Show us who you are

It’s Saturday, the day after the party. I’m sitting at our breakfast table and Gregor has made me a plate of buttery toast and two large fried eggs. Dad is staring out the window, as he does now that Mum isn’t here to tell him off for putting too much salt on his eggs. Gregor is reading the newspaper.

“What does Pomegranate do?”

I ask Gregor the question. Dad glances at me nervously.

“It’s not easy to explain,” Gregor says carefully, laying his newspaper down with an air of great importance. “They use artificial intelligence to provide a service.”

“Like robots?”

“No, not robots. More like holograms.”

“Gregor.” Dad’s voice is a warning.

“What are they holograms of?” I ask Gregor, ignoring Dad.

“Well, they’re of people,” Gregor says. “Of real people.”

I frown in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“When it’s fully up and running”-Gregor scoots his chair a little closer to me and gives me his full attention- “it will be open to the paying public. They can pay money to spend time with the holograms.”

“But why would they do that?”

“Well, because some of them will be doubles of famous people. They can pay money and have a long conversation with their favorite actor or musician. Like they’re really meeting the person.”

“But how will that be like meeting the real thing?”

“Well, that’s where the Golden Department comes in. They take great pains to make sure every Gram- hologram, that is will be as humanlike and true to life as possible. They’ll study the subject they’re recreating and won’t activate the Gram until it’s identical. It’s people’s brains and souls uploaded onto a computer and then projected!”

Gregor is so proud to work for Pomegranate. I can tell he’s thrilled that I’m finally asking questions. I look at Dad, who is glaring into his mug of coffee.

“It sounds interesting,” I say.

“Well, that’s just part of it. The real work of it will be ”

“Enough!” Dad snaps, getting to his feet and clearing his place at the table. “You’ve told her about that place, let’s talk about something else.”

“What’s the real work?” I demand. I hate when they keep things from me. Gregor is so much older than me, he’s twenty-six and I’m just twelve, so they’ve always outnumbered me with their infuriating grown-upness.

“Well, we interview real people and study them so that we can make a Gram of them and then they can live for- ever. Virtually. Like virtual immortality. Then their loved ones can visit them after they’ve died.”

I stare at Gregor. Processing what it is he’s just said.

“So…” I feel all the things I want to say jumbled up inside me. “So, if Mum had been interviewed and studied by this place, they could have made a copy of her to live forever?”

Dad makes a sound I can’t name and storms out of the room, but Gregor smiles a watery smile. “Exactly, Cora.”

The idea is so strange, it frightens me a little.

“Speaking of Pomegranate, there’s something I actually wanted to talk to you about,” Gregor says, glancing at the door to the hall as if he expects Dad to come charging back in.

“What?”

“You see, Magnus… you know, the guy whose house we were at last night.”

Adrien’s dad. “Yes?”

“He’s really interested in interviewing you for the Golden Department.”

I flinch. “What? Why?”

“Right now, his team is really good at re-creating neurotypical people, but he’d love to get a realistically autistic Gram.”

I freeze. We never talk about me being autistic. I don’t know why, I don’t see anything wrong with it. I was sent to a psychiatrist before Mum died and he ended up diagnosing me. That was a while ago now, and Dad and Gregor haven’t brought it up since. I sometimes wonder if they’ve forgotten. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, they want the holograms to be as accurate and lifelike as possible,” Gregor explains. “And, because autistic people are much rarer than neurotypical people, they haven’t mastered how to replicate that kind of brain yet.”

“I…” I feel very exposed talking about this. “I would just need to be interviewed a bunch of times?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Dad suddenly enters the room, his coat on and his eyes furious. “Because you’re not doing it. You hear me, Gregor? She’s not doing that.”

“Dad.” Gregor’s voice is steely as they have a secret conversation with their eyes. I glance down at the linoleum, uncomfortable.

“Dad, Magnus would pay a lot of money for her input.”

“I don’t care. It’s not happening. Tell your boss, who can’t even get your name right, that your little sister won’t be one of his guinea pigs.”

“Dad, this thing is so huge! So much more important than you can understand right now. People will be able to grieve properly. Heck, they won’t have to grieve at all! They won’t ever have to say goodbye, unless they want to. It’s remarkable stuff.”

“You can say that until the cows come home, son, but she’s having nothing to do with it. Not for all the gold in Egypt. No. She’s not an experiment.”

I watch Dad leave the house while Gregor storms upstairs to his room. As two doors slam, I slowly clear my plate. I stare at the white china as it gets steadily cleaner and I wonder what it must be like. To see someone come back to like in the form of a hologram.

I can’t understand Dad’s reaction. Surely it must be the most wonderful idea in the world.

Never having to say goodbye to somebody.