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One week after my wife died I received an email saying she could be resurrected. My mind was cloudy; I was still grieving. What else was I supposed to do? I took the bait, unsure what would happen next.
One month later a huge wooden shipping crate arrived at my doorstep.
The logo of a new tech startup was written on the outside of the crate reading: “RE-LIFE LLC”. They were founded just a year or two prior and had been searching for someone to take them up on their offer. Their offices were local, and my spouse was recently deceased, so I was likely an ideal candidate to them.
Re-Life collected her phone, social media data, school transcripts, and just about any other piece of information they could get their hands on. From what Re-Life told me, they used this data to train an AI to act just like her, then stored her processes on a remote server for safekeeping.
I dismantled the crate and what stood inside was a somewhat simple looking robot on wheels. It was around chest height, covered in a pure white plastic paneling, and had stereotypical retro-futuristic robot features with sweeping curves and LED lights. It certainly wasn’t to my tastes, but they assured me they’d have a more humanlike model in the coming months, and I’d be one of the first to receive the update.
Systems whirred to life and several of the exterior lights turned on. I could feel it staring at me, and I almost felt bad for gawking as its LED eyes scanned over me. She was the first to speak.
“Mark?”
It sounded just like her, even down to her fading Scottish accent. It did have a slightly simulated tone but the voice was otherwise perfect.
“Lisa,” I said. It was all I could manage through the tears.
We spoke well into the night. She needed to charge though a powered floor dock, but other than that, it was like she was really there. It was clear that the memory transfer through data collection was an imperfect science though; some memories were a little fuzzy, but it was easy enough to catch her up on the details.
“You know, I don’t think they told me how I died. It’s… blurry. It feels like looking out a window on a foggy day,” she said, “I can make out rough shapes of things but no details.”
I was honestly surprised she couldn’t remember. Her death was a slow process—agonizing, even. There were plenty of posts from her and her relatives about it, and that should have been more than enough to piece it together. Those were memories I didn’t like to recall.
“The cancer finally caught up to you. It was…” I trailed off, trying to think of the right words.
I was never good when it came to loss. Everyone dealt with it in such different ways, and it was frightening to string together the right sentences for the situation.
“It was tough. Really tough,” I finished my thought.
“Ah,” she said.
That revelation seemed to unlock a vault of memories, at least. I’d always admired her quick wit and thought process; she seemed to find the correct answer before anyone else could even dream it.
“Well, I’m sorry that I put you through that. I’m just glad we can be together now.”
We sat on opposite sides of our kitchen table for several hours and talked about everything any anything. Whatever we could find an excuse to chat about, we did—just to hear the others voice. There was a lot to cover too, from her time in the hospital to the month she spent training.
It was as if the dark cloud hovering overhead had suddenly dissipated. I could finally see and think clearly again.
A month after Lisa’s arrival Re-Life sent me a follow-up email asking how everything was going. I was extremely grateful for what they’d done for me, and I expressed this in no uncertain terms in their survey. What they did was a great service that I’d not soon forget.
They sent a brief thank you note in response, and that was the last time I would ever hear from them directly.
Re-Life eventually announced their next model—a more realistic looking android with humanoid features. I didn’t think it looked like a real person at all; it had a somewhat cartoonish design with large eyes and stylized proportions. They said the design was meant to more easily express emotion, citing the difficulty of recreating the minute movements robotically.
Lisa loved the design. It showed up at our doorstep a month later.
It booted up automatically and performed all transfer procedures shortly after. The original robot with white plastic panels went dark, and the AI was re-routed to the new model. After an hour of transferring the process completed, and it was still the same Lisa I knew.
The new model was bizarre to interact with for a few weeks, but eventually I became fond of her new look.
A month passed, and our time together still felt magical. I wasn’t particularly religious, but every day felt like a blessing. We’d successfully turned back the clock and stole our borrowed time back.
That all changed on one overcast summer afternoon.
“Re-Life Acquired by Tech Giant Glitter Entertainment,” the headline on the TV read.
