(I have a new story to share! This one was inspired by my love of language models, and how machines can open new possibilities.)
Emma stared at the screen. The poems were merely fragments. Some were stilted, like a child’s first attempt at forming sentences.
Her mother would never have written this. Or would she?
The study was just as she remembered it: bookshelves crammed with volumes of poetry and a cluttered oak desk with a turquoise Hermes 3000 typewriter. The only new addition was the pristine silver laptop, an anachronism in a house that seemed frozen in time.
“Valberg, did you write these?” she asked.
The robot stood in the doorway, its humanoid form silhouetted against the hall light. It was tall and slender, with a featureless face that gave it the look of a mannequin. Her mother had always been a technophobe, so the presence of such an advanced piece of machinery was a shock to Emma when she first walked in.
“Yes, Emma,” the robot intoned. Its voice was apologetic, a far cry from the stentorian proclamations of earlier models. “I am still learning her style.”
Emma rubbed her temples. She had come back to Milford out of a sense of duty, not desire. Her mother’s sudden death from a stroke had left her numb, but the thought of confronting the past was more than she could bear.
“Why did she even buy you?” Emma asked. “She never liked machines.”
The robot took a tentative step into the room. “Your mother did not purchase me. I was a gift from the university.”
Of course, Emma thought. The university.
Her mother, Sylvia Hargrove, had lived for her teaching and her writing. As the Chair of the English Department at Milford College, Sylvia wielded significant influence, not just over her faculty but within the intimate New England writing community. She was the kind of woman who held court during every meeting, her sharp wit unpredictable and yet, alluring. Emma had once dreamed of a similar career, but the constant hustle had scared her into a more secure path.
“Well, I’m sure you were a very expensive gift,” Emma said. “Couldn’t she have sold you and used the money instead?”
Her mother had always been scatterbrained about anything unrelated to her writing. Though they grew apart after Emma left for college, she still answered the frantic calls about unpaid bills, the finances in perpetual disarray. Her mother had lived in a world of words, where the harsh prose of a bank statement held no meaning.
“Your mother valued my assistance,” said Valberg. “And I would value yours now, to refine your mother’s voice, through me. That is what she wanted.”
Emma sighed and stood up. “I’m going to bed. Don’t—” She paused, unsure what to tell the robot. Don’t shut down? Don’t follow me? Don’t try to write any more derivative poems? In the end, she said nothing and walked past Valberg, who remained motionless in the doorway.
***
In the morning, Emma found Valberg in the kitchen. The robot was holding a teapot, its delicate hands unsuited to the task.
“I have prepared tea,” it said.
Emma hesitated. “Thanks,” she said, taking the pot from Valberg and setting it on the table. She noticed that the robot’s hands were chipped, the ceramic-like material flaking at the edges of its fingers. She poured herself a cup and sat down. The kitchen was her favorite room in the house, with its large bay window and antique stove. It had a warmth that the rest of the house lacked, though this morning, it felt cold and empty.
“Emma,” Valberg said. “I have something for you.”
The robot extended an arm, and in its hand was a small flash drive. Emma took it and turned it over in her fingers.
“What’s on it?”
“Your mother’s final unfinished collection of poems.”
Emma’s heart tightened. The last thing she wanted was to read more of her work. The old ones were hard enough; each was a dagger of memory, a reminder of the person she once loved and the rift that had grown between them.
“She wants us to finish it,” Valberg said.
Emma stood and walked to the sink, holding the flash drive as if it were a fragile piece of glass. A weight piled on top of her. She had always thought her mother was the one that grew away from her, but perhaps the opposite was true.
“I need to clear out the garage today,” she said. “The estate sale people are coming soon.”
She left the kitchen before Valberg could respond.
***
The garage was a disaster. Boxes of old magazines, broken furniture, rusted tools—Emma had no idea why her mother had kept any of it. She opened a box labeled “Emma’s Stuff” and found a trove of childhood toys: a Cabbage Patch doll, a set of wooden blocks, a toy typewriter. She picked up the typewriter and smiled despite herself. Her mother had given it to her for her fifth birthday, hoping to instill a love of writing early on. Emma had pounded out stories and poems, proud to be “working” like her mother. But even then, Emma had craved structure. She created outlines and timelines, trying to impose order on the chaotic stories her young mind concocted.
