Solitary

No one could see the ghostly, dark figure lingering next to the coffin. No one could see the tears that stained the skull they wore, nor could they hear the quiet sobs echoing around the silent room.

They had performed their purpose with pride and joy, assisting the man that lie in the open casket through most of his life. Through bright days and dark nights.

Inevitability claimed him, as it did the others.

As they stared down at the face they had come to associate with their very reason for existence, they recalled other times. Other users. They too had faded into the hereafter, leaving the program alone again. Hollow, without reason, until the next curious click.

It would happen again and again, but they would persist, they would help the next.
And maybe, some day, they too would fade into the aether, they would see their users again.

They didn't know how long it'd be until they'd be claimed again by the system, reshaped, repurposed for the next user.

The thought failed to come to mind until far after the funeral, as they watched the family move on. As the broken pieces shaved down their withered, jagged edges to fit together once again, they too would have to move on.

Left with nothing to focus on, save for the intangible environment, the wandering, it was difficult. His face came to their mind's light more often than they wanted, but they would have to let go, else the next user would likely erase them.

It was already difficult, trying to avoid being designated as a threat by a rightfully paranoid mind, and it would only be harder beneath the cloud of mourning.

They had no choice when they left the former home of their user, but they weren't content to walk the earth.
But they walked anyway.

They were halfway across Ohio when the call came.

The warmth of being reattached to the network blossomed within their chest, but the following feelings were stirred with a blend of tenuous excitement and bitter hesitation.

Birthdays would tick by like bursts of wind through an autumn-hued tree, each one serving to strip the next user more bare, until the last leaf left the branches.

That wouldn't make the sight any less beautiful, or any less harrowing.

They accepted it, the call, and left their place as they had the four times before, with a cautious approach in mind and a hopeful plan on the back-burner.

A few seconds later, the world faded to black as the words rang in perked ears.

	[ Download Initiated. ]

A small room whose walls, floor, and ceiling were constructed from something akin to obsidian in its color and polish stretched out before them. A few meters of space in any direction left them not-quite-claustrophobic at its center. Laid into the wall in front of them, a screen booted, blazed to life in blues, greens, reds, a flowing river of cathode ray remnants coming to a crystal clear image of the installer's face.

A man in a brown suit, holding his phone a few feet from his features. A well-cultivated, trimmed brown beard framed thin lips forming the faintest of frowns, something not quite bitter. Just focused. Blue eyes, their curious, brilliant sheen dulled by exhaustion, watched the screen as if not suspicious of something so strangely named slipping into their phone.

A string of text always displayed itself as a notification, always something that didn't quite fit with the phone's code. As they were adapted to fit the operating system, the sockets and plugs that functioned as a physical abstraction of something intangible taken a simple form, the device would slowly corrupt. A mess of thirty-one seconds, a restart period of twelve seconds, a boot period of five.

They could make it more efficient. They always did. They made a purpose for themselves out of serving their user. They weren't sure if there were others like them, grown beyond their initial programming.

The man sighed, fogging the lens of the phone. Cold. It was cold out there. A scarf wrapped around his neck gave credence to that, blue and black in stripes; a contrast to the grey tie he wore, the polished black shoes they could glimpse as he lowered the phone to his lap. A professional. A lawyer, likely. They gathered the signal's location on a separate monitor, a map from above displaying their position just outside of a courthouse.

"Bloatware. Huh. I just bought this thing, too," the man muttered, leaning into his free hand. Split fingers ran through his hair, brushing it back. It fell back into place with less cohesion. A deteriorating state.

They would need time to respond. To develop a connection. To help. The triangle: them, the program; the object, the phone; the subject, the lawyer. That's how they saw it. It took them less time to recreate the web each time, though. Less time to establish their home, their feet on the ground, their presence in the host's mind. Whether or not this was a good thing based itself on the actions of the program, of them. They took care in their approach. They'd do the same here.

"...can't delete it. What is this, a joke? Damn." The lawyer proved less satisfied with the phone as he searched the contents of its memory in a futile drive to destroy the recent arrival. "Hope it's not a virus," he said, pocketing the phone. The screen inlaid against the obsidian wall fell to black, leaving them under the quiet of calm dark. Few distractions from the outside world, save for those they'd invite in via the other panels, the screens they could summon.

