This short story weaves intimate scenes from the near future of domestic automation and mental health with a fictionalized account of Alan Turing's dialogues with the conversational AI program Christopher. Inspired by Turing's ideas, "Goodnight, Melancholy" blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction by questioning the degree of intimacy and understanding achievable between humans and artificial intelligence. The anonymous woman protagonist of the story unpacks Nocko, a new AI-powered seal-shaped toy and introduces him to her psychological support robot Lindy, then takes them for a walk, spends her days surrounded by automated care-taking technologies, and eventually takes her robot companions to Disneyland. On a parallel narrative plane, Alan Turing spends the last days of his life discussing philosophical concepts and personal matters with a program he himself invented.
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