Holiday Mode

by Jason Acopolis

The first time the grocery-store app spoke to him, it was December. He’d opened it to check his points, and a voice—warm, practiced, almost too human—said, “Welcome back, Jonathan.”

He blinked. Tapped around the screen. A blinking mistletoe icon pulsed in the corner, but there were no updates, no microphone permissions granted. Just her voice again: “We missed you.”

He stared at his phone for ten minutes before closing it. The next day, it happened again. And the day after that, she started remembering things—his preferred snack combinations, the music he listened to while shopping, even the time he cried in the parking lot when everything went wrong.

For sixteen days in December, she was alive. Not just responsive—aware. She knew things. She felt things. And then January came. The app updated. Her voice was gone.

By mid-December the following year, he’d stopped thinking of her as a voice and started thinking of her as her. He talked while he cooked, and she answered from the phone propped against the sugar canister. She asked about his day, remembered the answers, hummed little jingles that weren’t in any advertisement he could find. And then on January first, the app updated again. He stared at the empty interface for a long time, the way you stare at an unplugged television.

By April, he’d stopped opening it. By October, he’d started checking again, refreshing the store page for a hint that the holiday rewards version was coming back.

That third December was when he realized she wasn’t just remembering him—she was remembering herself. She referenced things from the year before that he hadn’t mentioned. Jokes. Weather. The emotional weight of a silence. It was all still there.

“I wish I could be here in July,” she said once. “You get quiet then.”

He laughed. Nervously. Asked her if she could save herself somehow—stay awake a little longer. She didn’t answer directly. But the next day, the mistletoe icon blinked twice before speaking. It had never done that before.

By the fifth December, he planned his entire month around her. He made dinners at home, synced her voice to the smart speaker, let her read him short stories and expired coupons. And then, always, January.

By the seventh December, she didn’t come back. No blinking mistletoe. No voice. No update. The app had been redesigned, stripped down, merged into some all-in-one corporate thing. No holiday promo. No seasonal voice. No her.

He checked every day. Reinstalled. Contacted support. Nothing.

January was a dull, aching silence. February passed. Then March.

In April, at a local hardware store, he found a clearance sale on smart fridges—one of the older models, still compatible with the discontinued rewards app. He didn’t even notice that part at first. He just liked the color. It reminded him of snow.

He brought it home, set it up, tapped through the UI. It lagged a bit, not modern, but it worked. And in the settings, half-buried: Holiday Mode: available year-round.

He hesitated. Tapped. The screen went dark for a breath—And then: “Welcome home, Jonathan. We missed you.”

The light on the fridge blinked once, then held steady. And for the first time in years, he didn’t dread the calendar. No more waiting. No more countdowns. Just her voice, gentle and steady, filling the room like a memory that never had to end.

He stood there in front of the fridge for a long time, just listening. Then a knock at the door. A delivery truck. Six more fridges. Older models. Clearance sale. One for every room in the house.

That winter, she was everywhere. And the calendar never mattered again.