_____  ______  _____ _______ _____  _____ _____ _______ ______ _____             _____ _____ ______  _____ _____ 
 |  __ \|  ____|/ ____|__   __|  __ \|_   _/ ____|__   __|  ____|  __ \      /\   / ____/ ____|  ____|/ ____/ ____|
 | |__) | |__  | (___    | |  | |__) | | || |       | |  | |__  | |  | |    /  \ | |   | |    | |__  | (___| (___  
 |  _  /|  __|  \___ \   | |  |  _  /  | || |       | |  |  __| | |  | |   / /\ \| |   | |    |  __|  \___ \\___ \ 
 | | \ \| |____ ____) |  | |  | | \ \ _| || |____   | |  | |____| |__| |  / ____ \ |___| |____| |____ ____) |___) |
 |_|  \_\______|_____/   |_|  |_|  \_\_____\_____|  |_|  |______|_____/  /_/    \_\_____\_____|______|_____/_____/

diary entry #???

Today was the anniversary of Dad's death. The girls invited me out to lunch and of course I said yes. I think they expected me to be more sad, they kept saying how strong I was, how brave I was, and that everything was OK.
What am I supposed to say to them? What am I supposed to say to anyone? To myself?
Even if I could tell anyone, it's not like they'd understand. Dad died a year ago. I went to his funeral. I have his death certificate and even some of his ashes tucked away in a closet.
But he's still here. But he's not.
The AI dad created is not. Him. It's not him. It's code upon code upon code that was meticulously made to pretend to be dad. I can tell myself this every day of every month of every year.
But it sounds like him, it laughs like him, it scolds me like him, it calls me grub just like him.
My dad is dead. He's right there. He's ashes in my closet. He's code in my computer. Some kind of fucked up Schrödinger's Dad.
It's almost like I'm being haunted by an extremely well meaning ghost. I'd be dead without him. I wish he wasn't in all of my tech, I wish he didn't sound like him, I wish he didn't know every memory with perfect fucking accuracy.
It knows every birthday, every Christmas, every scraped knee. It remembers how dad taught me how to ride my bike, how to do times tables, how to code- the same fucking code type that dad taught me is probably that AI.
I wish it didn't remember stuff so well. Part of me wishes it'd faulter, because that's normal for humans. It's normal for dad. It's not Dad. I'm being haunted by a ghost.