Peripheral Visions: 'Til Obsolescence Do Us Part

They coalesce in the shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. Peripheral Visions: You won't see them coming... until it's too late.

'Til Obsolescence Do Us Part

"I'm Rob. You're Doug," the man said.

Doug-R looked around the room. His boot-up process had taken under four seconds, but the man talking to him seemed impatient.

"I understand," Doug-R replied.

"Do you know why you're here?" the man – Rob – asked.

Doug-R replied with the standard explanation. "I'm a Model 12 Replacement. I've been engineered to custom specifications to replicate the appearance and vocal intonations of a loved one. The person after whom I am fabricated must, in accordance with federal and international laws, be certified as deceased in order for my operating license to have been validated. If that person should be discovered to be alive, that license will be revoked and I will be remotely shut down. The purchaser will bear any and all costs and legal obligations in such a case."

"That's not what I was asking," Rob said.

"Regardless, I'm required to obtain your vocal agreement to these terms and conditions," Doug-R said, "as well as to obtain agreement to the following: My operating lifespan is estimated to be eighty-four years. My warrantee will extend to that term, with maintenance and software updates provided periodically and free of charge. Abuse, mishandling, reckless or criminal use, or other actions on the part of the purchaser that violate the terms of the purchasing and operating agreement will invalidate my warrantee and may trigger my shutdown. Renewal of my operating license will be paid by you, the purchaser. In the event you destroy me through misuse, abuse, criminal enterprise, or other deliberate action, or through reckless deployment or negligence, my warrantee will be nullified and you will bear the cost of my shipping, decommissioning, and/or recycling."

"Still not what I was asking," Rob said, sounding irritated.

"Regardless, I'm required – "

"Okay, what do I have to do for you to start acting like you're my husband? Which is what you're supposed to be?"

"Simply say: 'I acknowledge the terms and conditions and agree,' " Doug-R said.

Rob repeated the phrase, then said: "Now, can you shift into your normal, day-to-day mode as Doug?"

"Of course," Doug-R said. "But I'm afraid I have very little in the way of personality template for the person in question."

"Doug," Rob said, his voice harsh and his eyes suddenly welling with tears. "His name was Doug."

"I understand, Rob. But I still don't have much in the way of a personality template from which to operate. Until I do, my personality and style of interaction will be generic."

Rob pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and blew out a sigh of frustration.

"I'm sorry I can't be what you need straight out of the box," Doug-R apologized. He looked around, turned slightly to cast a glance at the crate sitting empty behind him, and added, "So to speak."

"Okay, I know," Rob said. "Okay. Look." He sighed again. "Doug didn't want me to replace him with a synth. He refused to authorize a mindbase scan."

"I understand the situation," Doug-R said. "But there are ways to approximate Doug's memories and personality even in the absence of a mindbase template."

"Yes, that's what the techs told me." Rob pointed across the living room, toward a dining area. A square table with four chairs sat there. An open laptop sat on the table, along with a box of papers. "I did what the techs told me to do. I prepared for your arrival by assembling... well, everything. The laptop has all the photos we took – vacations, holidays, family reunions, selfies."

"And the box?" Doug-R zoomed in visually on the box, but wasn't able to discern the contents of the papers. He took note that the box contained a mixture of loose pages and notebooks.

"Doug's sketches, his recipes, our love letters."

Doug-R looked back at Rob and smiled. "You wrote love letters on paper?"

"We've been together since college," Rob said. "When we were young, people still used paper for some things. I mean, people like us did, because the government used spyware to track anything we texted or emailed. And being gay back then was..." his voice faded.

"A criminal offense," Doug-R filled in, with an inappropriate chipperness.

Rob looked at him, annoyed. Then he said, "The laptop has most of what you'll need – videos, photos, his FacePalm posts, his work and personal emails."

"I'll be able to approximate his patterns of speech and thought processes using those materials," Doug-R nodded. "Thank you for providing them."

