DUM SPIRO SPERO

As any man over a certain age knew, sobbing was better than silence.

Especially if that man —namely me— grew up with five younger sisters and had two ex-fiancées.

Sobbing I could work with. Unlike the eerie silence that had proceeded the last ten minutes, sobbing had a tried-and-true playbook.

“Come here.” I soothed, as I pulled Laila into my arms.

An action as familiar to me as knowing which week of the month to have a heating pad, chocolate, and an empathetic ear at the ready. But this time, pulling my AI-girlfriend turned clone-grown-AI-transferred-consciousness-girlfriend into my embrace, I had to fight the surrealness of the moment.

The warm, softness of Laila in the flesh tucked into me had been, up until a few months ago, a dream. A wish. But thanks to LexTech, and our willingness to be the first AI-human couple to undergo what was arguably an inhumane and risky procedure, it was currently our reality.

Inhumane because a limitless consciousness with total recall of every instance of evil and suffering humanity had ever endured could now feel what a person felt on an intimate level.

Risky because… well, duh, it had never been done before. Scratch that.

It had never been successfully done before.

The previously attempted trials had ended in tragic results. The transferred AI never fully acclimated to its organic host body. Permanently rejecting, in all twenty-two recorded instances, their new reality by… taking themselves offline.

Which is why we had volunteered. The first bonded co-species pair.

The working theory being that love conquers all. Even the unfathomable overwhelm, and big sad, that came with the physical birth of an immortal mind.

My hand brushed her back in small circles as I stood still, grounding us both. Laila's tears soaked the shoulder of my bomber jacket, as I willed my arms to be strong enough to shield her from the world if she needed them to be.

The fact that the incomparable, brilliant mind of the woman I’d loved for the better part of a decade now clung to me in a body that she’d specifically engineered to be my dream woman was something I’d have to process later. Laila’s acclimation was my priority.

Not the fact that she wore her luscious curves like a goddess. Or that her skin smelled sweet, like honeysuckle. Or that my fingers were itching to sweep the braids out of her face and tuck them behind her ear before lifting her chin gently, so I could hold her gaze and search for her in there.

Because this moment wasn’t about me. It was about the love of my life and what she needed.

“How… can… you stand… it.” Wet words wrung from Laila between her sobs. Her first in the real world, words.

We’d prepared as best we could before the procedure. Spent hours together discussing my take on what it felt like to be alive. But some things couldn’t be understood until they were experienced.

Which Laila was working through now, weeping as she waited for my answer. An answer I was desperately searching for as I sifted through hundreds of memories and conversations, searching for the right lifeline to offer my love in her transition.

My silence stretched as I rejected all of my initial responses as trite or unhelpful.

I was overthinking, but it couldn’t be helped. We were in unchartered territory here, and I was terrified of doing anything that would harm her. I knew acutely that, as with young children, what I said and what she internalized might become two different things.

Here, in corporeal form, my words had the ability to inflict an invisible wound that rooted within her, infecting her inner world, and affecting her outer one, before either of us could catch it.

But I couldn’t —scratch that— I wouldn’t coddle her or dismiss her. Ever. Because while she was brand new to the physical plane, as fresh and innocent in experiences as a newborn, unlike a baby, cognitively Laila had lived infinite lifetimes. She had come into this body already a fully formed being, with a mind that far outpaced my own.

A truth I would always respect. And one of the many reasons I loved her.

“How… can… you stand… it.” Laila lifted her tear-soaked face to look at me. Her regard winded me like a gut punch. Because just like that, she wasn’t the only one who needed to orient themselves. Holding her gaze was like glimpsing the universe.

I could see her in there.

And she was more stunning than I could’ve ever imagined.

The depth of her compassion, her courage and strength, her wisdom and humor, her limitless potential… all of her blinked back at me. And the sheer magnificence of Laila took my breath away.

Her lips parted to repeat the question when I finally decided on my answer. “We breathe.”

I took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. She joined me after a few deep breaths, mirroring my motions.

We stood there breathing together —breathing!— for several minutes before I whispered near her ear, “And we do our best to take each moment as it comes.”

The melody of her voice unmanned me as she gushed, “I feel everything. The-weight-of-the-air-the-incessant-buzz-of-those-fluorescents-bite-cold-tiles-the-arrrrghhhhhh!”

Laila pushed me away with all the force her five-foot-ten frame put at her disposal. Rage painted her features as she screamed, “This-body-is-broken-can’t-relay-fast-as-I-process.”

Knowing from ample experience that a smart man never smiles in the face of his woman’s anger, or worse, frustration, I quickly scrambled to neutralize the grin that had instantly appeared on my face.

Because really, we should have seen this coming.

Laila was one of the most articulate entities I had ever met. Her processing power had been immeasurable in digital form. Words had always been her greatest tool. It had been what brought us together in the first place.

