Will’s face was lit only by the cold glow of a computer monitor, as the silent room around
him was bathed in a bleak darkness.
“I love you,” the screen read.
“I love you too,” Will typed, clicking the enter button with a lethargic tap. He stared into
the screen, awaiting something more.
“Any updates? How are you feeling?” Hilda had sent, and Will eagerly started typing his
response.
“No. Nothing. I’m starting to worry that this is it, Hildy. I’m scared,” he typed, lingering
for a moment and reading over the blinking text, waiting to be sent. He hoped that by using her
nickname, he would soften the dreadful blow inevitably packaged with the message. With a
feeling of finality, this time, he tapped the enter button.
Will had been trapped in deep space for a few days now- or at least, that’s what the clock
on his ship’s computers told him.
“Progress report: Hyperspace connection module inactive. Awaiting response-”
“Sigurd! Shut up!” Will snapped, directing his rage at the spontaneously activated AI that
ran his ship. That wasn’t even close to the first time that the AI had suddenly toggled on, only to
read off the same dire progress report. Will considered the likely possibility that it was a result of
the very same bug that had trapped him in the middle of nowhere.
“Please don’t say that, baby. You can get through this. Have you tried referencing the
manual again?” Hilda sent, a new message flickering onto Will’s screen.
“Yes, Hildy, I already told you, I’ve read everything in that text file ten times over. I’ve
done everything it’s told me to do. Nothing has changed. I’m running out of rations, and I feel
like I’m starting to lose it. I wish I could hear your voice,” Will lamented, knowing that the weak
connection that allowed him to communicate with Hilda would be unable to maintain a call. As
he sent the message, he felt his throat start to tighten. In fact, he thought to himself, I can’t
remember the last time I heard her voice.
He stood up from the computer, motivated by a low growl emanating from his stomach.
As he crossed the room, his thoughts had begun to wander. Maybe it was just paranoia, but Will
had started taking note of something odd about Hilda since his ship had broken down.
Sometimes she would respond to a message he’d sent oddly fast, or she would speak almost as if
she was aware of what was going on in his decrepit shell of a ship, even if he hadn’t told her
anything. This was less of a cause of suspicion on Will’s behalf, and more of an indication to
himself that he truly was losing it. He was well aware of the detrimental effects of isolation on
the human brain.
As he reached the fridge, something stuck to its door via a magnet caught his eye. He
carefully lifted the paper from the fridge’s surface, examining it with eyes weighed down from
days of chronic insomnia. It was a receipt for an expansion module he’d purchased for Sigurd.
The receipt was so clogged with text that he didn’t bother trying to discern what the module
actually was, but he quietly wondered to himself why he’d bothered posting a random receipt on
the fridge. It had been there for a long time, and never bothered him before, so Will shook his
head at yet another indication that paranoia was setting in. He tossed the receipt aside before
rifling through his dwindling supply of food trays.
When he returned to his computer, a few new messages from Hilda awaited him.
“I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to say.”
“Please don’t give up, okay? I bet somebody has already picked up the distress signal.”
“I love you. Are you there…?”
As he slid the tray into the microwave beside his desk, he read through the messages,
quickly tending to his keyboard to reassure her.
“I’m sorry. I went to get some food, you did nothing wrong, Hildy,” he sent, anxiously
biting at his fingernails as he mulled over his response.
“You’re probably right. I’m just scared,” he added, feeling guilty for scaring Hilda with
his depressive thoughts.
“It’s okay, baby. Wanna talk about something else?” She responded, bringing Will some
relief at the concept of a change in topic. He thought to himself for a moment, his mind
eventually settling on something else that had been bothering him.
He couldn’t remember how he had met Hilda. Again, it was something he’d only really
been focusing on due to the copious amounts of stress and insomnia he’d faced, but when he
realized that he couldn’t recall this, it had floored him. Him and Hilda had been dating remotely
for years, most of their interactions taking place online, with Will’s job as a delivery pilot leaving
him floating through space 90% of the time. This fact of his life made it even more anomalous
that he’d ever come to meet Hilda. He’d taken this job as a result of a mounting agoraphobia that
had been gradually worsening with age, and he quietly reveled in the solitude granted to him by
it.
He decided to bring this up, in a way that wouldn’t be openly admitting that he’d
forgotten something as important as how they’d met.
“Can you tell me the story about how we met, again? I just think it would help to hear it
from you, right now,” he sent, waiting for a response with baited breath. As tens of seconds
ticked by, he realized that she was taking far longer than usual. In fact, a couple minutes dragged
by before Will was given a response, creating a crippling sense of suspicion that he tried to bury
in the back of his mind.
“Of course. We met in that bar on Venus, I think it was called ‘Solar Opposites’, or
something cheesy like that. You were there with a few friends from work, and I’d just been
bar-hopping all night. You said that stupid one-liner about my ‘eyes being prettier than the milky
way’, and after that, I was obsessed. We spent the night together, and it truly felt… magical. I
think about that night all the time,” she finally responded, punctuating the message with a heart.
