It had nothing to do with text generation.

It had to do with curing my fucking insomnia. For three consecutive years I slept no more than twenty minutes in a single night. That was until I discovered the voice of Derek Smothers.

Derek Smothers is my son’s friend’s dad. Derek Smothers was talking to me about work at our sons’ soccer game last Saturday. His voice was chocolate-syrup-sundae-warm. Or like Mom when she gently ran her fingernails through my hair because I was too scared to stay at the sleepover and decided to go home early.

What was Derek Smothers even saying to me? Rather than comprehending a single word, I experienced it. His words warmed my skin, and my muscles relaxed.

I fell asleep within two minutes and ended up missing the entire game.

When I awoke, I suddenly wanted to be alive for the first time in three years. I had enough energy to play with my son. Normally when he asked, I had to fake an illness out of exhaustion. My wife said she “couldn’t remember the last time” I “actually answered her” when she asked me a question rather than “just staring at the wall with bloodshot eyes.” But we played tetherball and my wife and I spoke.

But the happiness was short-lived.

That night, and for several nights after, I lay awake, trying to recreate Derek Smothers’ voice in my mind. I even woke my wife and made her try to do an impression of Derek Smothers while I closed my eyes, but it didn’t work. Her voice wasn’t deep enough, and she kept asking me why I wanted her to do it.

At the next soccer game, I made sure to have the Voice Memo app on my phone open and recording. Derek Smothers spoke about upcoming plans for a family trip or some shit. I’m not sure. All I know is I passed out almost instantly. His deep, grizzly, bristly-against-my-cheeks voice that I felt when dad used to kiss me goodnight.

That night, I checked the time every two minutes until it was finally my wife’s bedtime. As soon as I heard her first snore, I put on my Beats and listened to the recording. 

Motherfucking Sue Bailey, Bradford Bailey’s mom, was blabbing about her haircutting business. Completely drowned out Derek Smothers. 

I took the phone out to the living room and opened my laptop. I uploaded Derek Smothers’ voice to AI.

I typed: Hey AI, can you please enhance Derek Smothers’ voice in this audio clip? And while you’re at it, can you drown out Sue Bailey’s voice (Or whatever the technical term is)? Thanks, AI. 

AI said: Sure, I can do that for you. And AI did it. 

Finally, I downloaded the AI clip of Derek Smothers’ voice. I tested Derek Smothers’ voice in my ears with my Beats. It was deep. It was calm. My muscles relaxed. I wanted to get under the covers, so I did. 

It was a tad too warm under the covers. The problem was, I wanted something holding me snug while I listened to Derek Smothers’ voice in my ears, and it would be like when I was young. But the covers were thick, and my wife was too close. It was making me sweat. I gently nudged my wife away. She moved, and I turned over on my side and listened to Derek Smothers talk about planning a trip to Gatlinburg in his gentle, yet slightly gravelly, voice. 

I was out within minutes. 

The next day Derek Smothers’ AI-augmented voice was gone.

The morning it went missing, while I was still asleep, my wife had let my son use my phone to play a game while he was waiting for his breakfast. Little bastard must have deleted it or something. 

That night as I lay awake listening to my wife snore, something spoke to me. Maybe it was God, maybe it was a demon. Maybe it was something else. It told me if I didn’t get sleep that night, I’d die within days. 

I stared at *DEREK SMOTHERS* in my contacts list for several moments. Fuck it, I decided. I called him. 

“Hey, uh, Derek Smothers, it’s Rich. You weren’t sleeping, were ya? Oh, good, good.” I chuckled. “Yeah, sorry to bother you, but it’s just…my wife keeps nagging me about Gatlinburg…It’s Gatlinburg this, Gatlinburg that. I told her it could easily wait ’til tomorrow. She says no.”

Derek Smothers talked me to sleep while discussing black bears and pancake restaurants in log cabins. 

I knew this wasn’t sustainable. I couldn’t just call Derek Smothers every single night. 

Maybe Derek Smothers had called me at some point and left a voicemail, though I doubted it. I religiously cleared out my voicemail every single time someone left a message. 

I checked anyway. There were only two voicemails. One from Mom, one from Dad. Both from three years prior.

I wrapped the comforter around myself as tightly as I could, turned the volume on my Beats to maximum, closed my eyes, and listened to Mom and Dad wish me a happy birthday on repeat until I drifted off. 

At the next soccer game, Derek spoke the whole time. Suddenly, his voice made my ears itch.

I don’t need Derek Smothers or AI at all anymore.

My sleep has been perfect. My kids aren’t allowed to touch my phone now.

---

Richard Pounder is a writer living in Philadelphia. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in places like Bending Genres, Maudlin House, BULL, Expat Press, Farewell Transmission, and others. X: @RichPounder150