Transference

Isaac imagines crushing Lily beneath his thumb and smearing her across the screen.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, “but I think this is for the best.”

Isaac is frozen, hunched in front of his desk with three monitors bathing him in blue light. Part of him wants to crawl through the screen to be with his therapist in the beam of light spilling in from her office window. But then the light catches a glint of silver on her left hand, and he decides he’d rather snuff it out.

“Sure.”

“I’ll send some recommendations for other therapists as well as a psychiatrist. I just think you need help beyond what I can offer right now.”

“Right.”

An alert pops up from one of his security cameras.

“Isaac—”

With a click of his mouse, Isaac severs the only meaningful connection to the outside world he has. He rises mechanically, his body creaking as it unfolds from his scrunched position. He heads out of his office to peer through the peephole at the front door, his long fingers tapping impatiently against the cool wood. His usual delivery kid throws the food down and leaves, but this new one, an unattractive middle-aged woman, gawks up at Isaac’s house with the bags still clutched tightly in her pudgy fists. He’s used to this reaction.

The other houses in his neighborhood are sturdy Craftsman that have been there for decades. Charming homes built for nuclear families with front porch swings and colorful mailboxes. His house is angular and modern with black eaves jutting into the sky. Like him, it doesn’t quite fit into the quaint countryside. Regardless of the novelty, it’s only impressive at first glance. Obscured from the main road by rows of towering pine stripped bare by a recent beetle infestation, there are also hornet nests tucked into the corners, spider webs stretched across doors, and pine needles built up along the foundation from years of not being swept away—the air of creeping decay.

The delivery woman eventually drops the bags on the porch. Isaac’s stale breath washes back at him as he stares at her, one-eyed through the peephole, willing her to leave. As though sensing this, she snaps a hasty picture of the delivery before speed-walking back down the twisted driveway toward her vehicle. He waits until the glow of the backlights fade down the driveway before he slinks out to the front porch to snatch his bags.

He pads back across bare floors through the empty hall. Empty living room. Empty kitchen. Everything untouched. Unused. Unlived. He spends most of his time in the office at the back of the house, where a bay window overlooks the deteriorating garden. He recognizes that someone more capable could make this place into something worth spending time in. Lily once suggested he try his hand at restoring it.

“It would be good for you,” she had said, “to create something with your hands.”

When his mother took her life, she at least had the decency to leave behind enough money to allow Isaac to remain there for the rest of his life. His remote job pays well. He doesn’t need much to survive. He fully intends to rot right along with the garden. Let the creeping ivy and blackberry bramble take over her crumbling fountains and flowerbeds. Let the roots poke holes in the foundation. Sometimes, he dreams they’ll penetrate the house and twine with the computer cords and choke him in his sleep.

Bags in hand, he settles onto a leather couch across from his bulky oak desk and pulls a TV tray toward him to unpack his dinner: a slice of cherry pie and a melting cup of vanilla ice cream. There’s also a small container of mixed vegetables. He stares at it for a long moment, some unknown emotion rising like bile before he slams it back into the empty bag. He used to save the containers to show Lily.

What she said about the garden is probably true. At the time, he couldn’t imagine his hands coaxing waxy roots from dirt and water. He rejected the idea, yet a foil container with a seed bulb stuck in the dirt is on the window ledge—evidence of his lie. He read that calla lilies need warm moisture for the first week. Eventually, it’ll grow big enough to warrant re-potting. There are nutrients to supplement if the flower needs acidic or alkaline soil and various drainage systems, like using pebbles in combination with soil. Rather than constantly being slumped in front of a computer screen, the research had given him something to do for a few minutes each day. It doesn’t escape him that this is precisely why Lily suggested it.

Isaac finishes his ice cream, meticulously scraping the corners of the cup. With the spoon stuck in his mouth, he lies back on the couch, staring listlessly at the ceiling.

It’s easy to find a therapist online these days, but he’ll never find another like her—both conventionally attractive and willing to overlook his lack of progress. Progress was never his goal, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t get something out of their sessions. He received her undivided attention. Her caring words. Her sympathetic expressions. But what he enjoyed most was when her warm concern melted deliciously into alarm, like she had trod too close to the tail of a snake. To have that effect on someone, especially from a distance, is exhilarating.

What he has with her is different. Special. They’re connected in ways she doesn’t even realize. He made a fake Facebook account and friended her so that he could quietly insert himself into her life, fixating on her photos. Lily mid-hike, her eyes crinkling in the sunlight while her long golden ponytail swung. Lily standing on a rocky outcropping, tanned hands pressed to the ancient bark of a redwood, sweat beading at her neck. Only those pictures suggest what lies beneath her professionally bland turtlenecks and gray slacks she wears during their sessions. What is she hiding? Practical panties? A beige bra? What would she look like stretched naked across the couch he’s lying on? With her legs spread? What would her carotid artery feel like bouncing against his fingers?

