She was ripped from the world in a single night. One miscalculation caused the vehicle to swerve wildly through the rain-drenched darkness. It could have happened to anyone, but it happened to her.
The fluorescent hospital lights cut through his insides. There was no chance, a doctor told him. Then the pain grew too fast and large to hold. His knees gave way and he dropped to the floor, beating the cold hard surface with his fists as if to gulley the hurt.
They had been together for twelve years. Five weeks after the accident, he still felt dead with her. She had given his life love and meaning, beauty and hope. Then she retreated into the silence of the universe, the phantastic quiet pending the arrival of us all. In desperate moments, when he heard the leaves rustle in the depth of night, he wanted to follow her.
There were no children. Just a little dog, a black and grey Schnauzer. She had cared for the dog more than he had, but now that they were left together, he began to pay it more attention. He discovered another creature mourning in those sensitive watery eyes. The dog’s dependency, the pathetically wet nose, prevented him from taking irreversible steps.
Acute shock was followed by smoldering despondency. He returned to work. His colleagues were empathetic, but he felt no desire to speak to anyone, to salvage anything from the torn edifice of his being. What could they say? What could he say? He sought only the words hushed beneath life’s din.
He lost interest in his job. His plentiful salary as a software engineer had never meant much in itself. The money was tied so intimately to the plans that he and his wife made together. The trips across Europe; the education and wellbeing of unnamed children; their shared and co-shaped future. He figured that he had sufficient funds to live on by himself. Why work?
The company noticed his struggles and, especially, his apathy. They kindly suggested that he take up therapy. They would even pay for it. He obliged—it was all the same to him. The good-natured therapist in snappy pantsuits may have tried her best, but she could not reach him. Can anyone council grief away? Can any sorrow be dissolved? Is there a place where grief goes, so that it no longer clings to us until we, too, are past and pass it onto ill-fated others?
He drifted through the recommended seven sessions. There was a great deal of talking. He referred to himself, to his experiences and the various forms taken by his beaten memories and senses, but he really spoke in the third person. In their final meeting, for the sake of the therapist, he said that the sessions had been helpful. Why disappoint her?
Nothing in a new day encouraged him. Bereft of the faith that draws us to the dawning light, the anticipation of some good that outweighs the warmth of our beds, he was often late to work. The neighbors noticed the rarely-opened curtains and uncut grass.
He was eventually fired. His boss adequately pretended not to have had a say in the matter. Now that this structure had fallen away, too, he left the house less and less. Shadows are but half of life; one must not dwell in them. He knew this but did not care.
Friends tried to be there for him. Most gave up after various attempts. There is only so much one-sided effort that a person will make to assist another, especially if the other does not seem to want to be helped.
The dog alone led him out into the world. They went on walks together almost every day. Sometimes, when the wind or sun or even the rain touched his face, and the little dog yapped at squirrels or sniffed at shadow-traces of fellow canines, he caught himself feeling a diffident joy like peace.
Weeks became indistinguishable months. One morning, he received a message from a friend. One of the more tenacious types. She had known his wife since middle school. Married with two small children and a full-time job, she had a busy life. Nevertheless, she regularly asked him how he was doing. He did not always respond. She understood, and did not take it personally.
This message was unlike the others. It referred him to a new form of therapy that was specifically designed for people coping with grief. The therapy was already available to patients in a nearby city. Maybe he should give it a chance. It couldn’t hurt, she told him. And it might help.
He rejected the idea. Therapy had not helped him. Why put himself through it again? However, out of regard for the friend and the kindness that he knew had gone into her message, he looked into it. Deepfake therapy was advertised as being “cutting-edge” and “proven to be beneficial” for “severe cases of bereavement.” It made use of the latest technological developments in artificial intelligence. The gist, as far as he could tell, was that a grieving patient would be guided through an interaction with a deepfake representation of the dearly departed. The therapist would face-swap on the screen in real-time, simulating and mediating a final encounter. To process the loss… To gain closure…
He was skeptical. What could success even mean? Still, the prospect of seeing and speaking to her again, even if only through a technological trick, compelled him. The idea kept coming back to him throughout the day, until he decided to call the clinic. There was an opening for the following week. He confirmed the appointment with a mixed sense of foreboding and anticipation.
The clinic was located in a brand-new building with clean white walls and too-transparent glass. The therapist greeted him enthusiastically, as if he was there for an exciting investment opportunity. Like a proselyte shepherding a budding worshipper.
