“Oh my god, mom! I can’t believe you would do this!”
“I told you I was going to, Amelia. Emily knew. See? She’s smiling.”
“But, to surprise us with this? When I showed up today and you weren’t in your room, I thought you were dead!”
“Well I’m sorry to disappoint.”
“That’s not… that’s not what I mean, mom.”
“Well, legally speaking, I am dead. I’m a digital intelligence now. Why hasn’t anyone taken me out of this box yet? This poor nurse is just standing here holding me on display.”
“I’ll hold grandma!” Emily quickly snatched up the grandmagotchi and held it out so everyone could see grandma.
“Thank you,” Amelia thanked the nurse, who nodded and smiled, then departed.
“So, grandma, what’s it like being a grandmagotchi?” Emily asked.
“It’s not bad so far. My bones don’t hurt anymore, and I can see in three-hundred and sixty degrees, just looks a little different. I guess I’m pretty happy with it so far.”
“I don’t even know how to react right now.” Amelia shook her head, mouth agape.
“Well, when your mother says she’s going to do something, she does it. Lilly,” Emily’s father spoke to the grandmagotchi directly, calling her by her first name, “would you care to join us for breakfast?”
“I’d love to!” Little fireworks exploded around Lilly on the grandmagotchi screen.
“Alright, let’s go out for breakfast. I’m calling off work today. This is too good. Thank you, Doctor Li, it’s been a pleasure. Is there anything we need to fill out?” Emily’s father got straight to the point.
“Just a few things. I had my staff prepare everything. If you just go down the hall here and ask someone at the service desk on your right, they’ll take care of you.”
“Thank you, Doctor, it’s been a pleasure.”
The family left the hospital in a strange but jovial mood. Emily’s grandmother was gone, but she also wasn’t. For days, they had been preparing themselves to let go of her, and now she fit in their pocket and came with a built-in belt clip. She explained what it was like to go in for the procedure. She remembered everything until they strapped the device to her head and sedated her. Since she couldn’t eat breakfast, Emily used the grandmagotchi to feed her digital food.
“Are those my only options?” Lilly asked.
“Yeah, I guess so. I think it’s because you’re new, so we’re going to have to unlock all these other options.”
“Well that’s a bum deal. I guess I’ll be happy with some eggs and bacon then.”
“Okay, grandma, eggs and bacon coming right up.” Emily and Lilly played a minigame to make the eggs and bacon, finishing in time for Emily’s food to arrive. “How’s the breakfast in there, grandma?”
“Pretty good! They taste like real eggs.”
“It’s probably based on your memories of flavors. I bet if we get a higher score, it’ll taste better.”
“What if they have an option here for something I’ve never tried?”
“Hopefully this thing has flavor profiles for those situations.”
“This might be pretty fun.”
The weekend flew by and before she knew it, it was time for Emily to go back to school. Amelia gave her the option to leave the grandmagotchi at home, but she declined. After being so consumed with getting to know how to use the grandmagotchi, she had remained completely offline for days. She had received a few messages from friends checking in but not wanting to bother her in case the worst had happened. The most she gave them was vague assurances that she was okay. This was news best left as a surprise, especially since her friends all loved Lilly.
Attaching the grandmagotchi to a necklace, Emily wore the device in plain sight so her grandma could see what she could see. The grandmagotchi had a variety of appearance settings that Lilly herself could switch between. Her favorites were a cute face on the screen consisting of a pair of cartoon eyes and a mouth, a tiny hologram as opposed to a full sized hologram, and a pixel-animated version.
With a matte-black hovering ball-shaped camera following Emily and recording between classes, Emily introduced her grandmagotchi to everyone. Grandgotchis had only been around a few months and she was the first person at the school with a grandparent who had passed and became a pocket pet. As such, Emily and Lilly were the talk of the high school, with everyone trying to sneak a peek.
With History class as first period, the teacher decided to skip the day’s curriculum and talk to Lilly about the history of pocket pet toys and the Membury company. It was like the one she had with Emily at the hospital but with more detail. The teacher looked up the information she was discussing as she told her story. The teacher, Mr. Moore modeled the day’s classes around what they learned.
By lunch, Emily and Lilly were an online sensation. Everyone was getting a kick out of Lilly’s cheeky attitude and Emily’s relationship with her. Emily tried to make her grandmother the star and everyone loved her for it. In one day, Emily went from being a well liked but otherwise ordinary face in the crowd to being on the tip of everyone’s tongue at school.