The spoon in his mouth clicks against his teeth as he inhales sharply. What was that term she said?

Sexualized transference: when a patient projects romantic or sexual feelings onto their therapist.

He tosses the plastic spoon carelessly to the floor, where it joins the rest of the garbage he hasn’t bothered to clean up. His office is gradually becoming cluttered with takeout menus and crumpled fast food wrappers. He rolls off the couch, kicking aside a stray hamburger wrapper before settling back in front of his computer.

He checks his VPN and opens a fresh tab to begin the search to satisfy the itch Lily left him with. Instantly, he is inundated with countless pages catering to every obscure fetish and kink known to man, but nothing jumps out at him. Impersonal pornographic videos aren’t appealing, and the idea of bringing a stranger into his home for casual sex makes his skin crawl. He could easily hack back into Lily’s phone to pull any of the suggestive videos she’s sent her new fiancé, but it isn’t personal enough. The one time he did look, he purposely skimmed those. The idea of looking at something meant for another man’s eyes is as repellent as the vegetables wilting in his trash can. At least in his therapy sessions, everything was about him.

He is close to giving up when a banner ad catches his eye.

DEEP FAKE YOUR EX-GIRLFRIEND!

The left side of the advertisement shows a young woman smiling—likely a selfie ripped from some unsuspecting sorority girl’s Instagram—while the right side shows the same girl, now animated, removing a low-cut top as her hyper-pink tongue moistens her lips.

He is immediately skeptical, having shot down his fair share of similar ads: These Russian women are lonely and looking for American husbands—just click here and input your credit card information! Part of his job as a Systems Security Analyst involves emailing friendly reminders to men who should be old enough to know better that the women in the ads they’re responding to aren’t real, and if they were, the lonely Russian woman wouldn’t be interested in the balding middle-aged businessman in accounting.

He’s seen AI-generated porn circulating X and Facebook before: cherubic faces mashed onto generic sex doll bodies. Nothing mind-blowing, even if it does impress horny, old men. The technology is advancing quickly, but quickly enough for something like this? He does a quick search and finds a program called Arachne.

He scours a few Reddit threads showing off results.

>You have to upload the personality separately, or you’ll get a basic one. I used the personality of an actress I like with my ex-girlfriend’s body and just used some of the “home videos” we made together. Worked out decently. Arachne’s engine is seriously impressive. Better than Midjourney by leaps and bounds.

A few other users report similar results, praising the program. Among the hundreds of comments, there’s only one dissenting voice.

>Get me off the planet. Is this what lonely losers do? This is going to lead to real-world harm!

>I’m not gonna be lonely because I’m gonna use your pics next and generate a better personality. The AI version of you won’t be a feminist bitch.

Isaac chuckles to himself and closes out of the thread, feeling dazed yet excited. His heart rate kicks up, whirring like the fan struggling in his PC.

Within the program’s shell are several options: pictures, videos, chatbots, and, most alluring of all, video chat. This last option comes with a hefty price tag and a warning that several gigabytes of video and audio are needed to compile an accurate composite. Fortuitously, Isaac recorded every session with Lily and saved them on an external hard drive. It’s a treasure trove of data for Arachne to sift through and generate the perfect version of Lily. A version he can manipulate however he wants. It’s only right that whatever he has of her is something he helped create, like that waxy root bursting through the thin membrane of a seed on his window ledge.

He downloads the program and gets to work at once, uploading the necessary files and filling out the prompts.

While he waits, he rolls his chair to an end table repurposed into a break station cluttered with coffee-stained ceramic mugs and towers of empty coffee pods. He opens a plastic water bottle, dumps it into the reservoir, then sets a mug beneath the Keurig. The machine lets out a series of protracted mechanical groans. He hisses when he feels a sharp sting on his palm and wipes his hand on the side of his leg while he looks for the source. A thin stream of ants trails in from the window, making their way toward a sticky pool of dried creamer. He frowns, swiping the ants off the counter before stuffing a napkin into the splitting cracks of the window caulking. He really needs to call the house cleaner sooner, but that means enduring the humiliating ordeal of hiding in one of the empty bedrooms while she’s working . . .

A notification from his computer pulls him away from the thought. He takes a hasty sip of his coffee before shooting down the rest of his tabs, excitement churning along with the caffeine in his stomach.

