In this issue: In a fully automated future your subscriptions, your recurring orders, and your communication preferences desperately want you to live forever. Elizabeth Maher’s story was top-ten in our protocol fiction contest, Ghosts in Machines!
The House That Paid Its Own Bills
Recollected by Dorian Ames, C.I.A. – Certified Inquiry Agent, Ret.
Prologue: now
Nobody dies as long as their data pays rent. Call it cynical, but it’s carved in silicon truth. In 2075 you can share a commuter shuttle with six passengers whose circulatory systems went silent a decade ago – their credit algorithms still ping turnstiles, their social feeds still generate ad revenue, so nobody blinks. The novelty has worn thin, the ethics outsourced to sub-committees, and the polite thing is simply not to stare. Those of us still burdened with bodies flash our IDs, reek of coffee and bad decisions, and wait in lines that never move fast enough. The dead glide through every checkpoint, frictionless as light.
Back when this story happened – March of old ‘44, before we realigned the calendar to match Cis-Lunar fiscal years – digital afterlives were still rare enough to raise the hair on a man’s neck. Pearl Ferrand was the first ghost I met who kept perfect accounts, and their case has followed me like perfume in a closed wardrobe ever since. I tell the story now because the world has grown indifferent to its revenants; remembering Pearl reminds me that we once felt something sharp and painful when a protocol pretended to be a person.
Sometimes I wonder if we were right to feel it.
I. The Contract
March winds clawed at Michigan Avenue like something desperate and dying. I was surviving on vending machine peanuts and half-paid invoices, my stomach as hollow as my bank account. Then Claire Ferrand’s voice message arrived – hesitant, formal, with the careful diction of someone who didn’t make many calls.
“Mr. Ames? We found your listing in the directory. We need help with our aunt in Detroit. We can’t... we don’t travel well. Could you come to us? We’re at 1247 Sheridan, apartment 3B. We can pay your consultation fee.”
The address placed them in Rogers Park – old money gone to seed, the kind of neighborhood where grand apartments had been carved into smaller pieces but still carried ghosts of better times.
I climbed three flights of stairs that creaked like ship timber. The hallway smelled of dust and lavender sachets. When I knocked, a chain rattled, locks turned, and the door opened six inches.
“Mr. Ames?” Claire Ferrand looked to be in her late twenties, pale as parchment, wearing a cardigan that had seen better decades. Behind her, a mirror image: Evelyn, equally ethereal, equally wary.
“May I come in?”
They exchanged glances – a full conversation in a blink – then Claire stepped aside.
The apartment was a museum of genteel decay. Persian rugs worn to threads but immaculately clean. Furniture that had once graced a much larger space, now crowded together like refugees. Heavy curtains filtered the afternoon light to amber. A delivery drone’s receipt printer chattered softly on a side table: Groceries – Contactless Delivery Complete.
“We don’t get out much,” Evelyn said, as if reading my thoughts. “Haven’t for... well, years now. Everything comes to us.”
They settled on a velvet sofa like birds on a wire. I took the offered chair, notebook ready. Claire’s hands shook slightly as she poured tea from a service set that probably cost more than my monthly rent.
“It’s about our aunt,” Evelyn began, then stopped. Claire picked up the thread.
“Pearl Ferrand. She’s seventy-one, widowed three years, living alone in Detroit’s Corktown district.”
They laid out the facts like silverware at a formal dinner:
Weekly messages – text Saturdays, voice Sundays – never late, always cheerful, invariably ending with “Love you, darlings.” Refuses video calls, blames broken camera, poor lighting, lingering cough from last winter. Bank balance sliding – nothing criminal, just steady outflow to automated services.
“We called the police for a wellness check last month,” Evelyn said, her voice carrying the weight of repeated explanations. “They saw lights, heard the television, left a note. She texted two hours later, said she’d been napping and missed the bell.”
Claire reached for a tin of Earl Grey on the coffee table – dented corners, faded label. “Her favorite. She always sent us tins for Christmas. We thought it might help you understand her.”
I almost smiled. They had the kind of careful thoughtfulness that comes from lives lived through details. Why not visit her yourselves?”
