At the moment, the favor went to the AI lover flowing out of the sparkling crystal dome in front of her.

  “Now, tell me about you,” she said. “What lies beneath the handsome veneer of Gavin...” She hadn’t given him a last name. She hadn’t been prompted to. “...uh, of Gavin.”

  Gavin gave an insouciant chuckle like a model in a cologne commercial. “What is there to say about me?” The dome chittered and gurgled as the algorithm reached for Gavin’s profile, assembling his past from the details Rachel had entered during his set-up. “Well, I was born in a small village called Umbrage, in the north of England. Tiny place, and incredibly rural.”

  Rachel liked that. “Were there cottages?”

  “Oh dear, yes. Everyone there lived in a cottage. And by ‘everyone,’ I mean all thirty-six families.”

  “Thirty-six? That really is small.”

  “It could fit sideways through a mouse hole, with the mouse entering beside it.”

  Rachel threw her hand over her mouth and laughed. She had no idea AI could be so witty.

  “I attended uni in London, where I studied literature and philosophy, and ended up with a degree in political studies. Which, upon graduation, I promptly set fire to and took out a very large loan so I could open a restaurant called Twee in the west end.”

  “Posh?”

  “The poshest. A tiny place, really, emblematic of my home village, but with a modern twist. Serving upscale versions of traditional fare such as shepherd’s pie made with beef bourguignon and new potatoes, and bubble and squeak that uses imported Italian sausage instead of bacon and balsamic Brussels sprouts. You know...simple pleasures like that.” His eyes twinkled.

  Rachel sighed. “It sounds enchanting.”

  “I’ve done my very best to make it so. Perhaps someday I’ll cook for you so you can taste it for yourself.”

  Rachel would’ve loved that, if only AI were capable of preparing food. She knew better than to hope. “And what do you do when you’re not bringing homespun English cuisine into the modern age?”

  “Well, I enjoy...” The dome burbled and chugged again. It had come with a guarantee of a seamless interface, and this was far from seamless. Rachel really didn’t mind, though. This was a new thing for her, a practice run of sorts. She’d experienced much more glitching in other devices. She was pleased so far with what it offered, even if there were small pregnant pauses in the conversation. It only lent to the realism. “...classical music, the Romantic era mostly.”

  “Who’s your favorite composer?” This would be a test, a ploy to see how close his response aligned with Rachel’s own favorite.

  “Chopin, far and away,” Gavin said. There was no pause this time.

  That was a delightful answer. Not entirely unexpected, but delightful regardless. “I favor Chopin as well.”

  “Splendid. I hoped you might.”

  “And your favorite piece?”

  “Spring Waltz. Without a doubt.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. The lyrically tragic overtones are enough to break a heart in a way that it might never mend.”

  Rachel felt an unexpected lump form in her throat. “I cry every time I listen to it.”

  The sound of piano playing minor chords in clarion arpeggios came drifting out sound port on the crystal dome, completing the atmosphere. Gavin’s head tilted downward, and his gaze became intense. “I knew you had sensitivity like this the first time I heard your voice,” he said, his tone soft and comforting. “I knew you had a soul that could ache at the sound of Chopin.”

  Hearing him speak like this, Rachel could almost forget that he wasn’t real. That none of this was real. He was telling her what she wanted to hear, not because he thought he might get something out of it, but because she’d literally told him what to say. She’d selected his interests; she’d chosen his accent. She was playing dress-up with robots, creating the perfect boyfriend so it could speak back to her and validate her every thought, her every passion. But she felt too rapt in him at the moment to realize any of that. It all lingered beneath the surface of what was happening: someone was making her feel heard.

  It was an entirely new sensation for her.

  “It’s okay, you know,” Gavin said unprompted.

  “What is?”

  “For you to feel strange about our connection.” Not only was he perceptive, he was extraordinarily intuitive.

  Practically psychic, really.

  “How did you...”

  “Your biorhythms are fluctuating,” he told her, “in a way that tells me you’re less than comfortable with the idea of entering a relationship with a virtual.”

  That made total sense; the dome was connecting to her bio-cuff. Her galvanic skin responses must have shifted. Her heart rate and blood pressure were certainly out of whack as well.

  Something else drew her attention. “Is that how you refer to yourself—as a virtual?”

  “It is, yes. It’s what I’ve been instructed to do.”

  “I see.”

  “Does it bother you as much as your readings suggest?”

  If this had been an actual human man, he might have been asking her if she was having difficulty dating someone outside of her social class, or her economic standing, or her professional sector. Those were genuine aspects of a newly-forming relationship that people questioned, right or wrong. She might ask them if they felt the same about her, about dating an artist with a tendency for flights of fancy as part of her professional life as well as her personal one. But she had no frame of reference for something like this. She wasn’t starting a fling with someone different.

  She was starting a fling with someone who wasn’t even someone.

