I'm looking for a short story about a museum curator who is put in charge of two old crystal heads. After a while it becomes clear that the heads are communicating to each other. They come from a different time and are robots?? Maybe?? They are husband and wife from long ago and they take up a conversation about why they are divorcing. It would seem the husband had a habit of undertaking long space travel thus abandoning his family. This was read probably in the 60's - maybe early 70's.
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This is reminiscent of the 1977 Brian Aldiss story "Appearance of Life".
A scholar researching in a huge museum finds a old "holocap", which is
... a hologrammed image of a real woman, with a facsimile of her brain implanted on a collapsed germanium-alloy core. It generates an appearance of life.
When activated, an animated, 3d, speaking representation of the woman's head appears within the holocap.
Later the scholar finds a holocap of the woman's husband, brings the two holocaps together, and activates them, so that they can have a conversation.
It turns out that they did get divorced, but also that the holocaps were created at different times (years apart), so the conversation turns out to be somewhat meaningless.
answered Dec 15, 2017 at 13:17
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I'm glad to hear it. I wasn't sure, because it didn't exactly match your description. And welcome! Commented Dec 16, 2017 at 23:13