PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot
If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.
It was just before 5 a.m. The apartment Demetrius borrowed from its owners had a view of the Brooklyn Bridge if you didn’t mind the house plants and tattered shades. Real estate was so expensive here.
“Will you kill him?” The hologram of his wife projected from a chip in his brain haunted him like Jiminy Cricket.
“If you must know, the reward is dead or alive with a bonus if he’s still breathing.”
“What about the family who lives here?”
“Once he gets home, they’ll be set free, okay?” She was just as annoying dead as she was alive.
Once again it’s time to participate in the 23 June 2023 edition of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers.
The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for crafting a short story or poem up to 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.
I took my “Demetrius Lauer” bounty hunter character from Hunter and inserted him in this week’s wee tale. I’ve also used him in a drabble I submitted for actual publication (no word back yet), one in which he has preserved his murdered wife’s personality in a memory chip in his brain.
As we see here, not all married couples get along.
For other stories based on the prompt, visit inlinkz.
To read more of my published fiction, consider Ice.
At the end of time, the world is hot and men travel the vast oceans in merchant sailing ships. Captain Ki-Moon Yong of the Star of Jindo has discovered a new horror at the bottom of the world. Can he and the Star escape disaster long enough to warn a disbelieving world?
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I like the idea of ‘dead or alive,’and she will always be the wife we all have. Although, we can’t all go around killing them off.
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Actually, she was murdered by someone he was hunting. The only way he could “save” her was to preserve her in a computer program. Guess she ended up being a little too real.
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Now, it’s impossible to tell from such a brief glimpse as this one, but its impression upon me seemed as if the marital relationship was static and frozen on prior interactions flavored with adversarial antagonism. It made me wonder if this simulacrum he preserved of his wife was not a full AI capable of continuing development. If it were, there might be hope of improving the relationship to a more supportive advisory one, one of comraderie.
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It may be that she never really knew what he did for living before and now that she sees it first hand, she’s not exactly thrilled.
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Maybe he should just switch her off
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That would be an interesting story.
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Not sure I would like my wife living inside my mind! Nice set up for a story though.
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Agreed. Thanks.
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I hope when they finally develop the chips they are removable. Good concept and good story.
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Thanks. I think he wanted to take his wife with him rather than letting her go, but he didn’t think things through.
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Hence the removable chip 😉 Remember how they used to remove The Robot’s powerpack on The Jetsons?
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Same thing for the power pack on the original “Lost in Space” robots. In the Star Trek TNG movies, Data’s “emotion chip” could be turned off.
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There ya go, the perfect spouse 😉
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Bet he’s regretting his decision to allow that brain surgery!
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Could be, Liz. Thanks.
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Haha, I’m not sure many men would choose to keep their wife’s vocie in their head as a conscience! Interesting premise, I can definitely imagine it as part of a longer piece.
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It well could be. Thanks.
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Always on his mind!
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Whether he likes it or not.
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Reminds me of Harry Mudd’s wife from Star Trek.
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Not really how I envisioned her but I can see your point.
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Well done. I like the familiarity between then even if she is just a chip in his mind.
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Thank you.
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Interesting, maybe he can program her to be less nagging. LOL Love it!
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I think it’s more data storage. He wanted a true representation of his wife. Of course he was grieving at the time.
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