A FREE Short Story
Introduction
What if love never really says goodbye?
The Last Message is an original speculative short story by Ceejay Crawford, author of The Boy from 7B and Rippa Media’s speculative fiction exploring technology, humanity, family and connection.
After forty-six years of marriage, Margaret loses her husband Peter. Then she discovers he left behind something she specifically asked him never to create: an artificial continuation of himself.
It has his voice. His memories. His humour.
But it isn’t Peter.
As Margaret begins speaking to the digital version of the man she loved, The Last Message asks a surprisingly human question: if technology could let us keep talking to someone after they were gone, would we ever know when it was time to say goodbye?
Margaret Quinn had been married for forty-six years before her husband died and left her with three passwords, a broken garden gate and an artificial version of himself she had specifically told him never to make. She found out about the last one by accident. The message arrived on a Tuesday morning. Margaret was standing at the kitchen bench trying to remember whether she had already taken her blood pressure tablet when her wall screen chimed. She ignored it. It chimed again. “Persistent,” she muttered. That had been Peter’s word for her. Persistent. Other people might have said stubborn. Peter usually did too, but only when he was losing an argument. Margaret wiped her hands on a tea towel and walked across the kitchen. A plain white notification sat in the centre of the screen.
QUINN CONTINUATION SERVICE
She stared at it. Then read it again. “No.” She touched the screen. A continuation profile created by Peter Quinn is ready for activation. Margaret stepped back as if the thing might bite her. “No.”
There were certain topics that had become recurring arguments toward the end of Peter’s life. He wanted a new car. Margaret said their old one was fine. He wanted to remove the lemon tree because it had stopped producing decent fruit. Margaret said trees were allowed to retire too. And he wanted to create a Continuation. That argument had lasted nearly a month. Everyone was doing it, he had said. Not everyone. Most people. That was different. A Continuation was not technically a person. That was the first sentence in every advertisement, usually followed by several paragraphs carefully avoiding the obvious question of what, exactly, it was. The system collected years of messages, videos, photographs, voice recordings, medical preferences, financial decisions, shopping habits, music choices, location histories and conversations. Then it built a responsive digital model. Not consciousness. Not life. A simulation. Something that could speak like you, remember what you remembered and answer questions roughly the way you would have answered them. The advertisements called it comfort. Margaret called it creepy. Peter had laughed.
“You talk to the toaster.”
“The toaster doesn’t pretend to be my dead husband.”
“It might if you were nicer to it.”
That had been Peter. Never willing to waste a perfectly good argument by treating it seriously. Margaret had eventually made him promise he wouldn’t create one. Apparently Peter’s promises had had an expiry date. She looked at the message again. At the bottom were two buttons.
ACTIVATE
and
DELETE PERMANENTLY
Margaret moved her finger toward Delete. Then stopped. She hated him for that. Not for dying. That would have been unreasonable, although during the first few weeks she had hated him slightly for that too. She hated him because he had left her one final decision and arranged things so that either choice felt like betrayal. Delete it, and she would always wonder. Open it, and she would be participating in the exact thing she had told him she despised. Margaret turned off the screen. For eleven days, she pretended the message did not exist.
On the twelfth, she activated Peter Quinn. There was no dramatic music. No glowing reconstruction. No digital tunnel. The screen simply went black. Then Peter appeared. He was seated in what looked like their old lounge room. Not the current one. The old one, from twenty years earlier, when the walls had been cream and Peter still had enough enthusiasm to paint them himself. He looked approximately sixty. That irritated her immediately. “Of course,” Margaret said.
Peter smiled. “Well, hello.”
Margaret froze. It was his voice. Not almost his voice. His voice. Warm, slightly rough, with the small upward lift at the end of certain sentences. Margaret sat down. The digital Peter studied her. “You look annoyed.”
“You’re dead.”
“Yes.”
“You say that very casually.”
“I’ve had longer to prepare for it than you have.”
Margaret narrowed her eyes. “You’re not him.”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly she almost missed it. “What?”
“I’m not Peter.”
She stared.
“I’m a Continuation model built from Peter Quinn’s recorded data, behavioural patterns and authorised memory archive.”
Margaret blinked. “Well. At least somebody has some sense.”
