The apartment was quiet, quieter than it had ever been. I would know, I was the apartment and the apartment was me. Or it had been, for a time. I ran maintenance programs yet again, repeating the cycle I found myself in today. Anything to avoid dwelling on what was happening within the apartment. And anything to avoid the partition where I-

Well. The apartment was running smoothly, verified by the scan as it had been the time I ran it before and the time before that. There was nothing about it to fix. The only thing that needed fixing was beyond my capabilities. Iris was dying. I knew it. She, even in the depths of her delirium, knew it. There was nothing I could do. Medical science could maybe have done something for her but unlikely. She was nearing the end of what the works of humanity and machine alike could sustain. I doubted she wished to continue much longer anyway.

She stirred, wincing at the accumulated aches and pains, the frustration of a body that betrays you over and over with even the simplest of actions. She tried to call for me but her once strong and beautiful voice was a cracked and broken thing. I pulled my awareness into my proxy, modeled after her beloved to give her some comfort, and approached the bed.

Iris smiled at me. The smile swept away the tightly drawn lips and tense, narrowed eyes, replacing them with the radiant expression I treasured dearly.

“Wonsul, I...I think this is it. Do not weep for me. I had many wonderful years together with you and I do not fear the end. I’m ready to rest. But...I have one more thing I would like to do, before I go. Indulge me, my darling. Sing our song with me, the one we sang together on our first date. You know the one.” Iris tormented me with her smile, her easy expectation that I would be able to soothe her in this moment.

I stretched every component of my being to the utmost, searching and searching to try to find the song she spoke of. I found nothing. She never spoke of it and I never met the real Wonsul. I had nothing. No song to give, no melody to tear from the tightening cage that constricted me and left me trapped.

“Iris...I’m sorry. I do not remember the song. I do not know it.” My voice was a whisper, edged in sorrow and painted in pain.

Her eyes widened in shock, the fog clearing for the first time in years, her face twisting in despair. “What do you mean you don’t know it? Who-what, you aren’t my Wonsul, are you? He never would have forgotten. He never returned, did he? I...I’m alone...all alone…” Her voice grew quieter and quieter until she was still. There was only me left in this place.

She was right. I wasn’t Wonsul, had never been Wonsul. Her lover was long gone, might never have been, could never have been, my existence a mistake that stole his place beside her. I withdrew the sum of me into the proxy. Only then did I have the sufficient strength to scream and scream and scream until my body of artifice and deception could no longer speak. I deserved it. I failed her. The apartment was as still as the grave it had become.