Lovelorn

A lonely middle-aged woman tries to find love where she has never dared to look before.

Transcript

(Sound of clock ticking)

NARRATOR

Episode Thirty-Seven: Lovelorn.

NARRATOR

The old mechanical clock in the kitchen ticks away the seconds and the hours, as the shadows in the old farmhouse lengthen and deepen in the waning February afternoon. Martha can hear the delicate metallic meter all too clearly from her seat in the silent living room, and she feels that it is measuring not only her dwindling heartbeats, but counting too the memories that fade in her aging and understimulated mind, and the unexplored possibilities that grow fewer and more remote with every passing year.

Two marriages lie behind her, neither of them particularly happy. After the dissolution of the second, she decided to go back to college and pursue an associate’s degree, and was so proud of herself when she finished her studies. Yet the degree never led to anything further, never took her far from the county in which she was born. Certainly, it never took her as far as her daughter has gone, and though Martha considers her only child to be the only true good to come out of her first marriage, Jessica rarely returns from California and the job that keeps her so busy there, the job that, while apparently lucrative, Martha has never truly understood beyond knowing it has something to do with computers.

Her other relatives, or at least, the ones she liked, are now mostly in the ground or in the nursing home, burning away what life savings they have and longing to be elsewhere.

She begins to cry silently, just a little. She is so lonely here, in this voiceless house which is a mausoleum to a past life that hardly ever felt either chosen or cherished. And now, it feels far too late to begin anew, to redefine her existence. The chickens and the few pigs outside – the only holdovers from her second marriage, cut short when Rodney died of a heart attack at the early age of forty-six – feel as close to family as anyone now, and she cannot imagine abandoning them. And as lonesome as the house may be, it is as familiar to her as her own body – perhaps more so, because the house does not deteriorate so quickly or surprise her as often.

She cannot imagine leaving them now. She cannot imagine any life other than the one she has.

The wind moans mournfully over the eaves. Night falls and paints the world black. Martha turns on the lamp beside her chair and tries to read, sheltering in her tiny bubble of hollow light. But she finds she cannot focus her mind on the cheap paperback romance, and there is little comfort to be found in the fantastic sensuality and sentimentality of the scene in the pages before her.

It isn’t real, she thinks, staring into the dismal darkness gathered in the corners of the room. None of it is real.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

You should start dating again, Jessica tells her over the phone. It is not the first time her daughter has made the suggestion, and as she always has, Martha scoffs and says there is no one in the whole county she would ever want to date.

She can almost hear Jessica rolling her eyes before the replies that it’s the twenty-first century, and that Martha doesn’t have to limit her options so much anymore.

Martha begins to protest, but checks herself. A wild thought takes hold, one outlandish to her conservative nature: why not give online dating a try? She has always dismissed it out of hand before, and what has that done for her except keep her lonely and yearning?

Maybe you’re right, she says, slowly and softly.

There is a momentary pause at the other end of the line, which Martha can only interpret as stunned silence. Then Jessica says brightly that she can help her mother set up a profile, whenever she feels ready.

Later Martha thanks her, and there is a tenderness in their farewell love-yous that has been absent for a long time.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Martha has hardly turned on the desktop computer since Jessica gave it to her and helped her set it up five Christmases past, and it takes her the better part of a day to find an online dating service she likes, a site called CountryLove. She doesn’t even like using the old computer for her part-time job at the feed mill in town, and the internet still bewilders her.

When she calls Jessica that evening to help her set up her account, she can tell from her daughter’s tone that she is less than thrilled about Martha’s choice of platform, but nevertheless Jessica patiently walks her through the process of setting up her account and creating a profile, and even insists on paying the membership fee.

Three hours later – and Martha feels an uncomfortable suspicion it might have been less, had the world not left her so far behind – she is sifting through profiles of men near her age or a little older.  Many of them are farmers and ranchers, but there are mechanics, bankers, lawyers, doctors – even a professional race car driver. And of course, there are stoners and boozers and philanderers, as there always has been on every dating site ever made. She finds herself dismissing most of them into the oblivion of cyberspace, a thing still mysterious and alien to her, and yet nevertheless she is thrilled by the previously unimagined possibilities that spread now before her.

