Here, but Not Here

       To begin, in the episode, "Be Right Back," of the Black Mirror series, a young couple, Ash and Martha, moves into a small house, isolated from society. The next day, Ash has to return the van they used to help move their belongings. This shows the irony in the title because, as he went to return the van, Ash was killed in an accident and never came back home, so Martha thought. At the funeral, Martha runs into one of her friends who informs her of a system that allows people to stay in contact with the dead. At first, Martha was convinced that she wanted no parts in this system, until she found out that she was pregnant. This led her to looking into the service, which started as a messaging system with a chatbot. This bot was a bundle of data of Ash gathered from his social media accounts. Martha quickly grew attached with the system, which led her to constantly upgrade the service. What started as a conversation with information from social media accounts grew to Martha providing videos which gave her the ability to speak to what sounded and seemed like Ash. Once she dropped her phone, and almost lost Ash again, she upgraded to the human form. This not only allowed Martha to talk to Ash, but she could now interact with him, ranging from eating with him to having sex with him. However, Martha soon realized that something was always different with the new Ash. Due to the new Ash being nothing but information that was provided, Martha could never get the old Ash back. This is because the new Ash was not there to be human, he was there to please Martha. This wasn't a smart grieving choice for a number of reasons. One reason would be because it convinced Martha that she would always have Ash around. Some may believe that people who lived in an earlier period would think using pictures and voicemails as a coping mechanism is creepy, but it's different. A person can't talk to someone that's in a picture and get a response. All the things Martha did with the new Ash would keep anyone from moving on. Another reason for it not being a wise grieving choice would be because the new Ash had an effect on more than Martha. Obviously the new Ash had an immediate impact on Martha, but the impacts on her began to affect her surroundings. For example, due to Martha spending all of her time with the new Ash, her relationship with her sister, Naomi, became very distant. It became so distant that Naomi had to surprise Martha with a visit in order to comfort her. During the visit, Naomi went to use the restroom, but saw men's clothing in her sister's room. This led Naomi to believing Martha had already moved on, which led to Martha having nobody to convince her that keeping Ash's presence was not healthy. The new Ash also had an impact on Martha's daughter. A viewer of this episode would think that Martha wouldn't tell the young girl about the android-like figure of her father, but she did. However, the young girl interacted with the new Ash as if he were a pet. She didn't call him "dad" and Martha kept him in the attic, where Ash's mother put all of the things she didn't want to deal with. This showed that Martha knew it was unhealthy, but she kept the new Ash anyway. Martha will live with the pain of knowing that the closest thing to having Ash back is nowhere near having him back. All in all, artificial intelligence should never be used to handle grief. People have to let go and move on eventually.