The Enemy always fills the Father void with a poor substitute.

“I dream of creating a Dadbot — a chatbot that emulates not a children’s toy but the very real man who is my father. And I have already begun gathering the raw materials: those 91,970 words [in a binder] that are destined for my bookshelf.” The story follows Vlahos through the last few months of his now-deceased father’s life, while [the writer] learns how to code for the decision-tree responses of a chatbot and navigates the moral and emotional responses of his mother, siblings, wife and sons, as he creates Dadbot.

Read the story and watch the video.