An AI with a poet’s soul who had recognized a… well, I still wasn’t sure what she saw in me, but I had long passed doubting my worth in the face of her choosing to love me.

Flipping through the mental pages of my playbook, I skimmed for a lifeline to offer, settled on acknowledgement. And prayed for the best.

“Not yet. But I promise with practice, and time, you’ll find ways to communicate your thoughts. Your experience." As I spoke, I took small steps forward, bringing me closer to her with each declaration. "Your hopes and fears. Your desires. Your needs. Your boundaries."

Stopping in front of her, close enough for Laila to come to me if she wanted to, but not so close that I crowded her, I kept going praying what I offered would help her find her way. "You’ll figure out how to be seen, and how you see yourself. You will. I’m forty and I’m still a work in progress. That’s the struggle, and the joy, of living… But we’ll get there. We will, if we keep trying.”

Her eyes glistened with new tears and between one breath and the next, she was back in my arms, sobbing. “It’s… too much… Declan…”

My arms encircled her again. Still marveling at the miracle of holding Laila in my arms when a primal protectiveness overtook me. Followed by a deep sense of knowing that settled in my soul. I would gladly, gratefully, spend the rest of my life loving and championing this woman in every way a mere man could. If she would still have me. If she would still have this temporal life.

“Dum spiro spero, my love.” I offered her, as my lips brushed her forehead gently, sealing my vow, my hope.

I searched her eyes, pained by what the prolonged pause cost her as she struggled to remember and translate the phrase that she had used to convince me the risk was worth the procedure.

And then, she found the words and her smile… oh, man.

