Laura sat in her pristine kitchen, beautifully clean, thanks to the servants gifted to her for technological achievements in the artificial intelligence field, years ago.

The house had become quiet again. She walked silently to Lucas’s room, carefully not to wake him earlier, he was always a grump in the mornings. Flicking the light switch on, there he was. “Good morning, love, go get dressed for school.” Lucas grinned and shot out of bed, “Yes Mum!” She quickly turned away, heading back into the kitchen.

She set three plates on the dining table as usual, then dug into her runny eggs on toast. Lucas came and sat next to her, just waiting. “I’ve got a late meeting tonight, so I won’t be back until teatime,” she said, then gave him a pointed glance. “That doesn’t mean stuffing your gob with sweets before I’m back.” She laughed half-heartedly, admiring his lovely face.

He looked at her blankly momentarily, then replied “Of course!” he giggled. A servant appeared next to him, holding out her raincoat to her. She grabbed her work bag and pulled on her coat.

Her son and the servant waved goodbye to her as she stepped over the threshold, nearly forgetting. “Sweetheart, make sure your teachers give you your medicine at lunchtime!” Lucas stepped out with her, unbothered by the rain splattering on his blazer.

“Of course. Would you like me to enter battery saving mode while you are at work?” And her heart dropped. She didn’t know what to say, so she walked away and drove to work.

Then, the servants went to work. Lucas began his still vigil in his room. Wheels of cleaners screeched on the floors, long arms unfolding from their metallic links to dust the ceilings, almost like the stretched feathers of a swan. They prepared dinner, and Laura returned.

                                                                           *****************

She thought she was doing better. Work felt like an escape, being elbow-deep in some machine distracted her. Though these days it was hard to feel much at all. Nighttime was worse, when the silence pierced through the fragile thing that was all that was left of her heart. So, she turned desolate nights into tinkering, something she could control.

Her late husband Charlie and son Lucas left a hole in her soul. Her rock and her sunshine. She lost them both to illnesses no technology or science could cure. The grief felt like a bullet to the chest, sometimes so sharp she struggled to breathe. Other times it was like a wave, a crushing weight that refused to let up as she sank.

After months of additional hours of work in her AI engineering job, the labour helped deflect the pain. Reprogramming an android was a difficult, but necessary challenge.

Lucas became a canvas for her to paint. The subtleties that made an android appear human-like and avoid breaking the illusion of normalcy were crucial. Tiny metal probes beneath the skin of the cheeks acted as muscles, allowing him to react ‘naturally’. Receptors in his eyes tracked and mirrored thinking patterns. Humans don’t maintain eye contact when thinking. Neither would Lucas.

She hadn’t told the governing body she worked for her plans. The occasional loss of spare parts were easy enough to cover. They’d been pleased enough to know that yes, she was feeling better. No, she wasn’t having dark thoughts again. Yes, she remained on quota for her scheduled workload.

After returning home, Lucas opened the door for her, and the crushing weight lifted a little. She rustled his hair and patted his neck, forcing herself to ignore the cold, artifical skin. “How was your meeting?” His eyes inclined up to hers, his smile almost familiar. Almost comforting.

“It was good, darling.” She pulled her chair out from under the dining room table, the scrape of the metal legs loud in the quiet house.

“You can get your toys out and play in the living room if you want, love.” She motioned her hand toward the white box that contained his favourites. She’d brought them in the living room when going into his bedroom became too difficult soon after he died.

Lucas walked to the box, pulled out three toys and sat cross-legged in front of them. He first turned to see if she was still watching, then started to play. The crash of plastic against plastic became soothing, even the slightly annoying roar of a robotic dragon. She felt a breath she didn’t know she was holding release. She closed her eyes.

Then the playing stopped. Lucas had now moved in front of her. “Madam, if you don’t need me-”

“I said to call me Mum.” She said flatly, that familiar weight returning. She avoided his gaze.

“I’m sorry, you’re right Mum. I forgot, silly me!” He giggled and leaned in to kiss her cheek. She stiffened. He continued, the cold press of his synthetic lips on her warm skin felt repulsing. A stinging reminder of a warmth she could never replicate.

She turned towards the cook, its silver arms whirring and stirring the multiple pots and pans. “You can go until dinner is ready.” She mumbled to him as she stared into nothing.

                                                                           *************

The steam of the soup wafted up into her nose, but she couldn’t taste it. The warning bells of a fatigue she knew wouldn’t go away sounded distantly in her mind. Lucas held his hand above the bowl, hovering an empty spoon. Just holding it.

“Do you feel better today, Mum?” He said, those chocolate eyes empty. Eyes that mirrored her own, but only reflected what she wanted to see.

She heard rather than felt a tear escape from her eye as it rippled in her soup. She fled to her dark room, but she couldn’t run from the familiar weight returning. She moved robotically, pulling back the covers on Charlie’s side of the bed. Cold as usual.

A night and day passed, and a deep cold leeched the strength of her remaining soul. Lucas came in at some point, and she couldn’t look at him, at what she thought could replace her son. She had used a plaster to cover a bullet wound, and still expected it to heal.

She was almost glad she hadn’t managed to make Charlie. She couldn’t stomach the idea of feeling for his hand in the night only to touch a cold husk of the man he once was.

She’d contemplated joining them. But how could she face them now, after massacring the memory of her son?

So, Laura stayed in bed.

Works cited list:

Bradbury, Ray. “August 2026: There will come soft rains”. The Martian Chronicles. HarperCollinsPublishers, 2014. VLeBooks, EpubReader.

Clarke, B. H. “Mourning and Melancholia” Meets The Babadook: Emptiness and its Relation to Absence. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, vol 93, no. 2, 2024, pp. 321–347. Taylor and Francis online, https://doi-org.yorksj.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/00332828.2024.2345047.

Minato, Tikashi et al. “Evaluating the human likeness of an android by comparing gaze behaviors elicited by the android and a person.” Advanced Robotics, vol 20, no. 10, 2006, pp. 1147-1163. Taylor and Francis Online, https://doi.org/10.1163/156855306778522505.

Wan, Jou She et al. “Investigation of a Web-Based Explainable AI Screening for Prolonged Grief Disorder”. IEEE access, vol 10, no. 1, 2022, pp. 41164-41185. IEEE Explore. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3163311.

Commentary:

This short fiction piece takes inspiration from Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950) use of personification and atmospheric tone to deliver an emotional story of grief under the context of growing reliance on artificial intelligence. The robot helpers serve as a metaphor for the potential effect of human isolation and replacement by AI.

Recent and steady growth in use of AI inspired the central conflict. Creating an android replica of her son halts the natural process of Laura’s grief, creating dissonance in the anguish over her family’s death. The aim of the story is to highlight the reality of over-reliance on technologies and under-appreciation of human connection. The exploration of the uncanny valley is deigned to break Laura and the reader’s perception of an imagined reality. Ultimately, the piece critiques the notion that AI could replace the complex connection humanity shares.

Eden Kenefick is a Media and English Literature student at York St John University. Eden enjoys female-led fantasy novels and writing in her spare time.