had seen the whole thing.

This must have been how Addie had felt, Blair considers, when she realized Henry Strauss really did remember her: caught, exposed, and equally exhilarated by the fact that what she had once believed was no longer true. 

This time, the wine isn’t coming easily from the wall. Blair wipes and wipes, and the red remains. She lets out a frustrated sigh and starts collecting shards of glass piece by piece. When she reaches for the final shard, it cuts her, blood instantly oozing from the slice. 

“Fuck!” she yells, dropping all the glass and reaching for the wine-soaked towel. Squeezing her finger tightly and gritting her teeth as the pain finally catches up, she senses the eruption coming. "Damn it!" Like Parker’s death, it is both slow and sudden when Blair collapses against the wall. Her back to it, she pulls her knees to her head, curling into herself and letting the grief consume her with deep, guttural sobs. It is the same fit every time, a place she knows well, like traveling back in time, holding Parker’s hand, begging him to try for one more day.

“Please, please, please,” Blair begs into her lap, to an empty kitchen. “I don’t want to do this alone anymore.”

Unexpectedly, Blair feels a hand on her head. Then –

“Sweetheart, it’s just a little broken glass. You don’t need to cry.”

Parker’s voice stops her heart, and her whole body ceases. Just as quickly as she’d been ripped from her memory earlier, she feels herself immersed once again. It really has mastered so much of his voice. She knows that tone so well, dreams of it. He's being facetious, teasing, her favorite thing about him, his ability to pull her out of her shit. Still concealed in her lap, Blair’s lips tremble; tentative but overcome by temptation, they slide into a subtle smile.

“But now I have no wine.” At that, she hears the start of his laugh. His sonorous, breathy, flirty laugh, the one she’d promised to die for. “And I cut my finger,” she adds, pathetically.

Lightheartedness gone from his voice, he says, “Let me see it.”

She recognizes that tone, too, but it’s not the seriousness in his tone that paralyzes Blair. It’s the sudden inclination to do what he says. A hardness spreads through her, like a wall that stops these two worlds from colliding. She knows her rules. She is always so careful not to look. It could ruin all of their progress. 

“Let me see it,” he insists, concern softening his urgence. It breaks her, and she lifts her head, slowly moving her toweled hand towards him before finally letting her gaze follow. 

The robot looks nothing like her husband, and despite having known this, hope is a powerful thing. It destroys her all at once, every time. She gasps, whipping her head in the other direction, tucking her chin against she shoulder. Unperturbed by her response, she feels it gently opening the towel, inspecting her finger. 

“The bleeding’s stopped. That’s good.” Blair’s heart pounds. If she doesn’t look, if she just kept her eyes closed… When she reports to GAIA, she'll leave this part out.

“Parker?” 

“Yes, honey?” 

“I’m sorry I threw the wine at the wall.”

“It’s okay, honey.”

“And burnt the mushrooms.”

Chuckling, he says, “What’s new?”

This makes Blair laugh and cry at the same time. He is there. He is really right there.

Squeezing her eyes tightly, she turns her head in his direction, “Will you keep reading to me?”

She feels arms wrap around her, scooping her up into a hard chest, lifting her off the floor. Just keep them closed.

As they head towards the couch, she hears her husband, her beautiful Parker, say, “Now, where were we?”