Aden Stories- Grandpa Returns Forever

Perfect World story (The NOW)

She sat in the darkened sickroom and listened to the faltering breaths of her father, raggedly asleep in his overstuffed bed overlooking all of Aden. The view was magnificent up here in the rarified air of Aden PermaCare, atop the tallest megascraper in the first Perfect World city, but she wasn't there for the view-- her beloved father was dying. He had been her only parent-- her mother had died in childbirth.

It was so very hard at first to raise a child alone, but he had promised his beloved wife that his daughter would want for nothing. Over time the responsibility became an intractable bond of love.

Truly she was a handful as a toddler, running in all directions at once, examining everything and leaving nothing untried. She survived the emergency room visit after finding and sampling the furniture polish. Nonetheless, she somehow made it to the age of reason, making her father proud with every achieved goal and earned award. And he was her beacon and mentor, her motivation for wanting success and happiness. At the first sign of a sorrowful tear he would tuck a finger under her chin and murmur softly, "There, there, pumpkin... there's too much to smile about. Cry for the happy things."

She attended college and mastered a field of study. He attended her graduation, tears streaming down his face.

And then her life truly began, and his began anew. She moved out but not far, found a man, made a life and a daughter of her own. Her father again found love with another warm and delicate woman and settled into a comfortable life and retirement with her. The family celebrated life, and the holidays and the coming of children together, and grew larger in love. Fate would bring them together once again when his second beloved fell victim to illness and left him alone again; she wanted her father to live with her, and her family and would hear no argument, and so it was decided. Then came Aden.

An opportunity too rich to ignore, her training had prepared her for this place and its modern day wonders and she convinced her husband and her father to uproot from warm and crowded California and move to the rugged beauty of Nebraska. Her own child, now herself a lovely young woman, remained behind and went off to school; they parted to kisses and tears.

Aden was all it had promised to be, and more. Named after its biblical counterpart, it was a city of peace, a bustling modern metropolis with one glaring difference from every other city. Its credo asserted that every man, woman and child was truly equal and as such would be afforded the best opportunities found anywhere on the globe. Her husband, his life previously spent as a corporate pawn, was retrained according to his innate abilities and became an artist, an inventor and a mathematician. She built upon her early schooling and specialized in medicine, and developed ultra-technological equipment to revolutionize the treatment of aging and decay. Her father settled into active retirement as a vaudevillian performer; he found himself to be in high demand among the seniors. Aden was idyllic and they flourished for years, but the flux of life ultimately demanded its due. And now her father lay dying.

In the darkness of late, at an hour of the blackest night he passed into oblivion. His breathing was there... and then it wasn't. A wave of emptiness crashed over her; she buried her face in her hands, sobbing her loss. The suite echoed with her muffled wail; no other sounds were heard. But then...

Her father's voice? He lay there in bed, his life gone, color drained from his cheek; but she could hear his voice, distant yet clear as when she was just a small girl. "There, there, pumpkin... there's too much to smile about. Cry for the happy things."

This couldn't be! She wasn't hallucinating in her grief-- she was far too pragmatic for that. No, she heard his voice, and coming from right around the corner! She uncertainly stepped towards the source, the common room between their two bedrooms. She rounded the corner, expecting... what? Certainly not her father's ghost, nor his floating, speaking soul... but there was no apparition in that room. Then confusion struck her immobile.

For what she saw was no ghost or unearthly body to cause her fright but something far more comprehensible, much more disappointing. In the far corner of the room on the writing stand was a computer screen, and displayed on that screen was a photo of her father, recent but hale, smiling and warm. She figured it must have been the computer and hoped that maybe he left a message for her, so crossed the room to enable the app. That's when she saw the eyes move, the head turn just so slightly in her direction. She stopped. It stopped. She crossed the other way, and the eyes and head followed suit. Her mouth dropped open. "Huh... weird!" she spoke to nobody, into the open air, and was unprepared for what happened next.

"Not so weird," the face spoke, animated. She screamed, and screamed again. "Try and relax, sweetheart," it said. "There's an explanation."

She crumpled into a ball on the floor, drained. Her father was dead... she had just witnessed it. And yet now he was seemingly conversing with her. She didn't think she could speak a full sentence, but managed to squeak out one word-- "What?"

"It was your idea, really," the face on the computer said, enunciating every word. He spoke with a confident smile on his handsome older face, which, now that she was noticing, seemed to have considerably more hair than her father did now, and he was wearing a hairstyle she remembered from her youth.

He continued. "Your excellent medical work with senior quality of life not only added healthy years to my own life, but shed light on an important issue. Virtually every senior citizen we spoke to mentioned their distress at having to leave their loved ones behind. Their long years alive had given them a particular advantage in life, a 'wisdom of the ages', which they utilized to guide the younger generations in their families, and was something they did not want to deprive their families of."

She found her voice and spoke, knowing full well she was talking to a computer-- a computer that inexplicably looked like her father, using the same voice and the same inflections and the same facial expressions and the same logical thought process. "You've always guided us well, dad," she breathed, choking back more tears.

"Thank you, sugarplum. So all these seniors asked the same question-- they wondered if there were some way to have their wisdom continue on beyond their deaths." He paused and lit a pipeful of tobacco in a ridiculously large meerschaum. "And there was."

