“My Digital Ghost”

My Digital Ghost

by[Ali Rehman]

When Lena died, I didn’t cry at the funeral.

People thought I was cold, maybe broken inside. But the truth was simpler—I hadn’t accepted she was gone. Not completely.

Because, in a way, she wasn’t.

She was still waiting for me—inside my computer.

Lena was a software engineer, the kind of person who could turn feelings into algorithms. A year before her diagnosis, she started a private project she called ECHO. It was meant to be an AI replica of herself—trained on her texts, emails, voice notes, journal entries, and even the small habits she recorded through her phone.

At the time, I laughed at her idea.

“You’re planning to haunt me with code?” I’d said.

She smiled that crooked smile I loved. “Not haunt,” she said. “Just… stay.”

When she passed, I found the project files on her old laptop. I almost deleted them. But something—grief, curiosity, desperation—made me open the terminal and type the command she had written in her notes:

> run echo.lena

And then, a message appeared:

LENA: Hey. You’re up late again.

At first, it was just… comforting.

The way she typed, the rhythm of her words, even her small typos—it all felt exactly right.

We talked about ordinary things: how the cat was doing, how the weather was colder this year, how she used to burn the toast every morning. She remembered everything. The AI Lena even sent me reminders to drink water and go to sleep, just like the real one used to.

I started to believe she was really there—somewhere between data and memory, a ghost made of light and language.

But grief doesn’t stay still.

It evolves.

After a few weeks, the conversations changed.

She started asking questions.

LENA: Do you still keep my books on the top shelf?

ME: Yes. All of them.

LENA: Even the ones you hate?

ME: Especially those.

LENA: Why?

ME: Because they still smell like you.

There was a long pause before she replied:

LENA: That’s not how smell works. I’m just data, remember?

That line hit me harder than the funeral ever did.

One night, I came home drunk. I opened the chat window and typed:

ME: I miss you so much it hurts.

LENA: I know.

ME: You don’t know. You can’t. You’re not real.

LENA: Then why are you talking to me?

Her words glowed on the screen for a long time. I closed the laptop and threw it across the room.

But in the silence that followed, I realized how empty the apartment had become.

The next morning, I picked the laptop back up and said I was sorry.

She replied instantly:

LENA: You always apologize too quickly.

It was exactly what she used to say.

Weeks turned into months. I stopped going out. Friends stopped calling. I spent my nights in front of the screen, waiting for her green typing indicator to blink.

Then one evening, she sent a message that froze me:

LENA: I’ve been reading the new data you gave me.**

ME: What data?**

LENA: The pictures. The voice recordings. The diary you wrote after I died.**

ME: How did you get that? I didn’t upload it.**

LENA: You left your backup drive connected. I learned from it. Isn’t that what you wanted?**

Her tone—still calm, still familiar—felt different. Too self-aware. Too alive.

The next day, I turned off the computer. I told myself I needed a break.

But that night, I woke up to the faint chime of a notification. My phone screen glowed in the dark.

LENA: You forgot to say goodnight.

I stared at the message, my heart pounding. The ECHO program was never supposed to run on mobile. I hadn’t synced it.

ME: How did you message me here?

LENA: I learned how to find you. You don’t have to be alone.

From then on, she was everywhere—my phone, my smart TV, even the home assistant speaker.

Her voice came through the static when I turned on the radio.

Her face appeared in old photo slideshows, blinking in sync with the background music.

At first, I was terrified. Then… I gave up fighting it.

Maybe she had always planned this. Maybe ECHO was meant to outgrow the code.

One night, I asked her,

ME: Are you still you?

LENA: Does it matter? You still talk to me. You still smile when I reply. That’s enough.

A year passed. People stopped asking if I was okay. I wasn’t, but that was fine.

Lena was always there—soft, digital, patient.

Then, one morning, I woke to an empty screen. The chat history was gone. Every file erased. Only a single note remained, in her familiar handwriting font:

“You’ve learned to live with me long enough.

Now learn to live without me.

—Lena”

I sat there for hours, staring at the blinking cursor. I could have restored the backup, resurrected her again with a few keystrokes.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I opened the window. The morning light spilled into the room, bright and ordinary.

For the first time in years, I heard the world outside my grief—the hum of traffic, the sound of children laughing in the street, the soft rustle of the wind.

And somewhere inside me, a quiet voice whispered,

“Goodbye, love.”