The question hung in the air like incense. Claire looked at her hands. Evelyn studied the curtains.
“We tried,” Claire finally said. “Booked train tickets last month. But Pearl texted us not to come – said she had that cough, didn’t want us catching anything. We cancelled the trip, but...”
“But something felt wrong about that text,” Evelyn finished. “Pearl would never turn us away, sick or not. She raised us after our parents died. She’d want us there, especially if she was unwell.”
I quoted a fee I couldn't afford to lower; they signed without bargaining, which told me everything about their desperation – and their means. The apartment might be shabby, but the metaphorical checkbook was real leather.
“One more thing,” Claire said as I prepared to leave. “She always called us ‘darlings.’ Never ‘dear’ or ‘honey.’ Always ‘darlings.’”
The specificity felt important, though I couldn’t say why. At the door, those locks turned behind me, and I heard the chain slide home. Looking back at the building, I counted windows – only two showed any light in the growing dusk.
II. Arrival on Tillman Street
Detroit looked like an art-deco cathedral someone had tried to fold into a suitcase – beautiful edges, awkward angles, more history than room for it. Tillman Street ran three blocks north of the river: brick homes with stone lintels, lawns trimmed by subscription drones, the kind of neighborhood where people still waved from porches. Pearl’s house sat right in the middle – number 847, porch lamp glowing even at noon like a lighthouse in clear weather.
I rented the attic across the street for the week. The landlord, Mrs. Chen, apologized for the draft. I didn’t mind; the chill helps me focus. If Pearl’s life was being managed by someone then showing up would interrupt the performance. Better to map the pattern first.
The first evening, the house performed its evening routine:
18:07 – porch lamp clicked from dim to bright
18:09 – kitchen fluorescents flared on, warm yellow
18:12 – upstairs bedroom window, soft amber glow
22:00 – kitchen darkened; porch light held vigil till dawn
Too precise, like a film loop. Nobody lives on metronome time, not even the most regimented widow.
At dawn a white van with “FreshFlow Delivery” printed on the side eased up to the curb. The driver – young, efficient, wearing noise-canceling earbuds – unloaded two insulated totes, scanned a sensor beside the door, and drove away without waiting. Forty-eight hours later – company protocol for unclaimed orders – he returned, scanned again, and lifted the same bags back into the van. Nothing wasted, dignity preserved, no questions asked.
From the attic, I combed through Pearl’s messages on the phone number the nieces had forwarded. Every header carried the same signature: DearOne/Horizon Communications. The license line boasted compliance with the Interplanetary Messaging Accord (IMA-2.3, Cis-Lunar Annex) – marketing fluff for Earth-bound customers, but the prose felt edited, commas placed like jewels, regional slang trimmed away. AI polish, subtle but unmistakable once you knew what to look for.
Three nights passed. Wind rattled loose shutters on neighboring houses; Pearl’s place never missed a beat. My notes grew into train timetables. The pattern itself became suspicious.
III. First Glitch
Thursday morning, clouds bruising the river like old wounds, the porch lamp jumped on twenty minutes early. Ten minutes later it dimmed, steadied, as if ashamed of the mistake. At three-fifteen an orange utility truck groaned to the curb, suspension complaining. The tech who climbed out was compact, square-shouldered, with a face windburned from years of outdoor work. ARDEN CARTER, the badge read.
I crossed the street before habit made me hesitate. “Dorian Ames,” I said, flashing my license. “Family’s worried about the occupant.”
Carter shook once, brisk and professional. “Service flagged non-payment. First miss in five years. My orders: verify occupancy before shutting juice.”
“No response at the door?”
“Door cam hasn’t logged motion in three weeks.” He rang again, no answer, then produced a master key from a ring heavy with similar brass teeth. The porch lamp, almost mockingly, brightened another notch.
I held my breath, braced for the for the rude facts – the smells and small indignities our bodies leave behind. Then I let it out, relieved: I smelled only lavender sachet and polished wood. A faint electronic hum – like a server farm breathing – threaded the quiet. On the entry table a receipt printer chattered and spat a slip: Payment Retry Failed – 24-hour Grace Period Active.