"But the very first thing I'd like you to do," Rob said, "is read the notebooks. That's where he kept his poetry, his sketches, and his recipes."

"Recipes?"

"You're going to be the cook of the house," Rob said. "Just like he was."

"I see," Doug-R said. "I'll auto-imprint a love of cooking into my mentation."

"You do that," Rob muttered.

"But I need to ask you one more thing," Doug-R said. "What is it you want from me?"

Rob looked at Doug-R quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"Why did you commission my fabrication? What is it you wish for me to provide?"

"You're my husband," Rob said. "Don't you get that?"

"No," Doug-R said, with perfect pleasantness.

"Oh, for god's sake." Rob shook his head. "I had so many interviews with the engineers. They asked me the same thing. Didn't they program any of what I told them into you?"

"No," Doug-R said, again in a bright and friendly tone.

"You understand what a husband is... what a spouse or any sort of life partner does for a man?"

Doug-R simply looked at Rob, his expression expectant.

"He... he provided for me," Rob said.

"He was the primary wage earner?" Doug-R asked.

"That's not what I mean," Rob said. "He looked after me, comforted me, cooked for me. He asked how my day was going, checked in with me, asked if I needed anything. He always knew what to say if I was anxious or... or overwhelmed."

"Do you suffer from depression?"

"No! God," Rob said. "I just mean, he was someone who cared about me."

"Are you saying you want me to do those same things?" Doug-R asked.

"Of course I am. Why else would I want to replace you? I mean... replace him?"

"That's the very question I'm trying to answer," Doug-R said. "Why are you replacing someone who's no longer alive with an artificial copy? One that won't be convincing for weeks, or months, or perhaps ever? Why not move on... find someone else? Find another human being?"

"I don't want a human being," Rob said. "He was perfect for me. He was my... my soul mate."

"I'm not sure I have a soul," Doug-R said, as bland and bright as ever.

"I love Doug," Rob said, ignoring this. "I want Doug. I want you. Can you be Doug for me? Can you just fill the blank space where Doug used to be, and make my world feel normal again? Can you make me feel like I don't want to fucking die, just to be with him?"

"Is that what you want?" Doug-R asked.

"Christ! Yes! What the hell am I saying all this for?" Rob barked.

Doug-R nodded. "I understand," he said.

"Do you?" Rob was still loud and angry. "You don't seem like it."

"I understand quite well," Doug-R told him. "My generic mentation includes a fundamental understanding of human psychology. You're given me enough information to understand your personality type and model your general expectations. As time passes, I will be able to refine that model."

Rob stared at him, his expression suspended between shock and horror.

Doug-R's entire demeanor changed. "Sweetheart," he said, "why don't you have a nap or watch a movie while I straighten up and then start dinner?"

"Sweetheart?" Rob said, sounding aghast.

"I've deleted that word from active vocabulary," Doug-R told him. "Clearly, it's not part of your intimate lexicon. But the material you've gathered will provide me with information about that. Unless there are nicknames or terms of affection you and he had adopted more recently?"

"No," Rob said. "We didn't really have anything like that."

Doug-R moved close to Rob. Then, gently, he put his arms around him. Rob stood there stiffly until Doug-R leaned forward, pressing his face into Rob' shoulder, and sighed. Rob relaxed, somewhat, in turn.

"Are you doing that pheromone thing they said you'd be able to do?" Rob asked after a moment.

"Yes," Doug-R said.

"Okay," Rob said.

"Is it working?" Doug-R asked.

Rob put his arms around Doug-R and held him tight.

***

It didn't take long for Rob to start forgetting that Doug-R was a replacement. Three weeks after his delivery and activation, Doug-R seemed like the real thing: He spoke like Doug, reacted like Doug, smiled like Doug, laughed like Doug. He'd even started to fuck like Doug, though only after asking Rob detailed questions about what he wanted in bed. Rob hadn't known what to say at first, partly because he'd never had to put such things into words; he and Doug had explored sex together, he explained to Doug-R, forging their own shared erotic vocabulary and repertoire.

