“Abbie Cullen, everyone. Our first artist-in-residence,” Tim said, escorting her into the open-plan area. “Her work’s amazing, so look it up online. She’ll be here for six months, working on some projects.”

“What kind of projects?” someone asked.

It was Abbie who answered. “I haven’t decided yet. I hope it’ll be informed by what you guys are doing.” Her voice had a twang of the South in it, and her smile lit up the room.

Whether someone deliberately activated it we couldn’t say, but one of the shopbots chose that moment to approach her. “Hi, how’re you doing today?” it said brightly. “This jacket I’m modeling would look really great on you.” Needless to say, it wasn’t actually wearing a jacket—that was just a sample pitch we’d coded into the prototype. “Shall we go around the store together, and I’ll pick out some things for you to try? You’re about a size eight, right?”

“You got me,” Abbie said, laughing, and for some reason, even though it wasn’t particularly funny, we all laughed along with her. It was like our child had said something inappropriate but cute to a visiting VIP.

Tim laughed, too, the high-pitched boyish giggle that was one of the few geeky things about him.

“Abbie will be based in K-three,” he said, naming one of our meeting rooms, but she stopped him.

“I’d rather have a desk out here, where I can get a feel for what’s going on. If that’s okay by you.”

“Whatever you like,” he said, shrugging. “People, give her every cooperation. And learn from her. Asset-strip her brain. Reverse-engineer her creativity. Remember, she’s here for your benefit, not hers.”

Which, when we thought about it later, was not the friendliest way he could have welcomed her. But that was Tim for you.

6

   It’ll take three weeks, Tim predicts. Three weeks for you to adjust to this new reality.

Like most things he says, this isn’t plucked out of the air but based on hard data. In the 1950s a plastic surgeon called Maxwell Maltz recorded how long it took facial reconstruction patients to get used to the results of their surgery. He published his findings in a book called Psycho-Cybernetics that became one of the bibles of Tim’s industry.

For three weeks, therefore, Tim plans to stay home, helping you adjust. He starts with the simplest things, bringing you objects from the yard—a curiously shaped stone, a leaf, a bird’s wing—or reading you articles from newspapers. His pleasure when he finds something your brain has missed, like the oranges—something he can teach you—is infectious.

As if you’re a child, he limits your time online, and vets the sites you visit. Too much information at once, he believes, may be more than your new brain can handle. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality. You know you once knew who wrote that, but it’s gone. Your memories are piecemeal, dependent on what happens to have been included in the uploads Tim made before you woke up. Or booted up, as he sometimes refers to it.

   Then—clunk—it comes to you, plucked from the cloud. T. S. Eliot.

For the same reason, he still won’t talk about the circumstances of your death. The closest he comes is a brief reference to the accident before clamming up. No human being has ever been in a position to recall their own annihilation before, he explains. It might be unbearably painful. Mind blowing, even.

But you suspect it’s not only for your benefit that he avoids the subject. Revisiting that period would clearly be painful for him, as well. And Tim was never one to dwell on past defeats. Now he’s got you back, he’d rather behave as if the intervening years never happened.

You try to imagine what he’s been through, what those last five years must have been like. In some ways, you realize, you had it easy. You simply died. He’s the one who suffered. You see it in the deep lines on his face, the thinning hair, the small junk-food belly that juts from his once marathon-running frame: remnants of the terrible grief and loneliness that drove him on, night after night, in the obsessive quest to create you. Already he’s hinted at near-breakdowns brought on by overwork, arguments with his investors, employees walking out. The first cobots were abject failures, apparently: million-dollar experiments that went nowhere. But he refused to give up, and around about the fifth or sixth attempt it started to come together. “But I didn’t want to make you until I’d gotten the technology right. I couldn’t bear to have you come back as some half-assed beta.”

“So what am I? A prototype?”

He shakes his head. “Much more than that. A quantum leap. A paradigm shift. And, most important, my wife.”

Sometimes he just sits and stares at you, drinking you in. As if he can’t quite believe he’s actually done it. As if he’s succeeded more than he ever thought possible. Then you smile at him, and he seems to come out of a trance. “Hey. Sorry, babe. It’s just so good to have you back.”

   “It’s good to be back,” you tell him.

And gradually, slowly, you almost come to believe it.

7

   He’s tried to minimize the differences between this body and your old one, you discover. Your chest rises and falls, just as if you breathe. You shiver when it’s cold, and if it’s warm have to take off a layer of clothing. You blink, sigh, and frown in ways you can’t always control. And at night you go to a guest bedroom, so as not to disturb him, and sleep; or rather, enter a low-power mode, during which you recharge your batteries and upload more memories. Those are the best times. Somehow your dreams seem infinitely richer than the waking world.

During one of those sessions, you find yourself remembering the day after he proposed to you. You’d traveled east to the Taj Mahal, where he’d paid a fortune for a private tour without the crowds. You were in a daze of fuzzy euphoria the whole way, leaning against him in the back of the air-conditioned Mercedes, occasionally stealing glances at the enormous red diamond on your finger.

Later, the guide who showed you around explained how the palace was actually built as a funeral monument for the shah’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

   “If I die before you, I’ll expect at least a palace,” you informed Tim mock-seriously.

“I won’t let you die before me.” Even in the upload, you can hear the absolute conviction in his voice.

* * *

—

On the fourth day, some paints arrive.

“I hope these are all right,” he says as he unpacks them. “You were very particular about which brands you used.”

Were you? You don’t remember that, either. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”