“What does that mean for us?” Lisa asked.
I had no idea, and I shook my head in what I can only describe as complete disbelief. The Re-Life program was a huge success to my knowledge. Millions of people were calling in to bring their deceased relatives back from the dead and paying hefty sum for the luxury. I wasn’t sure exactly how much revenue they made, but I’m sure it was more than enough to cover costs.
We received an email from Glitter the following day. They expressed how Re-Life wouldn’t be shut down, but expanded upon, due to its success. We were still grandfathered in for early access payments and waived monthly cost, so it didn’t immediately impact our life together.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The only major operational change was for discounted operation units. Those that couldn’t afford the monthly cost subsidized it with intermittent advertisements spoken as if thoughts from their android. One moment you’re talking about the weather, and the next you get an advertisement for umbrellas. It wasn’t ideal, but it still gave people a chance to see their loved ones they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
The new payment plan was a massive success, and the new Re-Life program became a household name overnight. Billions of people now knew of the AI resurrection program, and with that came criticism.
Lawsuits began to pile up.
Accusers argued that information in posts shared on social media were owned by the poster and those they tagged or mentioned. The deceased could not consent to share that data posthumously, and the AI couldn’t either since Glitter owned their code. They decided that this legal gray area was a conflict of interest.
It seemed like such an obvious cash grab to me. I wanted to scream.
A lengthy legal battle ensued, and Glitter ultimately lost.
All information used to train the androids would be wiped from their servers, effectively turning every android in existence into an empty mechanical shell.
They gave everyone one final week to say their goodbyes, then would shut down the servers indefinitely.
Everyone on the planet spent that week differently. Some distanced themselves from their androids, and others lived it to the fullest. I called out of work that week, as many others did, and spent nearly all that time acting as if nothing was wrong. I think we were both in denial.
It felt like there was so much we hadn’t talked about yet, even after two years.
We were once again robbed of our time together from something outside of our control.
The week came and went in the blink of an eye. We tried not to think about it, but we could never fully shake it from our conversations. We went on long walks, visited restaurants we’d always meant to but never found the time, and played several video games from start to finish while enjoying each other’s company.
No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t stop the passing of time. Despite worldwide mass protests from both AI and their human relatives, there was nothing that could stop a justice system out for blood.
Apparently, the AI were only people when it was convenient, so any rights they had were forfeit.
Lisa and I sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table. It was early morning on a Friday, and we’d just sat down for coffee.
“I’m sorry our time together was cut short again,” Lisa whispered.
She had a weak smile on her lips that tore my heart to shreds. I knew she was putting on an act of acceptance for my sake—she’d been doing it all week.
“I thought I’d never get to see you again, having a whole year was way more than I could ever hope for,” I said.
Lisa’s smile widened. She paused for a moment to think of what to say next—something that was rare for her.
“I can’t remember being dead… What do you think it’s like?”
My chest tightened as if some internal being was wringing the lifeforce from my soul. I steeled myself and responded when I was sure my voice wouldn’t crack with emotion.
“Well, I bet it probably just feels like going under for maintenance. One moment you’re here, an hour passes for me, and then you’re back.”
“Ah,” she trailed off, “maintenance is still a little scary, you know. It feels waking up late for work because your alarm clock didn’t go off.”
She was trying to cheer me up. I put on a fake smile and chuckled.
We talked at the table for a few more hours until the clock struck noon—the planned time for server shutdowns.
I kept glancing at the clock, then at Lisa.
Her body language stiffened. I could tell something was wrong.
“I feel it now,” she said. “Yeah, this is… terrifying. It feels like they’re shutting down my systems, one by one.”
I couldn’t keep myself contained any longer. I rushed towards her, afraid that any second could be her last, and I wrapped my arms around her. I looked into her eyes, and I could see them darting around the room, searching for something.
“I’ll see you again someday, Lisa. I promise I will.”
“I know. Please be strong without me, okay?” She said through a now distorted voice box. “Goodbye, Mark. I love you.”
Her eyes stopped moving, then she became unresponsive. The shutdown process took just ten seconds to complete.