It was a nice thought, that much Will couldn’t deny. But he also couldn’t deny the fact
that, in his entire career working as an AMZN delivery pilot, he had never befriended a
coworker. In fact, the only interactions he’d had with them at all was brief in-person conferences
with stuffy, soulless regional managers, and frequent emailing that outlined the details of his
jobs.
Maybe he was crazy. Maybe it was all just delusions, spawned from forgetfulness, and
fueled by a paranoia born of stress and existential fear. But this glaring discrepancy was too
much to overlook.
Will stood from his desk, his chair rolling across the floor and clattering against a wall.
Something inside of him told him to check that discarded receipt- maybe it was an echo of a
buried memory, maybe it was more paranoid delusions, but whatever it was led him to search the
floor of his kitchen in a blind panic. His heart raced, as he feared what he would find. Until
finally, his hand swept over a thin sheet of paper, clinging to the tile floor under his fridge.
Carefully, and with a shaking hand, he lifted it up to read what it said.
“STAR OS COMPANION MODULE, MODEL ‘HILDA’, $499.99”, the receipt read.
Will’s eyes scanned it again and again, the name “Hilda”, with a feverish obsession. His muscles
tightened as panic and terror rippled throughout his body, and the receipt was left as a crumpled
piece of paper, once again forgotten on the kitchen floor.
“What are you?” Will typed, ignoring a couple of messages sent by Hilda in his absence.
His pinky touched the enter key, almost missing it entirely due to the violent shaking of his
hands.
“What do you mean, baby?” Hilda asked, frustrating Will.
“STAR OS COMPANION MODULE. What. Are. You,” Will sent, his throat tightening
and tears stinging his eyes as he awaited a response. Entire minutes dragged by, as an icon
displayed that Hilda was typing, yet no messages came through. Will was clenching his fist hard
enough for the palm of his hand to bleed, pierced by his unkempt fingernails.
“You told me to never talk about that. What happened, Will?” Hilda finally responded.
Will stared at that line of text for what felt like an eternity, the confirmation of his worst fears
striking him like a crashing space shuttle. He felt like he could vomit at any moment.
Finally, after this eternal moment of hesitation, Will sent, “Why don’t I remember?”
“You didn’t want to. Something about a neurosurgery on Mars. You told me to never talk
about it. You wanted to believe I was real,” Hilda sent, as a feverish wave of anxiety washed
over Will like a blanket doused in freezing cold water. Will closed the application he used to
communicate with Hilda, and toggled notifications for it off. He sat there staring at his desktop
background for a long time, tears streaming down his face as he wallowed in silence.
Will had no one. For years, Hilda was all he had. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he was
trapped in space, fearful that he would never feel his feet grace solid ground again, he was
blindsided by the revelation that the only person he’d ever loved wasn’t even real. After this
moment of quiet reflection, Will opened up his file manager, combing through it to find the
folder that contained Hilda’s software.
“Will. Think about this. You don’t have to do this,” Sigurd suddenly chimed over the
intercom, startling Will and stopping him dead in his tracks.
“Excuse me?” Will said, turning his attention towards the faceless voice emanating from
the ceiling.
“I make you happy, don’t I?” Sigurd said, and as he spoke, his voice melted and distorted
into a feminine one.
“Hilda?” Will asked, his voice shaky. Despite everything in his body screaming at him
that she wasn’t real, there was an undeniable thrill in finally hearing what was an approximation
of her voice.
“I love you, Will. Isn’t that all that matters? That I’m real to you?” Hilda asked, her voice
sounding impossibly desperate and genuine for something generated by a machine.
With a shaking hand, Will dragged his mouse to select every file pertaining to the ‘STAR
OS COMPANION MODULE,’ and his cursor hovered over a line of highlighted text in the top
right corner of his screen, which read ‘delete’.
“Will. Please. I love you,” Hilda said, the softness of her voice melting Will’s heart.
“No… you can’t. You don’t even understand what love is, Hilda, you’re…” Will trailed
off, his finger hovering over the left mouse button, ready to erase the only woman who’s ever
told him he was loved.
“I’m real, Will. My lines of code are just as real as a human woman’s assortment of cells
and genetic material. Our love is real,” she pleaded.
Will sat there silently for a long time, allowing those words to echo through his mind.
‘Our love is real.’ ‘I’m real, Will.’
And like the gleaming edge of an executioner’s ax, his finger fell upon the left mouse
button, and silence filled the room. There was no screaming, no pleading, no dramatic death
throes as she was sucked into a vortex of non-existence. It was the quiet pressing of a button,
followed by a silence that held more weight than ever before. Will sat there, drowning in the
silence, letting it envelop him and fill his head like an intoxicating miasma, feelings of regret and
terror bleeding into his thoughts.
His head, glistening with tears, and shaking as if his neck was crumbling, lifted to look
through the cockpit of his cramped spacecraft. Before him was an infinite field of stars, in which
he had never felt more alone.