Turkey Talk

by Bradly Davidson

He sat at the consul, typed a sequence of keys, and soon lights started to glow shining their beams into the middle of the room. Suddenly a life size hologram appeared.

“Hi mom,” he said.

The figure got brighter and smiled and replied, “Oh honey! How nice. According to my time stamp, it’s been a while. How have you been?”

He thought how amazing it was she got the “You never call me” sentiment out of the way so early.

“I’ve been good. Busy but good. How have you been?”

“Well,” she replied. “I’ve been feeling a bit scattered lately, but I’m all put together now, eh?”

There was a long pause then she burst out laughing. “Oh honey. That’s just some cyber humor we work on here.”

“Yeah, I never remember you being funny, mom. What’s going on in there?”

“Oh nothing much. There’s just this guy, Max. He’s a riot and makes me laugh so much. Guess it kind of rubs off.”

“Oh, meeting new people. That’s good.” He said while pondering if it actually was.

“You know, your Aunt Emma was just talking about you and wondering how you are. You haven’t seen here since her funeral. Such a nice eulogy she gave herself. Would you like to talk to her? She’s right here. I can go get her.”

A sense of panic struck him thinking of the talkative Aunt Emma and her gripping, long hugs she gave pressing his face against her more than adequate bosom. He wondered if holograms could do that.

“No, no, no, no, no. That won’t be necessary. I just wanted to talk to you for a bit, mom.”

“Oh, how nice dear.”

There was another long, awkward pause.

“So, what did you want to talk about, sweetheart?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m having some folks over for Thanksgiving and I said I’d cook the turkey. Remembering how good yours always came out I was just wondering,… how do you cook a turkey?”

The hologram released an audible sigh. “Well, you have my cookbook with the notes in it. You took all that after my body died and I was uploaded here. There’s a handwritten recipe for the stuffing. Follow the directions and do it the night ahead of time.”

“Oh great!” I can do that. Funny I never thought of looking in your cook book.”

“Funny.” She agreed.

“Then what?” he queried obviously missing the obvious.

“Well, following the directions, you flop it around a while on the counter as you put the stuffing inside it, you sew it up then put it in the oven at a bazillion degrees for about, say, two weeks.”

“Ah,… mom. That doesn’t sound quite right.” he said looking a bit worried. “You sure you’re not getting your bytes mixed up with those of a 4 year old in there?”

She stared back at him with a blank look, then suddenly burst out laughing again.

“Ha, ha, ha. Got you. You looked a bit worried there. Just some more of that new found humor of mine.”

Rather than smiling, his face showed annoyance.

“So who is this Max guy and what’s up with you hanging around him so much?”

“Max?”, she repeated. “His name is Max Headroom and he’s been here a while. I think he was one of the builders of this cyber place, an original AI, not that I’m artificial, of course.. You may have heard of him. He’s a real crack up. Makes me laugh so much.”

“Is making you laugh all it takes to be happy?”

“Of course not, dear. He sort of… kind of… in a way titillates me. Yeah, titillate. Makes me all titillated. You should see his bits and bytes”

“Mommmmm! Enough. I don’t want to talk about this right now. Thanks for turkey advise. I’ll catch you later. Good-bye.” He went about closing down the program.

“Oh honey. You always were such a sensitive child…” and her voice trailed away as the lights dimmed and she was gone.

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