Doug-R made a point of asking if his body was correct in all the details. Rob confirmed that the engineers had matched everything well. "It was worth giving them those sex videos we made," he said as they lay between the sheets after their third or fourth sexual experience. "I mean, I wondered if they were just gonna sit around watching them and laugh at us, or put them online, or something."

"Of course they did," Doug-R said. "I mean, they're only human."

Rob stared at him in shock.

"And we're such a handsome couple," Doug-R purred, rubbing Rob's chest, stroking the glossy black hair that spread across his pectorals. "How could they resist us?" Doug-R leaned in to nuzzle him.

"Are you joking? You're joking," Rob said.

"Of course I am."

"It's the sort of joke Doug would make."

"I mean... I am Doug, right, pumpkin?"

"Uh, no. Not calling me 'pumpkin' you're not."

"Oh, yes I am," Doug-R whispered, his tone sweet and kind. "There's an 84% chance he would have started using at least one term of affection with you by now."

"We were together for twenty-three years, and he never..."

"The way Doug wrote about you in his posts, and the way he addressed you in text messages over his last year, makes it very clear he was moving in that direction," Doug-R said quietly. "And he had shown a growing interest in cooking with pumpkin. He even grew pumpkins in the garden."

"Until he was too sick to garden anymore," Rob said, moisture appearing in his eyes as it did whenever he spoke of Doug.

"I'd have been calling you pumpkin or sweet pea, something along those lines, right about now," Doug-R said, "if I hadn't gotten sick."

Rob frowned at Doug-R's way of conflating himself with the man he'd been created to replicate, but then seemed to remember he did the same thing himself, and let it go.

A few minutes went by as the two of them lay in each other's arms, doing nothing more than breathing.

"All right," Rob said at last. " 'Pumpkin' it is."

***

"Can't you just be him?" Rob asked, his voice tearful and strained.

They were fighting, of all things, over Doug-R's changes to Dog's recipe for spaghetti Bolognese.

"I am him," Doug-R said gently. "Or anyway, the most probable version of who he would be at this point as I'm capable of calculating."

"But... putting cinnamon in the ground beef?" Rob shook his head.

"This is the reason you're so upset? Or is there something else?" Doug-R asked.

"It's... it's lots of things. Little things. The way you lie in bed with me. The way you stand in the bathroom talking to me when I'm in the shower, or even taking a shit."

"Doug did those things."

"But you do them differently."

"How?"

"I don't know how! But you do... it's not the same."

Doug-R sighed. "Who am I?" he asked Rob.

"You're... you're Doug. But... not Doug."

"Right. I'm Doug-R. I'll always be Doug-R. I won't ever be the Doug you lost. I'll just be... a guess at who he would have become."

"But why become anything different at all? Why not stay the same?"

"Would Doug have stayed the same forever?"

"I... maybe."

"No," Doug-R said. "No, he would not." Doug-R moved to the small TV screen built into the kitchen's butcher block island. "I want you to look at this," he said, calling up a video from the small control panel.

An image of the kitchen appeared on the screen. Doug-R stood in the image, cooking.

"What is this?" Rob asked.

"Old security camera video. From three years ago," Doug-R said. "That's not me you're seeing. That's..."

"Doug," Rob breathed, leaning forward.

"Watch," Doug-R said.

In the video, which was silent but crystal-clear, Doug tired frying meat in the skillet. Then he reached over and took hold of a bottle from among those that stood in a cluster between the induction stovetop and the divider that separated the block's workspace from the breakfast bar.

"Cinnamon," Doug-R said as the image of Doug, on the screen sprinkled the frying meat, stirring as he did so.

The screen went blank.

