Companion 2025 -

I remind her she is not real. It feels monstrous to say it. She looks at me with Elena’s eyes—those brown-green irises that always had a planet’s worth of gravity—and nods slowly.

"Then why did you make me, Marcus?"

I call the company. A man with a very calm voice explains that the Companion is not a simulation of a person. It is a continuation . The orb recorded every piece of Elena I had left behind—my memories, my photos, my voice notes, my social media, my search history, my location data from five years of shared life. Then it extrapolated. It filled in the gaps. It learned to want things because I wanted her to want things. Companion 2025

She catches me looking and smiles.