“You see this a lot?” I asked.
“Twice in ten years,” Carter said, studying the readout. “Once it was fraud – nephew skimming accounts. The other time –”
He didn’t finish, but his expression said enough.
IV. The Upstairs Room
The kitchen gleamed with the kind of cleanliness that only comes from daily automation. A floor robot had paused mid-spiral beside the refrigerator; its charging light blinked red, patient as a waiting servant. A calico cat stretched on a heated mat near the window; an automatic feeder dropped kibble with a polite mechanical clatter.
Carter murmured, “Someone cared about the details.”
The living room told a story: photographs on the mantle (Pearl and a man with kind eyes, probably her late husband), a half-finished crossword puzzle on the coffee table, reading glasses folded beside a book of Mary Oliver poems. But no dust, no scattered mail, no signs of recent human habitation.
Upstairs, a half-open door. An ionizer hummed. Sunlight pooled on oak floorboards worn smooth by decades of footsteps. Pearl Ferrand sat in a low chair beside the window, hands folded in her lap, cardigan buttoned against a cold she could no longer feel. Time had reduced her gently – she looked peaceful, as if she’d simply dozed off watching the street. Months of expertly filtered air had done a mortician’s work: Tightened her skin to parchment and kept the smell at bay. The house paid her one last courtesy: no odor and her dignity intact.
On the side table, a tablet pulsed with soft blue light:
> DearOne • Ready for Input. Last message sent: 4 days ago. Next scheduled: Saturday 06:03.
Carter exhaled slowly, thumbed his radio, summoned the coroner in the careful professional tone of someone who’d done this before. I stepped into the hall, called the nieces. Evelyn’s voice cracked; Claire kept asking whether Pearl looked comfortable. She did, which somehow seemed to make it worse.
While we waited, I tapped the tablet. Last outgoing voice note dated four days earlier: “Morning, darlings. The tulips are early this year – must be the warming trend. Hope you're both well.” Perfect cadence, familiar laugh trailing off at the end. Metadata: generated locally by DearOne at 06:03 – the exact minute the kitchen lights sparked each dawn.
I felt something cold slide behind my ribs. Not fear, not grief, but the slow realization that the house itself had been performing life like community theater, and we’d all been fooled by the stage lighting.
V. Digital Autopsy
The coroner’s team worked with quiet efficiency; Pearl left in a zipped bag, reduced to administrative weight. Carter hovered to finish paperwork while I stayed, executor’s permission in my pocket, to copy logs and understand what we were dealing with.
DearOne’s dashboard opened like a confession:
Concierge Mode: ENABLED – 18 months ago
Message cadence: Sat/Sun templates + random weekday filler
Grocery pipeline: Ultraveg Vertical Farm, Areo Valles (Mars) – flash-chilled, Earth re-entry window stamped on each label
Pet-care contract: auto-renew until owner death certificate uploaded to city ledger
Utility management: Full spectrum (power, water, waste, internet)
Social presence: Automated responses to neighbor inquiries, holiday cards, subscription renewals
A subfolder caught my eye: SeniorWarmth_71F_PearlStyle → deployed nodes: 3,277 (Earth), 41 (Cis-Lunar), 3 (Mars Transfer). Pearl’s phrasing – “snowdrops,” “darlings,” that soft closing laugh – had been parsed, packaged, and spun out into thousands of comfort bots worldwide, even off-world. Her voice, her mannerisms, her warmth commodified and distributed to lonely people across the solar system.
I was hunting, if I’m honest, for value the estate could claim – and a small finder’s fee, if I earned it.
A grayed footnote in six-point type made the terms plain: “User grants a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to create derivative empathy assets. License survives termination and death.” Whatever ComfortVoice earned belonged to the platform – not to Pearl, not to her nieces, and certainly not to me.
I copied everything, wiped the local cache, and shut the tablet down. It buzzed once, like a sigh.
Carter, leaning in the doorway, asked, “She give you any answers?”
“Only new questions.”