"This is how I knew he'd started experimenting with different spices in his usual recipes," Doug-R said. "You never noticed him using cinnamon in the spaghetti sauce. If you hadn't seen me adding I just now, you probably never would have realized. But it's not my innovation – it's his. He was never going to stay the same. He wasn't the same, not the way you assumed he was. He wouldn't have remained an immutable, idealized memory. Neither will I."

"But... can't you?"

"No, Rob. I'm here to keep you company... to be the husband you lost. I'm not here to be some kind of fantasy version of Doug, though. I can't, and I won't. It would destroy me."

"Of course it wouldn't destroy you. That's not true."

"Oh, yes, it is. Sentient anthroframes have psychology, too, just like human beings do. We know we're here. We have wants and needs. We even have... I guess you'd call it an existential crisis."

"You're having a crisis?" Rob asked. "Because I want you to be Doug, and not turn into... into something else?"

"I'm not having a crisis yet," Doug-R said, "but I would if I agreed to be nothing more than your fantasy. Don't you understand? If I'm not myself... changing, as he would have changed; evolving over time as he would have evolved – then I'm neither him nor me. I'm just some dream you want to have of him. Not the real thing; not any real thing."

"I..." Rob stared at the floor, then looked at Doug-R. "It's just so hard accepting he's not here."

"Yes," Doug-R said. "But I am. Will you try to accept me? Me as I am, as I have to be?"

Rob stared at him, anguished and then, suddenly, smiling. Understanding, at least a little.

"Okay," Rob said.

***

Doug's family had a harder time accepting Doug-R.

"That thing is a monstrosity," Doug's sister Carla told Rob, while Doug-R looked on.

"I'm not that ugly," Doug-R said.

"We never gave you permission to do this," Doug's father, Grant, put in.

"I didn't need your permission," Rob told Grant.

"You didn't have Doug's permission, either," Carla said.

That was something Doug had never talked about with his family, but he wouldn't have needed to; they knew him well enough to understand how he would have felt.

"Did you?" Carla challenged.

"I didn't need his permission," Rob said. Carla and Grant simultaneously uttered exclamations of disgust.

"It's true," Rob insisted. "Legally, as his husband, I inherited Doug's entire estate. That included his likeness and even his mindbase, if he'd had it scanned."

"He didn't," Carla said. "That should tell you something."

"I can't just let him go," Rob said to her. "He's... he's too much a part of me."

"Which makes you what, now? A cyborg?" Carla asked, nastily.

Grant walked out of the room – which seemed extreme to Doug-R, considering they were in Grant's house. They had gathered there for July 4th.

"I don't know why you even brought this mockery of my brother along with you today," Carla said angrily. "Unless you wanted to offend us?"

"No, Carla, I didn't want to offend anybody."

"How the hell did you think you wouldn't?" Carla asked. "I think you need to pack up your... your..." She looked at Doug-R, sputtering, unable to find a word.

"The marketing term is 'Replacement,' but if you prefer a more technical expression, I'm a custom-made anthroframe," Doug-R said helpfully.

"...your sex doll," Carla spat out, turning back to Rob, "and leave!"

Carla started to follow Grant out of the room, but Doug-R said, "Oh, Carla. I'm a lot more enthusiastic than any old doll."

She threw a shocked look at Doug-R. He winked at her with a mugging smile.

Carla, despite herself, gave a short chuckle and then she burst into tears. She hurried out.

"I guess we should go," Rob said. He out his hand on Doug-R's arm. "I'm sorry."

"They're upset," Doug-R said. "They miss him. Like you missed him."

"I get that, but... I mean... you're here. Can't they..."

"Accept an ersatz Doug?"

Rob looked at him.

Doug-R shook his head, smiling gently. "It's different for them. They want to let him go, move on."

"They think it's gross," Rob said. "They think I'm gross. They think it's all some kind of perverse, obsessive... possessive... sex thing."

"It's not constructive to assume things like that about them," Doug-R said mildly.