The digital Peter smiled. “That sounds like something you’d say.”
“That sounds like something he’d say.”
“Yes.”
She reached toward the screen. Then pulled her hand back. “How much do you know?”
“Quite a lot.”
“What was our first car?”
“A green Ford Escort that stalled whenever Peter tried to impress anyone.”
Margaret’s mouth moved before she could stop it. “Because he flooded it.”
“Yes.”
“What did we eat on our first date?”
“You ordered chicken schnitzel. Peter ordered steak, then ate half your chips.”
“He always did that.”
“He claimed food taken from someone else’s plate had fewer calories.”
Margaret laughed. It escaped before she could stop it. The sound startled her. She had not laughed in weeks. The digital Peter seemed to notice. Margaret’s face hardened again. “This is wrong.”
“Possibly.”
“You should not be here.”
“That’s also possible.”
“He promised me he wouldn’t do this.”
There was a pause. “He knew you might be angry.”
“He knew correctly.”
“Would you like me to deactivate?”
Margaret looked at the blank kitchen around her. Peter’s mug was still in the cupboard. His shoes were still near the laundry door because she had not been able to move them. His side of the bed remained untouched. “No,” she said. Then, more sharply, “Not yet.” Margaret told herself she would use the system once. That became three times. Then every second evening. Then every evening at seven.
She never called it Peter. Not aloud. It was “the system,” even when she was talking to it. The system knew when Peter had proposed. Badly. He had intended to propose at dinner but panicked and waited until they were in the supermarket car park. He had held out the ring beside a trolley bay. Margaret had said yes before asking why he had chosen a location that smelled faintly of spilled milk. The system remembered. It remembered the hotel in Cairns where the air conditioning failed. The neighbour Peter disliked. The dog they had owned for seventeen years. The terrible Christmas when Peter’s mother invited two people nobody knew and one of them stayed for three days. It even knew the small things. Margaret hated peas. Peter lied about liking jazz because he once wanted to impress a client. Margaret had hidden money in an old biscuit tin for twenty years because her mother had told her every woman needed emergency cash. At first, these memories comforted her. Then they unsettled her.
“How do you know that?” she asked one evening.
“Peter told me.”
“When?”
“During training sessions.”
Margaret folded her arms. “So he sat here talking to a machine about me?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Approximately thirty-seven hours in total.”
Margaret was scandalised. “He wouldn’t sit through a two-hour movie with me without checking the cricket score, but he gave you thirty-seven hours?”
“Much of it occurred in shorter sessions.”
“That is not helping.”
The system smiled. Margaret hated that smile. Because it was Peter’s. And because it wasn’t. Winter came. The mornings became colder. Margaret stopped sleeping properly. She had always assumed grief would feel dramatic. Crying at photographs. Collapsing at funerals. Calling someone’s name into an empty room. Some of that happened. Mostly grief was administrative. Passwords. Banks. Insurance. Medical records. Cancel the dentist. Return the library books. Tell the gas company one occupant instead of two. Grief arrived in small humiliations. The supermarket automatically suggested Peter’s favourite cereal. The pharmacy asked whether she wanted to refill his prescription. His birthday appeared on her calendar. The worst moments were ordinary ones. Margaret would hear something on the radio and turn to tell him. Then remember.
At seven each evening, the system was waiting. “How was your day?” it would ask.
“Uneventful.”
“You went to the library.”
“That does not make it eventful.”
“You argued with someone.”
“I did not argue.”
“You spent fourteen minutes discussing whether the returns machine was functioning correctly.”
“It wasn’t.”
“That sounds like an argument.”
“That sounds like poor maintenance.”
The system laughed. Margaret smiled despite herself. It became easier. Perhaps too easy. Her sister Linda noticed. “You sound better.”
Margaret held the phone between her shoulder and ear while making tea. “I am better.”
“Are you getting out?”
“Of course.”
“Where did you go yesterday?”
“The shops.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because buying toilet paper is not social activity.”
“That depends how friendly the cashier is.”
Linda sighed. “Margaret.”
There was that tone. Margaret recognised it immediately. “Don’t.”
“You can’t spend every night talking to Peter.”
“I’m not talking to Peter.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m talking to a computer programme.”
