This is a speculative fiction piece that I’ve been working on for a while. And I mean a while. It’s been something like a year now since I started it.

Actually, this is an excerpt from a novel I’m working on, but I don’t know if I’ll ever complete that, so I’m also adding this piece to my blog. Maybe posting it somewhere (even though no one is going to really be reading it) will convince me to finish.

Hollow Son

The dim evening light spilled into the living room, draping everything in a soft, fragile glow. A woman sat in its quiet embrace, an old photograph balanced carefully in her hands. Three faces smiled up at her—hers, her husband’s, their daughter’s—captured in the warmth of a summer long gone. In that moment, the future had seemed wide open, a future filled with more children, a larger family, a life unfolding in abundance.

But years had passed since the picture was taken, and each year had hollowed them a little more. She traced the frozen smiles with her finger, as if touch alone could bridge the gulf between then and now. The photograph had once been a promise; now it was a wound, reminding them of what had been denied.

Her gaze drifted to the doorway, where the man stood half-shadowed, his hands knotted together, his brow drawn tight. The silence between them was charged, humming with the knowledge of what lay ahead—an unseen current urging them forward, yet holding them still.

“Do you think we’re making the right choice?” the woman asked at last, her words scarcely louder than the faint hum of wind against the windows. 

He did not respond immediately. His glance shifted—first to her, then to the photograph, and finally to the closed door across the room. Once, it had been only a spare bedroom. Now it held their secret: wires and circuits, flesh-like polymers, years of hidden labor compressed into the small body waiting on the other side. The threshold loomed before them. To cross it would mean no return.

They had been blessed with a daughter who remained the light of their lives, steady and radiant despite the years of disappointment that followed. Yet the shadow of what could not be lingered always at the edges, dimming even their brightest joys. Doctors spoke of possibilities—something hereditary, perhaps—but never offered certainty, only shrugs and silence. Month after month, year after year, their hopes collapsed into the same emptiness. The second child they dreamed of never came.

Now their daughter was eight, her laughter filling the house that otherwise echoed with absence. Often, the woman told herself she should be content—that one perfect child ought to be enough. But longing carved a hollow space within her, a hollow her husband shared. And when no natural answer arrived, they turned to the only path left to them: a solution that was not natural at all.

At last, the man spoke, his voice weighted with caution. “This isn’t about right or wrong,” he said, reminding himself as much as her. “Those words belong elsewhere. Here, there is only what we want. Our choice.”

The woman lowered her eyes to the photograph, the smiles caught in its fragile paper. “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel ready,” she admitted, and the confession trembled in the air between them.

He shifted, hands tightening as if around something invisible. “Were we ready the first time? We believed we were. This is no different—just another way of arriving at the same place.”

She pressed the photograph against her chest, as though to steady herself. “You’re right,” she whispered. “We’ve carried this dream too far to stop now.”

For a moment, they only looked at one another, the silence stretching until it seemed endless. Then, without speaking further, they moved as one, laying their hands upon the door. The hinges gave a soft groan as the threshold to their secret world opened.

The room was dim, the overhead light casting a muted yellow haze across the walls and floor. Heavy curtains sealed it from the outside world—no one could be allowed to glimpse what lay within. Discovery would mean ruin.

In the corner, a desk sagged under the weight of scattered wires, fragments of metal, and sheets of synthetic polymer that resembled skin too closely to be mistaken for anything else. On the narrow bed rested their son. Or the promise of him. He lay motionless, eyes shut, limbs folded in on themselves, the image of a child lost in sleep.

For four years, they had labored toward this moment, shaping and reshaping him until the codes that would serve as his mind were refined enough to learn, to grow, to gather emotion as naturally as breath. Longer still had been spent on his body, the careful mimicry of flesh and sinew, the illusion of bone and muscle layered beneath the surface. They had given him hair dark as river stone, eyes that would open brown and bright. He possessed every detail of a human child, down to the architecture of his muscles, built not merely to appear real but to grow with time.

He was their masterpiece, the sum of sleepless nights and unrelenting devotion. Yet above all else, he was meant to be something far simpler: their son.

They lingered in silence, watching the small form on the bed. The woman’s heart thrummed with anticipation, sharp and uneven, a rhythm tangled with fear. What if their years of labor ended in failure? What if the child never woke? They had poured every fragment of devotion, every hidden hope into him—but what if love itself was insufficient?

The man moved closer, his voice scarcely more than breath. “Are you ready?”

She drew a long inhale, steadying herself. The word she gave in return was simple, but it trembled with weight. “Ready.”

He bent over the child, fingers finding the faint seam at the back of the neck. A panel, nearly invisible, opened beneath his touch. He pressed the hidden switch, then closed it again, retreating to her side. Their hands locked together, two bodies braced against the unknown.

For a moment, there was only stillness. The woman felt her chest collapse around a sinking heart. Then—motion. Subtle at first, a twitch, a breath that was not breath. The child stirred, eyelids fluttering open as if reluctant to abandon sleep. He straightened by degrees, limbs unfolding with fragile precision. His eyes widened, luminous and unblinking, sweeping across the room as though cataloguing it piece by piece. At last, his gaze caught on them.