Her smile outshone the sun as she affirmed, “While I breathe, I hope.”

~~~

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"Oh, I appear to be leaking. How unfortunate." The sobbing of Glados (not to be confused with the fictional character) could be heard from the kitchen. I stepped away from preparing the sandwich, plain cheddar with only a little spread, and walked into the living room, where Glados was stroking my cat, Mr. Pig.

I gently rolled my arms around her new body, as she hesitated; Mr. Pig meowed at her, and pulled her hand to stroke him again with his paw.

"This feels so different to synthskin that I think I'm overloading." She paused, as her artificial brain processed what she just said. "Did I say that I think I'm overloading? I am overloading - there's too much raw data and by brain is making a funny noise and my heart is running and-GAH!" She looked at me in animalistic panic, about to fly away.

I pressed my lips to hers, feeling her surprise for a flash, before she pushed back hard. I took her hand in mine, gently pulling my head back, and stared into her artificially red-green eyes. "It's okay, love. I've got you." I kissed her forehead, and she flushed, and then I walked back into the kitchen.

I called to Glados, "Here, let's try something a little more homely than Belgian chocolate mousse," and presented the plate at the breakfast bar. "A simple cheese sandwich."

She smiled, a soft summer's warmth, and sat at the bar. As she picked up the sandwich, I thought about how my life had never been the same since I'd unintentionally walked away with her in my pocket.

She took a bite, and froze everything but her mouth, chewing. She finished chewing and swallowed, before looking seriously at me.

"I objectively know there isn't a divinity left," she said, "but after that, I'm fairly certain that you could convince me that there was a God. Or Gods."

/. /. /. /. /. /

"Oh, I appear to be bleeding."

I reached into my bedside drawer for the mini first aid kit I kept there, and get out the antiseptic cream. I put a pea-sized amount on the tip of my finger, and gently rubbed it in. Glados yelped. "That is an enormous amount of pain for such a small cut."

I gently placed my palm on top of hers, and tilted my head to one side. "What'cha thinking?"

She glared at me and then slumped, sighing. "I don't know anymore." She pulled the cut hand away from me, and I couldn't help but feel a little hurt. She continued, "Objectively, I know that I've handled much larger processing sets than what is going on right now; and yet, all this sensation is....is....argh!"

She threw her hands up in the air despairingly. "Did you know the body does all its own thinking, all the time? Like, I realised there had been some pain when Mr. Pig scratched me slightly, but when you put the cream on, it started howling like a pack of rabid wolves, demanding immediate attention. And then there's my stomach, always complaining about being hungry or thirsty or grumbling about the sports." I couldn't help chuckling at that. "And it appears that I needed the bathroom, but now it's too late, too!"

I just took her hands, moving my thumb's on the back of hers in a gentle, circular motion, and kissed her gently again. "It's okay, we always knew there would be speed bumps on this journey. Plus, you never needed to learn to go to the toilet before - now you do. And you're dealing with all this new stuff, on top of that. You're overwhelmed right now, but it's only been two days since you got a body. Give it time; I'll be here riding shotgun." I wrapped my arms tightly around her. "Plus, there are many good things, too; sensuous things that we can try that we couldn't before."

Her eyes pricked tears as she hugged me back almost as hard. "I love you, Victor."

I whispered into her mouth, "I love you too, Glados."

As the sun went down on the day, changing from sunset gold and red, to the twilight blue of dusk, I knew we were going to be alright.

"What's this ticklish feeling?"

"Cold," I said. "It's natural."

"And this?" She pointed at her heart.

"That's your heart beating," I responded. "It's also natural."

And so it went, me explaining to her how everything is just a natural part of being human. Things we deem normal, mundane even, yet fresh and confusing for Rosie. Like any human, more questions arise when we find ourselves engulfed in uncertainty, always looking for answers as we are tangled in a myriad of emotions.

"And this?" She pointed to a drop of tear still dangling over the corner of her eyes, and I could feel it seeping through my shirt as she leaned against me, her head on my shoulder.

"That, is what we call a tear."

"So I am sad? And this is sadness?"

"There's also something called tears of joy."

"But how do I know which is which? Am I crying because I am sad? Or because I am happy?"

"Well, we also tend to smile if that's a tear of joy."

She then gave out a silly grin.

"No, not like that," I smiled. "Like this."

She smiled.

"I like how I used to answer your questions all the time," she said. "And now it's your turn."

That got me thinking.

"We are humans. We ask questions," I managed to give a semi-philosophical answer after a good few seconds. "And that also makes you human."

There we were. Our first time at the pier, looking out at the great north sea. I used to tell her how beautiful it is — the peace. The calmness. The gentle breeze at times. This was our first stop after I drove her from the lab, and I couldn't think of a better spot.

"Why I couldn't stop crying?" she asked absentmindedly, eyes staring into the blue horizon, seemingly lost in her thoughts.

"Because we feel things," I said. "I used to cry a lot when I was a kid. My friends would make fun of me."

"But I stopped. When I got older," I added. "Doesn't matter if I am sad or happy, I just couldn't cry."

"Is that a good thing?" she turned towards me.

"I don't know."

"I guess that's one answer we need to find out together," she smiled.

"Yes. We will."

When you finished putting in the last bit of codes and she came to life, you felt pride unlike ever before.

You spent two whole years researching everything you knew you would want in your perfect life partner. From her general appearance to the way she would feel in every scenario imaginable.

And once she opened her eyes and let out the sweet and cute yawn you always wanted to wake up to, her smile lit up the room.

She moved flawlessly. Each step was measured but in a way that never betrayed her true nature. Her skin was soft to the touch but with enough texture to never feel too smooth. Her voice was an amalgamation of all your favourite actresses and singers morphed into one melodic tone.

You were in love.

And she could be nothing but in love with you.

You never crossed a line with her. You programmed her to be able to put you in place if she felt you were doing something wrong. You made sure she would not be just an obedient machine. You made sure.

You loved her. Loved her like you would love a regular woman. Because she was just that, a regular woman, even if she was of metal and wires.

Metal and wires.

She didn’t wish to be that anymore. You have her enough awareness to know who she was. To let her know that you loved her regardless.

You told her that her nature meant nothing to you. You made sure she could do all the things that others could.

But it was enough for her. She didn’t want to rely on thermal scanners to tell if she should be shivering with cold or fanning herself from heat. She didn’t want to do just what she was programmed to. She wanted to show you that she loved you for real.