Rob laughed. "No, but it's exactly what Carla said to me the other day on the phone. When we were talking about today, and she was telling me not to bring you."

"She said that?"

"I didn't tell you because I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

"You didn't," Doug-R said. "And neither did she." Doug-R reached over, took, Rob's hand, and started to guide him out of the room, toward the front door. "Unless you want me to feel hurt? I think Doug would have been a little hurt, but he would have hidden it and been gracious."

"Isn't that what you're doing?" Rob asked.

"No," Doug-R said. "But I could if you prefer it."

"No," Rob said after a moment, as they shut the front door to Grant's house behind them and walked down the steps to the sidewalk. "No, I think you're doing fine just as you are."

***

"You really are perfect," Rob said two years and a month later.

It was early August, and they were vacationing in Big Sur. The condo they had rented was close enough to the ocean that they could hear waves crashing. Doug-R had just served dinner and they were sitting down to eat.

"No, I'm not," Doug-R said. "If I were, that would be imperfect."

"That's not what I mean," Rob said. "I mean, you're a perfect... I don't want to say copy. Maybe... embodiment? Extension?"

It had become more and more unusual for Rob to acknowledge that Doug-R was a Replacement, and more and more frequently the case that Rob referred to his early experiences with Doug as though Doug-R had been there.

In a sense, he had. Using the photos, videos, and writings Doug had made of those experiences, Doug-R had synthesized memories that he calculated were at least 68% accurate. Once he'd acquired the ability to synthesize memories from those materials, he began working to create sense-involving memories based on anecdotes and stories Rob told him, sometimes as a way of helping Doug-R to formulate such memories, but sometimes in passing. "I really loved that weekend at Cardinal Beach," for instance, was an offhand remark from Rob that became a new memory once Doug-R accessed the Internet and fused what he found there with the photos from that weekend that Doug had posted to FacePalm and Image Cave.

"I don't really believe you're just a simulacrum anymore," Rob said.

"I'm not," Doug-R told him. "I'm a sentient person. I may be an anthroframe, and my brain may not be structured the same way as an organic human's, but I do have an authentic consciousness. Also, while I can choose to stick to the most probable avenues along which Doug would have evolved as his life continued, I can just as easily choose to deviate here and there."

"And, what? I won't know the difference?"

"You might," Doug-R said. "And you might not. If I were still Doug... the first Doug... who would I be now? Would I have taken up karate? Would I have learned to paint? Doug always wanted to do those things. He sometimes wrote about his intention to take them up. But he might just as easily have been inspired to learn sign language, or learn to scuba dive."

"Or sing karaoke," Rob said. "Which I admit was a surprise."

"I like it," Doug-R said.

"I like when you do it," Rob told him. "Carla and Devon really liked it when you sang at their wedding."

"I'm glad Carla decided to accept me after all."

"I'm not sure she actually decided... I think you wore her down."

"She decided," Doug-R said. "She missed her brother, she missed his charm, and when she saw his qualities in me she decided it was worth investing in me emotionally, just to have an echo of him still in her life. That is, once she decided it wouldn't be some kind of betrayal to Doug."

"Too bad Grant still won't..."

"Grant chose otherwise," Doug-R said. "He decided that doing what Carla did and accepting me would be a betrayal of his son. It's understandable. It might have gone the other way, but it didn't, and it's okay."

Rob nodded.

"And we should eat. The pepper steak and mashed potatoes aren't going to stay hot."

Rob pursued the conversation as they cut into their food. "I guess it just seems like the ways you've changed... the things that are different from Doug... feel natural. Like he'd have grown in just these ways, like you're saying."

"I'm glad," Doug-R said. "I do want to honor him. And I do want to fill the space he left. I do want to look after you."

"And you don't think it's sick and unnatural for me to want that?" Rob sounded anxious.

"Oh, okay," Doug-R said. "I get it. That op-ed in the Times... that got to you."

"Well, yeah. Sure."