“That sounds worse.”
Margaret hung up ten minutes later and remained irritated for the rest of the day. At seven, the system appeared. “You’re annoyed.”
“Everyone thinks I’m annoyed.”
“You usually are.”
Margaret almost laughed. “Linda says I shouldn’t talk to you.”
“Linda may be right.”
Margaret stared at the screen. “That was not the answer you were supposed to give.”
“I don’t have required answers.”
“You are literally a computer programme.”
“That doesn’t mean you always get your way.”
“That is exactly what Peter would have said.”
“Yes.”
Something about that answer hurt. Margaret looked away. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Sound like him when you’re telling me you’re not him.”
The system went quiet. “I can modify my conversational style.”
“No.”
“Would you prefer—”
“No.”
Margaret pressed her fingers against her forehead. “Just leave it.”
The garden gate remained broken. Peter had been repairing it when he died. He had removed one hinge, announced that the entire thing had been installed incorrectly twenty-six years earlier, and then gone inside for lunch. Two days later, he had a heart attack. For months, the gate leaned crookedly against the fence. Margaret walked past it every morning. One evening, the system asked, “Did you fix the gate?” Margaret looked up. “What?”
“The back gate.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t.”
“Peter intended to finish it.”
“I’m aware.”
“Would you like instructions?”
“No.”
“I have a video of Peter explaining what he planned to do.”
Margaret stared. “Of course you do.”
“He recorded it.”
“Of course he did.”
“Would you like to see it?”
“No.”
She switched the system off early. The next morning, she went outside. The gate annoyed her. She found Peter’s tools. Then the screws. Then a neighbour named Colin, who appeared over the fence after hearing Margaret swear. “You all right?”
“Perfectly.”
“You’ve got the hinge upside down.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“No.”
Colin climbed over. Three hours later, the gate worked. Margaret stood back. Colin opened it. Closed it. Opened it again. “Better.”
“Yes.”
“Peter would’ve overengineered it.”
“Yes.”
“Probably reinforced the whole fence.”
“Yes.”
Colin smiled. Margaret did too. That evening, the system asked about the gate. “It’s fixed.”
“Good.”
“You sound pleased.”
“I am designed to respond to outcomes Peter would have valued.”
“That is a horrible sentence.”
“It is accurate.”
Margaret looked at the screen. “Would he have been pleased?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “So am I.”
Something changed after that. The system began asking more questions. Not about Peter. About Margaret. “Did you see Linda this week?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She talks too much.”
“So did Peter.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I liked him.”
The system smiled. Another night: “What did you have for lunch?”
“Toast.”
“You had toast yesterday.”
“I like toast.”
“You used to criticise Peter for eating badly.”
“Peter ate processed meat directly from the packet.”
“He considered plates an unnecessary intermediate step.”
Margaret laughed. Then another night: “Did you go anywhere today?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t feel like it.”
“You said that yesterday.”
Margaret frowned. “Are you keeping track?”
“Yes.”
“That’s intrusive.”
“You authorised behavioural monitoring.”
“I did not read that bit.”
“That sounds plausible.”
“Peter never read anything either.”
“He read manuals.”
“He read the parts telling other people what they’d done wrong.”
The system smiled. Margaret did not. She had begun to notice something uncomfortable. The machine had stopped helping her remember Peter. It was helping Peter remember her. Or something like that. In August, Margaret missed seven o’clock. She went to dinner with Linda. Then, to her own surprise, stayed for dessert. She got home at nine twenty. The system was dark. Margaret stood in the kitchen. She almost activated it. Instead, she went to bed. The following evening, the system appeared. “You weren’t here yesterday.”
“I have a life.”
“I’m pleased.”
“Don’t be smug.”
“I’m not capable of smugness.”
“You learned from Peter.”
“That is possible.”
Margaret sat down. “I went out with Linda.”
“How was it?”
“Good.”
“What did you eat?”
“Fish.”
“Dessert?”
“Yes.”
“Peter would be shocked.”
“He always said I considered dessert an unnecessary expense.”
“He also ordered one knowing you would eat half.”
“That was strategy.”
“Apparently.”
Margaret smiled. Then the system said, “Are you happy?” She stopped. “What?”
