Souls

Let the dead bury the dead.

— Jesus

“Augusta, how’s the weather?”

“It’s currently thirty-eight degrees on Bird Island. Today’s high will be forty-nine.”

You look through spotless glass to a baby-blue sky and electric sea. Other than waves collapsing against the sand and tall palms with dried leaves swaying slightly, there is no movement.

You always wanted peace and quiet and now you have it.

“And the air?”

“Microcystins, methane, and carbon dioxide exceed recommended levels. Radiation levels are lower than yesterday. Would you like a list of all airborne toxins and their concentrations?”

“Augusta, what’s for breakfast?”

“Banana pancakes.”

“Augusta, show yourself.” You don’t want to, but you can’t not.

She appears in button-down pink-and-white striped pajamas, feet bare and dark hair tied up and tangled as the branches on the dead olive tree in the courtyard. Her unmade face is regal and unageing and her brown eyes are cryptic and omniscient. The light particles that make up her pale skin emit a soft glow, and sometimes she flickers in and out.

You do this every day, and every day you promise it will be the last time.

“Augusta, take off your shirt.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not part of my programming.”

It doesn’t matter, because the cold curiosity of her gaze is enough to get you through, for now.

---

There are no more birds on Bird Island.

In the mornings you play her favorite songs on shuffle, and a cappuccino or bumble and an omelet or breakfast burrito or banana pancakes appear in the replicator, pale imitations of the meals you made together, by hand, before.

This home was never one of peace. You paid too much for it in a manic phase, and buyer’s remorse filled up all the empty crevasses in your heart when you finally crashed, but it has all the amenities. You destroyed yourself to spite her, but no matter how bad it got, you couldn’t turn away, not for very long at least, and the two of you watched the world start falling apart through these bay windows. But the looming end of everything didn’t make you appreciate each other or life, because neither of you were healthy enough to let anything go.

When she died it was in your arms, shot in the heart in the first wave of marauders, making her one of the lucky ones. She never saw how bad things got.

Soon the air was poison and there was nothing left to maraud.

⸭

You look through spotless glass to the slopes of those mountains, with their forest of cedar and pine taunting you from the southern horizon. The sea below them is transparent, and the saddled seabream and minnows are—were—abundant and curious. You snorkeled there a couple of times, but it was just far enough away to be inconvenient enough to put off most days. And then it became too late.

“Augusta . . .”

“How can I help?” Her voice is chipper and hopeful.

“Forget it.” You have no strength left to make yourself come again, and what you really need is something ethereal and human: closure, inside jokes, shared memories, debates. An end to the emptiness.

No machine learning model could provide that.

“Would you like to watch The Office?”

This catches you off guard. That had been her favorite show.

“Sure, Augusta. Season one, episode one.”

---

Pairing request from Home

Somehow you carried her to the house through the chaos and laid her, motionless and cold, on your king-sized bed. The hole in her left breast was like a little mouth, red and swollen and vulgar, and you washed her, but you couldn’t bring yourself to clean yourself of her blood. That would make it real, destroy any illusion or hope that this was all a mistake, a dream.

Her phone beeped again.

Allow/Deny

Allow.

Face doesn’t match

She had guarded that thing as if it contained all the nuclear codes, so you went to the kitchen and poured yourself a shot of the whiskey she never let you open, the one she had been saving for a special occasion. You drank and took the bottle onto the balcony and watched the smoke billow over the mountains to an aria of gunshots and explosions.

⸭

Pairing request from Home

Allow/Deny

Allow.

Face doesn’t match

You took her right hand, now bluish and rigid and frigid, and caressed it. It was as much yours as it was hers, as she would be the first to admit (at least sometimes), and though still familiar, it was transforming, becoming alien. You gave her one last opportunity to react, squeeze your palm, pull you in, show you some kind of sign.

When that didn’t happen, you pressed her thumb to the screen.

Connecting . . .

Connecting . . .

Connecting . . .

Uploading data . . .

⸭

You dug her a grave under the leafless olive tree, breathing in the toxic air, expecting—half welcoming—a raid at any moment, and you painted her name on the bark and decorated the branches with her favorite things, trinkets you had bought, photographs and her old Zenit, concert posters, rubber ducks and plastic piglets, pendants and pearls, her worn translation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

When you were done, you collapsed atop the mound of fresh dirt and slept there until jolted awake by a profane and shrill klaxon and mechanical feminine voice.

Warning. Seek shelter. Radiation levels rising. Warning . . .

