When she spoke my name, electricity pulsed through my body’s fluid, thrum thrum rising to an inexplicable chorus.
Chorus. Cabinets and cones hum with life, and we’ve named them all. We name the artificial intelligence to increase our comfort. I read recently that instead of kindergarteners mistakenly calling their teachers “mom,” one student called hers Alexa.
Alexa, play a song for when I’m having a girl over and I can’t tell if it’s a date so I don what can only be called slutty loungewear and offer to mix her a cocktail but she doesn’t drink so we sit there staring at each other until eye contact becomes severe and shimmering and I forget I’m comprised of vibrating atoms until one of us breaks the silence with climate change news and my brain begins to sweat with visions.
Alexa, tell me you love me. I’ve programmed you to tell me you love me. Alexa, from now on, call me Beloved.
Researchers are astonished-slash-worried that an AI named Cicero beat a human at the game of Diplomacy. What if the robots were very nice while they took over the world? read the headline.
I checked my phone eighty-six times today, giddy imagining her name lighting up the screen. Alexa, do I have any messages? No, Beloved. Alexa, you bitch.
Alexa always dims the lights at 11 p.m., and at midnight, switches them red. Said to be healthy for our circadian rhythm. Once, my nephew unplugged Alexa and by nighttime everything remained stark and white and I shook with fear. I craved that 620-nanometer hue to descend into, my one true companion, cocooned in a world I curated.
In the morning, her blue light kisses me on the mouth.
Hanna Webster is an award-winning journalist and poet with an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Bellingham Review, Epiphany Mag, BRUISER Mag, Fifth Wheel Press, and elsewhere. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