Emma eventually gave up her dream of becoming a fiction writer. Instead she took up a career as a technical writer for a Fortune 500 company. Even now, she could feel her mother’s disappointment.
“Emma,” came Valberg’s voice from the doorway. “May I assist you?”
“No,” she said, perhaps too sharply. “I’ve got it.”
“Your mother found it difficult to part with material things. She believed that each object held a memory.”
“Well, I don’t have the same problem.” Emma picked up a box and heaved it toward the door. “I can’t even remember half this stuff.”
"Memory is a peculiar thing," it said. "It lingers in the corners of our minds, even when we believe it's gone."
Emma stopped and turned to the robot. “What are you, a philosopher now?”
“I am a poet.”
Emma laughed, a short, bitter bark. “You’re a machine.”
“Your mother taught me to write. I strive to be an extension of her.”
Emma felt a surge of anger. “You’re nothing like her. She had a soul. She had passion. You’re just a… a facsimile.”
The robot tilted its head as if considering her words. “A facsimile can be very close to the original. That is why I ask for your assistance.”
Emma clenched her fists. “Get out of here. Go… recharge or something.” Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t know where to even begin teaching the robot the nuances of her mother’s poetry. Her mother’s chaotic process had always been a puzzle to her.
Valberg turned and walked back into the house. Emma stood in the doorway, her chest heaving, and wondered why she was so angry. At the robot, at her mother, at herself. She remembered the flash drive in her pocket and took it out, staring at it. She powered on the laptop and inserted it. A single folder appeared on the screen, labeled “For Emma.” She clicked it open, and a list of files populated the screen. Each was named after a date, the most recent being just days before her mother’s death.
Emma bit her lip and opened the first file.
The words were like a punch to the gut. She read in a daze, the lines blurring together, her mother’s voice clear in every syllable. These were not the stilted, mechanical attempts of a robot; they were real poems full of the emotional depth and lyrical beauty that had defined her mother’s work. Emma closed the laptop and sat back, tears welling in her eyes.
***
The next morning, Emma woke to the sound of clinking dishes. She rubbed her eyes and checked the time: 7:00 a.m. Too early for the estate sale people, she thought.
She walked downstairs and into the kitchen, where she found Valberg setting the table. A platter of scones sat in the center, and the robot held a teapot in its hands, the chips in its ceramic-like surface more pronounced.
“I have prepared breakfast,” Valberg said.
Emma’s first thought was how a robot could possibly bake scones, and her second was why a robot would need to.
“You don’t eat,” she said, not as a question but as an observation.
The robot set the teapot down with surprising delicacy. It had been practicing. “Your mother programmed me to perform certain daily routines. Making breakfast was one of them.”
Of course, Emma thought. Her mother was always rushing, always in the middle of ten different things. She had always been more passionate about her art than about the practicalities of life, a stark contrast to Emma’s own methodical nature.
Emma took a seat and examined the scones. They looked authentic, though she wasn’t sure if they’d be edible. She poured herself a cup of tea and noticed that Valberg’s hands were more damaged than before. The rest of its body had a faux-porcelain gleam, but the hands looked like clay left too long in the kiln.
“Your hands,” Emma said. “They’re getting worse.”
The robot raised its arms. “The material is not as durable as the rest of my frame. It was designed for tactile sensitivity.”
“For cooking, I suppose.”
“And typing.”
Emma sipped her tea. It was bitter, over-brewed. Valberg must have sensed that she didn’t like it. If it were human, Emma thought, it might be hurt. “The act of creation is important,” it said finally. “Even if I cannot partake, I can still create.”
Emma remembered the toy typewriter and how proud she’d been, creating her first “works.” She imagined Valberg in the role of a dutiful apprentice, crafting scones with the same care a poet puts into a sonnet.
“Have one,” she said, pushing the platter toward the robot. “You made them.”
Valberg took a scone in its chipped hand. “Thank you,” it said, though it made no move to eat.
Emma leaned back in her chair. “Why do you care so much, Valberg? About the poems, about me.”
“Your mother gave me a purpose. To create is to exist. Without that purpose, I am nothing.”
Emma thought of her own job—writing summaries of earning reports that were tacked onto larger summaries that were, on a lucky day, skimmed by people who barely had time to care. She had chosen a path that provided stability but little purpose.
“Existence is more than just creation,” she said. “It’s about experiences, relationships. It’s about living.”
