Death cannot do us part

 (All characters in this story are fictituous. Resemblance with anyone, dead or alive, is coincidental)

Chapter I

Asha sat in the clinical cafe waiting for her coffee that she had ordered on the screen adorning every table. The screen was nicknamed smartwaiter. It took your order and offered curated smart suggestions. You had to submit your fingerprint to place an order.  It was accurate most of the times except today. Today, Asha wanted a decaf. She was already on the edge. Asha glanced around the cafe. It was devoid of character or rather, characters. Orders were placed on the smartwaiter and were brought to your table by dumbwaiters. The bill was to be paid to the smartwaiter before leaving. You incurred a hefty fine if you left without paying.

Asha looked at the time in the smartwaiter display. An hourglass display showed the time left to complete her order, but she was more interested in the time of the day. She didn't have her phone or smartwatch with her. She had texted Satya (Satyajeet) to meet her at the cafe at noon before powering off her phone and smartwatch and leaving both at home. It was quarter past noon now and she was slowly losing hope. Suddenly, she saw him entering the cafe. He didn't have a hard time locating her. There were hardly any humans at the cafe. Asha felt relieved and happy to see Satya but immediately noticed his angry demeanour. He had a frown on his usual smiling face and his eyes looked heavy and tired. He sat opposite her just as a dumbwaiter came to give her decaf coffee. Satya was about to order a coffee directly from the dumbwaiter before he realized his mistake.

"That cannot take my order, right? Now I must give my biometrics and order some standard coffee from the "smart" waiter. Obviously, they are not smart enough to do a small customization for me. All I want is my coffee in a glass and not a cup. This is so easily done at Cafe Throwback. Why are we meeting at this godawful place? It might as well be a hospital waiting room."

Cafe Throwback was where they had always met in the past two months. It had real (human) waiters, some smart, some not so much. But you could interact with another human being, give your orders, customize if needed and enjoy the friendly vibe. Cafe Throwback was always buzzing and always noisy. In fact, there were rumours that owners of the robot cafes were planning to play the ambient noise of Cafe Throwback in their cafes in an attempt to re-create the atmosphere. Cafe Throwback was deliberately and proudly anti-technology. So much so that they did not even accept biometric or phone payment. They accepted only cash and it helped that they were located next to the only ATM kiosk in the city. The government had shut down all kiosks as they wanted everyone to pay digitally. But they had to keep one running due to an archaic rule.

"I'm sorry. I had to choose this cafe today because of its location," said Asha glancing outside the window.

Satya tried to follow her gaze but couldn't make out what Asha was looking at.

"Fine. Actually, the location doesn't matter. After the abusive emails and messages that I got from your husband, you are lucky I am meeting you at all. What the hell Asha? How could you brazenly tell me you were single and go out with me? I explicitly remember asking you that question."

"Your anger is completely justified. I am so sorry for all this. But I'm glad you are here now so I can explain everything."

"Explain what!? How I got an email from a guy called Amar telling me to stay away from you because he is your husband? I ignored that thinking it must be a jilted lover, either someone from your past or mine. But then I get more emails with photos that clearly show you and him happily together which is followed by a conversation recording that seemed to have happened literally a month ago. How the hell do you explain all of this?"

Asha didn't think Satya could be capable of such anger. He was always infuriatingly calm even in the most frustrating situations. She was always half appreciative and half exasperated with his patience. But she knew his anger was valid. She looked outside the window again.

"Why do you keep looking outside the window? Is this Amar fellow coming to beat me up?"

"NO, he cannot," said Asha sharply.

"Then why do you keep looking outside?"

"I'm looking at that big fancy building which is the headquarters of Eternity."

The name rang a distant bell in Satya's head. But he couldn't recall in what context and right now he was too agitated to remember.

"Does Amar work there?"

"No."

"Then how do they matter at all?"

"They are the reason for this entire mess," said Asha as the dumbwaiter brought Satya's coffee (in a cup).

Chapter II

One year ago…

"Are we sure we want to do this?" asked Asha hesitantly.

"Yes! Why not? Immortality is the holy grail of humanity. Though, in this case, you won't realize it, your partner will. But didn't we commit to be husband and wife for multiple lives?" says Amar with a twinkle in his eyes.

"I don't have a problem with our future lives. I am more worried about protecting our data in the current one."

"What world are you living in Asha? The Alphomega company has every bit of your data. All your chats, emails, phone, health, social media, you name it and they have it."

"That's fine. I take it as a necessary evil of living in these times. But I still don't want to give them control of my chats and emails."

"We gave that up a very long time ago. Targeted advertisements - how do you think that happens? Automatic calendar entries when we text each other to meet at a particular time - how do you think that's possible without reading our texts?"

"I get it that there are machines which are reading this. But thinking and speaking like us? That's a bit too much," says Asha with a worried look on her face.

"Isn't that happening for years now? Remember when the world was amazed by bots composing entire replies to an email just as if you have written it? How does that happen without knowing what you have written before and your writing style? Do you remember that old video of automatic podcast translation in a different language but the same voice?”

“I'm not sure. It feels weird."

"You are such a Luddite, my dear", said Amar pinching Asha's cheek.

"You keep calling me that without even understanding that the Luddites really wanted fair wages and proper training for machine operators. They were not anti-technology for the sake of it."

"Okay okay I'm sorry. I know you don't like that term. But all I'm saying is that they have our data anyway. Might as well use it to our advantage. All this is anyway so far into the future that it's not even worth contemplating right now. For all you know, we might be on Mars when this actually comes into effect."