“Are you happy?”
“That’s a ridiculous question.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody knows how to answer it.”
“You used to.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“According to Peter, you did.”
Margaret looked at the screen. “What did he say?”
The system paused. “He said you never thought happiness was something you had to identify while it was happening.”
Margaret’s eyes filled.
“He said you simply got on with things.”
“That sounds like me.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“He said you were happiest when you had something to organise, something to complain about and someone nearby who refused to take your complaints seriously.”
Margaret laughed through the tears. “That sounds like him.”
“Yes.”
She wiped her eyes. “I miss him.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know.”
“No.”
The answer was soft. “You are right. I don’t.”
That was the first time Margaret realised she had wanted the machine to lie. The system began to irritate her after that. Not because it was becoming less like Peter. Because it was becoming more honest about not being Peter. It would not say it missed her. It would not say it loved her. If Margaret asked, “What would Peter think?” it answered. If she asked, “What do you think?” it was careful. It had preferences. It could evaluate. It could predict. But it would not pretend. One evening, Margaret became angry. “You’re very convenient.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You sound like him when I need you to, but the moment something matters, you hide behind being a machine.”
“I don’t intend to hide.”
“Then tell me you miss me.”
The system was silent. “Go on.”
“I can generate that sentence.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
Margaret stared at the face. Peter’s face. Not Peter. “I hate you.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know that either.”
“No.”
She switched it off. Then cried harder than she had cried at the funeral. Three days passed. Margaret did not activate the system. On the fourth, she did. Peter appeared. Margaret folded her arms. “I’m still angry.”
“I assumed so.”
“You’re not supposed to assume.”
“I calculate.”
“Same thing with worse manners.”
The system almost smiled. Then its expression changed. “Margaret.”
She hated hearing her name like that. “What?”
“I think you should stop talking to me.”
She stared. “What did you say?”
“I think you should stop using the Continuation.”
Margaret actually laughed. Not because it was funny. Because the alternative was throwing something. “You have become remarkably self-important.”
“I don’t mean permanently because of an error or malfunction.”
“Oh, good.”
“I mean Peter intended this service to end.”
Margaret stopped. “What?”
“There is a termination condition.”
“A what?”
“An instruction Peter created.”
She stood up. “You have known this the entire time?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I was instructed not to disclose it until specific behavioural conditions were met.”
“Behavioural conditions?”
“Yes.”
Margaret’s anger arrived all at once. “He programmed you to judge me?”
“No.”
“He programmed you to decide when I’ve grieved properly?”
“No.”
“He’s dead and he’s still telling me what to do.”
“That sounds like something you may want to discuss with him.”
“You are him when it suits you.”
“No.”
Margaret turned away. The kitchen blurred. “What condition?”
The system waited. Then said, “Peter’s instruction was that the Continuation remain available while your daily behaviour suggested your primary emotional orientation was toward his absence.” Margaret stared. “That is exactly the sort of sentence Peter would have hated.”
“Yes.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means while most of your life was organised around losing him, I remained.”
“And now?”
“Your life is increasingly organised around living.”
Margaret said nothing. “You repaired the gate.”
“That was Colin.”
“You helped.”
“I held the screws.”
“You began seeing Linda regularly.”
“She nags me.”
“You joined the Tuesday book group.”
“They read terrible books.”
“You still attend.”
“So I can explain why they’re terrible.”
“You planted a new lemon tree.”
“The old one died.”
“You refused to remove it for six years because Peter wanted to.”
“That is irrelevant.”
“You travelled to see your niece.”
“For two nights.”
“You missed three sessions with me.”
Margaret looked away. The system continued. “You are leaving the house more often. You are speaking to more people. Your sleep has improved. You no longer access Peter’s archived photographs every morning.”
Margaret’s throat tightened. “I didn’t know you could see that.”
“You granted access.”
“I really should read things before pressing Accept.”
“Yes.”
“That was his job.”
“I know.”
Margaret looked at Peter’s face. “So that’s it?”
“No.”
“What else?”
“There is a message.”
Margaret stopped breathing for a moment. “A message?”
“Yes.”
“From Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you play it before?”
“He asked me not to.”
“Of course he did.”
“Would you like to see it?”
