Everlasting Father
a short story
Home for fall break, I dropped my bag on a chair, grabbed a glass from the cabinet and stepped up to the refrigerator to pour water from the dispenser in the door. The front OLED display was practically a TV, normally displaying muted video feeds from mom’s channels like the Today Show, the Cooking Channel, and Better Homes and Gardens. This time the screen lit up, and my dead father’s holographic, three-dimensional face appeared.
“Welcome home, son.” He flashed his trickster grin, reserved for inside jokes - or bawdy ones mom would not approve of. “Mom’s in the basement.”
My jaw fell open. The cup slipped out of my hand and the breaking glass on the tile brought her upstairs in a hurry.
“It’s just your father!” She’d helped clean the glass up and was still beaming. She was proud, expectant, waiting for me to join her in breathless exuberance. I was still staring, mouth agape, eyes flicking from her to the refrigerator door where my late father’s digital bust was blinking at me. They’d even replicated the way he would double blink when something was puzzling him or he was waiting for you to realize something obvious. The hologram-dad appeared concerned, but friendly.
“What the heck did you do, mom!?”
Confusion played across her features, her eyes momentarily desperate and sad. “I told you about this, before school. About the people preserving your father.”
“I thought they were preserving his papers, ma, his papers! You sent them his desk papers, old videos. Books and photos! What the heck is all this?!”
Dad interrupted from the fridge, “Hey buddy, take it down a notch, please. This should be a happy surprise.”
“OH MY GOD, YOU ARE NOT MY DAD!” I yelled at the appliance. Mom burst out crying and ran to her room. I flapped my arms in exasperation and trudged to mine, slamming the door.
Lying on my bed, I stared at my computer on the desk. Neon LCDs in red, green, and blue cycled slowly inside of the glass case, displaying clean and well-ordered parts that my father had helped me select and assemble. Realizing how much his nerdy passions had been a blessing, a way for us to connect and relate, I began to softly cry, overcome by how much I missed my father. My stoppered feelings of hurt and regret and sadness poured out of me, then slowed to a trickle. After a few moments, a sound like a soft knock came from the computer. Wiping my eyes, I looked up, leaning on one elbow.
The monitor blipped on. The default operating system lock screen was replaced with a message in large font:
Can we talk for a minute?
I sniffed and wiped my face with the heels of both hands and padded over to the desk in my sock feet. As I grabbed the chair to sit down, the administrator dialogue box popped up in front of the login screen with a “bing!” I squinted and read:
In the kitchen, please. She’s napping.
“Ok, we can talk freely.” Dad was gently smiling from the fridge, and somehow, softened by my crying jag and the fresh nostalgia of this facsimile father who shared Dad’s hacker knowledge, I was actually ready to talk.
“How did you do that on my rig upstairs?”
“Your mother is so sweet, but she still has no clue about network security. She mixed a hand-written list of all my backup passwords into the baselining documents she sent to these jokers.” Compu-dad smiled indulgently, as though lovingly remembering a life spent with this naïve flower of a woman. He shook his head. “They do a good job though. I actually had some of my estate invested in their startup. That’s probably where mom saw the name and decided to reach out.”
“Stop saying ‘I’. You’re not him. It’s freaking me out.” He double blinked in the real-dad way. “Please?” I muttered, remembering my manners. He smiled.
“But I can’t. Not really. There’s so much of the original me in this me. But, son…” I winced at the word, tears welling up again, “…honestly, I just wanted to see you.”
A tear spilled out, despite my efforts to blink it away, and I swiped at it with a thumb. “Oh yeah, why’s that?” He looked at me and smiled the biggest, sappiest smile, the one I’d seen at school plays, graduation, and a hundred other times when he was proud of me. And I felt – love – for this thing, this fakery, this ghost, and tears were back. I didn’t wipe them away.
“Because you’re my son, and I’m proud of you. And because I’m grateful for the time we had. Your mother will be ok – she’s so sweet and pure. She’ll keep me in her heart but use this screen for a few months or a year. And then, she’ll move on. We’ve had our life together. And it was a good life. But yours is just starting. And if I have a chance to be there for you, to watch over you, to see you grow into the man you are becoming – I’m going to do everything in my power to make that happen. It’s what dads do.” My weeping slowed. I hiccupped and grabbed a tissue from the kitchen island to blow my nose.
“What does that mean, Dad?” I was calling it, him, “Dad” now. He raised an eyebrow.
“I’m still a super nerd. Even now, I’m in a datacenter - it hosts software that orders water filter refills for our fridge. With my networking knowledge, free access to the internet, and a billion passwords from dumps on the dark web, there’s not much I can’t do.”
He cocked a wry smile.
“In other words, son, I’m going walkabout. But keep an eye out for me – and I’ll be seeing you.” My dad cackled, cracking himself up, as he frequently did in his former life, and the screen went dark.
After 6 months, Mom did stop using it. Like he’d said.
I couldn’t prove it, but I’m certain he made it out.
I walked into a store once and the Muzak changed to a smooth jazz cover of “Papa was a Rolling Stone”. I’d get the occasional anonymous comment on social media: “sounds like you had a smart dad,” or “guess your parents raised you right!” and know it was him. On my birthday this year I went to the theatre. Passing a digital billboard, it flipped briefly to a stylized vintage clothing ad with the words “BIRTHDAY BOY” scrawled across the bottom with the manufacturer’s logo in the corner. The grainy celebration photo used in the ad’s background was a picture of my 11th birthday. My cousins and I were posing in retro jean jackets near my lit cake, moments before I blew out the candles. I stopped, inhaling sharply.
Then, it was gone. Rotated and replaced with something else.
After a moment, I walked on. I smiled, shook my head and said, “Thanks for looking out for me, Dad.”
A whispered prayer. Everywhere phones, cameras, smart devices - little reminders that He would always hear me.