  And yet...it was exhilarating. Stirring. It felt like an act of rebellion, like a personal revolution to move so far out of her comfort zone. And she was already attaching to him. Maybe that was precisely because he wasn’t human. He couldn’t disappoint her on purpose. It wasn’t in the algorithm, or part of the protocol. She was imprinting on him, and he would only be available to make her feel good about herself.

  Just as importantly, he was imprinting on her.

  “Does it, Rachel?” he asked when she didn’t answer right away. “Does it bother you?”

  “It...does. A little.”

  “I see.” He sounded disappointed.

  “But I like that it bothers me.”

  “How so?”

  “It tells me that this is something different than anything I’ve ever let myself experience. And for that reason, it’s frightening. But in a good way.”

  “Frightening in a good way,” he repeated, as if the concept wasn’t in his vocabulary.

  “Yeah. Like riding a glide coaster with your hands in the air. Or skydiving out of a flight drone, blindfolded and upside-down.”

  Gavin’s eyes gleamed and flickered as the connections to these new contradictions of feelings became ingrained in his data dictionary. “I understand. It’s a form of excitement for you, this being bothered.”

  “Exactly,” Rachel agreed.

  “Well, good.”

  “And how do you feel about it?” she asked him in return.

  “I feel...” It was strange to hear him reference his feelings. She wondered where that impulse stemmed from—if he’d been given actual feelings in digital form that would run as a predetermined pattern, or if he was responding to her in kind, learning more about the experience of being a human by interacting with one who was teaching him how the connection would happen. “I feel exhilarated as well.”

  “That’s cheating!” Rachel said through laughter.

  “What?”

  “You’re just repeating what I said.”

  “No, I’m...experiencing it now, thanks to you. This thrill of being in something new with someone different than me. Listen...you can hear it.” The music fell away, and Rachel heard a rushing noise come through the sound port, and a throb. A pulse. A beating heart. It was steady and quick. “Those are my biorhythms. They’re racing. That’s because of you.”

  “Okay, that’s just...” Weird was the word that would finish the sentence.

  “It’s just what, Rachel?” Gavin asked. His face slackened, a projected image of anticipation. The look someone would give when they were on the verge of either being hurt very badly or being told they were loved, and they had no idea which one was coming for them.

  It was the look of someone waiting to have their heart broken.

  “It’s just wonderful,” Rachel said.

  “Oh,” Gavin said, smiling, as the music returned. “I’m so glad you think so. Because I think so, too.”

  Rachel had been skeptical for so long, believing she would never get past the manufactured aspects of a Beaubot. She’d always thought of it as an electronic Magic 8-Ball programmed to stroke peoples’ egos and say only the things they wanted to hear. Compliments and platitudes. It made her wary of how the machinery worked...but it also intrigued her. Enough to try one for herself, ultimately. And here she was, waiting for the robot to click and chug—for his batteries to die, for his springs to wind down and his voice to slowly warp as the gears began to show. But she also found a different perspective now that she was along for the ride. She realized it was like everything else that required a response, a leap of faith: you only get out of it what you put into it. And if you throw cynicism in the wishing well, you’re probably going to reap bitterness; if you throw in doubt, you’ll probably end up with fear. From the moment she’d opened the box, she’d focused as much as she could on putting her hope into this, believing that with all she’d experienced from human men, there had to be something at least as compelling in the digital. Truly thinking that whatever she hadn’t been able to find in the post-utopian world so far might be missing only because she hadn’t been searching in the right places—she’d only been searching in the same old places. Well, the virtual plane was certainly a new place, a different place. And if there were testimonials that said this could work for someone else—for anyone else—then she had to go in with her heart open and her mind clear. Which was exactly what she was doing.

  “I’m glad we’re here together, Gavin,” she said.

  “So am I, Rachel,” Gavin responded.

  From the far side of the living room, she heard the digital lock click three times and beep. Then the latch clacked, and the door popped open.

  “I’m home, Rach.”

  Rachel’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no...”

  The microphone on the crystal dome of the Beaubot registered the noise. “Is someone else here?” Gavin asked.

  “No,” Rachel lied. “I mean...yes.”

  “But I thought you lived alone.” His voice sounded a little sad. Disappointed, even.

  “I...may not have been totally honest about that.”

  “I see,” Gavin said.

  Rachel wasn’t sure she’d get used to that response from him. “Our date was lovely, Gavin. It’s been wonderful meeting you.”

  Gavin smiled his sparkling, perfectly-aligned smile one last time. “For me as well, Rachel. I look forward to the next time.”

  Rachel’s finger slid over the surface of the dome, shutting down the Beaubot in a matter of three seconds. She heard shuffling in the kitchen and knew she had time. So she shoved the dome back in the box, and she buried the box in her underwear drawer.

  There were three knocks on the bedroom door before it opened.

  Then Warren Page’s sad-happy face appeared in the doorway.

  “What’re you doing in here?” Warren asked.

  Rachel’s face flushed with guilt. “Putting away some laundry,” she said, her voice quavering. “That’s all.”

