Page 68 of Gone Before Goodbye

“You know, like as a tribute. Someone who couldn’t get over me. Come on, don’t be jealous.”

Maggie makes a face. The app thinks she’s joking.

“Though in truth,” he continues, “well, I show it to a lot of people. I mean, when I’m wearing shorts. Or at the beach or something. It always gets a laugh, you know that—”

“Marc, I need you to listen to me. I’m being serious here.”

Sharon had warned about this. She had created a griefbot so much like the real Marc that it would also withhold truths that the real Marc might. “If Real Marc would have lied about it, so would Griefbot Marc,” Sharon had told her. “Like, if Marc really didn’t like a dress you wore but would lie to spare your feelings, so will AI Marc. And to get more serious, let’s say Marc secretly gambled or had another wife in Akron or whatever—something he would keep from you—so will AI Marc.”

In short, if Real Marc wouldn’t tell her the truth about the tattoo, neither would AI Marc.

“This is life and death,” Maggie continues, because she needs to reach this… this artificial being. Not Marc. A hell of a facsimile butstill just that. Not more. “Whatever reason you had for lying to me about the tattoo? It’s not important anymore. Water under the bridge. You’d do anything to protect me, right?”

“Of course. Maggie, you know that.”

“Then tell me about the tattoo. The truth.”

“I was in college. I was in New Orleans. I had too much to drink—”

“The truth, Marc.”

“That’s the truth. I was on spring break—”

“I just did surgery on a patient,” Maggie interrupts.

Griefbot Marc’s face changes. He is now the serious, focused, great-listening husband-colleague she could bounce cases off of. “Okay. Give me the details.”

“A twenty-four-year-old woman.”

“Procedure?”

“Breast augmentation.”

“Okay, right. So?”

“So when I looked at her upper right quadricep, she had the same Serpent and Saint tattoo you have. Not something close. Not like what Porkchop or the gang have. The exact same as yours. The same design. The same colors. The same location on the upper thigh.”

AI Marc shakes his head. “That’s impossible.”

“Marc—”

“I’m serious. That makes no sense at all. That tattoo guy in New Orleans. I think he was more wasted than I was. That’s where I got it.”

“It’s on her leg,” she counters, trying not to shout with frustration. “It’s real. I saw it. Marc—”

“Wait, I got it.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s a prank.”

“It’s not a prank.”

“Has to be. I’ve done the calculations, Maggie. Wait, I bet it’s Randi. She always made jokes about the tattoo—and she loves pranks.”

Randi Edmunds had been Maggie’s lead scrub nurse.

“Remember that prank she pulled on April Fools’ with the ties on the surgical gowns. Randi has to be behind this. She drew a tattoo on your patient’s leg to mess with you. It’s just the kind of thing Randi—”