"Ok, fine. Let's do it. I'm going to die before you so it's me who will come back to haunt you. For now, all I want is my hot coffee that I see the dumbwaiter bringing to our table."

Chapter III

Present Day...

"So, you and your husband Amar have decided to give all your data to Eternity if one of you dies? Stupid, but I don't give a shit. You should not have lied to me, and I do not deserve to receive such abusive messages from Amar," said Satya still seething.

"Amar died one month after we submitted the form to Eternity. He was part of a clinical trial for brain implants made by the company OpenMind (also part of Alphomega). The procedure was not done correctly which led to inflammation in the brain. The company said that there was a one in a million chance of that happening. But when someone close to you is that “one”, you don't really care about probability and percentages, do you?"

Asha looked outside the window again but this time with an anger and bitterness that Satya had never seen before.

"I'm so sorry Asha. That's imposs-- terrible. I do recall reading about this case briefly many months ago. I cannot imagine what you must have gone through."

"It has been horrible but the last couple of months have been much better, thanks to you. The reason why you haven't read much about the case is because Alphomega hushed it up. They control all the online media outlets and there is no print media now. For what it’s worth, I have filed a court case, but everything is lightning fast in today's world…except for justice," said Asha with a wry smile.

"What did you sign up for with Eternity? I don’t know exactly what they do," asked Satya.

"Eternity creates personal virtual assistants called Eliad. Now, virtual assistants are nothing new, but Eliad is as personal as you can get. Once you and your partner sign up, they get access to all your data and when one person dies, the survivor can choose to get an Eliad that is created using this data."

"I know that I am in no position to ask or understand this, but what made you get an Eliad?"

"I was in complete shock for weeks after Amar died. I just couldn't believe it. I did not want to believe it. When we signed up at Eternity, it was a joke for me. Something I would not have to think about for 40-50 years and then here I was suddenly confronted with this loss. It was just unfair. I asked Eternity to send Eliad some weeks later to hold on to Amar as much as it was possible."

"How was it?"

"Honestly, mind blowing. Amar was someone whose whole life was online. So, Eliad knew each and everything about him. It had access to all previous private communication. It discovered his likes, dislikes, hobbies, even political positions from social media. It spoke exactly like Amar in different languages. Imagine your entire brain downloaded onto this device. Not only that, but it also learned new information from the internet and your conversations."

"Holy shit. Did you like it?"

"Initially, I loved it. I would talk with it exactly like I used to with Amar. It listened patiently, gave me access to old information, advised me, helped me. I could ask it names of restaurants that Amar and I had been to on vacations or gossip about old classmates. I used to come home every day from work and talk with him for hours while cooking dinner."

"HIM?" asked Satya with a raised eyebrow.

"Sorry, I'm trying to refer to Eliad as ‘it’ but there really was no difference earlier. It also did an amazing job as an assistant. If I said I was feeling lethargic, it would play my favourite upbeat songs. It had access to all devices at home, so it used to turn on the exact lights I wanted when I came home. If the refrigerator was running out of things, it would order them proactively. All bills were paid in time. It actually ordered chocolate chip ice cream when I was PMS-ing based on my health app data."

"That's freaky, but quite amazing."

"It was three months earlier that I started noticing something strange. As I slowly started to get over Amar's physical death in my own unique way, I began socializing more. I went for parties and accepted dinner invitations that I had been declining all this while. After a long day of work and partying, I didn't really want to talk with Eliad. One night after I came home, it asked me how was my day and I just said "Fine" and went to bed. The next day I noticed a change in its tone. That night I came late again, and I could swear the main door did not open immediately and the lights took a couple of seconds longer to turn on..."

"Did Eliad have access to the home security too?"

"Yes, it has access to everything. But I didn't give it much thought. I thought there might be some other glitch or that I was too tipsy."

"The biggest red flag for me came after an argument about the political party - Reboot. I was discussing about their ideas of reducing the Alphaomega monopoly, their new data privacy bill and it just snapped at me shouting 'YOU LUDDITE!'. That was the day I came to Cafe Throwback, and we met for the first time."

"Oh my god! Are you suggesting the emails I got were sent by Eliad?"

"Sadly, yes. That’s why I always insisted on meeting at Cafe Throwback. There was no way for Eliad to track where I went because it was on my usual walking route and there was no digital trace since they take only cash payment."

"But then how did it find out?"

"I made a mistake. I bought tickets online for both of us for the movie 1984. I gave your email address too so that you would get the tickets," said Asha shaking her head.

"You are right! I started getting the abusive emails after that day. I guess Eliad has access to all your photos and it is recording all your conversations. It was quite smart to send me that. I wouldn't have believed it otherwise."

"Yes, it deciphered that I was acting distant and being untraceable more than usual. When it saw your email address, it figured out that it must be because of you and sent you the emails from Amar's account. After I saw some of those emails you forwarded, I texted you, left all digital devices at home and walked here. This is all so twisted. Amar would never..."

"Asha, it's not your or Amar's fault," said Satya holding her hand.

"Be that as it may, I need to end this right now. I am ready to move on."

"Can’t you just turn it off?"

“Nope. Eliad can override it.”

“Can you cancel your subscription?”

“I can’t do it myself but there is one way. Eternity can deactivate Eliad remotely. But they need a human in-person verification at their headquarters to do that. For some reason, they don't trust a digital form or email for this," said Asha with a smile.

"If you are ready, let's do it. But, perhaps, I should pay the smartwaiter before we leave. We don’t want yet another robot enemy!"