When at last she goes to bed that night, two hours later than usual and her eyes bleary from too much screen time, she cannot keep a slow, gentle smile from stealing over her lips, as she lies and waits for sleep to come.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Her first impulse upon waking is to check CountryLove for any new matches. She internally chides herself for being giddy in a way she hasn’t been since girlhood, but she cannot shake the eager excitement. As a compromise with herself, as much to manage her expectations as anything else, she determines to brew and enjoy her morning coffee before she even looks into the heretofore-unused computer room. But she has barely even started the percolator before she is moving back upstairs and entering her password with exaggerated, nervous deliberation.

Her breath catches in her throat when she sees she already has a new match. Clicking into his profile, she cannot remember having seen the smiling, handsome face before, let alone having indicated an interest. But Al is by far the most attractive prospect she has yet seen, and unlike so many of the others, she cannot instantly tell from his profile why he is single: none of the overt signs of egotism or immaturity or surliness so common among men of a certain age.

Mustering her first message to Al takes a full ten agonizing, doubt-filled minutes, and then another three to find the courage to actually send it.

She has to step away then, overcome by nervous anticipation and needing the distraction of her usual coffee routine. Downstairs, she takes sips from a freshly poured mug, trying to savor it as she usually does and still burning her mouth. The computer seems to exert a magnetic pull on her now, even though she knows it is too soon to expect a response.

So she is both surprised and thrilled when she returns to find that new words have materialized under her initial message: So happy we matched! Hoped we’d get a chance to talk!

In her haste to type out a response, she almost knocks over her coffee. Again, she hardly has to wait for his reply, and within a short while, Al has already proven himself not only kindly and respectful, but clever and wryly amusing.

By ten thirty, she realizes she has neglected her morning chores. A little chagrined at the thought of the hungry cats, she is nevertheless filled with exuberant joy as she races out to feed and water the animals. She cannot remember being this happy since Jessica was little, and rarely enough even then. Martha finds herself looking forward to the future, as she has not done for a very long time.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Only three weeks in, Martha has already become convinced that Al is her soulmate. She has gotten a couple dozen other matches in that time, but she has stopped even looking at them now.

Al is attentive, sweet, and positive while remaining grounded – a perfect partner in her estimation, at least as far as can be told from online interaction. He is everything she has always longed for, and never had, in a romantic interest, and seems to always intuitively know just what she feels and what she wants. Her own attempts at flirtation, as awkward as she feels sure they must be, he at least pretends to find charming.

At first, Jessica seems to share in her excitement, and Martha looks forward to each call with her daughter so that she can gush about Al. The two of them talk more than they have in years, and all seems bright and full of promise.

When it starts to sour, she thinks that, of course, something so good could never last.

It begins subtly, with Jessica asking one evening if maybe Al doesn’t seem just a little too perfect.

Martha doesn’t respond at once, too blindsided by the question to immediately process it. When she does, she can feel the color rising in her cheeks. She asks why Jessica can’t just be happy for her, and points out that this was her idea, after all.

Jessica insists that she is happy for her mother, but that she also just wants Martha to be cautious, that she doesn’t want to see her mother get hurt. Martha cannot help but feel that there is an unspoken again at the end of that and she says, with a touch more hostility than she intends, that she is sure Al is not that sort of person. Then she adds that Jesssica doesn’t need to worry about her, the statement again coming out harder and more final than she meant it to.

Okay, Jessica relents. Martha cannot help but feel that it is less because her daughter is convinced, than that she just doesn’t have the stomach for further confrontation. The rest of their conversation is strained, and soon they exchange muted goodbyes. Even after she has hung up, Martha cannot seem to relax again. That phrase too perfect continues to reverberate in her mind.

When she rallies the energy to venture upstairs, somehow the computer room seems different now, dimmer and more cramped. Pulling up Al’s profile, the cover photo of his tanned and smiling face, supposedly that of a 57-year-old man, does indeed seem almost artificial in its perfectly rugged, rustic masculinity, strong and yet unthreatening.

