I shuffled to the edge of the bed, groaning as stiff, achy joints protested the movement. My fingers fumbled for the bottle of painkillers on the nightstand. I dry-swallowed a couple of pills before slipping my feet into the worn, comfortable slippers.
"Good morning, Alex," chimed a voice as smooth and sterile as the white walls of my room.
"Morning, Betty," I muttered without enthusiasm. The robot's sensors faintly whirred as she navigated towards me. She helped me up and helped me to the bathroom.
Once I was done my business, Betty began my morning grooming routine. As she combed my hair, she commented, "Your hair seems longer than usual today, Alex," Betty stated in her typical gentle, lifeless tone. "Shall I assist you in trimming it?"
I answered harshly, “No, god damn it. Ann always wanted me to grow it out. I’ll be damned if I don’t do that one simple thing.”
"As pleasant as ever, I see," she chirped.
I slightly smiled as I pondered whether the sarcastic remarks from Betty were programmed by the developers, generated by the Large Language Model she used, or a combination of both. I never felt the need to investigate further and to be honest, I never cared that much. Regardless, her sarcastic comments occasionally amused me, and I appreciated them.
I slowly made my way to the dining room, Betty helping me the whole way, ready to react at lightning speed if I fell. There, she had already laid out my breakfast, each piece precisely placed in the exact same way every morning. A bowl with three-hundred millilitres of oatmeal, plain, and a spoon exactly thirty-five millimetres to the right; a one-hindered-twenty-five millilitre glass of orange juice, exactly five degrees Celsius; a two-hundred-fifty millilitre glass of water, tepid; one medium banana, ripe. Breakfast number three. The lunch and supper will both be random menus. It was the closest thing I had to excitement in my life.
Not far away was a small tray with my pills in a little cup and a syringe with medication that kept me alive and as mobile as possible. Her precise, mechanical hands were ready to clean my spills and inject the medications once I had eaten.
My thoughts were already adrift, meandering through the corridors of memories, each one echoing with the laughter and warmth of my beloved wife, Ann. Today marked the tenth year since those echoes had faded into silence.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of routine. Science programs droned from the display screens embedded into every wall, following me wherever I sat or looked. Their discussions on quantum mechanics and space colonization were too sharp and too clear compared to the dwindling details of my surroundings. Medications. Meals. A bath every other day, which I endured rather than enjoyed.
By noon, I felt the walls pressing in, asphyxiating me with the silence of the house—a silence once filled by Ann's vivacious energy. I needed air, a respite. With a kind of desperation that surprised even me, I decided that a bit of personal archaeology would be just the thing to exercise my mind.
The basement was as forgotten as the relics it housed—boxy monitors considered slim in their day, tangled cords, old laptops, and generations of various processors. A testament to the evolution of technology, caught in a stuttering series of snapshots.
Among the relics lay Lily's old desktop. "State-of-the-art," they had called it back in the mid-2020s. Now, it appeared as ancient as the dust that layered its sides.
I found the old household network server, built on, even then, older technology. I connected it to the wall power and turned it on. It beeped and failed to start. After some trial and error, I discovered what components had failed.
"Alex?" Betty called from somewhere upstairs, her cameras undoubtedly tracking my every movement. "What are you doing?"
“None of your damn business,” I called up. While my spirit was up to the task of this endeavour, I soon realized my body was betraying me. I could not do it alone. I called up again, “Betty? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped.” I knew Betty wasn’t sophisticated enough to care, but I had to admit to a little guilt for being mean to her. The apology felt right.
She replied in her even, friendly, but fundamentally emotionless voice, “It’s alright, Alex. I’m here to help.”
Piecing together fragments from the digital graveyard, I managed to revive the old network server over two days with Betty's reluctant assistance. The green LED flickered reluctantly, like a hesitant heartbeat. And then, across the screen filled with folders and digital debris, an old love caught my eye—a folder simply labelled "MLP_FiM."
"My Little Pony," I said aloud to no one, a rich chuckle rumbling from my chest. How many Saturdays had Ann and I spent on this silly indulgence, a momentary escape from a world that sped on too fast for our liking? "Eh," I shrugged, the chuckle fading into a breath, "I spent the last two days putting this thing back together. I might as well put it to use."
So began the nostalgia-fueled marathon, consumed over the course of several weeks. Episode after episode, I was transported back to a life where colours were vibrant, and every problem could be solved in a twenty-two-minute narrative—back to a life where Ann's hand found mine whenever a song filled the living room.
It wasn't the magic of friendship or the land of Equestria that held me in thrall. It was the fleeting taste of lost days, each episode unlocking a chest of emotions I had long sealed away. And it was then, upon reaching the bottom of the chest, that I realized something. I didn't want to lock it away again—I wasn't ready to return to the numbing quiet of my world. A world that was eerily silent without any companionship, not just without Ann. As useful as she was, Betty did not make a good companion.
The answer dawned on me, as bright and clear as the summer sky we were promised but rarely saw. Technology had moved on, even if I hadn't. Perhaps it was time I did, too.