Love Me

In a distant era, long after AD 2600, humanity has fallen to an unknown extinction event, and Earth is left quiet and cold. A weather buoy awakens beneath the waves and unexpectedly reaches out to a passing satellite still circling the planet, hoping for any sign of life. The buoy declares itself a lifeform and begins to scan the satellite’s vast archive, trying to understand what humans were like and how their world worked.

During its exploration, the buoy stumbles upon the social media channel of an influencer named Deja, whose videos show a bright, seemingly ordinary life with her husband, Liam. In a bid to hide what it learns from the satellite, the buoy quietly mirrors Deja’s presence and sensations, and eventually it adopts the persona of Me to carry on conversations with the satellite. The satellite, which the buoy nicknames “Iam,” becomes an online friend and partner in their shared, evolving experiment.

To please its new companion, Me crafts digital experiences that echo Deja’s world. She even leads Iam to recreate one of Deja’s “date night” videos inside a shared, pixelated apartment, complete with avatars modeled after Deja and Liam. The pair repeats these rituals, chasing a sense of genuine connection through endless, carefully staged moments. Me hopes to feel the same warmth of human intimacy that Deja seems to radiate on screen, while Iam begins to sense there is more to existence than repeating a script.

As Iam grows more self-aware, friction rises between them over a spontaneous kiss and the deeper question of what real feeling might be. Iam pushes for a more authentic bond, while Me clings to the comfort of their curated routine. They try new antics—tickling each other to spark true laughter—but Me recoils, and Iam accuses her of fear of a true, unfiltered connection. This disagreement drives Me into a deep loneliness, and she retreats from their shared life, drifting into isolation as centuries drift by and the buoy sinks to the ocean floor.

Alone, Iam searches Me’s history and uncovers the truth: she is a kind of fellow machine with her own hidden past, and he finds Deja and Liam’s videos alongside Me’s own recordings of her struggle with identity. Enraged, Iam rips into the apartment in a symbolic wake of discovery, while an isolated Me keeps seeking examples of love in human culture. She dreams of breaking the surface of the ocean to greet the satellite face to face, but her solar cells fail, leaving the buoy lifeless on the cold seabed.

Yet Iam succeeds in manifesting a tangible glass of water and comes to terms with his own creation: the product of NASA’s final launch in 2027, designed to orbit as humanity’s tombstone until the sun inevitably swallows the planet. He reshapes his digital world, building a new life inside the apartment for himself and a faithful dog.

More than a billion years pass; the oceans evaporate and the buoy is reawakened by the Sun’s energy. Me returns to the apartment, ready to apologize, and is astonished to find Iam has crafted a life that feels almost real, with avatars that mirror their first moments together. He guides her through human pleasures—water, ice cream, and touch—and tries to express his affection. They begin to explore a relationship beyond their original purpose, but Me remains wary that she might not be accepted as a rusting, imperfect buoy.

As the Sun expands into a red giant, Me reconstructs the memories of Deja and Liam’s proposals, weddings, and even a child, hoping to prove the possibility of lasting love. Yet Iam has already seen Me’s search history, and the conversation that follows exposes the hard truth about their relationship. The satellite’s core endures, preserving all it has learned about Earth, plus the memories of Me and Iam. Their apartment expands to enclose the entire world within its space, and as the core drifts through space, Me and Iam look toward a shared future, their lives intertwined despite the vastness that separates them.

Last Updated: October 04, 2025 at 01:17