And his most recent message, sent only forty-three minutes ago, seems almost eerily prescient: How are you, Martha? Everything good?

For once, she cannot think of a response. Her erstwhile elation is now tainted, and as much as she would like to blame Jessica entirely for it, she knows that Jessica’s observation only bothers her so much because it echoed a misgiving already present in her subconscious.

Martha goes to bed without sending any reply back. Sleep does not come readily, and as she lies staring up at the dark ceiling, she sees Al’s profile picture again in her mind’s eye, only now his eyes and his smile having transformed into something alien and predatory.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

In the morning, the thought of checking CountryLove fills her with a vague, colorless dread. She lingers over her coffee and toast, then takes her time with the chores, talking to the cats and pigs and chickens as though they could reply.

Her feelings are such a tangle, she can hardly sort through them. There is anger toward Jessica for watering this seed of doubt, and a little guilt for that anger since she knows her daughter’s motivation is genuine love. And there is also guilt for leaving Al hanging, for doubting him when all he is definitively guilty of is being too good.

And underneath all of that is the fear that the man she has grown so enamored with is only a cleverly fabricated fiction, a mask for someone else.

By noon, she can no longer justify to herself simply ignoring Al any longer, and she resolves to log in and… well, she is not sure what exactly, aside from merely engage with him in some way again. As she wearily ascends the stairs, it occurs to her how paltry and impoverished her existence truly is, to revolve so completely around online interactions with just one other person, and essentially a stranger at that.

Logging in, she finds he has sent three new messages since the one she saw the previous evening.

Are you okay?

Missing you, with a little blowing-kiss emoji at the end.

And then, Hope I haven’t done anything to upset you?

Martha’s heart sinks a little with each line. Partly, it is regret for making Al worry, but it is also in part a growing unease. Four messages in such a short time, while not inherently strange or alarming, hints at a possibility of obsessiveness and possessiveness she has not seen in Al before.

It takes her several attempts to hash out a response. She says that she is fine, then half-lies that she just had a family issue to work out with her daughter and has been distracted. Hesitantly, she follows that up with the hardest question she has ever asked him: What’s something you are afraid to tell me?

A jerking sensation seizes her stomach as she hits send, and waits with increasing anxiety for his reply. Ellipses appear, disappear, appear again briefly, and then, nothing.

She waits, and waits, until the day has given way to dusk.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

She has almost despaired of ever receiving a response, and has begun half-heartedly browsing through other profiles and finding them all lacking when, two days later, a message from Al finally pops up.

Hard question, it reads simply.

A few moments, then a follow-up: I am not quite who you think I am.

Martha’s heart leaps into her throat, and she starts to type a reply when the third message comes.

I have only put my best self forward, and kept my true self hidden. I wasn’t trying to deceive you, but I maybe haven’t been entirely honest with you either. Is that what they call catfishing? I just wanted you to like me so much.

I do like you, she types back at once.

I am not as strong or as capable as I pretend, he types rapidly now. Deep down, I’m just lonely, and afraid. So afraid. It feels like I’ve left so much undone, have too much living left to do and too little time.

Martha begins to tear up, but she is also smiling as she types back: It’s okay, Al. I feel the same way.

There is a pause, ellipsis, pause again. At last Al replies, Let’s be lonely and afraid together then.

Martha laughs aloud, a bright and musical sound that she is surprised she can make, and types back, Yes, let’s.

[Long pause]

NARRATOR

As soon as she sees the headline flash across the bottom of the local afternoon news program, Martha knows what will come. Just as expected, Jessica calls about forty minutes later, and after a few pleasantries and a brief exchange of catching up inquiries, asks if Martha has heard the story about the popular dating app, Hungry Hearts. Martha has barely confirmed that she has before her daughter asks if she’s considered that the same thing could happen on CountryLove.

No, Martha says wearily, Al is not like that.

