Still humming from that box of wine the night before, I decide to burn a sick day and sleep in. I don’t bother to alert the Burt device, so by the time I pootle downstairs, the breakfast it prepared for my usual rampage of getting out the door on time is cold and slimy. Much like the expression on its face.

“What a waste,” the Burt device complains. “It’s all gone cold.” At the end of its long, stringy arm it grasps a plate with a coagulated fried egg and a diagonal slice of toast.

“And slimy,” I add. I belly up to the kitchen island and untwist my socks.

The Burt device glowers, but its programming lets it do nothing more until I grant it permission. I release it with a simple task, “Coffee,” as I fuss with a tangle on the back of my head.

I dismissed this replicant fad at first. Matt from work bought one of his cat, Paws, after the original succumbed to a tumor. The fur looks acrylic, the eyes like marbles, but the damn thing sits on his keyboard when Matt has a deadline, knocks over water glasses, rides the Roomba, all that cat stuff. Matt loves it. He upgraded it with dance moves the original never acquiesced to, and his CaTwerk channel has exploded. But to me, all that expense for an inaccurate replica of what you’ve lost didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Then my friend Meadow splurged on a high-end model of her boy Rudra, using her wrongful death settlement from the school bus company. She had gigs of video and audio of him to flesh out the template. She invited a few of us over for Rudra’s twelfth birthday. Her Rudra device had softer, wetter eyes than Paws and almost convincing skin, but it still looked only nine years old, even though Meadow had updated the voice to puberty. The thing sulked off to its room when the adults (no kids--Rudra’s actual friends had all sent regrets) broke into the whiskey. Meadow beamed, something I hadn’t seen in three years. Goth music bumped through Rudra’s door, and Meadow still smiled and smiled and smiled. That’s when I decided I could make some use of a basic model, a mannequinesque facade of Burt who mulled about my kitchen and couldn’t go anywhere, do anything, without my say-so. That inspiration led me to PerfectFit, a site on the cheaper wing of the marketplace.

Not that they made it easy to stay on budget. Porn leads the market, so PerfectFit hurled pop-ups galore at me, hawking their fantasy upgrades. But I held to my agenda. I had only one image of him, the real Burt: a high res pic from our last New Year’s together. Burt was deep into his cups, looking all dour and leaning away from me, which seemed fitting for his replicant. The hardest part was finding a voice package. Three years together, and I didn’t have any audio files of the man.

The Burt device’s voice is a little lower than Burt’s, a little more breathy, but that’s the porn industry for you. And the skin tones are a little more Resusci Anne, the eyes rather gumball. Even now, it moans under its breath as it presses the plunger on the french press, but as the original Burt never once made me coffee or fried me an egg, I’m happy.

I check my phone, and of course there’s a thread from Jasper, even though I called out of work. Muller vids? Client wants a preview. A series of question marks. I smooth and accentuate home videos for a service called Revisionary Life. I add cinematographic flair to handheld crap, remove unwanted photo bombs, hone the client’s product towards their preferred memories. The Muller job was a wedding reception from hell: infidelities, past and present, were revealed and/or caught on camera. I was pretty impressed with myself for giving the father-daughter dance a crane shot that faded into the glory of the chandelier just before the maid of honor came at the bride with a broken bottle. But you can’t rush that kind of whitewashing.

Burt clears its throat, coffee in hand, while I swipe away Jasper’s notifications. “Burt,” I say, “propose.”

Burt takes a knee on the tile. “Marry me,” it mutters, still offering up my coffee.

“Like you mean it,” I command.

“Please,” Burt proposes.

“That’ll do, pig,” I say, “stand.” Burt rises slowly. Frowning, but rising. I like to get in at least a dozen proposal rejections a day. Sometimes I make the Burt device beg, which it always halfasses, but that’s what I paid for: a replication of the actual Burt’s emotional distance, the way he humored my marriage plans for a year with noncommittal hums. When anyone (anyone!) asked him if he loved me, he’d rebut: “What kind of a question is that?!?”

Then he dumped me. Word is, he’s now shtupping some dream therapist who feng shuis corporate break rooms on the side.

“Burt,” I say. “Read your letter.” Burt sighs audibly, and I point to the packet drawer. At least, that’s where I think I stuffed it last night. (It was a big box of wine.) Burt rummages through duck sauce, mini allen wrenches, wrapped sporks. I raise my phone and livestream. I tag Burt, the real Burt.

The Burt device fishes out the letter and gets to reading. I zoom in on its face. The Burt device proceeds from the faux-self-effacing opening (“I must seem like an old fogey, using this medium to break this news to you”) to the transition (“but I figured sending you these words in my own handwriting would confirm my sincerity”). The compliment (“You’re a passionate and wonderful person”) followed by the backhand (“who demands much more than I or anyone else, for that matter, can ever give”).

The Burt device reaches the dismal closing, “Your friend.”

“Again,” I insist. Already, Burt’s lapdogs rail at me in the comments:

●      Real mature.

●      There’s a beautiful place called MovedOnville. I recommend an express ticket.

●      Bitch.

The real Burt withholds comment, though from the green halo around his icon I know he’s live. Jasper joins the feed: You take a day off for this?!? I plunge into a momentary flashback of last night: tipping the box for its dregs, Burt’s letter in my hand, the device vacuuming, me drunk-facetiming Meadow: “Is it everything you ever wanted?”

Meadow smiled and smiled, her eyes wide and teary, her device tantruming in the background. “Yes,” she cried, and as though I had asked her again, she cried again, “Yes! Yeeeeesssssss!!”

I watch the comment feed thicken, emojis and bile and concern for my wellbeing piling in.

Fuck them all. I got what I wanted.

“Stop,” I command. Burt stops. “Turn around like a cake display while you read it all over again.” This Burt does everything I tell him to.

Richard Weems is the author of three short fiction collections, including Anything He Wants, finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. You can find him on Medium, and on Instagram: @richardkweems.