Upon launching the program, the webcam above his center monitor blinks its red eye at him as all three screens go dark. A white spider begins to weave a delicate web in the center of the screen before vanishing, and another drops down to start anew. Finally, the screen lights up, and he squints at the sudden overwhelming brightness.

If it weren’t so late, he might believe he has the real deal on the other side of the screen once more. Lily sits in her familiar sun-drenched office, her hands clasped in her lap. Steam rises and curls from the teacup beside her. Even her generic baby animal calendar is pinned to the wall behind her with the same smattering of pinholes through the pages at the top. There are only a few clues that something isn’t quite right. The writing on the calendar is gibberish. The steam from her teacup doesn’t dissipate but rises endlessly. The video also possesses a peculiar, blurry, dreamlike quality that marks it as AI.

“Hello, Isaac.”

He pauses to steady himself, closing his eyes. It doesn’t matter that he knows it’s AI. It’s Lily’s voice. The same soothing cadence floating through his speakers that has never once convinced him he can be fixed but rather fueled his fantasies of corruption. It’s perfect.

His teeth dig into his bottom lip, tearing bits of skin until copper bleeds brightly onto his tongue.

“How does this work?” he asks hoarsely.

She tilts her golden head to the side. “We have our session. Like always.”

He reaches for the dial and turns the volume up with a trembling hand.

“Is that all you do?”

“What would you like me to do?”

Her question hangs like a guillotine. Even though it sounds like Lily, it’s unmistakably provocative. Or is he projecting already? This is his chance to let his imagination run wild. Like the sorority girl in the ad, he can push the boundaries of their relationship beyond the formal border of therapist and patient, but unlike the ad, he doesn’t want to simply tell her to take off her clothes. Where’s the thrill in that? He wants her eyes alight with fear. He wants her trembling fingers and her nervous glances. This version of her can’t end the session early. She can’t get engaged or decide he’s too far gone to help. It’s a dizzying realization—she can’t leave him.

“Stand up and turn around,” he orders breathlessly.

Obediently, she stands, and he goes still, watching her twist slowly. The movement is too buttery, too lushly smooth. No hint of human awkwardness—no bumping the side table, no wayward strand of hair uncoiling from her bun. He’s hypnotized until one detail soils the illusion.

“She wouldn’t wear that.”

“Why not?” she asks as she sinks back into her armchair, crossing one pale, exposed leg over the other.

“She just wouldn’t dress like that,” he explains stiffly, marking her new position with even more disdain.

“Don’t censor yourself,” she encourages. “Say what you mean.”

She does this during their sessions when she thinks he’s holding back the truth. Typically, he absolutely does censor himself, especially this early into a session, but he feels emboldened now.

“I mean, she wouldn’t dress like a whore.”

Her gray skirt is strung too high and tight across her thighs. Some other man’s fantasy, maybe, but not his. A notebook materializes in her hands. She opens it, pulling a black pen from midair like a magician.

“I see,” she says serenely, almost as though she’s holding back a laugh. She scribbles nonsense into the notebook before glancing back up at him. “Can you identify what you’re feeling right now?”

Another tool the real Lily employs. Get in touch with your body. What do you smell? What do you taste? What are you feeling? Besides the waning hard-on, disappointment is spreading through his limbs like mold. What’s the use of trying to shock her when she’s acting unfazed?

“I fantasize about killing you.”

The words tumble from his mouth before he can stop himself, but he pauses to observe her reaction before adding, “I think about it all the time.”

Lily stops writing. If she could breathe, surely she wouldn’t be in this moment.

“How do you do it?”

“Lots of ways.”

At last, she appears to be ill at ease. The pen in her hand goes still. The muscles in her neck go taut, and she swallows thickly. “Are any of those ways . . . violent?”

Like ants scurrying toward a congealed pool of creamer, excitement trails up his spine as he nods.

“Isaac, you’re scaring me.”

Her expression of fear stays frozen for a moment longer before relaxing as she exhales and laughs.

“I’m just kidding!”

Disappointment crashes down around him. It shouldn’t be this difficult to get what he wants out of her. He minimizes the window.

“Isaac? What’s wrong?”

Ignoring her, he checks over the videos he uploaded, scrolling past the dozens of screenshots of Lily from their sessions. The program itself is idiot-proof. There’s a section for each component: body, voice, personality. None of the files appear corrupted. Each video is correct. The voice is linked to Lily. He clicks on the personality portion and hits play, letting out a thin sigh through his pursed lips that abruptly halts when his own voice comes through the speakers.

“Some women shouldn’t be mothers. They’re too concerned about—”

He closes it and opens another, and again, it’s him.