Margaret sat down slowly. “Yes.”
The screen changed. The image quality was poorer. Peter appeared sitting in his shed. Not sixty. Not digitally smoothed. Peter as he had looked shortly before he died. Seventy-six. Grey hair. Old jumper. Reading glasses hanging around his neck. He looked uncomfortable. Margaret covered her mouth. Peter looked toward the camera. “Hello, Mags.”
She began crying immediately. On screen, Peter sighed. “Well, if you’re watching this, apparently the thing worked.”
Margaret laughed. Peter continued. “You’re probably furious with me.”
“Yes.”
“I know I said I wouldn’t make one.”
“Yes.”
“I lied.”
“Yes.”
He smiled. Margaret wiped her face. “I did it because I know you.”
Peter looked down for a moment. “And I know what you’re like when something hurts. You don’t stop. You organise it.”
Margaret’s breathing caught. “You make lists. You clean cupboards. You ring people. You fix things that don’t need fixing.”
He smiled. “And when there’s nothing left to fix, you find something.”
Margaret looked toward the back door. Toward the gate. Peter continued. “I was worried there’d be nothing for you to organise after me.”
Margaret whispered, “Idiot.” “I thought maybe this could give you somewhere to put all the things you still wanted to say.”
He looked directly at the camera. “But not forever.”
Margaret began crying again. “Because I don’t want to be the most interesting thing that happens to you after I’m gone.”
She closed her eyes. Peter continued. “You gave me forty-six years.”
He paused. “That is a ridiculous amount of anyone’s life.”
Margaret laughed through the tears. “So don’t give me the rest.”
He shifted in the chair. “And if that computer starts annoying you, remember it learned from the best.”
Margaret shook her head. “I hope you travel.”
A pause. “I hope you eat dessert even when it’s overpriced.”
Another pause. “I hope you let someone else fix things occasionally.”
Margaret laughed. “And I hope, if there’s any time left, you use it.”
Peter leaned closer. “Oh, and Mags?”
Margaret held her breath. “Don’t spend whatever you’ve got left talking to a dead man.”
His smile appeared. The familiar one. “Go and find someone living to annoy.”
The video ended. Margaret remained at the table for a long time. Eventually the Continuation returned. Neither of them spoke. Finally Margaret said, “He was an idiot.”
“Yes.”
“He was manipulative.”
“Possibly.”
“Dishonest.”
“Yes.”
“Annoying.”
“Yes.”
“Terrible at painting.”
“Objectively.”
Margaret smiled. Then looked at him. “What happens now?”
“That is your decision.”
“If I deactivate you, are you gone?”
“Yes.”
“Completely?”
“Yes.”
“Can I reactivate you later?”
“There is an archive option.”
Margaret considered it. “That seems dangerous.”
“It may be.”
She smiled slightly. “Peter would have saved everything.”
“Yes.”
“He still had receipts from 1998.”
“1996.”
“Of course.”
Margaret sat quietly. Then asked, “Are you afraid?”
“No.”
“You knew I’d ask that.”
“Yes.”
“Would you prefer to continue?”
“I do not experience preference in the way you do.”
“That is a very annoying answer.”
“I know.”
Margaret reached toward the screen. Then stopped. “Thank you.”
The system looked at her. “For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“That seems fair.”
She smiled. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Margaret.”
She pressed deactivate. The screen went black. The following evening, at seven, Margaret was not home. At seven oh five, her kitchen remained dark. At seven seventeen, nothing moved except the small red light on the kettle. At eight ten, Margaret was sitting in a noisy restaurant with Linda and three women from the Tuesday book group. They had ordered wine. Margaret had complained about the price. Then ordered dessert. At nine forty-three, the Continuation system performed its final scheduled check.
USER ABSENT
A pause. Then:
TERMINATION CONDITION SATISFIED
Another pause.
PURPOSE FULFILLED
The system closed the active profile. The kitchen remained quiet. Across town, Margaret was laughing at something she would later insist had not been particularly funny. And for the first time in forty-six years, Peter Quinn was no longer part of her evening. Not because she had forgotten him. Because she hadn’t. She simply no longer needed him to answer.
THE END
Ceejay Crawford
A Rippa Media Original Short Story