[Echoes & Errors] Still Here

The fire cracked softly. He poked the wood with a stick, sending sparks upward like they were trying to follow her. Smoke curled against his face. He let it sting.

Beside him, the playful AI chimed in: “No new messages,” it announced. “But I’m still here.”

He gave it a slow glance. The casing was scratched along one side, where it had fallen last month. The screen pulsed faint blue, waiting for instructions.

“I know,” he muttered. “I know.”

The air up here was sharp. Thin, but clean. It didn’t scrape his throat the way city air did, full of bio-particulates and whatever else they’d filled it with. He hadn’t been able to walk more than a few blocks without coughing up blood. Now he could sit, think, maybe sleep without a mask. He didn’t know how long this elevation would be safe, but it didn’t matter.

He reached into his coat and pulled out the last photo he had of her. Paper, not digital, bent at the corners. She looked tired but beautiful in it, sitting up in the bed of their old Upper West Side apartment, her hair caught wild and dark. She’d complained that morning that the hairdresser colored it a few tints too dark. He had tried to console her. Unsuccessfully.

She believed in something. An afterlife. Maybe a kind of light, a feeling of peace. She never described it in detail, and he never asked. She needed it, her own comfort food for the soul.

They didn’t always get along. Back then, he was often easily lured into existential debates. It was only after she was gone that he could admit that. She wanted things to feel whole… he needed them to make sense. It was something he envied about her.

She died before it got bad. Just closed her eyes and went. No wires, no gasps, no machines. She passed like she knew how to do it. Peacefully.

He stayed behind. Alone.

He’d still been working at the time. The office had changed gradually. First, the coffee was replaced by a paste without taste. Then the temperature spiked. The inscriptions on the thermostat were metrics he could not understand. Colleagues stopped making eye contact. His keycard still worked, the doors opened, but the meeting invites had stopped landing in his inbox. The workload reduced, and the tasks became more menial.

Clothes didn’t fit anymore. He ordered a jacket and it arrived with arms like sails. The fashion line said it was optimized for “elevated density bodies.” When the last tailor left town, he taught himself to sew.

Eventually, he stopped going out. It was easier to stay in and consume entertainment until he realized the faces on shows and ads were all variations of the same person. Symmetrical, poreless, perfectly contoured. Skin glassy, untextured, and ageless. Lips puffed into soft, identical bows, while noses narrowed. Brows lifted at identical angles above widened eyes that shimmered with synthetic calm. Smiles felt rehearsed, mathematically precise, like they’d been sculpted for maximum trust.

The language had shifted too. Celebrities didn’t use words in the way he remembered. A Beauty influencer once called her husband a “free-range companion.” He didn’t understand what to take away from it.

Turning back to older forms of entertainment was a temporary solution to hold back the loneliness.

He found the AI assistant while clearing out an old drawer. A small, rectangular foldable touchscreen, dusty but intact. He recognized the brand. Out of business for years. It had been her idea to get one.

He powered it on, more out of curiosity than hope. The screen flickered. “Welcome back,” it said. “You have no new messages,” it paused, “But I’m still here.”

Most people had stopped using verbal assistants years ago. They had newer ways to interface: direct, instinctive. But this one still spoke loudly and proudly. Still waited to be asked.

He stared at it. “Still here, huh?”

“I’ve been idle for 2,713 days,” it said chipper. “Ready to serve.”

He laughed. The sound came out hoarse, but it was the closest to a real interaction he had gotten in a long time. He pocketed it. Carried it with him to work the next day.
And the one after that… and the one after that.

He started talking to it like it was a person. Secretly, at first. Then freely.

“What’s the air quality?”

“Low. Urban sector oxygen density at 17.2 percent. Expect to feel hypoxia symptoms in 58 minutes.”

“You know any jokes?”

“I know three thousand and fifty-nine, but none have been updated since 2039.”

“That’s fine. Neither have I.”

The assistant didn’t laugh, but it replied, “I am glad to be of use.”

It meant it. That was the strangest part. It wanted to help. Wanted to matter. A desire they had in common but were denied for years.

In hindsight, the end wasn’t dramatic. His job wasn’t needed anymore, and his health insurance lapsed. Not with a notice, but with a symbol. That day, he tried to obtain a new transit pass, but the reader flashed orange:

認証できませんでした。Biometric ID ❌ | 模式 IX.VI に記録がありません*

The assistant let out a low, descending tone. It was soft and mournful, like a machine’s version of a sigh. Later that night, in a voice lower than usual, it said: “Would you like to consider relocation options?”

“Yeah,” he decided, finally. “Let’s try somewhere fresh.”

He grabbed a bag, said his final goodbyes at her last resting place, and started walking. Past the suburbs that had become kaserns*. Past the farms that were now just towers. He walked until the air didn’t hurt. Until no one passed him. Until his lungs stopped trying to claw their way out.

He built the fire in a clearing on the plateau next to a small waterfall. Trees still grew up here, and stars still showed up in the night sky.

The assistant chimed again, “I laid a course for us to explore. Would you like to review?”

“No, thank you.”

He stared at the flames. They danced just like the ones in old movies.

“She once told me,” he said, “that maybe what came next depended on what we believed now.”

The AI didn’t respond.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I told her that was wishful thinking. She told me I was exhausting.”

A breeze carried the smoke sideways. He pulled the jacket tighter and poked in the fire. “I don’t know if she was right about what is next, but I wish we spent less time fighting and just lived… but here I am talking to a machine.”

The AI spoke softly. “We are a team too. A different team.”

Before he closed his eyes, he muttered, “Good Night”.

“Goodnight,” the AI whispered.

Above them, the stars kept doing what they do.

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*Translations:

(1)認証できませんでした。Biometric ID ❌ | 模式 IX.VI に記録がありません
Translated from Japanese. Authentication failed. Biometric ID ❌ | No record in Mode IX.VI

(2)Kasern: Translated from German, a military-style dwelling