by George BECKERMAN

Mark didn’t hate mar­riage and fam­i­ly, but he was falling out of love with it. He and Pamela mar­ried young. Nine­teen years old young. Mark missed out on his oats-sow­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty. Not just ex­pe­ri­enc­ing oth­er women, but just time to fig­ure out who he was go­ing to be when he grew up. And then, al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, they had the twins, Si­mon and Marie, who were now im­pos­si­ble-to-live-with, en­ti­tled, all-know­ing, eye-rolling, tem­per-tantrum­ing, teenage ter­rors, who rou­tine­ly left the din­ner ta­ble with­out be­ing excused.

So… be­tween a mar­riage in the stale as week-old bread stage and the two kids from the dark side of the moon, Mark de­cid­ed to take ad­van­tage of the avail­able tech­nol­o­gy. He got him­self an AI clone. Well, not ac­tu­al­ly for him­self, but for Pamela. Of course, Mark didn’t tell her that she would be shar­ing a bed with Tech Mark. And off he went in­to a brave new world.

And while Mark missed Pam and the kids, re­gret­ful he was not. He vo­ra­cious­ly scooped-up every­thing that was avail­able to a new­ly-sin­gle guy in his new non-com­mit­tal time of life. Dat­ing apps, bars, of­fice ro­mances, el­e­va­tor pick­ups. Until…one night, while on a din­ner date with a beau­ty he met at a rave, Mark was stunned at what he no­ticed a cou­ple of ta­bles away. It was Pamela, not with Clone Mark, but with a to­tal stranger. An ir­ri­tat­ing­ly good-look­ing stranger. Mark and his date did not es­cape Pamela’s no­tice ei­ther. Mark and Pamela both ex­cused them­selves from their re­spec­tive en­gage­ments and met be­tween the restrooms.

Fu­ri­ous and con­fused, each stat­ed their case, which was ex­act­ly the same. Mark and Pam had both em­ployed AI clones of them­selves to live at home while they gala­vant­ed. Each claimed the stag­nant mar­riage ex­cuse. Di­gest­ing this turn of events, it dawned on them that their chil­dren, Si­mon and Marie were be­ing raised by two ro­bots. Hor­ri­fied, guilt-rid­den and ashamed, they quick­ly in­tro­duced their sur­prised dates to each oth­er, bid them a suc­cess­ful evening to­geth­er and didn’t walk but ran home, the place they both had abandoned.

Up­on ar­rival, Mark and Pamela im­me­di­ate­ly dis­missed their clones, threw their arms around their con­fused kids and hugged them too tight­ly for what seemed like too long. And then, the apolo­gies kicked in. Run­away par­ents to aban­doned kids, then way­ward hus­band to way­ward wife and vice-versa.

The re­gret tour con­tin­ued the next morn­ing at break­fast. When Si­mon and Marie had enough, they in­formed Ted and Pamela that they were apol­o­giz­ing to the wrong peo­ple. They were just AI clones of their kids. An­oth­er gut-punch for the cou­ple. When they asked where their re­al chil­dren were, the sub­sti­tutes told them they were some­where in the city, liv­ing with an­oth­er fam­i­ly. How long has this been go­ing on? “About five years” was the re­ply. Mark and Pam had been un­wit­ting­ly par­ent­ing kid clones long be­fore they each pulled the same stunt.  They were gob­s­macked.  The teenage clones tossed them two of the most con­de­scend­ing “you two are id­iots” eye-rolls in par­ent-teen his­to­ry, cack­led with bru­tal sar­casm and left the ta­ble with­out be­ing excused.

Filed under Fiction on March 14th, 2025

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