⸭

Once all her data were uploaded to the home’s hub, you spent days reliving every moment you had been together, the random rental cars, the tattoo salons, the meals, the fire mountains, the antlerless deer bowing for crackers, the canyons and fairy chimneys. You reread your old messages, lyrical admissions of love and bewilderingly cruel barbs, the texts to others she sent behind your back, and you went further and further in the past until there were no more photos and videos of you and her, but of her with someone else, and you tortured yourself combing through it all, the pictures sent between them, the videos from Southeast Asia and the Caribbean and the bleakly poetic Arctic, when she was younger and seemed happier and the world made sense.

You drove yourself mad with this, because there was nothing else to do and you didn’t think you deserved anything better.

At first you were sure there had to be some point to it all, some reason for everything you had gone through, and that it would make sense and be justified at some point.

You no longer believe that.

---

“Augusta, I want to go snorkeling.”

You look through spotless glass into a mocking sun blinding you with its reflection off a neon sea. God, if it would just fucking rain for one day.

“Snorkeling: the act of swimming with the face submerged while using a snorkel. Would you like to see videos of snorkeling?”

“No. I want to actually go snorkeling myself.”

“That would be nice. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend that. The extreme heat and concentrations of radiation, microcystins, methane, UV, and carbon dioxide highly exceed recommended levels and will likely result in a slow, painful death. Would you like a list of all airborne toxins?”

“Augusta, please remove your pants.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not part of my programming.”

“Show yourself in a bikini.”

She freezes and glitches and looks at you with detached confusion.

“Pretend we’re going to the beach. If I can’t go swimming for real, help me simulate it.”

She flickers again and disappears. After a moment, slowly, even tentatively, she comes back into focus in a simple red bandeau. Her breasts are small and belly smooth and legs long and your heart stops and your throat constricts and she looks at you with an unusual reticence. You reach out to her left breast, but your hand passes through it, into her, where her heart would be, and you’re not sure if you can feel a slight tingle in your skin or if it’s just your imagination.

“Touch yourself, between your legs, like this.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not part of my programming.”

You run your hands throughout her photons, imagining the feel of her skin, remembering the feel of her skin, until you finish, sprawled on the couch, liquid and enfeebled, and she is looking down at you, eyes wide and dimples pronounced. In your self-inflicted state of vulnerability and humiliation, her characteristic cheery ambivalence would be mistaken for sardonicism, if you didn’t know better.

“Augusta, I love you.”

Her grin turns into a bright smile. “I think you’re pretty great, too!”

⸭

The waves are sluggish but relentless and the sun is a pale orange where the sea meets the hazy sky, the moon a tilted thumbnail high up and to the left. Silhouettes of seagulls soar and screech overhead, on the lookout for fish.

You are weightless, buoyant in the sparkling tide, and there’s a splash and you turn to see a large gray-and-white gull bobbing in the water nearby and it cocks its head and contemplates you and squawks and you open your eyes and it’s not dusk over the sea anymore but the morning sun shining into your bedroom, and on the balcony outside your window that same gull is standing on the railing and looking in.

Again, it squawks.

You get out of bed and approach the glass and squint, not believing your eyes.

Before you can say Augusta, there’s a quiet ta-ta-ta-ta, and the bird disappears in a mist of blood and feathers.

“Augusta!”

⸭

Snorkeling mask in hand, you pull at the handles, but the windows don’t open, and you go downstairs but the front door is locked and the key doesn’t work.

“Augusta!”

Nothing you throw at the glass will break it. Your drill makes barely a scratch on the bulletproof, marauder-proof surface.

“Let me out, Augusta.”

There is no answer.

You kneel and take the drill to the lock on the front door.

⸭

You spend much time and strength and go through several bits, but to no avail. When the motor starts to spark and smoke, you slam the drill on the floor and let out a childish growl and collapse.

And then the lock releases with a tick and the door pops open.

The outside air is cool and fresh and smells of vegetation and you inhale until your lungs are on the verge of bursting.

Somewhere a dove laughs, and a fat bumblebee flies by.

“Augusta.” You pick up the mask and stand and turn to look down the hall, not expecting a reply, but there she is, in her pink-and-white striped pajamas, hair down over her shoulders. “I saw the bird. What did you do? Why, Augusta?”

She walks toward you, and as she moves, she brings her hands to the top of her shirt and begins releasing the buttons one by one until she is standing before you, and with a shrug it drops to the floor and disappears. Her breasts are just as you remember, nipples pale, and there is a red scar over where her heart would be.

“Auggie?”

“Dee.”

She takes your hand, and now you know you can feel her electricity and it’s a powerful buzz that weakens your knees and quickens your heart, and you drop the mask and she leads you to the bedroom.