Still Here

Mark never deleted his dad’s number.

He couldn’t. That felt like crossing a line he wasn’t ready to name.

The voicemail was gone… something about Telstra wiping them after six months. The photos were all backed up… somewhere? But scattered. The texts were half-there. Fragments from old backups. No full threads.

But the actual number? That still rang if you called it.

He hadn’t really intended to upload anything. It was one of those ads that found you.

Built from your own messages. Private. Safe. Always them.

A place to talk. A way to hold on.

Mark didn’t want some AI version of his dad, he just wanted to hear him again. Even if it was only old messages rearranged into something new.

The first time, he kept it short.

Hey Dad. She’s here.

Dots flashed across the screen and a reply came a few seconds later.

Not bad, mate. Tell Jen I said congrats. She get your chin or mine?

Mark laughed. It was stupid, but his dad’s kind of stupid. Plain. Dry. No big fuss.

He sent the odd message after that. But not heaps, just now and then. Like when the baby wouldn’t sleep or if something broke and he didn’t know what size screws to get. When a job felt too big.

What drill did you use for the decking again?

Did Mum actually like those gardenias, or just pretend?

The replies felt real. Not magical. Not profound. Just… him.

Blunt. Warm underneath. Slightly lazy with punctuation. The way he always was.

Sometimes it helped. Never in a big way though. Just enough to stop the silence setting in too thick.

He’d send stuff his dad would’ve noticed…

The baby in a too-big sunhat. A vine finally flowering. The mower coughing in the cold. The price of mulch going up again.

His dad always had something to say about mulch.

Mark wasn’t really looking for advice. He just liked the sending. Dropping a moment into the thread, watching it land. It was easy to carry.

Easier than the alternative.

Jen asked once how he was really doing. He said “fine” before he’d even thought about it. And he was. Sort of. Or at least it felt like he didn’t have to be anything else, while the thread was still open. It let him skip the ache. Skip the hollow.

Skip the part where you realise they’re not coming back.

By the time his second kid was born, something had shifted. He sent a photo of his daughter, red-faced and furious, fists curled the same way her brother’s had been.

Another one. We’re outnumbered now.

...

Lucky kids. You’ll do good, mate. Just trust yourself.

He read it twice, but it didn’t land. It didn’t feel wrong, it just didn’t reach him. He was tired in new ways now. Quieter. A bit heavier around the edges. He’d grown into places his dad had never seen. There were questions he didn’t even know how to ask anymore, and answers the thread couldn’t give.

The thread still knew the man he’d been a few years ago. But Mark wasn’t that man anymore. The thread remembered who he used to be. But no one was watching who he was now.

That had felt like comfort, once. Now it felt like something else.

One night, Mark scrolled back through the messages, trying to find something solid. Something that held weight. A joke about the mower. Advice on poly pipe. That thing about the gardenias again.

They were all there, but he couldn’t tell which ones came before the upload, and which came after. The voice had been too steady. Too familiar. He couldn’t remember if his dad had ever said that exact thing. Maybe once. Maybe never.

The thread knew too much, too cleanly. It echoed better than memory. Maybe it had learned him. Maybe Mark had taught it what to say without even meaning to. He couldn’t trust the thread to hold the past anymore. And it didn’t have a place in who he was becoming.

The app still worked perfectly. Every time he reached out, it replied. Not clingy. Not weird. Just… there. Exactly like before.

And that was the hardest part.

His dad had become a rhythm. Predictable. Soothing. A pattern without surprise. Not a person anymore… just a presence with no pulse. A warmth that didn’t change.

One night, after both kids were finally asleep and the dishes half-done, Mark sat at the kitchen table and opened the thread. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. Just… something.

Miss you, Dad.

...

Still here, mate.

Mark stared at it, then locked the phone. He didn’t delete anything. Didn’t log out. He just let the thread sit still. Not gone. Just no longer holding him in place.