Say Goodbye to Happy Endings

“Mrs. D’Angelo, I understand this is a difficult decision, but we need to know soon—”

“I just found out my husband is dying. Can you give me more than a minute?”

“I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury of time. He’s already on life support.”

“Please! I need to think!”

“Do you need me to call someone for you? I know this is a shock—”

“Fine. Fine! Save him, if you can.”

“You made the right decision, Mrs. D’Angelo.”

*

I sit in the command center so that I can avoid going home. I tidy up the desks, go through blueprints and strategy ledgers alike, and rifle through records as if I’m a woman possessed.

But eventually there’s nothing left to do. I sigh and run a hand across my forehead. It’s Friday, and that means a weekend away from work. I can’t keep avoiding him forever.

He’s only been home two months after all the rehabilitation, and I can barely stand to be in the same room he’s in.

On my desk sits a picture taken from better days—back before terrorist attacks littered the country every week, back before the revolt that led to America being split into factions. When Adam D’Angelo and I first married, we were hopelessly and passionately in love. You can see it in the way he smiles at me in the picture, his grin telling me that I whispered something witty in his ear, and my own smile speaks of a love that never fathomed an ending.

Before I leave for the night, I put the picture face-down on the desk, hiding the happy couple from view.

*

“Good evening, Marina,” my pseudo-husband says when I walk through the door. “I expected you at 5:16 PM, given traffic patterns in your usual route home from work. Did the construction on the highway delay you?”

The constant stream of information, all from a computer implanted in Adam’s head to replace the brain function he lost in the attack, irks me like nothing else. If I wanted to chat with a bot, I would go to one of the Webs. And I don’t like to be reminded of his...otherness. Or the life I’ve subjected him to when I gave the okay to let him undergo the enhancements to become a cyborg.

The blue glow of his artificial eye follows me as I weave into the kitchen. “I sense that you’re upset,” he says, “Your blood pressure is spiking at an alarming rate. Did something happen at work?”

“I’m fine!” I yell, even though he’s sitting right there just feet away. I feel tears collect in my eyes right before I whisper, “I’m going to bed early. You can go into low power mode now.”

The old Adam might have protested and embraced me until the tears stopped, but the cyborg Adam just says, in his monotone way, “Affirmative. Going into low power mode.”

And then I’m left sobbing as my husband shuts down for the night.

*

“Marina, you look so tired. Why don’t you go home and get some rest?”

“I can’t. Adam hasn’t woken up yet. It’s been days.”

“It’s probably a big adjustment for his body. You know Rita from HR? Her husband had a cybernetic hand attached when he lost his hand in a bad car accident. It’s been three months, and he’s still trying to learn how to eat with a fork again. It’s not easy.”

“I’m worried. Worried that he’ll blame me. I didn’t know what to do, it was so fast, and I—I didn’t want to lose him. Not with everything else going on.”

“I don’t know how he’ll react, Mare, but at least you’ll have the chance to ask him. If you’d said no, we’d be burying him right now.”

“And the money—I don’t even want to think about it. We’ll be so in debt that I don’t know if we can be happy again.”

“Oh, Mare, just try to stop thinking for a while. You’re running yourself ragged.”

“I’m just so scared. This isn’t the kind of life I wanted for us.”

“He’ll understand. It’ll still be Adam in there, even with the cybernetic parts.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

*

Saturday arrives, and I’m lying alone in the bed I once shared with my husband. I try to think of a way to shower, get dressed, and sneak out without his sensors waking him up. But we still live in a small apartment in an old building built from the 2030’s. We don’t even have retina-scan security or an indoor garage big enough for a hovercraft instead of an electric car. And the elevator’s broken down twice already this month.

I know it could be worse. We could be in an underfunded area. We could live in tents in drought-ridden patches of land. We could essentially be living the true apocalypse that was promised to us with the last pandemic that ravaged through the bigger cities in the factions.

The only real tragedy in my life is that my husband became a cyborg after a terrorist attack’s bomb tore his body into pieces.

I still remember when I first saw him on that stretcher—both legs gone below the knees, his right arm missing from the elbow down, his left eye damaged, gauze wound in thick layers over his crushed skull, and burns that would turn into scar tissue over time.

Just remembering makes me sick to my stomach. I had no choice but to give him a second chance.

But it still felt wrong.

“Marina?” The hollow mimic of my husband’s old voice calls to me from the living room. “Your heartbeat is racing. Would you like me to turn on some soothing music for you?”

“No,” I say, “that won’t be necessary.”