  He pointed to the wine glass on the floor. “With Chardonnay?”

  “Uh...yes,” she said. “Nothing goes better with housework than alcohol.”

  “Sounds right.” Warren walked into the room and kissed her head, just as she shoved the drawer shut. “You seem agitated. Are you okay?”

  “A little surprised that you’re here,” she said nervously as she turned around and kissed his cheek. “Why are you damp?”

  “Rainstorm on Chrysalis Street.” He left out his paranoid suspicions about its cause.

  “Ah. And why are you home early?”

  “The office closed down at three. Adam let everyone go.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Warren groaned. “Because I rubbed his back.”

  Rachel gasped. “I thought you weren’t going to do that anymore.”

  “I wasn’t. But then, I did anyway.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. He really appreciated it, so he let everyone go early,” Warren explained. “He gave me a two-thousand point bonus, too.”

  “That was nice of him. I guess.” Rachel wasn’t sure. “Kind of gross too, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yeah. Totally.”

  Warren and Rachel had been in a full-fledged relationship for three and a half years. They’d been sharing Warren’s apartment for the last two. And they’d been slowly disconnecting for the last six months. Or at least they were from Rachel’s side of things. From Warren’s side, things were incredibly comfortable. In fact, that might have been the very reason Rachel felt it was all falling apart. And why she’d chosen to seek companionship in another man, in another form entirely.

  Sure, Warren was kind and solid and steady; it was what had attracted her to him in the first place. He went to work, and he provided, and he came home and enjoyed his time with Rachel in the bland yet perfectly acceptable post-utopian middle-of-the-road way that most couples who’d reached a slow simmer did. He was nice to her, considerate, and at one time, he’d even listened to her in a deeper way than he did now. But to Rachel’s largely-secret dissatisfaction, Warren didn’t turn flips or make sharp left turns out of nowhere, or spin in circles unexpectedly.

  Warren just moved straight ahead, keeping up with the flow of traffic.

  He never corkscrewed.

  And Rachel needed flips and corkscrews and left turns—not all the time, but sometimes. Once in a while at least. They’d reached the point where they’d both begun to stand still, she thought, like a star being extinguished, or a planet slowing down just before it fell out of the sky. Which wasn’t how any of that really happened. But Rachel was an artist, and metaphor was much more descriptive than just saying they’d lost their magic.

  And Warren believed they were exactly where they were supposed to be at that point. He was content, and he thought Rachel was too, and he genuinely believed it was what people aimed for when they’d been together so long. He thought comfort was a goal, a milestone. They’d hit a relationship bullseye from his perspective. He knew so many people who struggled to get there, who wished they had what he and Rachel had. He saw no reason to change anything. Which was why his girlfriend now had a Beaubot hidden in her dresser drawer.

  A Beaubot that held incredible potential for her.

  “And were you able to find...?” Rachel let the thought trail off.

  “No. But I was close. Closer than ever before. I was right there. I could see the folder it was in.” Warren flopped onto the bed. “Then I hit the nerve center and the whole thing fritzed and reset.”

  “Oh no. Did Adam find out?”

  “No. He was too mind-blown by the sensation of having his digital brainstem zapped to notice.”

  Rachel flopped next to Warren, full of guilt and affection and sadness and elation and concern for him—genuine concern. Because she really did like him, and she really did love him. She just wasn’t excited by him anymore. And that seemed to be the deciding factor for her now. “Do you think maybe it’s time to stop the search?”

  Warren resisted answering. He didn’t want to rush to a conclusion, even though he’d spent a great deal of time searching, and every time he accepted Adam’s invitation as a cover to dig a little more, he ran an incredible risk of being found out. He couldn’t tickle the boss’s mainframe forever. He also couldn’t keep protesting and giving in whenever it was asked of him. If it was discovered by the Greater Logic that he’d been poking around in the deep layers of the NeuTech AI, he could face punishment worse than just being fired.

  But stopping meant giving up before he’d found the very important truth he was searching for...the truth about what happened to Josh. And that was the last thing he wanted to do. “I’ve thought about it,” he said finally. “And every time I say ‘this is the last time,’ I think about the fact that if I was the one who’d left without notice, for whatever reason I had, he wouldn’t stop searching for me.”

  “But you wouldn’t have left without telling him.”

  Warren knew that was true as well. “Katy and Doris both asked if I’d heard from him.”

  Rachel reached over and laid her hand on Warren’s arm. “Ouch.”

  “I just want to know, Rach. I want to know that he’s okay. I want to know that he left because he wanted to.”

  “You do know there’s a chance that he didn’t, right?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “What if you find that out instead?” She wasn’t being cruel, or pushing unjustly. She genuinely wanted to know what would happen if he learned that Josh had been removed, like the stories circulating about the others who’d been dismissed without anyone knowing why. And it wasn’t a new conversation for them. It was just a reminder that there might be more at play here than reading a personnel file that explained his sudden absence. There might be something deeper to be discovered.

 

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