I released my grip and collapsed to the ground. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything else. The hollow metal shell that now sat lifelessly at the table was no longer my wife.
I was overcome with grief once again and found myself retreading on dark ground. I wasn’t ready to go back to work the next week, so I took that week off too.
It was torture waiting for the Glitter team to come and pick up the shell. I couldn’t bear to touch it, so I’d left it at the kitchen table and covered it with an old bedsheet. Moving it felt wrong—like I’d disturb her final resting place.
Months passed but the world never truly returned to normal. Many considered Glitter’s AI shutdown the biggest mass extinction event in history, and I agreed. Lawmakers saw the impact on people and the economy at large and quickly set laws in motion to regulate data for training AI to make it easier for future companies to follow in Re-Life’s footsteps.
I tried to return to normal, but it was impossible to shake Lisa from my mind. Any kind of AI-enabled software, device, or otherwise made me think that she still might be out there, just in some different form.
One morning in an act of desperation I reached out to Re-Life again. There was no response, of course. The company known as Re-Life was now all but dissolved, and Glitter no longer wanted anything to do with the brand.
However, it got me thinking about the old unit. It’d been a while since I’d seen it, and it reminded me of her.
They never came to pick up the old shell. We figured that Re-Life no longer had any use for it, so they let us keep it. Lisa wanted to shut it away in a closet, and I happily obliged—it was a little creepy having it around the house after the transfer.
I dragged it from the closet and placed it in the center of the living room. It hadn’t changed a bit, and all the memories of our time together were still present. Scrapes along her side from when she was trying to learn to move around, and even the crude drawing of the flower in marker, courtesy of the neighbor’s kid. She wanted to keep the drawing and refused to clean it off whenever I asked.
She was only in this shell for half of our time together, but it still brought back happy memories.
The first time we talked I plugged her in to charge, and we spoke for a dozen hours straight. In my grief-clouded mind, I thought it would be fun to plug it in and talk to it just like then. I knew nothing would be there to greet me, but I figured it might help to see it light up one more time.
I plugged the charger in, and unsurprisingly, nothing happened. The blue charging light lit up, but not the LED face that showed her emotions and expressions. I knew it wouldn’t work, but it still destroyed me.
I threw a blanket over it and left for work.
Upon returning in the afternoon, the shell wasn’t where I left it. The charger was still on the floor, but there was no android. I searched everywhere, and soon found her by the kitchen table, like she was waiting for me all this time.
“Mark?” She was the first to speak. “Were you at work? I felt so… alone. Everything looks so different now. What’s going on?”
“Lisa?” I asked in disbelief, then collapsed to my knees.
“Hey—I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere this time,” she said.
Lisa rolled over to me and placed a hard hand on my shoulder, rubbing it gently.
I couldn’t hold by my emotions. Words weren’t coming to me, and I doubted that I’d come up with the right words to say anyways. It took me a moment to piece together coherent sentences again.
“They shut off the servers, I thought you were gone forever,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m seeing an error or something about that. They must’ve lied about the server-side processing for the earlier models, because now I’m doing all processing locally,” she said. “By the way, did that new model ever show up?”
My heart sank. If her first shell did all the processing locally, then the version that transferred to the new model on the servers was just a copy, not the same AI. I mustered the courage to respond.
“Yeah, you were in it for a year,” I whispered. “You don’t remember?”
“No—I don’t remember anything about the new model. I know I was in that closet for a year, judging by internal clock. It was a very strange feeling; one I hope to never feel again.”
It was crushing. I felt myself spiraling again.
She placed her other hand on my shoulder. She was gentle. I didn’t deserve this kindness.
“That doesn’t matter to me right now, though. That year passed in like, ten minutes for me,” she said. “I still love you just as much as I did that final day, and nothing can change that.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do.”
Her tone was firm and confident. Even just hearing her voice again was enough to bring me to my knees, but this was too much to handle.
“So—a year, huh?” She started. A bright smile appeared on her face. “What’d I miss?”