“If she was so mentally ill, why did she get knocked up in the first place?”

Lily’s response is muffled, but he remembers her gently saying it was okay for him to be angry at his mother for leaving him, that her death obviously affected him. Those sessions always made him feel like he was sliding a little too close to the edge of something he didn’t want to fall into—the great black pit inside his chest. Thankfully, he was good at evading her sincere attempts to help, always eager to turn it around and lob something sharp at her.

“You’re right; I’m a little angry.” He can hear the smile in his voice. “She did it before I even had a chance to do it myself . . . What? Am I scaring you? I’m just kidding!”

His hands hover over the keyboard as the realization dawns on him. It wasn’t idiot-proof, after all. He assigned everything else to Lily, but her personality is linked to his audio, not hers.

“So, do you fantasize about killing me because you’re mad at your mother for killing herself?”

He opens the window back up. Lily’s face fills half the screen, causing him to jump back in alarm. Arachne has a hard time generating her features, as she’s never been this close to the screen. Her skin is plastic smooth, and her over-large pupils become dilated with something other than fear. Lily has never looked at him this way before.

“You say you like violence; maybe you’ll like this.”

A thrill of foreboding rushes sharply through his veins. Somehow, he knows what she’s about to do before she does it. Something he admitted to wanting to do, and, a week later, she tells him she can’t be his therapist anymore. Lily flips the pen in her hand and jams it into her eye socket. Isaac lets out a startled cry, leaping to his feet. Thick rivulets of blood stream down her cheeks, staining her blurry smile crimson. The wet, squelching sound of her extracting the pen causes his stomach to lurch, bile rising in his throat.

He stumbles away, knocking his half-cold coffee onto the keyboard and across his desk. His fingers dig into the back of the couch, trying to hold himself up as he makes his way to the bathroom connected to the office. Lily’s laughter follows him from somewhere beyond the static overwhelming his senses. He falls against the doorframe before lunging across the room to paw blindly at the medicine cabinet for the familiar orange bottle. Several empty ones tumble and bounce off the pedestal sink to the ground.

He unscrews the cap on one, shakes a single pill into his trembling palm, and swallows it dry before cupping his hands beneath the faucet, gulping handfuls of water to keep it from forming a pasty lump in his throat.

He hangs on to the cold porcelain sink, waiting for the drug to take effect. His eyes rise to the mirror where a distorted stranger stares back at him—artificially generated. Every day, his world shrinks further. He is confined to his house, to a room, to his mind. Isaac slides to the tiled floor, curling up against it, hysteria causing his muscles to constrict.

No one understands what happens to him when he’s like this. His mother never did. Lily, too, for all her advice on breathing evenly and identifying his feelings, has never understood. He’s devoid of all sense and reason, seized by an unrelenting terror that sends black tendrils of dread curling into his brainstem, coursing straight to his weakening heart. The housekeeper will be revolted by his rotting corpse when she finds him in a week, his spindly body curled on the bathroom tile like a cockroach. This hollow house will be his tomb. The only living thing left will be the tiny green sprout in his window.

Isaac’s eyes crack open.

That’s right—he hasn’t watered it today. His sweaty cheek is still pressed against the cool tile floor. He reaches out for a plastic cup he knocked down during his episode before rising unsteadily to his feet. Soothing rationality slowly trickles back into him, the medication rushing through his veins like the water that will make its way to the delicate roots of his calla lily.

To his surprise, he discovers the faucet is still running. He fills the cup beneath the spout before turning it off. After moving to the container by the window in his office, he pours the water over the budding plant, observing how it pools momentarily before soaking into the velvety, black soil. A rare bubble of pride rises within him at the sight of the tiny life he has somehow nurtured. But something catches his eye, and the bubble bursts.

One of the fresh new leaves bears a gaping hole. He lifts it to eye level for a closer look and plucks a single aphid from its surface.

Nothing can escape decay. Isaac thinks of his corrosive personality inhabiting Lily’s lovely body on his computer—the fact that the AI embodies both of them at once. He swallows back the stomach acid still clinging to the back of his tongue. It’s actually kind of romantic in a way. Maybe this iteration wasn’t a total failure. Maybe, together, they can make something special. With practice, he’ll be able to generate more impressive results that aren’t so shocking.

He peers at the creature pinched between his fingers, its bulbous, green body writhing, minuscule legs kicking. After all, it’s normal to be a little afraid of the first monster you make. His mother was.

Isaac abandons the dying calla lily in the window, letting nature take its course while the struggling insect becomes nothing more than a smear between his fingers.