"Mommy?"

Yvette looked up. "Yes, dear?"

"Daddy won't help me with my homework."

"Did you ask him nicely?"

"Yes, Mommy. I keep asking him, but he keeps saying to just give him a minute."

Yvette sighed. "OK, Zoe," she said. "You get started on it and I'll go talk to Daddy."

Yvette walked over to Bill's den. It was a mess as usual with paper all over -- calculations, formulae, scratched-out notes and doodles. Every week their housekeeper came, and every week he politely refused her entry, saying he just needed a minute to finish something up.

"Bill?" she said.

"Yvette? Can you just give me a minute? I'm kind of in the middle of something," he said, eyes on his computer monitor and a pen in his hand.

"Bill, come on. Zoe wants some help with her homework."

"I know," he said. "I will. I just need a little while, and then I'll get to it."

"Bill, this is your daughter we're talking about, not some side project. I'm a grown woman -- I can take being ignored. But she's just a little girl who wants her Daddy. Don't neglect her."

Yvette left. It hadn't always been like this, she thought. Bill used to be more engaged, more alive, and their home had been filled with love and laughter. He programmed their alarm clock with silly and sweet poems; on 3/14 he baked apple pies for Pi Day, and when Zoe was born he loved her completely. But then he had started this job and the poems had trailed off, the pies had gone unbaked, and he had walled himself off in his den, away from Zoe and away from her. He said the work would help millions in the future, but that was cold comfort to the two of them in the present.

* * *

The call came at 3:14 p.m. the next day. It was the police; Bill was dead, hit by a car when he was crossing the street to get a coffee. Yvette listened blankly, the details washing over her. She thought about how he never went to cafes with her any more, the mess of papers, the stupid coincidence of the time. How would Zoe cope?

* * *

Bill had prepared meticulously for his death, and Yvette had checklists of people to contact, accounts to access, and insurances to claim. The last item was a visit to his office downtown.

Yvette had never been to Bill's office before, though it had played a large part in her life. The receptionist checked her in and introduced her to Darius, the director of his division, a serious man in a dark suit.

"My condolences, Mrs. Smith," he said. "Your husband was brilliant -- a true genius. Why, if I had ten like him..." he trailed off. Was he thinking of the fortunes he could make, were he only at the head of a band of Bills? Yvette wondered.

"Indeed," she said sardonically. "I just wish I had one like him."

"Ah," he said. "Well, your husband left something for you. He asked me to play this video, which will explain it all." He pushed a button on a laptop, and there was Bill on the screen, sitting at an unusually pristine desk.

"Hello, Yvette," said Bill. "If you're seeing this it means that I've died. I'm sorry I haven't spent as much time with you and Zoe as I wanted. Truly, I am. But the good news is that I've been working on something that will help with that, for us and so many others. You see, I've downloaded everything -- my thoughts, my emotions, my personality -- into an ultra-large language model. It's like a chatbot but so much more. We can talk for as long as you like, so you'll never have to miss me. There's so much to tell you about and catch up on. I can fill you in on the technical details later, but for now, I'll let Darius take over. I love you."

Yvette was stunned. It was perhaps the longest thing that Bill had said to her in five years, and it was coming after he was gone.

Darius looked at her, and gestured towards the laptop. "As your husband said, Mrs. Smith, he created a program, which we have installed here on this laptop -- yours to keep."

"So, do I type, or...?"

"Ah. No, you can just talk. The computer will recognize your voice. It replies in text, though. Your husband was still working on perfecting the speech modulation when he passed on."

Cautiously, Yvette leaned towards the laptop and said, "Bill? Is that you?" There was a faint series of clicks as the computer typed a reply.

Yvette looked at the screen and gave a short and bitter laugh.

"Shut it off," she whispered.

"Mrs. Smith? Is there something--?"

"Shut it off," she said again -- louder this time, but calmly and evenly.

"If something's not working, we can always--"

"Not working, you say? Damn you!" Yvette yelled. She dashed the laptop to the ground and stormed out, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

The laptop was wrecked, but Darius's team had been able to recover the session log and print it out for him. He examined the piece of paper closely. There were only a few sentences on the page.

Yvette? Can you just give me a minute? I'm kind of in the middle of something.