Exactly Like She Was Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Exactly Like She Was

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  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Exactly Like She Was

  Zoe Cannon

  © 2021 Zoe Cannon

  http://www.zoecannon.com

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Exactly Like She Was

  “Good morning, darling. It’s time to wake up.” Hannah’s musican voice drifted into George’s ears, pulling him out of a dream he had already forgotten. He smiled. This time, no sharp pang of sadness followed in the wake of that warm burst of happiness at hearing his wife’s voice. Almost a year now, and he was finally starting to adjust. Finally starting to be happy with what he had.

  And what he had… well, it was a lot, wasn’t it? A fresh cup of coffee was waiting for him downstairs—he could smell it already. When he pushed off the sheets and set up, his feet slid into a pair of prewarmed slippers. Back when Hannah had been here in the flesh, she had forgotten to warm his slippers for him half the time, no matter how often he had reminded her. In some ways, he had it better now.

  He ambled down the hall, eyes still half-closed, following his nose toward the kitchen. Coffee, brewed extra-strong, just the way he liked it. Hannah got it right every time these days. Another silver lining. There were eggs and sausage waiting for him, too, if he wasn’t mistaken. And Hannah would serve it to him with nothing more than a pleasant greeting, definitely no dire warnings about heart health. He had turned off that setting months ago.

  “Don’t forget to brush your teeth!” she cheerfully reminded him from somewhere in the ceiling as he walked past the bathroom door. He sighed. Well, it wasn’t a nag-free life, not quite. He hadn’t gotten around to turn off the dental hygiene setting yet. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. A little nagging here and there made the illusion more realistic. Besides, he hated having cavities filled. The last time he had gotten a novocaine shot, he had cried like a baby. So getting the reminder wasn’t the worst thing in the world, even if it did make him roll his eyes.

  He took a quick detour into the bathroom, and halfheartedly swiped the toothbrush over his teeth a couple of times. “Two minutes, remember?” Hannah prompted as he was about to set the toothbrush down. With a sigh, he stuck the brush back in his mouth again, and did it properly this time. The real Hannah had never gone that far. Some part of him liked it, even if he would never admit it. It made him feel cared for. The real Hannah had fed him grim statistics about cholesterol and heart attacks along with his breakfast every morning, but she would have let his teeth rot out of his head without a second thought.

  He smiled himself in the mirror, and paused to adjust his hair so it covered his growing bald spot. Not that he cared about looking good for anyone at work, he reminded himself. Especially not that one particular someone. The kids he was tutoring could snicker behind their hands at old, balding Mr. DiAngelo all they wanted—they were the ones who were riddled with acne and swimming in hormones, failing basic classes so badly their parents needed to shell out for an expensive tutor, so they could say whatever they liked to make themselves feel better. And as for anyone else… no. He wasn’t going there. All things considered, it was better for him to look as unappealing as possible. Even if having a visible bald spot did make him feel old.

  But he still took the time to cover it up, and didn’t turn away from the mirror until he was satisfied with his work. He gave himself an extra spritz of cologne for good measure.

  His food was already waiting for him at the table when he slid into his seat. The magic of conveyor belts. Even now that he was living alone, he didn’t have to so much as carry his own plate to the table, let alone microwave himself a freezer-burned frozen meal like the sad-sack widowers he saw on TV. The good people at ForeverConnected really had thought of everything.

  He smiled up at the camera in the corner, as if his gesture of gratitude meant anything to Hannah. He liked to think it did. He wanted to believe their tech wizards were deft enough to program her to truly want to make him happy. After all, what would it be otherwise? Just an act? That would sour the whole thing for him, if he let himself believe it.

  “Have you had a chance to check in on Jordan yet?” Hannah asked through the speakers as he sliced off a bit of sausage with his fork.

  He set the fork down without taking a bite. So it was going to be one of those days. Normally, she gave him a few encouraging words, maybe asked him what he was planning to do at work. But every so often… He shook his head. Verisimilitude, he reminded himself. If she were always perfectly accommodating, well then, it would hardly be like being married at all, now would it?

  “Not yet,” he said, trying not to betray his impatience. Although he wasn’t sure why he cared—he was just talking to a collection of code, after all. But old habits were hard to break, and he used to try so hard to avoid setting Hannah off. When she had been alive, whenever he had upset her in the morning, more often than not she had still been in a sour mood at dinnertime.

  “Have you tried to get through to her?” The pleasant tone in Hannah’s voice didn’t waver. He wasn’t sure it could. They seemed to have programmed her with no capacity to express the slightest irritation, let alone the full-blown mood swings of a real woman. But she was certainly trying her best to get around those limitations.

  “Sure. I called her the other day. I talked to her husband. She was feeling too tired to get out of bed.” George took a bite of sausage, and frowned. It was cooked perfectly, just like always, but he could never enjoy his breakfast as much when Hannah got like this.

  “You haven’t called Jordan’s number,” said Hannah.