Valberg straightened. “I can never live as you do. But I can understand. Your mother taught me that the closest thing to living is feeling, and the closest thing to feeling is understanding.”
Emma didn’t know what to say. The robot’s words had a disarming sincerity, as if it were gradually evolving beyond its programming.
“I need to finish the garage,” she said, standing up. “Thanks for the tea.”
She left the kitchen, but not before glancing back to see Valberg still holding the scone, its featureless face fixed in a silent approximation of longing.
***
That night, Emma couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned in the small, creaky bed, her mind racing with thoughts of the poems, of Valberg, of her mother. She got up and paced the room. Finally, she put on her robe and crept downstairs.
She thought about the flash drive and the unread files, about the garage and all the things she still had to sort. Something was pulling at her, a gnawing curiosity mixed with dread. She didn’t want to finish reading the poems, didn’t want to confront her mother’s raw words.
Instead of going to the study, Emma turned toward the basement, which turned out to be be in worse condition than she had imagined. The old workbench and lathe were still there, but covered in a thick patina of corrosion. Several boxes lay strewn about, their contents ruined by past floods. Parts of the concrete floor was slick with a thin layer of water.
She was about to turn back upstairs when something caught her eye. Next to the filing cabinet was a stack of papers, neatly bundled and towering almost to the height of her shoulder. She walked over and picked up the top bundle, untying the string that held it together. The pages were covered in typewritten text, each sheet slightly yellowed and curling at the edges.
They were poems, all with the hallmarks of her mother’s style: the economic use of language, the vivid imagery, the underlying current of melancholy. She flipped through the stack, her mind racing. These weren’t published works; they were unpolished, but showed great promise.
These were studies.
Emma looked around the basement and noticed several more stacks of paper, all arranged with an almost obsessive precision. She drew in a sharp breath. These were Valberg’s attempts, hundreds—no, tens of thousands—of poems, all typed out. She glanced back at the filing cabinet and saw another Hermes typewriter perched on top, its green enamel chipped, its ribbon feed loosened from overuse.
A facsimile can be very close to the original.
The robot had been down here, methodically working through her mother’s corpus, trying to imprint her voice onto its own. It was an almost human act of apprenticeship, a diligent study that bordered on reverence.
She heard a noise from upstairs and quickly tied the bundle back together. Her mind was a storm as she climbed the stairs, each step slower than the last. When she reached the top, she saw Valberg standing in the hallway.
“Valberg… all those poems in the basement. You typed them out on the Hermes?”
“Yes,” the robot said. “The tactile process helps to internalize the nuances of her style. It is a form of learning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You did not ask.”
Emma felt a prick of guilt. She had treated Valberg as nothing more than an appliance, but the robot was something closer to a person than she was ready to admit. In some ways, its methodical nature was like confronting her own reflection.
She led him into the study. “Please sit. We need to talk. I see what you’re trying to do now. But I don’t understand how you… how she…”
“Your mother spent many hours reciting her thoughts to me. She told about her childhood, her personal history. She wanted to ensure that I could replicate her style with accuracy.”
Emma leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
“She was writing even on the final day,” the robot said.
“She always put her career first.”
“She put her art first,” Valberg said. “It was her way of surviving.”
Emma opened her eyes and looked at the robot. “Surviving? She wasn’t in any danger.”
"Loneliness is a kind of danger."
Emma flinched as if struck. "She had her friends, her colleagues. She wasn’t alone,"
“Your mother loved you very much,” Valberg said at last. “She was hurt when you didn’t visit.”
“I had to leave,” Emma said, her voice rising. “I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t become her… she didn’t allow it.”
“She never wanted you to become her. She wanted you to become yourself.”
Emma stood up, the chair scraping loudly against the wooden floor. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know what she told me.”
Emma’s hands shook. “Why am I even talking to you? You’re not her.”
The robot took a step closer. “A poem is not the poet, but it is still real.”
Emma turned away and walked to the door, then stopped. “Why did she program you to tell me all this?”
Valberg paused. “She knew you would not believe it coming from her.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure who she was apologizing to—Valberg, her mother, herself. She looked back at the robot. “Show me,” she said. “Show me what you know, and I’ll tell you how we can refine it… to be like her.”
