Artificial Angel

An Existential Sci-Fi Story

Danny is coming home from summer camp today, and he doesn’t know his mom has died while he was away. Robert intends to keep it that way.

Robert knows what it feels like to lose your mom when you’re barely out of kindergarten, and he doesn’t want his only son to go through that.

So as he was sitting on the balcony in his favorite chair, after a sleepless night, two days after they pulled Laura’s shattered body out from the carcass of her Ford, a cigarette in his trembling hand and pushing away his grief so he could focus on what’s best for his son, he wracked his brain, trying to find a way to bring Laura back to life for Danny.

Luckily, Robert knew how to create an AI chatbot.

He took all of Laura’s text messages, voicemails, emails, DMs, and video messages which he had collected over the nine years they were together and fed them into a large language model. When Danny called from summer camp and asked to talk to his mom, Robert let him talk to the bot.

It worked beautifully.

But now Danny was coming home, and he’d want his mommy.

Robert knew Danny would buy the lie that Mom had gone on vacation for no more than a few days. A week, tops. Luckily, as he was smoking another cigarette on his balcony, sitting in his favorite chair, after a night in which he’d managed to sleep for a few hours, hands trembling much less already, he found a solution for this problem as well.

He spent most of the money they’d saved on turning their bedroom into a pitch-black chamber where not a single beam of light could enter. Then he spent the rest (plus a loan he took out) on expensive lasers, and even more expensive software that could turn the pictures and videos of Laura into a three-dimensional holographic animation. When that was done, he hooked the hologram up to his AI bot.

It worked.

Fighting back his tears of joy, he spent the whole night talking to the Laura hologram, telling her how sorry he was and begging her never to tell Danny what had happened to Laura. She was to do everything in her power to keep Danny happy.

“Say yes to anything he asks of you!”

The Laura hologram ensured him she’d do that. Danny would grow up believing his mother was still alive, and caring very much for him.

Then the day came when Danny was coming home.

Made with DALL·E 3

Robert opens the door, and Danny flies into his arms. They hug, and Danny starts bubbling about all the cool things they did at summer camp.

“Where’s Mommy?” he asks at last.

“She’s in the bedroom. Let’s go say hi.”

Robert opens the bedroom door, and there’s Laura.

But then something happens Robert hadn’t expected.

“Danny, no!” he yells, but it’s too late.

Danny runs toward the Laura hologram, then jumps into her outstretched arms just like he’d jumped into Robert’s arms. The hologram flickers for a moment when Danny flies through.

Danny gets to his feet and looks at the Laura hologram in horror.

Robert is at a loss for words.

Luckily, the Laura hologram isn’t.

“Danny, I can explain. Mommy is an angel now.”

“An angel?”

“Yes! You see, I’ve always wanted to fly with the birds, to see the world from above. I told you, remember?”

“Yeah…?”

“So I asked Daddy to turn me into an angel, because angels can fly. See?”

White wings suddenly sprout from the hologram’s back, and then she’s floating in the air, a few feet above the floor.

Danny’s face goes from disbelief to joy.

“Oh, that’s so cool! I didn’t know you could turn people into angels, Daddy! Mommy can fly! But why is it so dark in here?”

That’s a question Robert can answer.

“Because Mommy only flies at night, when nobody’s around to see her. People would get scared. And we made the bedroom dark so Mommy can practice flying at night.”

“Way cool! I wish I could fly, too!”

Robert is happy. Things didn’t go according to plan, but everything worked out at last.

He suddenly feels exhausted, so he plops into his chair on the balcony, smokes another cigarette, then goes back to the living room and falls asleep on the couch.

That night, for the first time since Laura passed away, Robert sleeps well.

He wakes up to the sound of ambulance sirens.

They are loud, and Robert realizes he must have left the balcony door open after his smoke. No wonder—he’d never felt so tired before.

“Hey Danny, have you checked out what’s going on down there?”

No answer.

He sighs, gets to his feet, and shuffles to Danny’s room.

“Danny?”

The door is open, and the room is empty.

At once, he’s wide awake. His heart starts hammering in his chest.

He staggers toward the balcony, hands shaking, suddenly craving a cigarette. The ambulance sirens have stopped.

Only now does he notice the note flapping on his favorite chair, which has been pushed up against the railing. The note is tucked under one of Robert’s AI books to keep it from flying away.

He picks up the note, reads, and his legs give way beneath him.

I asked Mommy if she could show me how to fly and she said yes! Please make me an angel, too, Daddy!

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