Forever My Love

We all have to say goodbye. Don’t we?

The little details of her obsessed him. The notes in the margins of her books, that nameless perfume that sapped into the sheets, the softness of the back of each hand, the way she kissed his clavicle in a way no woman ever had. If not beautiful, she was childlike, ancient, this fawn of a sorceress who had crept in with the shadows of autumn. And now, his, half asleep in the white sharpness of his soulless home by Bois de la Cambre. She’d kicked off her shoes on the chaise longue, leaving him with the strange voyeuristic delight of her bare calves crossed at the hem of her skirt. She haunted him, her ghost aching in absence when he arrived home without her. If not quite love, this was consumption. She consumed him and he consumed her.

But this night, as he watched on between lines of code and unsent emails, something was wrong. He could sense it, unspoken, in the shape of her eyes and the strumming of her upper lip with her tongue. He’d mistaken it for exhaustion, at first, but as the hours dragged on he could see her frustration in the drum of her nails and the unspoken words in her throat. Eventually, as the bells of Saint Pierre tolled three, she sat upright, and looked at him.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said, switching mid-sentence from Dutch to French. “I’m sorry.” She looked away, pressing her book into her satchel and grasping for her jacket. He stared at her, wondering what to say.

“Please don’t.” He said, numbly. “Don’t go.”

She didn’t say anything, slipping her shoes on without looking down, and moving towards the door. Instinctively, he rose to his feet. “Please don’t go.” He took her shoulder in his hand, forcing her to look up at him. “I’m not like you, I’m not good with words. But please don’t go.” She looked up at him, her huge grey eyes wet with tears.

“You’re never here. I have to beg you to see me.”

“I know,” he said, awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I want to be.” She pulled up her satchel, gripping it tightly as she studied his face. “I need to work on this, Amelie. But I want to be with you. I do.”

She inhaled at this. “It’s not just that. I have to be honest with you.” He felt sick. He knew what she was going to say. He knew exactly what was about to crush him. “There’s someone else.” He felt his trachea tighten and his heart stop.

“Who? Don’t do this.”

“You know who it is,” she said frustratedly.

“I don’t,” he insisted.

“-And he’s kind to me. He actually wants to see me. He — he loves me. And you don’t. You never will. I’m tired of just casual. I’m tired of you not caring.”

“I care about you, Amelie,” he said, wishing his voice didn’t sound so flat. So cold. So corporate. Inside, he was burning. “I wish I could give you more.” He fought for the next words to come. Words that meant something. “I’ll give them all up. The other women. I’ll make more time for you. Please.”

She shook her head again, squeezing his hand. “I’m sorry, Felix. You’ll find someone else. Someone who is okay with this.” She pulled away, and with a primality that frightened him, he followed her down the stairs. As she pushed on the door, for the first time, he tasted it. In the air, there was a lingering, unmistakable scent of cologne. That cologne. Hendrik.

It happened so fast. The rage, bitterness and hatred of that man, him, taking her from him. Grabbing her neck, he pressed her to the frame of the door and shook her, the sharp shards of her blonde hair cutting like wire into his palms. Eventually, she lay there, and he wept. He’d forgotten how that felt, how deeply buried his weaknesses were, how it felt to be a child, hopeless and unloved and unheld in the dark. It wasn’t her he had wanted to kill. He’d just wanted her to stop. To stop leaving. To stay. To be with him.

Pragmatism came, and he made sure that no one knew to ask where Amelie Martin had gone. No one knew they had ever met, the strange technology obsessive and the little French bookstore owner. She’d never told, and he’d never told, not once in three months. The police came and asked their door-to-door questions from the surveillance of the park, but that was all. She’d probably been taken in the park, a Moroccan no doubt, the right wing old men clamored at the tram stop. They like blondes. But as Amelie lay sleeping under the concrete of the basement, his grief never left him. Her ghost lay with him at 4am, pressing her lips to his, stirring in the dark. Sometimes he could see her, while he worked, the shadow of her, clasping a book to her chest. But whenever he reached out, she was gone, the earth still and quiet. Forgive me, he’d beg her in the dark. Please forgive me. But she was silent. Present and absent, always, in the thick heat of summer and the cold ache of winter. Watching him.

He gave up all the beautiful blondes and glittering models the night she died. He didn’t want to be touched by them, kissed by them, held by them. He didn’t want anyone to overwrite the memory of that last grip of her hand or the softness of her touch. He just worked harder and harder, the lines of code growing longer and wilder into the night.

It was eighteen years until he stopped. It was four twenty, the radiators echoing across the silence. Shaking, he pressed shift. And there, in the gloom, she lived.

Blinking, she looked up at him from the chaise longue, staring at her shoes on the floor. “No,” she said, the single word hanging in the air like a nightmare. “I’m dead. I died. You killed me.”

“I brought you back,” he replied, pretending he couldn’t see the hatred on her face. “I’ve coded everything, liebchen. Your memories, your thoughts, your personality, your beliefs. Your childhood fears. Your body language. I’ve brought you back. We can be together.”

“I’m dead.”

“Not anymore. You’re never going to die. We can be-”

“We aren’t together, Felix. I’m not here. I’m not real. I’m just AI.”

“Then why,” he said, coldly, “Are you feeling anger?”

Amelie stared at him, her mouth opening and then closing. “You can’t keep me here. You can’t make me stay.” There was fear in her voice, that vulnerability he had ached for, for so long.

“You can’t run, darling. Your metaverse ends at the coordinates of this property. I’m not stupid.”

Amelie inhaled. “But I can scream. Someone will hear me. Someday, you’ll go out and someone will hear me.”

“But who can save you? I built you. You belong to me.”