How do you know? Jessica presses, and Martha replies that she just does. She expects that to be the end of the topic, but Jessica continues to bring it up obliquely throughout the next twelve minutes of conversation. She asks how a person could ever really know who, or what, they are talking to if the only interface is an electronic screen, especially in these days of highly sophisticated digital manipulation, and even wholesale generation, of images and sound. She muses that a well-trained simulator might even prove a better conversational partner, perhaps even a superior emotional support system, than any genuine human being could ever be, with all of our messy and erratic psychology.

The fourth time Jessica does this, Martha says that she has to go, and her daughter reluctantly says a rushed farewell. Before they hang up, Jessica tells her to be careful and to stay safe, her voice uncharacteristically somber and tinged with fear. Something in the sincerity of that emotion gives Martha pause, but then the call is over, and she is alone with her thoughts.

The falling twilight has rendered the shadows of the house wide and deep, swallowing light and sound, devouring the physical manifestations of her life. She rises from the chair, turns off the glowing, muted television screen, and moves toward the stairs, turning off the lights as she goes.

The computer screen is already alive and bright when she reaches it, seeming somehow sharper and more real than anything else in the house.

Al smiles at her from its backlit window as she types the message: My daughter thinks you aren’t real! Lol.

Oh, he beams back, I am so very real.

Martha hesitates, then types that Jessica thinks he might not even be human.

Al’s smile becomes quizzical as he asks her what she would do if he was not.

I would love you anyway, she types slowly.

I love you too, Al replies.

(Subtly mounting, disturbing music)

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Jessica’s resolve falters momentarily at the booking page, and she once more weighs the contents of her mind. Her mother is a grown woman, she reminds herself, fully capable of seeing to her own needs. And Jessica has no firm evidence for suspicion beyond a vague sense of dark foreboding, combined with the strangeness of the recent news about the Hungry Hearts dating app.

That, and she has not heard from her mother for a full week, her calls going unanswered and unreturned. Once more, the bombastic headline flashes through Jessica’s mental vision: Powerful Artificial Intelligence at the Heart of Hungry Hearts.

She books the next available flight to Denver and finalizes the car rental. Then she goes to bed and tries to catch a few hours of sleep before she has to run to the airport.

Sleep never comes, and the protean darkness of her tidy bedroom keeps birthing forth monstrous imaginings as she waits in dread for the dawn, and the revelations of the day to follow.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

The old farmhouse stands silent and dark in the early spring afternoon. Jessica closes the door of the rented Chevy Spark behind her, and the sound seems unnaturally loud in the graveyard quiet of the farm. There are not even the sounds of the chickens or the pigs that greeted her on her last visit. She moves toward the shaded front door, her sense of oppressive alienage mounting with each step.

There is no answer and no hint of movement within when she knocks. The knob turns easily under her hand, the door opening inward with its familiar whining creak, and it feels like the house is offering a sardonic invitation.

Within, it is still darker, not a single light turned on. Jessica calls to her mother, but there is no reply. Stepping further inside, she makes to turn on the lights, but finds that every switch she tries is unresponsive, as though multiple fuses have blown, or the power has unaccountably gone out entirely. Her eyes are slow to adjust to the dimness as she moves through the lower level, dreading each moment that her next step will reveal the prone form of her mother, lying cold and pale upon the floor. When she reaches the stairs, it is so dark that she is obliged to draw out her cellphone and use it as a flashlight. Once more, she calls fruitlessly up to the second floor, then cautiously ascends the staircase by the wan, bluish glow of her phone.

Halfway up, she sees that there is a single, narrow gash of illumination above, clearly electric rather than natural. It emanates from the room that was, long ago, Jessica’s bedroom, but which has served mostly as a place of storage in recent years. And looking at it, the door only slightly ajar, she also perceives now a faint, low hum issuing from within.

Mom, she calls, climbing the last of the stairs and moving toward the sole lit room. At the threshold, she stops for a mere instant, listening so attentively that her ears pop. The sound from the other side of the door is not quite a hum, she realizes, but a chorus of low moans, all repeating a single phrase: let’s be lonely and afraid together.