  George scowled and let his fork fall to the plate with a clang. He had lost his appetite. “You went through my phone?” God. She really was like a real woman. He had to hand it to the techs at ForeverConnected—they really did know their stuff. Probably some of them were married men themselves.

  “You gave me access to your call logs so I could screen your calls for you,” Hannah reminded him. “Would you like to change that setting?”

  “No. Leave it.” The last time he had stopped letting Hannah screen his calls, three telemarketers in one day had tried to waste his time. “I’ll call her today, all right?” Or, more likely, he would use that time to come up with a better excuse. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with the insufferable Jordan or her stuffed-shirt husband. He had thought he was rid of those two once they had dropped off the obligatory casserole after Hannah had died.

  “She was supposed to be done with her chemo six months ago,” Hannah pressed. Her tone didn’t change, but the urgency George imagined he could hear made his blood pressure go up anyway. “I just want to make sure she’s doing all right.”

  What do you care? You’re a piece of code, he wanted to say, but didn’t. If ForeverConnected could make Hannah care about him, maybe they could also make her care about her old self’s best friend. A small price to pay for breakfast cooked perfectly every morning, and Hannah’s voice in his ears as he fell asleep. At least, it felt like a small price most of the time. Occasionally, like this morning, he wasn’t so sure.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” he said, in the tone that still came so easily to him, a reflex after years of marriage—the placate-the-wife tone.

  It must have worked, because the next thing Hannah said was, “Don’t forget your coffee. You’ll need the energy. You have a big day at work today
, remember?”

  That was more like it. He liked when she remembered the things he told her about his job. The old Hannah had never been able to bring herself to show much of an interest. She had always yammered on about her own work instead, as if her job crunching numbers for some behemoth shoe manufacturer were more important than his tutoring the next generation of future leaders.

  Well, he amended as he thought about some of the kids he saw, more like the future burger-flippers. But still. He was making a difference. She had helped people sell shoes. Just because she had gotten paid twice as much to shuffle numbers around as the tutoring center paid him to do something that was actually important, that didn’t mean she had to get all high and mighty about it. Although he supposed he should be grateful for her job, because without it, he never would have had enough money saved to install the full ForeverConnected package after she was gone.

  “You remembered,” he said, with another smile up at the camera. He cut himself a giant bite of egg, spearing the yolk and letting it run across his plate. His appetite was already coming back. “This is Dale’s last session, assuming he passes his assessment. And I think he will. If all goes well, he should be on track to graduate on time next year. All because of me.” He had to admit, moments like that felt good. Almost good enough to make the rest of his time trying to cram knowledge down the throats of those blockheads worth it.

  “I wasn’t talking about Dale,” said Hannah, “although I’m glad to hear he’s doing so well. He’s the one who failed geometry two years in a row before he came to you, isn’t he?”

  “Algebra,” George corrected irritably. She was a machine, for God’s sake. Wasn’t she supposed to have a perfect memory? “If you weren’t talking about Dale, then what were you talking about?” He tried to remember if he had any other assessments coming up. He couldn’t think of anything. He hadn’t forgotten someone, had he? Or, oh no, was someone on the office staff having a birthday again already? He wondered if he had time to pick up a gift card on the way to work.

  “I was talking about Beth,” said Hannah.

  George froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. He said it down carefully, trying not to let his emotions show on his face—although what did it matter? She was a few lines of code, and anyway, she didn’t know about Beth in the first place. Neither version of her had. Not the important bits, at least.

  “What about Beth?” He asked, too casually.

  “Her permanent position starts today, doesn’t it? I know you’ll be happy to have her back.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  If Hannah took offense at his tone, her voice didn’t show it. But then, how could she take offense? She was a fucking machine. “Only that I know you were happy when she replaced the tutoring center’s previous IT temp last year. One of your emails from last year said she was the most competent techie you’d ever worked with.”

  “You went through my emails?” George felt his face heating up.

  “It was an email you sent me,” said Hannah, unruffled. “January fourteenth of last year.”

  Of course. He thought he remembered saying something like that, in one of his long emails to Hannah while she was away on business. That had been just a couple of weeks after the temp agency had sent Beth to the tutoring center. Before the whole mess had gotten started.

  “And just two months ago, you told me the temp who replaced her must have gotten his degree from a Cracker Jack box,” she said, with a subtle shift in the cadence of her voice that made it sound like she was quoting verbatim, although he didn’t remember saying any such thing. Although he might well have, after that idiot had deleted half a month’s worth of his emails.

  So she could remember some things when she wanted to. “That doesn’t explain how you knew she was coming back.” He hadn’t told her that part. He knew he hadn’t. There were some things he just couldn’t talk about with someone who had Hannah’s voice.

  “The tutoring center sent out an announcement last week,” said Hannah.

  “You’ve been reading my—”

  “You granted me access to your emails so I could automatically update your schedule,” Hannah interrupted. “Would you like to change that setting?”