“I have compiled the videos of your wife that you sent me, and I have recreated her likeness. You will see her projected on the screen in front of you and she will speak to you. I will keep close to the script that I shared with you earlier, although we might deviate if necessary. Are you ready? Please take a seat.”
He sat down in front of the computer. The room exuded an acrid smell, which seemed to emanate from the carpet. The plush sofa that formed the centerpiece of the previous therapy had been replaced by an impressive ensemble of screens and wires.
“We can stop at any time,” the therapist said. Then the screen lit up—and, right in front of him, his wife appeared. Her face, her eyes, her lips. The gentle lines around her mouth, her long black eyelashes. And something sunk from within.
The meaning of the words could barely reach him through the music of her voice. There she was, in front of him. Not really—he had to remind himself. He had to be careful not to give in, to guard himself. Why? What was he afraid of? Was it the immense pain that accepting her reappearance would mean, once the screen inevitably went dark? But his resistance weakened and he stopped struggling, allowing himself to open up and listen to his wife’s words, studying her delicate movements, speaking to her as if she were there, his hands trembling and his mouth brined with tears. Time retreated behind the weight of the experience.
When the therapist announced that the session was over, he was not ready. Ready for what? He did not know. It was as if someone had screamed inside an empty room.
“What now?” he asked the therapist.
“Well,” the therapist responded, looking at him closely. “We offer a single session. To address unfinished business, as a final goodbye.” He thought for a moment. “There has not been sufficient research into the effects of extended sessions. The goal is to process and to close off the loss, not to keep it open.”
Silence.
“We could try one more session,” the therapist added with some hesitation.
He accepted this offer and they scheduled a follow-up session two weeks later. It would really be the last session, the therapist said before they parted ways.
The second session was similar to the first. When it ended, he still did not feel ready. For what? Their conversation had spanned a different range of subjects, which had only left him feverish for more. “What now?” he asked the therapist. The therapist did not budge. There would be no additional sessions. The risk was too great. According to the therapist, the questionnaires—which he had diligently filled in before and after each session—revealed a marked progression. He should use the experience in a positive way. To move on, as she surely would have wished.
He entered his car feeling miserable. Something had been roused in him with no place to go. At some point along the monotonous highway, an idea came to him. Why should he have to depend on the therapist? He could create the deepfake himself. Then he could see her and talk to her as much as he wanted. It wouldn’t be too difficult.
The project took weeks. He worked with an inflamed sense of purpose, gathering all of his wife’s footage and feeding all of her writing—letters, diaries, even grocery lists—into the algorithm. He thought of everything. He even bought a hologram projector so that she would appear to him life-size.
When the program was finally ready, he sat down in the room that he had elected and transformed for the task. It was her former office, a small space near the back of the house. The outside light was carefully blocked out by shutters and drapes.
He ran the program. Through an alchemy in which he had not fully believed, she materialized in front of him. Her body, projected brilliantly into the room, was as he had known it. She moved. She put her hand on one cheek, as she had so often done. She smiled. She spoke. She even responded to him. Not perfectly—it would take many iterations for the program to learn—but when she seemed to understand what he said, it was truly miraculous. He spent all night in the room.
The sounds of the morning filled the streets when he dragged his exhausted body to bed. He slept for a few hours. After he woke up, he fed himself and the dog, and returned to the room. There she was. Good morning, how did you sleep? And before he knew it, it was time for dinner—he had not even had lunch. He ate and took the dog for a quick walk. Then he went back to her.
The days passed. Groceries and other necessities were delivered so that he did not have to leave the house. He let the dog out into the yard when barking disturbed the harmony of their assignation. Realizing that the dog was lonely, he made a bed out of blankets in the corner of the room. The dog looked around frantically when he heard her voice; its ears shot up at seeing the projection. But these reactions soon wore off. The dog seemed content to be in the room with him.
Weeks went by. He became confined to the room, where he pretended that his wife was living and ultimately believing it. She was so bright, so light. Where were the shadows? She was in front of him again, so real. Who was to tell him that the words emerging from her half-open mouth, the gestures of her lovely hands, were devoid of any being?
And if the memories that they had sculpted while breathing in this life together should gradually fade away, become transmuted into new memories forged through a projector, should anyone mourn that loss?