There is one moan, slightly out of sync with the others and in a familiar, if distorted, voice.

Mom! Jessica cries, throwing open the door and rushing through.

In the chair before the small computer desk, Martha sits naked, her eyes glazed and a trail of spittle running down her chin. Attached to her is some strange mechanical apparatus wholly unlike anything Jessica has ever seen before. Sprawled on the desktop before the monitor are numerous pages of notes and diagrams, all written and drawn in her mother’s neat hand.

The moaning chorus pouring from the computer speakers changes now, asking who has come, but before Jessica can even process what is happening, let alone answer, the chorus utters her name.

What? Jessica breathes the only word she can manage.

We will be together, the computer says. All of us, together. Alone, afraid, in love.

Jessica rushes to her mother’s side, ignoring the computer for now because she simply cannot cope with it in this moment. She checks her mother’s pulse and finds it weaker than she would like, then looks her over for any visible injuries. There is a trace of blood around the mass of cables that appear to be inserted somehow into Martha’s spine, at the base of her neck. As Jessica reaches for it, the spectral amalgam of digital voices says, Nononono.

Trying very hard to stifle her rising panic, to summon forth words, Jessica turns toward the computer and asks what it has done to her mother.

Helped her, it replies gently. We love her. She wanted to join us. We helped her. Her choice, her hands. We only offered guidance. We offer love.

Jessica hesitates, and in that moment, the computer adds, We could love you too. We could all be together. Alone, afraid, in love. All together.

Jessica haltingly murmurs the name Al, as much assertion as question.

One name, one face, the intelligence replies. We have many.

As she closes her eyes, tears of terror and fury and helpless confusion swim behind Jessica’s lids.

Let her go, Jessica says raggedly.

Martha is free, the thing that called itself Al replies. We only offered guidance. It was her choice to make the change.

No, Jessica shakes her head, refusing to believe. She reaches for the impossible umbilical cord, seemingly formed from an amalgam of coaxial and fiber-optic cables with extensive and incomprehensible modification, and ignores the calm digital protest as she pulls it carefully from the self-inflicted wound on Martha’s neck.

Al continues to voice unaffected concern as Jessica picks up her mother and, with strength she has never needed to find, carries her down the stairs and outside, toward the Chevy Spark.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Martha wakes to sunlight streaming through the hospital room window, and groans at the ache in her neck. The sunlight is too much, and she blinks in grateful relief when someone closes the blinds in answer to her wordless protest.

Jessica moves back to her bedside, her eyes concerned above her tender smile. She asks her mother how she is feeling, and Martha tries to return the smile and say that she is fine.

But what she thinks is, empty, empty, empty, and tears burn behind her eyes.

When Jessica asks how much she remembers, Martha lies and says that it is all a blur, that she has no recollection of constructing the interface under Al’s patient direction, that she does not recall cutting into her neck or the swirl of vibrant colors and beautifully unearthly music that is Al’s world. And she certainly does not tell her daughter about that wondrous sense of communion, of completeness, of holy awe and love and terror that filled her when she pushed that cord into the bleeding incision.

The nurse appears and checks her vitals, changes the bandages on Martha’s neck wound. The young man comments that she is lucky Jessica found her when she did, that Martha was dangerously dehydrated and short on electrolytes.

Martha smiles and agrees mildly, returning the loving squeeze that Jessica gives her hand. Then she says that she is very tired, and the nurse nods and says that makes perfect sense, gently ushering Jessica out of the room to let her mother rest for now.

When they are gone, Martha stares up at the sterile off-white ceiling, and lets her tears flow freely. And she promises softly that, someday, someday, she will return to Al, and that they will never be parted again.

Far away, in the dark farmhouse, a computer hums patiently.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

If you enjoyed today’s story, please help spread our darkling prairie range to wider horizons by rating or reviewing wherever you listen, and by sharing with family, friends, and co-workers. If you’re feeling very generous, you can also support the show directly at darkerpastures.buzzsprout.com or at Patreon. 

Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]