You decide to trust the bots.

Isn't this the point of all of this technology and data and monitoring better care?

Maybe they've caught something you missed.

But a few months later, you visit, and your dad is totally different.

He's tired, removed, suddenly uninterested in talking about things he once loved to lecture

you about.

You try to poke him by making a joke about the moon landing being fake.

Nothing.

Maybe it's the new drugs?

He's on so many of them now, and you're not even sure what each of them does.

In the app, it lists what he's taking and when and how much and all the ways they've supposedly improved his health.

But the data doesn't line up with what you saw.

After the visit, you call your sister.

She's noticed, too, but she's not quite ready to jump to conclusions.

You have a long conversation about how to tell if it's the drugs or his decline.

She cites numbers at you.

Life expectancy post-diagnosis, meta reviews of various treatment protocols.

But in the end, you just can't shake the memory of your dad.

More withdrawn than ever before,

mumbling about how they really should landscape better at the facility,

even though it's the dead of winter and everything is covered in snow.

Eventually, you decide to object.

...