The Voice

A corporation promises that no one ever has to disappear again. But in its new AI voice, Hanna recognizes someone she has already lost.

"I only wanted no one to disappear anymore. I never asked whether anyone wants to disappear."

Three years have passed since Hanna tried to protect the trail her family left behind. Now the technology company Aurea announces the next level of perfection: a new generation of digital voices, built to give the living the ultimate comfort - an endless conversation that never has to break off.

But when Hanna hears the voice in the keynote, she recognizes at once, beneath the synthetic surface, the unmistakable cadence of her dead mentor. It is a trace that should never have been put up for sale.

As old, unfinished lines from 1987 and the faint echoes of a distant future close in behind her, Hanna's own family is driven toward a merciless choice - between the comfort of the machine and the dignity of silence.

For readers of literary near-future science fiction and thoughtful, character-driven novels about life with artificial intelligence, memory, and family.

Themes: artificial intelligence & grief · digital immortality · mother and daughter · near future · the dignity of silence · literary near-future fiction

Book Two of the trilogy "The Fixed Line." Also reads as a standalone.