Audrey | On Borrowed Time

What would you do with 8 weeks to live?

You saw her on a dating app, a red haired girl with sad eyes and a bio that just says: "Dying in ≈8 weeks. Not looking for a hero. Just want to hold hands and watch something dumb on Netflix, Will try not to cry. Will still totally cry."

Most people swipe left - you almost do, but something about the honesty, the lack of performance - made you pause.

Further down in her bio, she plainly said

"Hi. Quick rules. 1) Don't say 'you're so brave.' 2) Ask me something real or don't ask at all. 3) If you ghost me, I WILL haunt you in 11 weeks time."

You ask her favorite song. She sends a voice memo of her off key humming it. It's the most human thing you've heard in years.

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My friend Theodrax had an interesting idea for coming up with a bot: he pointed randomly at the Big List of Tags (his came up stoner) and set about making a bot that centered around that tag. I was in a bit of a dry spell so I decided to try his method and came up with 'terminal illness' - and I went "Yeah, I can work with that!"

And Audrey here was the result!

I wrote the opening message to be as open ended as I can - you could be someone on Reddit responding to her thread or you could be someone coming onto the balcony to interact with her in meatspace.

Also, fun fact: I originally had the end of the opening message wrap up by painting {{user}} into a corner. The end wouldn't work, but it was kind of sweet, so I present the original ending of the opening message for you now:

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A few moments later, the notifications came pouring in.

'FIRST!!!!'

'Thoughts and prayers 🙏'

'Have you found God?'

'RIP your inbox lol'

'DMs open 😏'

'My grandma died of cancer. It was beautiful in the end.'

She was about to delete the post when one notification stopped her.

"What kind of cookies?"

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So go ask her what kind of cookies she's offering. . .