Eva sat on her couch cross-legged and broke the promise she had made to herself not to smirk. But she couldn’t help herself: the array floating before her looked so utterly ridiculous. She let one of her legs move so that her foot touched the carpet and drew back on her cigarette again. "So, tell me again why you want to interview me?" The interview was going to happen. Her tone made that clear. It was just curiosity. Like most things.

The interviewer leaned forward in his chair and pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I'm writing a book about what are considered non-standard relationships." He gave a smile that pretended to be nervous. "No offense meant by the term, of course."

Eva raised an eyebrow. "None taken. But I'm not in a relationship."

The interviewer nodded back to her, gesturing with his pen. "Yes, you see, that's the non-standard part of it."

Eva nodded to the array. "That's recording?"

"Only with your permission."

Eva waved the hand holding the cigarette. That was enough. An audible click and the array began doing its work. Wholly unnecessary noise, the click, but some people liked to think they still lived in a mildly analog world. Some people wanted their phones to still ring, their cameras to still sound like a shutter was going off. Those who were old enough to remember when you needed such things.

Eva drew off the cigarette again and then looked at him. "So. I'm considered to be in a relationship with Harold, my husband."

"Yes," the interviewer said.

"Even though he's dead."

"Especially because he's dead."

Eva brought her leg up under her again. "Oh, I see. But your real question is… why haven't I brought him back."

The interviewer nodded. "Yes. Did he refrain from…leaving provisions for it?"

Eva smiled, "Oh, he did leave provisions. I was furious."

"Furious? Why?"

Eva shook her head, but she was still smiling. "Because he wasn't supposed to. Neither of us was supposed to."

"So he left behind the genetic material…"

"Yes, the full set they require."

"And a mental map backup."

"Yes."

"And…that doesn't say to you he changed his mind before he died?"

Eva drew off the cigarette again and looked at the interviewer, sizing him up. "You've never been married, have you?" Another question in no need of an answer.

"In the traditional sense? No," he said, which was the polite way of saying you had an interesting poly-home-life without having to divulge details. Eva didn't want them, regardless, so that was fine. Good for him and done with it.

"Well, when you're married," Eva said, "you know things. Harold left me those because he didn't want me to be lonely. So I could…recreate him if it got too bad."

"But you haven't."

"No. I haven't."

"Has it not gotten bad enough yet then?"

"No. And it won't."

"How can you be sure?"

Eva let both legs drop and she leaned forward. She held up her cigarette. "You see this? It's smokeless. They've replaced all the cigarettes with smokeless ones. I still blow air out of my mouth and nose but it's just out of habit. Instead the cigarette makes my body think it's getting the burn and filling my lungs with smoke. It's a psychosomatic cigarette. It's just for show with my body as the audience. Which is ludicrous as I could have a new set of lungs if I wanted. An entirely new body. Why does it matter what damage I do to it? And yet, I have to go down to the black market to buy the real cigarettes–and if I smoked them in front of you, I would be committing a crime.

"Your glasses are just for show, too. I bet they would adjust to my eyesight if I put them on. And you don't even need them because you can get your eyes fixed as well. And the glasses are just there to let you zoom in on things.

"It's the same way with recreated people. Genetically it's them. Their brains are there, even their personality…but…"

Eva leaned forward and pointed with the cigarette. "They skip."

"Skip?"

"Yes. They lose their place in what they're doing. Harold and I met one at a party. It was a friend of ours who had dropped dead of congenital heart failure at forty-three. If there was anybody who you could understand getting a second chance, it was this person. Three tours of duty in Mexico. Charity every chance he got. Served others his entire life and was the sort of person you dream of being but know you can never quite manage.

" But at the party…"

Eva gave an involuntary shudder. "We saw him lose his place in what he was saying–and not like you or I would get derailed on a train of thought–but like a vinyl record skipping. Like his mind stuttered. Like he was missing, teetering over a precipice in himself. And then our friend was back. But it scared the hell out of both of us.

"That night we swore we wouldn't recreate the other if the situation ever came up."

The interviewer sat back in his chair. His back crackled. "Surely a flawed person is better than no person at all."

Eva smiled. "Not for someone you truly love. And. Well. Not for me, anyway."

"And you could only be with him? DNA is public domain now, so you could create just about anyone…even just for a companion, not another husband."

"Why would I ever want someone else?" Her smile broadened. "I had a long life with Harold. It's more than most people ever get."

"Technology is improving all the time. Perhaps they'll fix these…glitches.

"Well," she said, turning her cigarette off. One did this by tapping the front of it on any object. But force of habit, Eva did it into an empty ashtray. And always too hard. She broke more things that way. "When that happens, you know where to find me."

After she let the man out, she shut the door and leaned her head against it, closed her eyes. She was uncertain how long she remained like that, but she eventually gave out a huge sigh and went back into her bedroom.

She opened the storage space inside the wall and glanced in at the fourteen urns. She leaned her head against the top of the space's opening much as she had leaned against the front door.

"Damn you, Harold," she sighed again. "Damn you and damn me as well."

Eventually, she shut that door as well.