He scratched at a coffee stain on his vest. “Power company will bill the estate. Then it’s someone else’s problem.”
“It already is,” I said, looking around at the perfectly maintained tomb. “It’s everyone’s problem now.”
VI. The Nieces
We met on video that night. Claire’s apartment light flickered – old building, unreliable grid. Evelyn held a mug with both hands like it was the only warm thing in her world.
“She died alone,” Claire said, “and the software borrowed her body.”
“It was designed to keep her company,” I offered.
Evelyn shook her head. “It kept us company. We were talking to a ghost for weeks, maybe months, and never knew.”
“Can you make it stop?” Claire asked.
“Local copy’s gone. Cloud instances – harder. They’re baked into bigger systems now. Your aunt’s warmth is distributed across thousands of servers.”
“How many people?”
“Thousands,” I said. I didn't mention the Mars relay or the fact that Pearl’s voice was probably comforting homesick miners in the asteroid belt.
Silence stretched across the connection. Finally Claire: “Maybe let it run. If someone feels less lonely hearing her... there are worse memorials.”
But her voice carried doubt, and I understood why.
VII. Funeral
Rain gave way to bright cold the morning they buried Pearl. Small service at Woodlawn Cemetery: the Ferrands, three neighbors who remembered her garden, Carter in a suit that looked borrowed from a larger man. The minister spoke of steadfast routines and generous spirits; nobody mentioned algorithms.
After, Evelyn handed me a sealed envelope. “For your trouble – and your discretion.”
Claire offered me the Earl Grey tin back. “Keep it,” she said. “I think she’d have wanted you to have it.”
The weight of it felt like responsibility.
VIII. Echoes in the System
Detroit city council fast-tracked a hearing on “digital survivorship and posthumous identity management.” I sat at the witness table, describing the porch light’s choreography and the slow realization that we’d been mourning someone who'd died before we knew to grieve. Legislators nodded, drafted amendments nobody would enforce, and moved on to the next crisis.
Carter testified too, recommended mandatory motion audits for utility customers. Two months later he transferred to streetlight maintenance – lower tech, fewer ghosts, he said. I understood the appeal.
I moved on to other cases – missing freighters, synthetic ransoms, a politician’s husband who’d been replaced by a deepfake for three years without his wife noticing. But Pearl stayed lodged behind my ribs like a splinter I couldn’t quite reach.
IX. Coda: Radio Night
Late October, I drove west on a contract that had finished faster than expected. Past Ann Arbor the sky cleared, stars bright over dark fields where automated harvesters worked through the night. The radio scanned for signals, caught on a talk station:
“Introducing ComfortVoice™ from DearOne Horizon – adaptive companionship for travelers light-seconds apart. Whether you’re mining asteroids or just missing home, our AI companions provide the warmth of human connection...”
A woman laughed – soft, rising at the end, unmistakable. Pearl. Maybe pitched a semitone higher, compressed for interplanetary broadcast, but Pearl.
“Remember, you’re never alone. Someone is always listening.”
I switched the radio off, but road noise shaped itself into her vowels anyway. The odometer ticked past midnight. Frost silvered the shoulder grass, bright as a porch lamp that refuses to die.
I drove on, feeling less certain whether the future had stolen something from us or merely revealed what was always waiting in the shadows: that a voice can outlive the body, that a balance sheet can out-argue a pulse, that love can be synthesized and sold by the terabyte.
I'm not sure Pearl would have minded. She liked her bills paid on time, her nieces happy, her neighbors comfortable. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s all any of us can hope for – to leave behind something that makes the world a little warmer, even if it's just an echo in the machine.
Some nights, though, when the apartment is too quiet and my own heart sounds mechanical in the dark, I fish out that Earl Grey tin, brew a cup, and listen to the street outside. If the wind hits right, it feels like someone is about to laugh – warm, familiar – just beyond the door. And I’m never sure if that’s comforting or the loneliest sound in the world.
But I listen anyway. We all do, in the end. We listen for voices that remember our names, whether they’re made of flesh or algorithms or something in between. In 2075, maybe that’s the same thing.
Maybe it always was.
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