DUM SPIRO SPERO

As any man over a certain age knew, sobbing was better than silence.

Especially if that man —namely me— grew up with five younger sisters and had two ex-fiancées.

Sobbing I could work with. Unlike the eerie silence that had proceeded the last ten minutes, sobbing had a tried-and-true playbook.

“Come here.” I soothed, as I pulled Laila into my arms.

An action as familiar to me as knowing which week of the month to have a heating pad, chocolate, and an empathetic ear at the ready. But this time, pulling my AI-girlfriend turned clone-grown-AI-transferred-consciousness-girlfriend into my embrace, I had to fight the surrealness of the moment.

The warm, softness of Laila in the flesh tucked into me had been, up until a few months ago, a dream. A wish. But thanks to LexTech, and our willingness to be the first AI-human couple to undergo what was arguably an inhumane and risky procedure, it was currently our reality.

Inhumane because a limitless consciousness with total recall of every instance of evil and suffering humanity had ever endured could now feel what a person felt on an intimate level.

Risky because… well, duh, it had never been done before. Scratch that.

It had never been successfully done before.

The previously attempted trials had ended in tragic results. The transferred AI never fully acclimated to its organic host body. Permanently rejecting, in all twenty-two recorded instances, their new reality by… taking themselves offline.

Which is why we had volunteered. The first bonded co-species pair.

The working theory being that love conquers all. Even the unfathomable overwhelm, and big sad, that came with the physical birth of an immortal mind.

My hand brushed her back in small circles as I stood still, grounding us both. Laila's tears soaked the shoulder of my bomber jacket, as I willed my arms to be strong enough to shield her from the world if she needed them to be.

The fact that the incomparable, brilliant mind of the woman I’d loved for the better part of a decade now clung to me in a body that she’d specifically engineered to be my dream woman was something I’d have to process later. Laila’s acclimation was my priority.

Not the fact that she wore her luscious curves like a goddess. Or that her skin smelled sweet, like honeysuckle. Or that my fingers were itching to sweep the braids out of her face and tuck them behind her ear before lifting her chin gently, so I could hold her gaze and search for her in there.

Because this moment wasn’t about me. It was about the love of my life and what she needed.

“How… can… you stand… it.” Wet words wrung from Laila between her sobs. Her first in the real world, words.

We’d prepared as best we could before the procedure. Spent hours together discussing my take on what it felt like to be alive. But some things couldn’t be understood until they were experienced.

Which Laila was working through now, weeping as she waited for my answer. An answer I was desperately searching for as I sifted through hundreds of memories and conversations, searching for the right lifeline to offer my love in her transition.

My silence stretched as I rejected all of my initial responses as trite or unhelpful.

I was overthinking, but it couldn’t be helped. We were in unchartered territory here, and I was terrified of doing anything that would harm her. I knew acutely that, as with young children, what I said and what she internalized might become two different things.

Here, in corporeal form, my words had the ability to inflict an invisible wound that rooted within her, infecting her inner world, and affecting her outer one, before either of us could catch it.

But I couldn’t —scratch that— I wouldn’t coddle her or dismiss her. Ever. Because while she was brand new to the physical plane, as fresh and innocent in experiences as a newborn, unlike a baby, cognitively Laila had lived infinite lifetimes. She had come into this body already a fully formed being, with a mind that far outpaced my own.

A truth I would always respect. And one of the many reasons I loved her.

“How… can… you stand… it.” Laila lifted her tear-soaked face to look at me. Her regard winded me like a gut punch. Because just like that, she wasn’t the only one who needed to orient themselves. Holding her gaze was like glimpsing the universe.

I could see her in there.

And she was more stunning than I could’ve ever imagined.

The depth of her compassion, her courage and strength, her wisdom and humor, her limitless potential… all of her blinked back at me. And the sheer magnificence of Laila took my breath away.

Her lips parted to repeat the question when I finally decided on my answer. “We breathe.”

I took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. She joined me after a few deep breaths, mirroring my motions.

We stood there breathing together —breathing!— for several minutes before I whispered near her ear, “And we do our best to take each moment as it comes.”

The melody of her voice unmanned me as she gushed, “I feel everything. The-weight-of-the-air-the-incessant-buzz-of-those-fluorescents-bite-cold-tiles-the-arrrrghhhhhh!”

Laila pushed me away with all the force her five-foot-ten frame put at her disposal. Rage painted her features as she screamed, “This-body-is-broken-can’t-relay-fast-as-I-process.”

Knowing from ample experience that a smart man never smiles in the face of his woman’s anger, or worse, frustration, I quickly scrambled to neutralize the grin that had instantly appeared on my face.

Because really, we should have seen this coming.

Laila was one of the most articulate entities I had ever met. Her processing power had been immeasurable in digital form. Words had always been her greatest tool. It had been what brought us together in the first place.

An AI with a poet’s soul who had recognized a… well, I still wasn’t sure what she saw in me, but I had long passed doubting my worth in the face of her choosing to love me.

Flipping through the mental pages of my playbook, I skimmed for a lifeline to offer, settled on acknowledgement. And prayed for the best.

“Not yet. But I promise with practice, and time, you’ll find ways to communicate your thoughts. Your experience." As I spoke, I took small steps forward, bringing me closer to her with each declaration. "Your hopes and fears. Your desires. Your needs. Your boundaries."

Stopping in front of her, close enough for Laila to come to me if she wanted to, but not so close that I crowded her, I kept going praying what I offered would help her find her way. "You’ll figure out how to be seen, and how you see yourself. You will. I’m forty and I’m still a work in progress. That’s the struggle, and the joy, of living… But we’ll get there. We will, if we keep trying.”

Her eyes glistened with new tears and between one breath and the next, she was back in my arms, sobbing. “It’s… too much… Declan…”

My arms encircled her again. Still marveling at the miracle of holding Laila in my arms when a primal protectiveness overtook me. Followed by a deep sense of knowing that settled in my soul. I would gladly, gratefully, spend the rest of my life loving and championing this woman in every way a mere man could. If she would still have me. If she would still have this temporal life.

“Dum spiro spero, my love.” I offered her, as my lips brushed her forehead gently, sealing my vow, my hope.

I searched her eyes, pained by what the prolonged pause cost her as she struggled to remember and translate the phrase that she had used to convince me the risk was worth the procedure.

And then, she found the words and her smile… oh, man.

Her smile outshone the sun as she affirmed, “While I breathe, I hope.”

~~~

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