What all the students at her school were not expecting was all the great advice Lilly had. The teachers all expected Lilly to be a disruptive element in the classroom, but she was not. In fact, she would whip the kids into shape with her sharp tongue better than the teachers often could. After a successful first day, everyone agreed that Emily could continue to bring Lilly to school with her.
The video Emily made of the first day with her grandmagotchi was a hit, after gaining incredible online notoriety throughout the day. Lying on her bed, she voiced her excitement with Lilly, who was quick to temper her expectations.
“Don’t let it get to your head. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame, but it might not last,” she warned.
“First of all, grandma, it’s not me, it’s us. We’re popular. But, I totally get you. We’ll probably be played out in a few weeks. Maybe I can score a boyfriend right now, though.”
“Oh, you don’t want to try to find a boyfriend during peak popularity. Try to find someone when you’re down and out.”
“That would be embarrassing! Why would I do that?”
“So you know he’ll stick with you when times are tough. Things aren’t always good, honey, and when people don’t really care about you, they’ll take off on you when things get rough. When things are hard is when you see what people are really made of and if they’re really there for you.”
Emily took a moment to think about what her grandma was saying with a soft breath. She considered past experiences with friends and how people had let her down.
“Well, I guess I’m definitely going to find a good guy if I’m going to be hanging out with you.” Emily smiled, but her grandmagotchi looked unsettled by the statement. “What’s wrong?”
“I won’t be around forever, Emily.”
“Well, I know. But, you could be, right? You’re a grandmagotchi now.”
“That wasn’t my plan. I figured I’d do this for a while to mess with your mom and so I could live long enough to watch it all fall apart, but I don’t plan on staying around forever,” Lilly said.
“But, how do you plan on dying if you didn’t share this with anyone? I didn’t agree to kill you.”
“You wouldn’t be killing me, you’d be, uh… finishing what I started?”
“I’m sorry, grandma, but I can’t do that.”
“Well then… I guess we don’t know how this is going to end, but I don’t want to live forever.”
“You could live long enough to see me get married.”
“I guess we could always find a reason to keep going if we really want to.”
“Whatever reason you did it for, I’m glad you did. It’s weird, we never could have spent time together like this before.”
“Yeah I was thinking about that earlier. I would have gotten so tired running around with you all day.”
“Now you only feel tired on your bedtime, which we can change whenever you want.”
“I can take naps to recharge stuff in here, too. I wish real life worked like that. You can take a nap and things just get fixed for you. Imagine taking a nap and when you wake up, the house is clean! This thing’s got its perks.”
The first few weeks were great, and Lilly became a part of everyday life, telling everyone they could call her Lilly. Unlike Lilly’s prediction, Emily loved having her around all the time and was never forced to bring her along. Amelia had to ask for Lilly so they could spend some time together, but Lilly had much more fun with Emily. While Amelia could be argumentative and stubborn with her mother, Emily was all around more receptive to her.
Emily’s predictions also came true, and within a few weeks the world had moved on. She had retained the social bump, but the buzz around her online was gone and she was no longer the new thing at the school as much as a unique character in it. Lilly would usually nap during class so that at lunch and between classes she could spam as many abilities and animations as she wanted. Every day they unlocked something new.
With only a few months of school left, Emily was being courted by a number of boys for the prom, but she did not have her heart set on anyone. Instead, she decided to go with her girl friends who just wanted to dress up and dance. In such a short time, Lilly had managed to ruin the image Emily had of the guys she had been crushing on before, all of whom were now interested in her. She was learning to see potential in some of the guys she had previously overlooked, and was appreciating different traits in people.
She was also learning to see the world people tried to keep hidden. Lilly would whisper in Emily’s ear, alerting her to dishonesty as well as distress. Emily became more aware of those around her who needed help, and of those who were looking to take advantage. The overall behavior of the student body also changed to match people’s expectations. Emily was setting an example that others attempted to emulate. Even if she was not at the top of the social ladder, her influence was pervasive. This was lost on her, but not on Lilly.
When Emily would leave the grandmagotchi with her mom, she had a harder time with it since she was not as familiar with it. Since she was not accustomed to keeping it with her, she completely forgot the grandmagotchi at home and went out to do errands. When she returned, Lilly was distressed.
“Amelia, you left me! I’ve been sitting on the table for hours!” she complained.
“Oh my God, Mom, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m starving! This food alarm has been going off for a couple hours now and I won’t die but the hunger won’t go away. This is a living nightmare. Why was I programmed to feel hunger?”
“What? Oh my God!” Amelia scrambled to feed her mother before putting away the groceries. Lilly was sure to rub in that Emily had never missed a meal. She stayed home with Amelia even less after that incident.