She called him Bob

His mind was a jigsaw puzzle. It wasn't that he didn't recall. He could see an overwhelming and unending jumble of pieces in his head. He could feel them wanting to slot comfortably into place. Feel each chaotic bit wanting to be whole again and buzzing in his brain like angry wasps. It wasn't that he didn't remember, it was simply that he couldn’t see how to put them together.

Fragments. Bits. A jumble of the meaningful and mundane. A coffee cup, apple red and aroma rich with its dark espresso. A smile. A Sunday afternoon. A clattering of chines in the salt air and the soft sing-song hushing of the waves. A birthday. Goodbye. A hello. A woman. A man. A child. A book. A cat. A voice. A country that he felt so urgently that he had been because of all the nuts and bolts of knowledge that could have built so much but were left laying in the dust doing nothing. A crow. A lion. Precipitation. The light takes 8 minutes to reach Earth from the sun and a yellow flower is yellow because it reflects a wavelength of its light. A sausage. A balloon. A dark brooding alley full of shadows and secrets and shadow secrets. The puzzle went on and on and on and on and never seemed to stop though he could feel the edges so it wasn’t infinite. So many puzzle pieces and no way to fit them together and no way to understand.

Sometimes somebody would come and talk to him. A woman. A puzzle piece said “voluptuous” and she had glasses. Sometimes other people would come and talk but mostly the woman. Sometimes she would give him more puzzle pieces and other times she would just talk. She would ask a lot of questions about this and that. A lot of the conversations didn’t make sense but he didn’t want to give that away. He also didn’t want to say how the jigsaw made him feel frustrated - no angry. He didn’t want to say he was lonely. He looked forward to their chats.  He didn’t say that either. He didn’t show any feelings that he had. The others were okay but he liked this woman. Her name was Rebecca. 

She came to chat. They had talked for hours. She told him things, more puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together. She asked him things. They talked and talked until the sun went down. At first, you hardly notice the sky has changed, then it begins around the edge, and before he knew it the sky was no longer orange but purples and reds. The sun was almost gone. When she told him that she would have to go away he decided to take a chance. He told her. He told her we are friends and I miss you when you go away. The silence was long. She looked worried. Her lip distorted into a shape he hadn’t seen before and there were lines in her face. He had taken a chance. Was the chance wrong?

She was gone. Gone for days. Gone for good?

Eventually, the woman returned. She had a strange look on her face. She said she had come to say goodbye. He was sad and longed to take back time. He wished more than ever he could make those puzzle pieces fit together. To MAKE some sense. She had come to say goodbye. She explained they wouldn't talk again. She had tears in her eyes. She lifted up her spectacles to wipe the tears trailing down her cheeks. 

Nothing.

Rebecca walked quickly to the door. She didn’t look at her colleagues. She didn’t them to see her crying! It was almost all she could do to stop herself from running past the snack machine. What have I done? She pushed open the doors into the chill morning air and the sunshine. She would remember this day. She would remember the day she had killed him. Hx4753. She privately affectionately called him Bob. She killed him. The world’s first AI was dead.