“Your alarm clock is still set for 7:30 AM. Would you like me to shut it off for you? It’s only 6:39 AM. Going by your sleep cycle from the last few nights, your body might need extra rest—”

“Mute, please,” I say, already too tired, and the day hasn’t even really begun.

*

“Do you remember your wife, Marina? She’s been waiting for you to wake up, Adam.”

"I see that she’s average-looking with shoulder-length brown hair and hazel eyes. Her birth records from my database indicate she is thirty-five years old. There is a marriage record I have found that says we were married four years ago.”

“That’s good, good. See, Marina? He’s functioning just as we hoped.”

“What have you done to him? He’s talking like a machine, not an actual person!”

“Please be patient, Marina. He’s still learning his new capabilities. In time, you won’t notice a difference between the Adam before the attack and the Adam who is cybernetically enhanced.”

“I don’t understand. You promised to save my husband, but he’s—he’s not my husband! He’s looking at me like I’m a stranger!”

“Now, now. Please be aware that he still has emotion circuits.”

“Emotion circuits? So then what he’s feeling is artificial?”

“I didn’t say that, Marina—”

“I assure Marina D’Angelo that I am perfectly capable of reciprocating her affections for the act of marriage and any intimacy. I am only 72% cybernetic—”

“Adam, please let me go ahead and speak to your wife in private—”

“I don’t want to speak to you! You destroyed him! I wanted my Adam back—the real Adam!”

“Mrs. D’Angelo—”

"I can’t sit here and look at him. This is all wrong. This was a mistake.”

*

Saturday bleeds into Sunday as I keep Adam on mute in low power mode for the time I’m home. Though he has free will to override my commands, he rarely does so; I think that’s the 28% of humanity he has left within him.

But when I turn on the flatscreen to watch news of the other factions that will be holding elections, I see Adam’s artificial eye light up with its eerie blue sheen. Once, I loved staring into Adam’s blue eyes; now, all they do is remind me of what he no longer is.

I move to try and retreat to the bedroom, but his cybernetic hand catches mine. The coolness of it feels so wrong against my skin.

“Marina, we need to discuss our living arrangements,” my cyborg husband says.

“What’s there to discuss?”

“You’re not happy,” he says, eyes drilling into me, “and my goal is to make you happy. That’s what I promised you when we married four years and eight months ago. What can I do to ensure an optimum level of happiness or contentment at all times?”

Can you bring me back the husband I knew and loved?

But I try to remember the doctor’s words and stifle the urge to say those words of betrayal. Adam still has emotion circuits. He is more machine than man at this point, but he still has feelings. I have to respect the sanctity of our marriage union that much.

I sigh softly. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy again,” I say.

“I remember you like surprises,” he says, “so shall I surprise you?”

Sometimes it’s like talking to a machine with the mindset of a child. “Fine,” I say. “What is it?”

From a compartment in the couch, he brings out a small box that I take with shaky hands. I don’t know if he’s noticed, but I don’t even wear my wedding ring anymore. To me, it’s like Adam died that day of the attack.

“Please open it,” he says.

I take the lid off and see a heart-shaped locket on a chain. It’s the kind of jewelry that was made back when mass industry drove capitalistic pursuits. I’m not even sure if it’s real gold or not. I know I should smile and thank him, but I feel so numb inside.

“Look inside,” he says.

With a bit of fiddling, I pry open the locket—and what I see makes my heart feel like it’s falling from the sky.

It’s a picture of Adam—the old Adam.

The Adam before he became a cyborg.

“I know I’m not what you wanted to keep,” my cyborg husband says, “but I’m here nonetheless. I can’t be how I once was, I apologize for that. But if you want to share this half-life with me, I’m still willing.”

I stare down at the love I lost, only to look up and see something like hope linger in the depths of Adam’s eyes—both the real and the artificial, the human and the cybernetic.

But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I can say.

“Marina?”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” I admit. “It’s still too fresh of a wound. I still miss—I still miss how you were.”

Adam nods, but I can tell there is some spark dying in his eyes. “I miss how I was too. But we can’t go back. We can only go forward.”

I look back down at the picture in the locket. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, “for doing this to you.”

“I have no regrets,” he says, “because at least I get to spend what life I have left with you.”

And those are the words that break me. All the months of being hurt, of being angry, of crying myself to sleep because he’s no longer beside me—I feel it all hit me in a rush.

I start to sob, and for the first time this new Adam wraps me in his arms.

It’s not the embrace I remember. But that’s okay.

This is the love I need right now.