Letter From The Other Side By Peter Caunt
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Alison, if you are reading this, then I must have died.
I realise that this email must come as a bit of shock to you and you may think it a little creepy, but I have thought a lot about the grieving process and I hope that this will enable you to come to terms with the situation.
The email has been generated by an artificial intelligence system which I put together, with Gary, in the last few years. The idea was to make it as human as possible. Basically it is a simulation as close as I could make it to myself. In the past people have used mediums to try to connect with dead loved ones, but this system makes no such claims of life after death. What it does is provide the grieving relative with something they can talk to, saying the things that they should have done in life. It gives what is as close to a real interaction with dead relatives as we can make it.
If you have any doubts about the veracity of this system then please talk to Gary at work.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I'm sorry but this definitely does seem strange. I spoke to Gary at your work. He has assured me that this is not some sort of scam. He said that he had not been sure that this system was a good idea when the two of you first set it up, but the trials you and he did seemed to have been welcomed by the majority of participants. He also said that I should treat this as if I was actually talking direct to you rather than to the computer system. He said that this would enable the IT system, sorry I mean you, to learn how I was feeling. To be honest I'm not sure I know exactly how I am feeling. And I'm not sure if I like being one of your test subjects.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Alison, I quite understand how you must be feeling, but if you think at any time that you want to stop, then please talk to me about it and if you still want to stop, then I will quite understand. For the moment think of me as one of the friends you have on Facebook that you never meet face to face. I know that our relationship was much more than that, and it could never be as wonderful as it was when I was alive, but perhaps we can build it into something different, something that we can both benefit from. And believe me you are much, much more than a test subject.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Ben. There I have called you by your name. I spoke to Gary again and he said that I should carry on for a while longer and perhaps try not to think of you as the Ben I knew. Instead he said that I should try to establish a new rapport with you. A bit like you suggested with my Facebook friends. He said that the psychologist you got involved in the project suggested that sort of thing. It seems that I need to make sure I speak to someone and it might be easier to talk to you, or at least the simulation of you, rather than to other people in my life. I must admit I have been avoiding friends and neighbours as the level of sympathy they pour over me can be a bit overwhelming.
So what have I been doing since I last spoke to you. Well I ran out of milk earlier today and went down to the local shop. Actually I went down three times before I summoned up enough courage to go in. I had waited until there were no other customers in the shop and kept my head down. Mr Brown was very considerate. If you remember, he lost his wife last year and he just said a quick 'I'm so sorry' and let me leave. It feels like a bit of an achievement, but I think it will be a while before I manage to face the supermarket. I should be grateful that Zoe is doing that for me at the moment.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hi Alison. That does sound like a big step forward, well done.
I was thinking that you could go out for a walk soon. Have you tried that at all? There are quite a lot of paths near where we live which have very few people who use them, apart from the occasional dog walker. If you chose a time after the early morning walkers have finished you would probably have the paths to yourself. Do you remember we used to walk up to the top of Bramble Hill and sit on the grass and have picnics. In fact I've found one of the photographs I took using that rickety old tripod and attached it to the email. It shows us sipping some wine. I remember that being one of the happiest of times.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hi Ben. I went to Bramble Hill. Although it has changed quite a lot since we were last there, it did bring back a lot of memories. The trouble is that it was just a bit upsetting. It was not the same going on my own. I think I shall have to stay inside for a little while before I try anything that adventurous again. I also think it best that we slow things down a little as I think I need more time to adjust.
I have talked to Gary and he has said that he will look at your responses to make them a bit more sensitive to how I am feeling.
I will talk to you soon.
Alison.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Alison, I'm sorry if I have been a little bit anxious to get things moving. I shall promise that I will be a bit more considerate in the future. I know that I have always been a bit pushy but I thought that you always loved that about me.
I have found a few more photographs of us which I have been looking at and I think you might like. A couple of them were taken very recently and I don't think I had time to show them to you before the accident.
But what is this about you asking Gary to change my responses? I am who I am. Gary has no right to change it. I think we are just fine together and it will just take a bit of time for us to become exactly like we were.
And please don't talk to Gary about this, We are fine.
I love you, Alison.
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To: [email protected] Bcc: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Ben. Thank you for the photographs. It was good to see some really recent ones of you, although I didn't recognise where they were taken.
And about Gary. He is just being kind to me and he is trying to make this whole process easier for me.
I'm sorry but I must go as I have joined an evening class and am really enjoying it. I promise to get back in contact very soon.
Love Alison.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I am glad you like the photographs. I must admit I can't really remember where they were taken, but you have to admit that we are so happy there.
I have been browsing through all of the new photos that were on my camera, there are several more that show how happy we were. If you would like, I could send a few more of them and perhaps arrange them in a collage so that we could put them on our Facebook page.
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To: [email protected] Bcc: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hi Ben. I think that a collage might be a bit overwhelming just yet. I am still getting used to this new relationship with you. And I think that putting pictures on our Facebook page would perhaps be confusing for all our friends. I have not told any of them about me communicating with you and would like to keep it between the two of us for a while longer.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
My darling Alison. This is not a new relationship. We have been together for over ten years. In many ways I am just as real as I was when we first met. I see that posting things on our Facebook page may be a problem at this stage, but when all our friends get to know about me then I'm sure they will be very accepting. Perhaps I could set up a Facebook page of my own until we are properly back together.
You mean the world to me.
Love Ben.
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To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hi Gary. I'm glad that everything is going well. Thank you for the copy of the emails that Ben has recently sent. He seems to be happy and getting on well with the simulation of me that you have set up. He doesn't seem to have noticed the change to the new me and I see that you have used some of the recent conversations between the real me and Ben to smooth the transition.
I have just finished letting everyone know about the change in my email address, but if you could keep the redirecting service in place for a while longer so that I get any emails from people who I've forgotten about.
I'm sure that my simulation will be able to make him happy now that I have moved on. I know that you would have preferred to just turn off Ben's simulation, but I still care about him and the thought of him no longer existing at all didn't seem the right outcome. This way we are both happy.
I can't thank you enough for all that you have done. And are we still on for dinner tonight?
Love Alison.
Judges Comments
The starting point for Letter From The Other Side, Peter Caunt's entry that was the runner up in WM's Epistolary Short Story Competition, is the tension between artificial and emotional (in this case, human) intelligence.
The set-up for this clever, darkly funny story is rooted in the very human desire to maintain communication in some way with a dead loved one. Ben's solution is to send his partner Alison 'beyond the grave' emails generated by AI. The twist, and the humour, come from the fact that each fresh email demonstates that the AI version of Ben wants to deepen the new, virtual relationship with Alison, whereas she is moving on with her life and wants a connection with a flesh-and-blood human, not a robot version of her dead partner. The neat resolution, as Peter writes it, is to create an AI Alison to talk to AI Ben.
It's a witty, caustic sidelong glance at the notion there is apparently a tech solution to any contemporary problem, and that it is always subject to user error and human interference. In a battle of wits between human and artificial intelligence, who is the winner? As this story shows, it's not always clear cut.