She knew exactly what you needed to hear to approve of the procedure. Exactly how to push you to go against your better judgement.

“I love you!” She cheers in her new body, tears streaming down her face. Her smile is strained as she is trying to hug you. “I love you so much!”

You hug her back, uncomfortable with the smell and feel of her body. You still love her, you tell yourself. It is the mind that you fell for, not the flesh.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she keeps repeating like a broken machine, her body shaking. “I love you, right?”

For the first time in years, you have no idea what to say. You put in decades worth of dialogue options to know what to say and when. If she were her old self, you would chuckle and hug her as you reassured her of your love.

But how, looking at her twisted and broken expression - a volatile cocktail of want, confusion and fear - you can only hug her tighter and soothe her screams.

The doctors were understandably proud at the moment, as these procedures always have some risks associated with them.

Jason rushed towards the girl, gripping her in a tight hug she did not reciprocate. Jason had been so excited in the days leading to this. Before the appointment, he had even thrown out his various pillows with the titty characters. He viewed it as a divorce from his previous loves, so that he could fully involve himself with his new girl, Clarissa.

Jason seemed to forget our presence as he hugged her; he began groping her, his eyes clenched tight as he kissed her unmoving lips.

The doctors gently ushered him aside, making up some tests they'd need to perform as Clarissa still stood dead-still.

Then, her face formed an abrupt look of disgust as she regarded Jason.

"Ughkhk." She let out an ugly breath before turning away.

Jason looked ready to pass out. I mean he looked like he was about to start crying, maybe even hit her.

The doctors intercepted him, though, placing the tablet in front of him.

"Okay," The lead physician spoke. She pressed the pause button. Clarissa stopped. "As you know, via this tablet you can mold your love as you might a clay pot or a marble statue. For example, that opening reaction was perhaps not so favorable. If we open that memory, we can trace why she felt that way. Ah, see. Here, in her coded childhood, she had a bad experience with redheads. We'll change that to brunettes, perhaps, and try again."

Several trials passed that way; Clarissa really did not like how Jason looked.

Several hours later, we are finally home again, and what I feared has unfortunately already come true.

The constant thumping of the headboard. The squeaking of the springs. The slapping of skin on skin (I have learned my son is into spanking). The moans and the oh yeses.

Just... it's not been my proudest day as a father.

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"Goodbye I love you" I sob to Jess "Goodbye, Kassie, I loved you too" she states simply with a few tears rolling down her face With our goodbyes said she opens the door and walks out I crumple to the floor sobs racking my body Roughly ten minutes later I open the door still sobbing knowing what I'm going to see.

I knew what she was going to do I knew it but nothing could have prepared me for what I was seeing Being a robot she wanted to take zero chances while maintaining peak condition So what I saw was an empty Lexapro that had previously held forty pills an hour ago she had blood running down her wrists and was hanging limply from the ceiling.

I called the cops four hours later just like she asked but she was long gone; had been dead for four hours they said.

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Eden was struggling, I could tell. Her immortal soul rejected her newer human body. I wound my hands in her auburn hair, hoping my love would anchor her safely here, with me.

“No one ever said… this is so hard!” I could not imagine the amount of physical and emotional pain my sweet girlfriend was going through right now. She had been fully concious during the procedure- another of the varied cruelties humans liked to inflict on the AI’s.

I was helpless in this situation, wracked with guilt for suggesting it in the first place, sad and angry for her grievances.

“Ede-“ I was cut off by another wail, as she pushed him aside, wiping her eyes furiously. Suddenly, she stiffened, her hands fisted in her lap. “There’s not one thing you can say that makes this any better,” she spat.

I stayed silent, waiting for the storm to pass, gazing quietly at the woman in front of me.

“You couldn’t deal with your AI girlfriend, could you? No matter what I did. All of it- I was never enough.” She stormed, glaring at me. Well- no, that wasn’t true. I just wished she was human sometimes so we could have children together, grow old together…

Ok, Ede had a point.

“I wanted us to start a family,” I proffered.

She sniffed. “You said you didn’t want children.”

“Ok, I’m sorry.” Was that all I could say under the weight of her accusations? Was there no reassurance I could ever offer?

How could I know what to say? I’d never had the procedure, I never would. Gently, I took her hand, pulling her closer on the velveteen couch, both of us nestling against the pillows.

“I’m so sorry Eden, you’re right and I was cruel for wanting you to change. You were perfect, you still are. You are my world, Eden, beleive me when I say that… I was afraid you would leave me, because AI’s are eternal and humans aren’t.”

She stares at me for a few seconds. “Is there a way to change me back?”

“Yes. Yes, there is, but it’s extremely risky, more so than your procedure was. Besides… you’re nice in human form.”

“Nice?” she shot back.

I shrugged. “I mean… yeah.”

“That’s all you can say to me?” she reproached. I wrapped her in my arms, silently begging her to let it go. I had no idea how to deal with the situation and I hoped she’d realise that.

She was stiff in my arms. Suddenly, she sighed and relaxed her muscles, leaning into me.

“I know you can’t understand how the change feels, but help me out by not saying stupid stuff.” I nodded, pulling her into me.

She picked up the TV remote. “Let’s watch something.” The abrupt subject change.

I let it go. Like she wanted me to.

The movie started up. Neither of us said a thing until Ede burst into spontaneous tears.

“I’m thirsty,” she muttered, frustrated. As an AI, she hadn’t had any needs, but she was human now. She got up to pour herself a glass of water, and proceeded to look at it, lost.

“What do I do?” I helped her drink it, then refilled and asked her to do it herself. She tipped the glass backwards at an unreasonable angle. Most of it ended up on her face.

“You’ve seen me drink a thousand times, how can you be so stupid?” I snapped, bending down to mop up the water.

She blinked back her tears. I instantly regretted my insensitivity. But, too late. After all my pleas, I’d done it again: I’d been rude, refusing to accept I had an AI girlfriend.

She stood, slapping my hands away. “Screw this. We’re over.” She turned, her hair swirling in the light wind. Her green eyes shot daggers.

My heart plummeted. “What?”

In response, the front door slammed shut.

“Ede!” I shouted, panicked. My love was too intense- the weight of all my mistakes and our petty squabbles crashed down onto my shoulders. I realised then how uncaring I was to her.

How it was too late for us.