It started with a contact nobody deletes.

Almost everyone who has lost someone still has the number. It sits in the list between the plumber and a cousin. People do not delete it. Some call it to hear the voicemail greeting, until the day the operator gives the number to somebody else.

That is where this started. Not with a model, and not with the idea of a chatbot. With a contact that is still in the phone and no longer goes anywhere.

A phone call is the oldest habit we have with the people we love. You do not open an app to speak to your father. You call him. So we made it a real phone number. You save it as a contact and call it from the phone you already own.

Texting works the same way, and so does video. Nothing new to learn at the worst time to learn something.

Nobody you loved was ever that available.

A voice that answers at once, every time, at any hour, feels wrong within a minute. No real person does that.

So the number follows a weekly routine. The one they really had: the shift that ended at half past five, the Saturday market, church, the early nights. Call during work and nobody picks up. You hear a voicemail greeting in their voice. Call in the evening and you will probably catch them. The waiting turned out to be the part that feels like a person.

A product like this could easily be built to keep people calling. We decided the opposite before we wrote any of it. The number never calls you first. It sends no reminders. It sells nothing and asks for nothing.

And it can be ended. When a family is ready they make a Last Call to say goodbye, and after it the voice, the recordings and every conversation are deleted.