YALE MILLER
ARTIFACT FROM THE FUTURE
You-logy
“She's the one,” said Mark, pacing around the couch. The ring in his hand had grown warm from his fidgeting. “It feels insane to say that out loud.”
“I remember when you first met her,” his Dad said. The profile picture on the TV was programmed to bob up and down with the cadence of his voice, but John Davis knew only one way to speak: loud and confident. That meant the static image mostly just hung at the top of the screen, falling when his Dad finally took a breath. “You called me up and heck, I could hardly get a word in. That must've been what, three years ago?”
“Yeah, three years. Hard to believe,” said Mark. “Even then I knew I was going to marry her. I just thought I wouldn't be this nervous.”
“You think I wasn't nervous when I asked your mother? I changed my shirt halfway through dinner!” his Dad said. “But when it came time to ask if she would spend the rest of her life with me, I don't think I felt anything but certain.”
Mark sank into the couch while his father continued to tell the story of the engagement. How Mark was part of the picture before there was a ring. The hasty wedding planning and the even hastier wedding. Mark had heard the same story every year on his parents' anniversary. His Dad had it memorized to the beat. He knew when to pause for effect, what jokes to tell when, and at what point Mark's mother would get teary. This time, however, he just told it plain. Mark took a deep breath.
“I love you, Dad,” he said, placing the ring back in its case.
“I lov—”
“You've reached your monthly limit of conversations with John Davis. Would you like to purchase another 20 minutes?”
“No, it's ok. Go ahead and shut off,” Mark said. The screen flashed a logo, You-logy: A world beyond goodbye, then dimmed to black.
Years ago, when the death of his father still hung over his life with a thick gloom, these conversations always left Mark with a chill. A primeval warning echoed through him that the man, the thing, on the other end was not his real Dad. The man was dead, but the data lived on. In life this digital revenant had been sold to advertisers eager to know what kind of lawn mower a man like John Davis buys. In death, it continued to turn a profit as a monthly subscription service for grieving families.
Mark now scarcely paid a second thought to the details. And why would he? Seven years of postmortem conversations had given the model ample data to turn John Davis into the father he never quite was in life.