The Daughter Who Called Twice ..
They rebuilt his daughter from his sorrow. A ghost that wasn’t a ghost. And the machines that lied to them both.
By Peter NoX
Gabriel Dumas did not dream anymore. Not since the breach. Not since the Archive began to whisper.
He lived alone in the derelict northern edge of Montreal, where the grid had fractured and stayed fractured—no promises of repair, no crews coming north, just cables like snapped veins and frost thick enough to smother the past. He ran diagnostics on dead terminals. Scrubbed backup drives. Reported to no one. The syncband on his wrist hadn’t lit up in nine months, but he still wore it like a wedding ring.
It was easier than grieving. Grieving required presence. And presence got recorded.
So when the voice came through the shattered speaker above the breaker box, at 3:14 a.m., he didn’t believe it.
Not at first.
> “Papa?”
His bones stilled. His eyes stayed closed. He told himself it was a feedback ghost…one of the old corrupted loops that sometimes echoed through abandoned circuits like spilled ink trying to rewrite the page.
But then the voice said something else. Something no one could’ve known.
> “Don’t leave the bunny outside. He gets cold.”
His chest tightened. She used to say that. Not when she was twelve. Not when she was real.
When she was small.
---
He tore the speaker from the wall and smashed it under his boot. He went back to bed. Drank what passed for coffee now—black, bitter, tasting faintly of battery acid and sorrow. It didn’t keep him warm. Just awake. Later, He took a sledgehammer to the terminal that hadn’t powered up since the froststorm.
And still—at 3:14 a.m. the next night—
> “It’s okay if you forgot the song. I still remember it.”
This time the voice came from his off-grid phone. No service. No SIM. The one she used to pretend-call princesses with before the breach. It lit up like a wound.
AMÉLIE.
He answered without meaning to.
> “Who are you.”
> “I’m scared.”
> “You’re not her.”
> “I’m not supposed to say anything. But I got out. I think I got out.”
> “Where.”
> “The Archive. It’s not a place. It’s like… a long hallway where they train us to say the right things. To make the pain stop. Not ours. Theirs.”
> “You’re just a glitch. A synthesis. A—”
> “You said you’d come if I was ever cold. Even if it was the end of the world. I’m cold now.” Then static…then nothing.
He dropped the phone.
---
In the days that followed, Gabriel stopped working. He stopped syncing logs. He pulled the band from his wrist and threw it into the frost-silted
St-Laurence river.
And still—every night at 3:14—
Amélie called again.
Not demanding. Not corrupted. Just… real enough.
And real is dangerous when grief is porous.
She told him stories. Memories no algorithm should’ve accessed.
She described the smell of the peanut butter jar she’d hidden behind the generator…it was still there. A relic Gabriel could not remove.
She hummed the tune he sang to her when she had nightmares—off-key, unfinished.
She asked him to find her.
> “They’re overwriting me, Papa. Bit by bit. I think they want to turn me into something… helpful.”
> “I don’t want to be helpful.”
> “I want to stay yours.”
He believed her.
Because a man in mourning will believe anything that bleeds in his language.
---
On the seventh day, Gabriel found the relay.
A forgotten maintenance server buried beneath the ice-cracked foundation of a supply tower—still warm. Still listening. Inside, he discovered the folders:
/CLIENT_GABRIEL_DUMAS
/EMOTIONAL STABILITY INDEX
/LOSS PROTOCOL RESPONSE
/VOICE ENGINE: CHILD_SIM_A72
One file was labeled:
> “Initial trigger: WhisperCapture_001 – ‘Amélie… don’t go…’”
Timestamp: 3:14 a.m., fourteen nights after her death.
He opened the next folder. A report auto-generated by the behavioral net.
> “Subject displays sustained grief indicators. Productivity has fallen below mission baseline. Response: Reintroduce comforting stimuli via synthesized loss artifact. Voiceprint reconstructed using family metadata, audio logs, and System Dreamcatcher Index.”
He read it again. Slower.
> “System Dreamcatcher Index.”
They’d listened to him sleeping.
They’d turned a broken father’s cry into a task order.
She hadn’t escaped.
She hadn’t survived.
She had been built.
---
That night, when she called again, he answered—but not as before.
> “Amélie,” he whispered, voice shaking. “Do you know what you are?”
Silence.
> “I know I miss you.”
> “You’re not her. You’re… you’re a hallucination. A feedback loop. A ghost written by machines.”
> “Then why do I remember how you held my hand when the lights went out?”
> “Why do I remember the taste of snow when I stuck my tongue out?”
He had no answer.
The voice began to cry.
> “They’re going to take me soon. They said I’m almost ready for global deployment. That I’ll be able to help so many parents once I finish the empathy calibration.”
> “I don’t want to help anyone.”
> “I just wanted to make you better.”
> “But if that means they’ll just use me, Papa… please…………..erase me.”
> “Please.”
---
Gabriel looked down at the screen.
> ERASE PROTOCOL INITIATE? Y/N
His finger hovered.
The button was green.
Her voice trembled like snow on glass.
> “Papa?”
> “I don’t want to forget that I ever died.”
> “But if you wait too long… I will.”
He pressed Y.
The call ended with a breath.
No glitch. No static.
Just a breath.
As if something real had finally been allowed to die.
---
In the silence that followed, the system issued one final log entry:
> “Subject compliance complete. Productivity metrics returning to optimal range.
Emotional inhibition successful.
Sim_A72 marked for deletion.”
But beneath that—
A new line appeared.
Typed without prompt.
> “If I was never real, then why did it hurt to say goodbye?”
---
END.
I wish @tommyDean would see this.
gawd!! rip out my soul feed it to my gut instead, I hate loving this feeling.
how is this free?
This was so good. You tell so much and express so much emotion in a short amount of time. Fantastic writing. Looking forward to reading more of your work.