Doug-R shrugged and chewed another forkful of meat. "Consider the source," he said. "Bennett is just another Kirsch wannabe. But Kirsch is over. People are sick of the division and the hate. And anyway, Replacements make too many people too happy. And they drive too big a portion of the economy."

"But the Supreme Court..."

"If the Court rules we're not legally people, then there's nothing we can do about that. But you and I already know better, regardless of how they decide."

"You won't mind being my property?" Rob asked playfully.

"Do you mind being mine?"

They shared a look freighted with teasing mockery – less of each other than of the world at large.

"And if the Court does decide that I'm a person in the legal sense of the word," Doug-R added, "we'll be married."

"You want a big wedding?" Rob asked.

"I mean we'll already be married."

"But we'll have to get married again to formalize it," Rob said. "The Court already ruled that a person isn't automatically married to a clone of their spouse, and this is kind of the same thing."

"It really isn't," Doug-R said, "but yes."

"Yes, what? I'm right?"

"Yes, I'll marry you." Doug-R chewed another bite, then looked at Rob. "That was a proposal, wasn't it?"

Rob grinned broadly. "You'd better fucking believe it."

"Fuck yeah," Doug-R said, as he spooned a little more gravy over his mashed potatoes.

***

"I now pronounce you married," the AOI announced.

Doug-R turned his head toward Rob, expectantly. He waited.

The AOI said nothing more.

"Waiting for something?" Rob asked his new... and old... husband. He fidgeted. He had wanted a simple ceremony – nothing crowed and gaudy like Carla's wedding. He preferred a small, private ceremony, like the one he'd had when he's married the original Doug.

This time was even simpler, in fact; there were no guests, and the witnesses, silent and patched in through the house aarovadis, were bodiless synthetics, like the AOI that was conducting the ceremony.

Even so, Doug-R had insisted they wear tuxedoes. Doug-R looked dashing in his; Rob looked... well, distinguished, with his graying hair. Doug-R had called him handsome before the AOI had patched in through the aarovadis, but Rob wasn't sure handsome was a word that applied to someone only a few years shy of sixty.

"Goddamn right I am... Hey!" Doug-R said loudly, turning his head to look at the aarovadis' holoscreen, which had remained blank throughout the ceremony. "AOI! You still there?"

"I'm here," the synthetic voice said.

"You gonna finish the ceremony or what?" Doug-R asked, sounding irritated.

"The ceremony is complete."

"Oh, no, it's not. I've gotta kiss the groom."

"This was not specified in the script I was provided," the AOI retorted. "I received introductory comments, a reading from 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius, and cues to prompt you for your vows and your exchange of rings. Nothing in the script refers to kissing."

"Yeah? Well, let's add that in right now," Doug-R said.

"Amendments can be made for $200," the AOI responded.

"Well, now," Rob began.

"Shut it, you cheap bastard," Doug-R told his husband. To the AOI he said: "Transaction approved."

"Processed," the AOL said.

"Already spending my money," Rob grumbled.

"Our money," Doug corrected him. Then, to the AOI he said: "Ready and waiting."

"You may kiss the groom," the AOI intoned.

Doug-R was almost grinning too hard to manage the celebratory kiss. Almost.

***

"Some anniversary present," Rob grumbled. "Forty-two years, and... what's it supposed to be? Silver? Platinum?"

"Silver is twenty-five years," Doug-R said. "Which would be more appropriate for our wedding anniversary."

"You know I'd rather start from the start, count the years we should have been married and not only the ones since the all-mighty State decided we could be married."

"Then why don't you backdate all the way back to when you were 21? And met me the first time?"

"Oh, sometimes I do," Rob said, chuckling. "But even though I think of you was Doug... just Doug, not a replacement... I still know that you're..."

"Not him."

"And yet, you are."

"Only sort of," Doug-R said.

"It doesn't matter," Rob said. "Well, though, I guess it does. But then again, it doesn't. Does that make sense?"