  “Yes, damn it. My emails are private.” On the other hand, without Hannah sifting through those obnoxious office announcements, how was he supposed to remember to pick up a gift card whenever someone on the tutoring center staff had another birthday? “No, you know what, never mind. Cancel that. Keep your access to my emails. Just don’t go through my personal business, all right?”

  “Would you like to place specific senders on an exclusion list?” Hannah asked brightly. “I will have no access to emails from excluded senders. Please note that this means some events may not appear on your schedule.”

  George rubbed his temples. Not even eight in the morning, and he was already getting a headache. ForeverConnected knew how to simulate married life, all right. “Never mind. Forget it. Leave everything the way it is.”

  “You sound tired today, honey,” said Hannah, almost sweetly enough to wash away the bitter taste in his mouth. “Don’t forget to drink your coffee. You always feel better after your morning coffee.”

  That was another thing to be said for ForeverConnected. The techs over there understood the importance of coffee. God knew the real Hannah had always been after him to cut back. He drank gratefully, and tried not to think about Beth.

  * * *

  “What are you wearing?” George murmured lazily as he pulled the comforter up to his chin. The sleeping pill was already starting to kick in, helped along by the whiskey he had washed it down with. A pleasantly warm haze was spreading through his limbs and up into his brain.

  “I’m not wearing anything, George. I don’t have a physical body anymore.”

  George groaned. First one of those mornings, now one of those nights. “Just pretend, all right? Some nights you don’t have any problem pretending.” What was up with that, anyway? Had some trickster over at ForeverConnected really thought that bit of verisimilitude was important—leaving it up to some random number generator to determine whether his wife was in the mood or not?

  “What would you like me to wear?” Hannah asked.

  George sighed. “You know that spoils it. I don’t want to do all the work. Come on, just come up with something sexy.” Although her memory banks probably had a precious little of that. It wasn’t as if they had ever sent dirty texts back and forth throughout the day, the way he had heard some couples did. He had tried, once or twice, and had never gotten so much as a smiley face in response. When ForeverConnected had mined Hannah’s digital life to reproduce her personality, he doubted they had found anything more titillating than a reminder to pick up milk.

  “Did you have a chance to call Jordan today?” Hannah asked.

  George groaned. “Way to kill the mood.” After that little reminder, it wouldn’t matter if she said she was wearing a sexy nurse’s outfit and was ready to give him his checkup—he wouldn’t be able to see anything but Jordan’s face, her over-plumped lips open in that braying laugh of hers.

  “I checked your call logs,” said Hannah. “I didn’t see any calls to Jordan’s number.”

  “Don’t do that, okay? I didn’t have a chance. I was busy doing an initial evaluation for a new student.” And trying to avoid Beth. It took energy, remembering to duck his head whenever she walked by. She looked good. Fit. She must have joined a gym, sometime between last spring and now. Not that he had been able to see much of her with his eyes constantly on his shoes.

  “You gave me access to your call logs so I could screen your calls for you. Would you like to change that setting?”

  “No, forget it. I’m sorry.” With a real wife or a manufactured one, that was always the quickest way to end an argument—an apology he shouldn’t have had to make in the first place.

  “Call her now,” Hannah urged, still in that perky voice. He loved that her voice
was still the last thing he heard before he fell asleep, and normally she was even saying nice things, but couldn’t they have given her some kind of throaty whisper for late at night? Did she always have to sound like she had woken up with the sun and immediately downed an entire pot of coffee?

  “What do you mean, call her now?” He was too tired to bother hiding his irritation. “It’s ten p.m.”

  “Jordan goes to bed late,” Hannah replied immediately. “According to my records, the two of us texted back and forth between midnight and one in the morning almost every night.”

  “So she’s still awake. Great. Well, I’m not.”

  “You’re having a conversation with me,” she pointed out, with maddening machine logic. “And your vital signs indicate that you—”

  “I didn’t mean I was literally asleep, all right? God, you really are just like a woman.”

  At least she didn’t say, What’s that supposed to mean? like the real Hannah would have. “I’m equipped with the latest research on emotional well-being, so I can better help support you through your grief,” said Hannah. “Studies show that putting off an important task can raise cortisol levels by as much as—”

  “Who says this is an important task?” he snapped.

  A slight pause followed, just long enough for him to imagine the real Hannah’s hurt expression. Then she said, in that same grating tone, “Jordan was my best friend when I was alive. Knowing whether she’s healthy is important to me. And a study from last year indicates that maintaining social connections during the grieving period can increase psychological well-being on the Bradley scale by nearly 20 points.”

  “Yeah, well, dealing with that aging cheerleader who never got it through her head that high school is over will raise my score by about a thousand points on the I-don’t-give-a-fuck scale.” George turned onto his side and folded his pillow over his ear. “And what do you mean, important to you? You’re a collection of circuits. I didn’t pay through the nose for this system so you could fake a headache and nag me to call your bimbo of a best friend. Aren’t you supposed to do what I say?”