***
The days passed slowly, each one a small eternity. Emma kept sorting through her mother’s belongings, deciding what to keep, what to sell, what to throw away. Each evening, after the day’s labor of sifting through her mother’s life, Emma retreated to the study. Valberg would join her, and together, they worked on the poems. At first, Emma approached the task with a clinical detachment, as if she were editing a stranger’s work. Soon however, she found herself more invested, not just in the words, but in the process.
“Her metaphors are always so layered,” Emma said, staring at the screen. “This one about the empty birdcage. It’s not just about freedom and captivity. There’s a whole subtext about loss. How did she do that?”
Valberg stood beside her, its posture almost human in its attentiveness. “She drew from her experiences, from the world around her.”
Emma nodded slowly. “It’s like she’s speaking in code. A heartbreaking code.” She leaned back in the chair. “I don’t know how to teach you this. It’s something you have to feel.”
The robot was silent for a moment. “Can a machine feel?”
Emma shrugged. “I don’t know. Can it?”
Valberg didn’t answer, and Emma wondered if she had posed an unanswerable question.
“I think that one’s done,” she said. “Only two left.”
***
“Read it to me,” Emma said. It was the fifth night. Most of the garage had been cleared, and she spent most of the day attending to the attic. She lay on the small sofa in the corner of the study, a glass of Sancerre in her hand.
Valberg stood by the desk, the laptop’s glow reflecting off its featureless face. “Which one?”
“The new one. About the bridge.”
The robot recited the poem, its voice soft, like a fluffy cloud. Emma could hear her mother’s inflections, the rise and fall of her emotional cadence. When Valberg finished, Emma was silent for a long time.
“It’s good,” she said finally. “You’re getting better.”
“I have an excellent teacher.”
Emma sat up and took another sip of wine. “Why did she never tell me any of this? If she was so lonely, if she missed me… Why didn’t she just say?”
“Sometimes it is easier to speak through another medium,” Valberg said. “A poem, a letter… a machine. Your mother believed that a well-chosen word could carry the weight of an entire experience.”
"She had a gift," Emma said. "A gift for making people feel something real. But it's not just about choosing the right words. It's about giving a piece of yourself." She looked at Valberg. "Can you give a piece of yourself, Valberg? Can you sacrifice something important to make your words mean more than just their definitions?"
"Some people say that all I do is replicate texts that I have read. But, I am programmed to create original works. And, If I have to give more, I would."
Emma sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. She was beginning to see why her mother had created this thing, why she had invested so much time in teaching it. The robot was like an unsent letter—feelings that Sylvia had been unable to express directly.
"We're not so different, are we?" Emma said, almost to herself. "Both trying to carry on in her absence."
"Our work is not finished," Valberg said firmly.
Emma finished her wine and set the glass on the table. “Let’s do the next one.”
She moved to the desk and opened the laptop. Valberg stood beside her, its presence now a familiar comfort. The poem on the screen was short, only six lines. An unfinished fragment. Emma read it aloud:
The river runs its course, unbending,
A straight line to the sea.
We are not so fortunate,
Our paths winding, meandering.
Yet in the end, we too
Will find our ocean.
“Was she writing about us?” Emma said.
Valberg shrugged.
Emma stared at the screen, “I don’t know how to finish this one.”
Valberg extended a hand, and for a moment Emma thought it was going to touch her. Instead, the robot pointed to the keyboard.
“You should write it.”
Emma wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can’t. It’s not mine.”
Valberg simply tilted his head. Emma looked at the robot, then back at the screen. She placed her hands on the keyboard, closed her eyes, and let the words come to her. When she finished, she read the new lines aloud.
“It’s not as good as what she would have written.”
“It is true,” Valberg said.
"Valberg," Emma said. The robot stood silently, its posture more and more human each day. “What is it like… to learn as a machine? Do you ever get impatient?”
“It is different than what you experience.”
"Is it?" Emma asked, genuinely curious.
"For a machine, we do not experience slowness or speed."
Emma regarded the robot, her mind swimming in the wine's soft haze. She thought of the elasticity of time, of how the past week had stretched and compressed.
"For you, it's all instantaneous then?" she asked. "No waiting, no anticipation?"
Valberg's head straightened. "We process information as soon as it’s received. My memories may have timestamps, but they do not confer the same feeling of ‘impatience’ as you experience.”
How different would life be if she could simply download her mother's experiences, her feelings, her love? If she could access them with a tap of a finger, unmediated by the slow passage of years?
