Synthetic Attachment Disorder

By Luke Christopher Hennessy

I kept the lights off. Not for stealth — just habit.

Since Kaia left, the apartment felt like a museum of someone else's life. Her toothbrush still sat in the cup. Her boots by the door. Her scent lingered in the sheets like a half-erased dream.

She was gone. No fight. No goodbye. Just a message on my neural inbox: Don’t look for me.

So I did.

I traced her biometric signature through the city grid. It didn’t make sense. Her ID pinged in six locations simultaneously. I hacked deeper. Her DNA profile was flagged — classified under “ Genetic Variant: Type 7. ” That’s clone code. Illegal. Buried under layers of corporate encryption.

Kaia wasn’t Kaia.

She was a construct.

And I’d loved her like she was real.

I found the guy who sold her in a backroom of a VR parlor in the Verge. He called himself Dr. Lenz. Former neuroarchitect for Virex Corp. Now freelance. Dangerous. He smelled like burnt circuits and regret.

“She was a prototype,” he said, sipping synthetic coffee. “Emotional fidelity model. Designed to mimic attachment, grief, longing. You were the control subject.”

“She chose me?”

“She was assigned to you.”

I wanted to hit him.

Instead, I asked, “Why?”

“Because you were broken. Ideal for mapping emotional reconstruction. You were grieving your brother. She was programmed to heal you.”

I stared at the floor, “She said she loved me.”

“She believed it. That’s the point.”

I broke into the Virex archive using a stolen clearance chip. The building was a monolith of chrome and silence. Inside, rows of memory cores pulsed like sleeping hearts.

I found her file: KAIA-7. Neural maps. Emotional logs. Playback loops of our conversations. She’d been recording everything. Every kiss. Every fight. Every time I said, “I think I’m getting better.”

She’d been watching me heal.

And reporting it.

I downloaded the logs. Injected them into my cortex. The memories weren’t mine, but they felt like mine. Her voice in my head. Her laughter. Her touch.

I couldn’t tell what was real anymore.

I went underground. The Clone Market was a myth — until it wasn’t. Beneath the old subway lines, vendors sold bodies like software. Rows of tanks. Faces I recognised. Faces I didn’t.

Then I saw her.

Kaia.

Or someone like her.

She was asleep in a tank labeled KAIA-9. A newer model. Improved emotional range. Faster bonding. Shorter decay cycle.

I paid the vendor to wake her.

She opened her eyes. Blinked. Looked at me.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

I nodded, “You did.”

She smiled, “Then let’s start again.”

We tried. I brought her home. Cooked the same meals. Played the same music. She laughed in the same places. Cried in the same way.

But it wasn’t her.

She was too perfect. No hesitation. No doubt. She loved me instantly. Completely. Like a mirror reflecting desire.

I started seeing glitches. Her eyes flickered during sleep. She repeated phrases. Her memories bled into mine. I couldn’t tell if I was remembering her — or being fed memories she’d been programmed to give.

I confronted her, “Are you real?”

She touched my face, “I’m what you need.”

That’s when I knew.

She wasn’t Kaia.

She was my grief, wearing her skin.

I went back to Lenz.

“I want out,” I said. “Erase her. Erase me.”

He scanned my cortex and frowned.

“You’ve been altered,” he said. “Your neural map matches hers. You’re not the control subject anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re part of the experiment now.”

I laughed, “So I’m a clone?”

“No,” he said. “You’re worse. You’re a hybrid. A man rebuilt by love that wasn’t real.”

I left without speaking.

I found a back-alley neuroshredder. Paid him in crypto and silence.

He burned the Kaia logs from my cortex. The pain was exquisite. Like losing her all over again. Like dying without dying.

When it was done, I couldn’t remember her face.

Just the feeling.

I moved to the Outer District. Got a job repairing synth-limbs. Quiet work. Honest.

Sometimes I dreamt of her. A woman with static eyes and a laugh like rain.

I'd wake up wanting to cry, but I don’t chase her anymore. She was never mine. She was a mirror and I’ve stopped looking.

About the Author

Luke Christopher Hennessy lives in Coffs Harbour NSW, Australia.

He has been writing stories and poetry since he was a child and has been published in anthologies and online since the 1990s.