À la lumière de l'amour de ma mère

“What are we going to do with her?”

David turned to Hal, needing a second to process his question. Hal carried on:

“We can’t leave her here, that’d be improper for the next tenants. And we can’t abandon her somewhere, or bury her—I don’t want to bury her.”

He mindlessly played with the zipper of his coat.

“We have the tomb but not the dead… I just hope she didn’t get thrown in a communal grave.”

Dave, hands buried in his pockets, grazed the crumpled letter with coarse fingertips. He had read the few words over and over again, becoming so intimate with the curves of the g’s and o’s the name of its writer stuck to the tip of his tongue yet never got out. He twisted and curled his mouth around the unlit cigarette in his mouth (Otacon had refused to let him smoke so close to his face).

“Somehow, I don’t think she was.”

Hal didn’t ask for clarification. Snake continued:

“I think we can find a way. We could rent a truck and crane and have her travel with us.”

An amused snort made it past Hal’s lips and Snake kept going, Otacon growing less sure he was just joking:

“We could find a place to settle, in Oregon, Washington state, Canada… We could buy our own cargo plane…” (that made Hal frankly laugh) “... Alaska…”

“God,” Otacon grimaced, “how cold.”

“Sure,” tempered Snake, “but fuck is it beautiful.”

Otacon kicked his feet mindlessly, then humored:

“Where would we put her? In the cabin?”

“In the garden of course. Wouldn’t she make a fantastic scarecrow?”

“Yeah,” chuckled Hal with him, “her huge eye beaming red when a bird comes too close to our fruit trees.”

“You get it!”

They laughed for a while.
From the half-wall they were sitting perched on, flanking a hill overlooking the city, they could see the grey door of the storage unit the pod was still sleeping in. The sun hit it low and bright, making it glow.
Out of the corner of his eye, David watched Otacon’s face twist, scrunch up and dip.
He was crying.
Dave put an arm around his trembling shoulders and offered a hug less awkward than they’ve had, but not quite there yet. Hal still appreciated the gesture.

There was, in some forgotten pocket of Hal’s coat, a small tape-to-USB converter. A thrift find he had never found any utility for.
From code to tape, from tape to file.
“What a journey for you,” he thought, directed at no one.

He’d lock these files, hide them somewhere safe—or, well, as safe as he could make them. There was no shortage of people who could find these .mp4 anywhere he stored them.
But then again, he thought, what would anyone find on those?
A woman saying “I love you” to her son.
A woman saying “I love you” to another woman.
Somewhere, in lines they couldn’t read, that woman saying “I love you too”.
A tale as old as the damn floppy. Surely the FBI would be on such sensitive information in an instant, he chuckled to himself.
He exported these tapes until exhaustion sent him face-first on his keyboard. He’d preserve these words for the eons to come, if for nothing but his selfish desire to hear Strangelove’s voice again.

He gently pulled the tape off the write-protection notch. It revealed another, and when he pulled that one off, another still. It felt forbidden to do this, and his chest tightened from stomach to throat. He cocked his head to the side, taking in a shaky breath, and dropped it over his shoulder.
Through the nose, he thought. Through the nose.
The decades-old adhesive left grey, sticky dots around the notch, tacky to the touch. Hal set the floppy disk on the kitchen table and hunched over it, shielding it from nothing with the width of his bony shoulders. He scraped the adhesive slowly, meticulously, as if entranced, as if praying, with a precision knife. He didn’t need to do that, he thought. He truly didn’t.
And yet he scraped. He rubbed with a light, fleeting thumb. The disk felt like sand with the grains of its cover, like skin. He brushed it lightly.

He could scrap it, he thought. He could scrap it all.
He read and re-read the lines and lines and lines that had been crammed in the few bits of storage the disk had. Scraping it all meant he could never read those again, but it also meant this would be safe forever. No one else could pull these years of work into anything else, no one could attempt to play necromancer again—an apologetic smile twisted his lips when this thought crossed his mind: he mentally added that, of course, he didn’t think mom really attempted necromancy, no matter how unethical one could see her actions, even though that would have been very cool if she had (and maybe he was lying to himself, maybe he was, but he’d have the time to come to terms with that too).

He read. He read the lines and between them.
He had gone through books about children finding their parents’ old love letters in a dusty, lightless attic, and maybe that was the closest he’d ever get to that.
The pointless wandering of his mind brought him to the realization that he didn’t know how well his father wrote, and then he decided he didn’t give a shit.
He read Dr. Strangelove a few more times.
He read the replies hidden in the few lines logging the AI’s responses. He knew she understood.

He’s not scraping it.
Hal decided he’d keep the floppy. In the absence of family photos, or family photos he’d actually want to see, he keeps the floppy.
Kids do not seem to be in the universe’s plans for him—he chuckles just thinking about it, hah, now that’s funny (with Snake in the picture? No way. And he’s not about to leave either.)—but… just in case.

He watches the screen (he feels the screen watching him).
He puts his hand on the mouse, cups it with more intention and care he ever had, carefully places his fingers as if he sought to hold a hand. He scrolls, taking it in. Taking in one last time these years of work, this storage of immeasurably precious technology, this letter between one woman he knows barely and one he doesn’t know at all, who knew each other at some time, at some place, who had fallen in love with each other.
At the bottom, there’s no closure.

“Hi mom.”
He types.
“Thank you. I love you.”

He mindlessly hits keys without pressing them, weighing his next words on his fingertips.

“Hi Joy.”
He types.
“Thank you.”

Closing:
“— your Hal, always.