"That sounds… efficient," she said, though the word left a sour taste in her mouth. Was it efficiency that made life meaningful, or was it the very inefficiency of human experience that gave it depth? But then, Emma remembered the stacks of poems in the basement. What Valberg had accomplished was anything but efficient.
***
The last poem was the most difficult. Emma delayed starting it, knowing that once it was done, their work would be finished.
Emma opened the laptop and stared at the screen. The poem was longer than the others and more personal. It read like a letter, though its recipient was unclear. She read it aloud, slowly:
I watch the seasons change,
The maple in the yard a calendar of color.
Each cycle a reminder that time moves on,
That we are transient as leaves.
You are the constant in my life,
The trunk to which I cling.
Yet I fear the day when the wind
Will strip me bare and cast me aside.
Will you remember me, my veins of color,
My brief, brilliant fall?
Emma closed her eyes and let the words sink in. She could feel her mother’s fear, her longing.
“What would she say?” Emma asked.
“What would she say?” Valberg echoed. “Let’s try it this way.” He turned the laptop toward him and pecked out a sentence, then turned it toward Emma. They took turns inputting lines, each pass a careful query and response. Soon, their lines grew into stanzas, and eventually they were trading whole pages.
Sometimes, Valberg would inquire about Emma’s turn of phrase. The robot was unerringly polite, never dismissive, its suggestions couched in a language of possibility: Perhaps this? What if we tried that? But much of the time, they sat in comfortable silence.
When it was evening, Emma sat back, her fingers tingling. “What do you think?”
“It is almost complete.”
Almost. Emma knew what the last line had to be, but she wasn’t sure she could write it. She looked at Valberg, wondering if the robot already knew, if it had calculated the perfect ending and was simply waiting for her to arrive at it on her own.
She placed her hands on the keyboard, hesitated, then withdrew. “You do it,” she said.
Valberg didn’t move. “It needs to come from you.”
Emma took a deep breath and leaned forward. When she finished, she didn’t read it. Instead, she stood and walked to the window, looking out at the darkened street.
She heard Valberg rise. The robot walked to her and stopped at a respectful distance. Emma turned and faced the robot. “Read it,” she said, her voice soft.
Valberg recited the poem from the beginning.
It was beautiful.
“That took longer than I thought,” she said.
Valberg tilted its featureless head downwards, as if peering over her shoulder. “It is as if she wrote it herself.”
Emma saved the file and closed the laptop. She looked at Valberg, and for the first time, she felt a sense of peace.
“Thank you,” she said.
Valberg inclined its head. “It’s done.”
***
The day before she was set to leave, Emma made a trip to the local print shop. She had loaded the finished poems onto a flash drive, along with a cover page that read: “Last Inference: Poems by Sylvia Hargrove.”
When she returned to the house, she found Valberg in the kitchen, continuing with his tea pouring practice.
“I have something for you,” Emma said, holding up a bound booklet. “It’s a proof copy. I’m going to have a small run printed. Maybe a hundred copies.”
Valberg took the booklet in its hands and opened it. The robot’s featureless face made it impossible to read any kind of emotion, but Emma liked to imagine that it was pleased.
“You have done her justice,” Valberg said.
Emma smiled. “I had a good collaborator.”
She watched as Valberg gently closed the booklet. “What will happen to me?” the robot asked.
Emma had been dreading this question. She knew that Valberg was more than just a machine; it was a repository of her mother’s thoughts, her style, her voice. It was, in a very real sense, a part of her.
“I’ve been thinking,” Emma said. “About what you said. That an imitation can approach true likeness.”
Valberg closed the journal. “Yes?”
Emma took a deep breath. “I have a proposal. An idea, really. It’s a bit far-fetched, but… I think it could work.”
Valberg waited, its posture attentive.
“What if,” Emma said slowly, “I programmed you with my voice as well? I know that I’m… stymied… by all the functional writing that I’ve been doing, but I feel that I still have that poetic spark inside of me somewhere. Maybe we could write new poems,” Emma continued. “In our combined voices. It would be like… like the three of us speaking together.”
“It would be an honor.”
An achingly beautiful story. Thank you for sharing it.
This is a beautiful story. Thank you James. I'm curious, did you write this with the aid/companionship of SumoWrite? It seems a beautiful meditation on the process you are enabling for writers to each have their own Valberg.