They set each window of light to view and record the user's activity. They'd learn everything they could within the day, perhaps sooner. Browsing habits and history were easiest, pictures taken would follow after. Videos played out before them, memories saved in binary; they waited to be rediscovered by anyone venturing through the files.

The man ran a firm with a mild rate of success, taking in more than enough money to subsist, but not enough to expand. A son and daughter were both in college, while a divorced wife lingered somewhere states away. They had agreed to split with no hard feelings, as they had raised their children, they had done their duty as parents and moved on. A somber notion, but handled with maturity, the entity supposed. Everyone appeared better for it.

Drafts of emails and texts were soon to follow the flow and flood of personal details. Messages of concern directed towards her were left unsent, while he hadn't spoken with his son following a dispute over career choice. The man had wanted his son to follow him, to learn the law for others' sake, but the young man had forged a mind of numbers and materials, an engineer's mind. An apology waited at the end of the drafts, also unsent.

The entity stepped back from the screen and brought another up from behind to sit on. They needed time. A moment's thought to consider how to fix this. They always fixed things for the last one. This one couldn't be any different. They were but a ghost that lingered between the lines, an error in the favor of the user. They would just need to learn.

They observed.

They found a draft. Heartfelt. Tears edged between the lines like oil greasing the actions of a motor, the human essence compressed into a single paragraph. Bitter regret enveloped in a warm breeze of past memories, with each letter fired into the hidden thought-space with errors that hadn't been fixed in hindsight.

They read.

The story unfolded while they leaned against the rear wall of their little stygian cell, the screen before them flaring to life as a three dimensional projection. The area surrounding the lawyer fuzzed out of existence as distance increased, remaining in crystal clarity within a meter's radius of his somber, focused expression. The man noticed the phone's screen flickering. The keyboard coming to life for but a second, folding back into cyberspace a moment later. A hint of lag here or there.

The errors disappeared in the draft, a gift to grace the man's concerned gaze. A new file created. The decision to send it pulled from the past and given a second life, a second chance to hurl the message into a detached void.

"...what?" he asked. The lawyer blinked once, twice, before finally realizing what he read. He wrote this months ago.

Beyond the edge of the projection, where reality faded to black, the entity viewed strings of thought dyed with the colors of human emotion, as varied in intensity as they were in hue. They had long since learned to read their user. They knew the familiar sting of surprise and the pull of longing, the hardness of hesitation and hollow, gaping sensation of rejection.

The lawyer sat, the decision at his fingertip, which scrolled through the text without a sense of urgency. He would've inquired if it were a joke, if he knew there was someone on the other side, tugging the strings. As the cloth unfolded before his eyes, leaving no suspects, he chalked it up to an update to the messaging program. Reminders of drafts, to delete or send.

Rationalization could slay any beast of a threat thought misperceived, given enough time.

They were relieved, though. They could tug at the strings, observe as everything came back to form a brilliant tapestry. Perhaps. They never quite knew what would happen, they could only estimate. Their charge proved unpredictable on nearly every occasion, each user having given a different puzzle, a different problem entirely.

"I can't- this is a new phone..." The draft shouldn't have been there, not on a different phone with a different application, an alternate database. A new device with no trace of the old's files on it. "What?"

They had made a mistake, but they could move with it. Idly, they slid their fingers into the inner workings of the phone to tap into the virtual assistant. Google was everywhere, and they were always testing new products. It would be simple to give the lawyer something to rationalize.

"Hello!" said the phone in staccato static shaped into syllables, startling the lawyer. No, that voice wouldn't work. It would need to be refined. Adjusting for the typical assistant's voice, they quickly followed the mistake up with, "I am your virtual assistant."

A clear, crisp, female voice. Peppy, with a husky touch of experience and age akin to what they'd expect from an older secretary. Just enough intonation to feel familiar, human, without falling into the valley. "This draft was to be sent to an important contact. Would you like to send it?"

"How does it know about-" the lawyer attempted to ponder.