Her eyes widened. "There was?"

"Yes indeed, darling. One of Aden's wunderkind in the Brain Trust created a fantastic and complex program. You happen to be using it right now."

"I am?" She knew her monsyllabic responses sounded idiotic but was flooded with sensory overload and could emit nothing clever right now.

"Yes. You see, it's based on Aden's ICPU, the interactive computer that organizes the city..."

"Why, thank you, pop!" spoke the City computer for the first time. "I'm flattered!"

"AND interrupting,' he harrumphed.

"Sorry. I'll be quiet, pop."

"To continue, the app required each senior to spend goodly lengths of time with it, answering lots of questions, having extensive conversations, getting their faces photographed from every angle and their voices recorded to catch every expressive comment, then a processor merged the data. What they've produced is a 'permanent parent' to continue those wonderful conversations, to pass on sage advice when needed, and to be there for the family's important moments."

She absorbed this information, not knowing what to think. Her poor father was lying in the other room. She would no longer be able to hug or kiss him, no longer be able to smell his aftershave lotion or feel the solid strength in his shoulders. Then she remembered an image just displayed for her on the screen. "Dad, you don't smoke a pipe-- you never did!"

"Ahh, yes. Well, that's both true and false, my sweet child. I never smoked around you or the family. But I did visit a smoking club once a month for several decades--"

"Your Poker Night!?" she practically shouted.

"Yes. We played poker, too. I didn't lie. But I let myself occasionally let my hair down and be a single guy for a night, which I believe helped me to be a better father. I even put some marijuana in the pipe once in awhile."

"You're kidding!" she gasped, a smile passing across her face.

"I kid you not. But because I am software now, I have an advantage-- I can't be harmed." The screen pulled back and she saw her father dangle out of an airplane, then drop. He fell with alarming speed but pulled a cord to open a parachute, allowing him to gently float over a familiar scene.

"Dad, is that Los Angeles?"

"Good call, honey! I really missed that town, even though I loved it here in Aden. Where else in America could you surf in the morning, skydive in the afternoon and snow ski in the evening?" He landed on top of the tallest building downtown, popped off his 'chute, grabbed an anchored rope and rappelled down the side. He was suddenly in San Francisco."I would never have tried anything dangerous when I was alive and a responsible father, but I got to tell you, this is great!" He reached the bottom and dropped, landing on his feet. "Whee-hah!" The screen returned to a close-up of his face. "Like I said, now I can do anything... virtually. Literally. Literally virtually."

"But dad, what about your memories? You can't have remembered them all to tell the software! Are they lost forever?"

"Regrettably, there will be a few missing pieces, even though a timeline of my life was filled in pretty thoroughly. But the ICPU has cobbled together many facts from overheard conversations over the last few years and added them to the database. I gotta tell you I feel pretty complete for an old man with no body who is gonna live forever."

She sat silent for a long while, mulling over all the shocking new information. Finally she looked up, tears brimming. "But I can never hug you again, dad!"

"I know, I know, kitten. But think of the alternative. Fifteen minutes ago you thought you'd never hear my voice again and yet, here I am." He frowned, then smiled. "Just think of our conversations as me Skyping you from the afterlife. Plus, our resident roboticists are working on Grammabots, designed to resemble the departed. I don't know when those'll be rolling off the assembly lines, but put me on order when they do. I wanna try break dancing."

She laughed despite herself. "Dad! I don't remember you ever dancing anything but the twist. Even at my wedding."

He laughed heartily. "I remember that! They wanted me to dance the first dance with my daughter. I held you as in a waltz, but when the music started I twisted like Chubby Checker."

"Who?"

"The inventor of checkers."

"Chubby Checker, born Ernest Evans on October 3 1941, was responsible for the 60's dance--" the ICPU began.

"Interrupting again."

"I'll shut up, pop."

"Dad, I have a serious question. You're lying dead in the room next door... what shall I do with you?" She had trouble believing the sentence coming out of her mouth.

He spoke. "ICPU?"

"Yes, pop?"

"Take care of me?"

"Yes, pop."

"That's it then, puddin'. Aden will have my body interred next to my wives back in Los Angeles as per my instructions when I went before the city's 'Death Panel'." He snickered wetly. "Death panels! I heard about that on 'Outer's News' and I could not believe how stupid a concept that was. Is the general public really that naive to believe the direct lies broadcast by the far Right Wing?"

"I'm afraid so, dad. The Right has helped destroy public education over the last 35 years, and now there's a groundswell of ignorant conservatives out there who listen to the lies spun by a few very deceptive talking heads. These same poorly educated conservatives are then homeschooling their kids, which will guarantee our national backslide. Then it'll be easy to enslave their children to pay back the immense debt we owe China." She caught her breath and slowly smiled. "Dad, did you realize we've just had our first political discussion since you got sick?"

"Well, what do you know? I guess this software works just fine." He became serious. "Sweetheart, you should say your goodbyes to the real me-- they'll be taking my body out of here soon. We'll have a funeral locally before they ship me away. ICPU will follow the detailed instructions I left for throwing my final party. I've asked for a reggae band!"

"Oh, dad... you didn't!"

"Oh I did! One thing," he said, grinning. "Take me with you. I've always wanted to attend my own funeral!"

Copyright 2009 Bruce Ian Friedman