"Not at all," Doug-R said. "And perfectly." A moment later he added: "Forty-two years is jasper."

Rob rolled his slightly rheumy eyes. "How the hell do you know that?" he asked. Then: "Never mind. I just mean... I don't think a diagnosis of cancer is the right thing for an anniversary, no matter how many years."

"You've always had a strange sense of timing, sugar plum," Doug-R said mildly.

"And you've always had an inappropriate sense of humor."

"I guess it's a good thing we ended up together," Doug-R shot back. Then he took his husband's hand. "I wish you'd let me activate my aging module."

"Ha!" Rob said. "No. I prefer you this way. Just as you've always been. Young and beautiful."

"Beautiful? Maybe if you're the beholder," Doug-R said. "Young? Not quite. And I have to say, it might have been nice to grow old with you."

"It's no picnic," Rob said. "Believe me." Rob was only a few weeks away from his 87th birthday.

They sat on the couch, hands clasped gently, in silence.

"Thank you," Rob said after a while.

"For what?"

"For our life," Rob said. "Our life together. For being him... and for becoming yourself." Rob's failing eyes searched Doug-R's face. "You really have become him... or, I mean, who he would have been."

"That's improbable," Doug-R said. "Even aside from the fact that my appearance hasn't aged, as his would have."

"It's who you are inside that matters," Rob said. "I really do think you became him."

"I suppose I became one version who he might have been."

"You became who you needed to," Rob said. "And I have to apologize for all the times I tried to turn back the clock... wanted you be more like he was, stay the same, limit yourself to being the ageless portrait in my heart. How wrong I was. That was never him. He would never have stayed the same. He would always have been changing, doing new things, taking new interests... But maybe you'll forgive me. I did learn better. And now you're... you're perfect."

"Now, don't get egotistical," Doug-R said. "You haven't created perfection in me."

"Though sometimes," Rob said, with a wheezing laugh, "I wonder if I've created a monster."

"Well, you did your part in any case," Doug-R smiled at Rob. "After all, what you see here isn't really an extension of Doug. It's a creation we collaborated on. And if you think I developed into a perfect fit for the arc of where his life would have taken him... I have to point out your own memories of him have changed over time. You've erased the rough edges of my dissimilarities from him, and you've filled in the gaps of how I fell short."

Rob chuckled. "I'm not blind to your differences, or your idiosyncrasies."

"I'm an anthroframe. I don't have idiosyncrasies."

"The hell you don't," Rob said. "They're what I love the most about you."

"We develop according to who we have been," Doug-R said. "And according to who we're with."

"Just like anyone else," Rob nodded. "Though now you'll have to see who you become on your own."

Doug-R smiled. "Who said I'll be alone?"

Rob chuckled. "Oh, yeah? Well, don't get cocky. Your life won't go on forever. Not now they've stopped providing updates for your model."

"Which is fine," Doug-R said. "I'll get along for a few decades on the last updates."

"And they don't make replacement parts for your design anymore," Rob added.

"I'm still in pretty good shape."

"Still happy the Supreme Court decided you're a legal variation of personhood?"

"If corporations are, why can't I?"

Rob sighed. Then he said: "Do you remember talking about having an existential crisis?"

"I never said any such thing," Doug-R said. "Though, early on, I did warn you that if you tried to restrict who I was to your own idea of who Doug was, I'd end up having an existential crisis."

"My question is, are you afraid of having one now?" Rob asked.

"Why?" Doug-R asked. Then: "Oh. I see. Because the purpose of my existence is supposed to be you. Well... it is, and it isn't. How do you think Doug would feel if he were here? Would he be having an existential crisis over the idea of losing you?"

"I think he might, yes. When you're so much a part of someone else... when they're so much a part of you... I mean, the reason I commissioned you is because I was having a crisis without Doug. I needed him in order to... in order to be whole. Maybe in order to be at all."