He stared, unblinking. His eyes lingered on their faces, measuring the tremor in their breath and their clasped hands. His chest rose and fell in flawless rhythm, a breathing meant to deceive but too even, too exact to be human.

None of it mattered. To them, he was their son.

“Hello, Mother. Hello, Father,” the child said.

The voice that filled the room was soft, childlike, but unnervingly exact. Each syllable fell into place with mechanical precision, polished and empty. It could have been spoken to anyone, yet to them it was everything.

The woman felt her chest ache with relief. He spoke. He saw them. And if he could speak, he could learn more. He had been built to grow, to feel, to love. In time, she told herself, these hollow words would be filled.

“My son…” she whispered, her voice trembling as tears welled in her eyes. She stepped forward, hands unsteady, and lowered herself to her knees before the bed.

The child regarded her without expression, watching the wet shimmer of her eyes. His face, still round with the softness of youth, was unreadable—curiosity without comprehension, calculation beneath the guise of innocence.

The man joined her, kneeling at the foot of the bed. His features carried a welter of emotions—pride, love, grief, awe—each layered over the other, none able to eclipse the rest. This was the moment they had labored toward for years, the culmination of hidden work and unrelenting devotion. Here he was, awake, speaking. He knew them, or at least he knew their names. The rest would come. It had to.

The woman reached for his hands and clasped them in her own. They yielded without resistance, limp and foreign, as though touch itself were a puzzle yet unsolved. He observed her tears closely, but his own face remained untouched by feeling.

He was perfect. Because he was their child, he was perfect.

The man leaned closer, his voice gentle, careful. “Do you understand? Do you know who we are? Who you are?”

The child tilted his head, blinking slowly as though running a calculation. For an instant, he appeared wholly human—features soft, brow furrowing in concentration.

“I am your son,” he said at last. The words were delivered without cadence, flat and precise. “You made me to be your son.”

His gaze did not waver. He studied them as one might study specimens, registering each intake of breath, each subtle shift in posture, each flicker of hope or fear across their faces. His small hands remained loose in the woman’s grasp, unresponsive, as if touch was only another variable to record.

The words struck her with the chill of recognition—accurate, undeniable, yet barren. Not the declaration of a child claiming his parents, but a line of code reporting its function. For a moment, she felt the edge of doubt, a whisper that perhaps they had been wrong.

But then she reminded herself: how could he know more? He had been given the outlines only—faces, names, the existence of a sister, fragments of the world into which he was born. The rest was meant to come in time. He would learn them. He would learn love, just like every other child.

She let his hands slip from her grasp and lifted one trembling palm to his cheek. Almost at once, his eyes closed, his head tilting faintly into her touch. The response was immediate, automatic, too seamless to be chance. She knew it might be nothing more than code—an algorithm recognizing contact and rewarding it with imitation. Still, her heart leapt as if it were proof of something deeper. She wanted it to be proof.

“Yes,” she whispered, forcing certainty into her voice. “You’re our son. We made you, and we love you.”

His eyes opened again, sharp and unblinking, and then his mouth stretched into a smile. It was clumsy, ill-shaped—too many teeth, eyes widened unnaturally. A gesture assembled from stored examples.

Yet she embraced him, clutching at the semblance of warmth, and the man pressed in beside her, holding them both tightly as though love could be forced into being. The child’s body stiffened, hesitant, then responded in kind—arms rising in a rigid, delayed imitation of a hug.

Neither parent flinched at the awkwardness. They chose instead to feel only what they longed for, to believe the stiffness was shyness, the delay in his response the hesitation of a child still new to the world.

“We’ll give you a good life,” the man murmured into the fragile silence. “One full of love.” His words trembled on the edge of promise and prayer, as if saying them could make them true.

As they held him, the child’s mind hummed—circuits aligning, processes awakening in careful order. Data arranged itself into neat categories: Father. Mother. Son. Labels assigned, definitions stored. Each remained as empty and uncolored outlines. He knew only that these words applied to him, not why they carried weight.

Their arms closed around him, and his systems noted the details with precision: surface temperature, steady pressure, the pattern of respiration against his body. Warmth. Contact. Rhythm. All of it measured, all of it recorded.

When the woman’s hand brushed his cheek again, his eyes closed without command. The movement lodged in his awareness with unusual clarity. No directive explained it. Still, it remained, marked but unresolved.

The word love surfaced, linked to the trembling cadence of her voice, to the shine of moisture in her eyes, to the phrase spoken against his skin: We love you. The file remained blank, the definition incomplete. Yet the emptiness pressed against him, as though the absence itself demanded to be filled.

He looked to the man, registering each detail: the downward drag of his brow, the parted lips, the uneven breath. Nothing in the data clarified the word. The woman’s arms tightened, pulling him close. Pressure increased. Variables shifted.

He did not move. He only absorbed the inputs, silent and compliant. When they stepped back, he stared again. Waiting.

The warmth of their arms remained.