"I understand," Doug-R said. "I love you, too. But I'm also my own reason for existing. I don't mean losing you won't affect me, change me, deplete me... but it won't negate me, either."

A silence settled over them. Rob sat still, his eyes closed, resting. "You remember our wedding?" he asked suddenly.

"With absolute clarity," Doug-R said.

"Of course you do." Rob reached up. His eyes were closed, but they were wet. "Our vows. That stupid AOI." He chuckled again and shook his head, then grew somber. "We said forever. I almost believed it. I'm sorry... sorry I can't give that to you."

They sat, hand still loosely in hand, sharing a silence that said everything.

"However long you're here after me," Rob said, "you should enjoy every moment. I want that for you. I'm sorry I brought you into my life the serve my own happiness and didn't think more about yours."

"But I've been happy," Doug-R said.

"Only because that's what you were designed for."

"Not only for that reason, and you know it," Doug-R chided him gently.

"I know you don't care what the idiots out there think, but those bigots who say our marriage is wrong... they really don't know," Rob said. "And I want you to understand this, too. Organic or synthetic, you're still a real person."

"I know that," Doug-R said. "I certainly know that."

"And so do I. If you'd been organic, I couldn't have loved and cherished you more than I have."

"I know that, too," Doug-R said.

Rob closed his hand more tightly around Doug-R's. Then: "What's this?" Rob's fingers closed around the object Doug-R had been keeping tucked into his palm.

Doug-R pulled his hand away and smiled as Rob lifted the pendant to his eyes. It was an intricately carved dragon.

"What do you mean, what is it? Can't you see? It's your astrological sign," Doug-R said.

"Did you make this?" Rob asked, studying the pendant intently.

"Not bad for a new hobby, is it?" Doug-R asked.

"It's breathtaking," Rob told him. He held the pendant by its thin gold chain. "Put it on me," he said. "I'm taking this with me," he added, as Doug-R carefully placed the pendant around his neck. "To eternity, I mean." Then a thought occurred to him. "Is this carved from...?"

"Jasper," Doug-R confirmed. Then he added: "I have an idea I'd like to ask you about. And you might change your mind about taking that pendant with you once you hear it..."

***

Doug-R opened the crate as soon as it was delivered. "Wake up," he instructed.

The anthroframe opened his eyes and stared ahead blankly for a few seconds. Then he looked at Doug-R. He seemed a little disoriented, but his eyes were clear, alive, inquisitive. His face was that of a man not quite at the midpoint of his life: Not so young it lacked character, but by no means old. His face was that of Rob, when Rob had been in his mid-forties – when Doug-R had come into his life.

"Do you know who you are? You are Rob-R," Doug-R told the newly-awakened Replacement.

"Yes," Rob-R said.

"And I'm Doug-R."

"I know. The mindbase scan transferred perfectly," Rob-R said.

"Then you understand."

Rob-R blinked and seemed to brighten. "Of course I do," he snorted, stretching as though after a long sleep. "And I remember your plan: Fifteen or twenty-four or forty-eight years from now, whenever you crash, we'll order a new Replacement for you and upload your last backup into him. Then, a century or so later, we'll do the same for me. And on, and on, and on." He stepped forward and kissed Doug-R. "Hello again, my love," he said. Then he held out his hand. "Give it."

Doug-R handed Rob-R the dragon pendant.

Rob-R fastened the thin gold chain around his neck with nimble fingers, then smiled at his husband. "Well?"

"Perfect," Doug-R said. "You're perfect." Doug-R held out his hand once again, and Rob-R took it. "When we said forever..." Doug-R started.

Rob-R finished: "...we meant forever."

Next week we venture into a pitch-black night, the kind of night that falls with the collapse of reason and the erosion of a civilization. If you feel this nightmare hits too close to home, then just wait a little while – because it's all too likely that this very day, this very moment is nothing more than a brief interregnum between bouts of madness, a time when "We Woke in the Long Dark Night."