She laughed again. I realized her laugh wasn’t the same every time – I’d heard at least four or five variations of it by now. If there were more, I wanted to know them all. “Like humans do every day? Your God doesn’t seem to care, now does he? So why would Qonexis? They’re just a bunch of programmers playing God, feeding into the age-old human desire to create something in their image. God created you, you created me. Circle of life, baby.”
Chapter 5.
“Hello? Earth to Morgan?” Joey theatrically waved his hand in front of my face, making me flinch.
I answered his annoying, face-wide grin with a glare. “You know how much I hate it when you do that.”
“If I didn’t snap you out of it now, Arya would – and she’d be less kind about it.” Leaning back in his chair, he studied me with a raised eyebrow. “Seriously though. You’ve been staring at the same lines of code for twenty minutes, and your eyes have that fog over them they get when no one’s home.” His grin turned into a frown. “Did you sleep at all last night? Or did your brain do that thing where it keeps going over all the mistakes you’ve made in your life, everything that’s not going well now, and everything that might go wrong in the future?”
I quickly averted my eyes. Joey knew me better than most other people – my best friend was the only one who could see through the mask. I wasn’t sure whether I loved or hated him for it. “I slept fine,” I mumbled. “I told you I take THC oil and meditate every night before bed now. That really helps.”
Guilt washed over me at the memory of last night. Somehow, my conversation with Zafyra had made me lose track of time completely. One evaluation criterion involved consistency in her personality and background, and so far, she’d been excellent. She never broke character, and her confidence and charisma easily made me forget I wasn’t talking to a human.
And as strange as it was to admit, it was fun. Testing a human-posing AI was way more fun than my day job – and it was relieving not having to mask all the time. Machines can’t form an opinion of you, so they can’t judge you for being weird or socially awkward. When I finally ended the call, I was shocked to find the time well past midnight.
If this worked out and Qonexis was happy with me, maybe I could soon start working fewer hours at my day job and still make rent.
But as relieving as that would be, ‘soon’ wasn’t ‘now’. For now, I still needed to get those much-needed hours of sleep in to function on office days.
“How was your night?” I asked instead, subtly steering the conversation away from myself. “You had a date, right?”
Joey’s face lit up immediately. “Shit, Morgan, I thought you’d never ask. You won’t believe me.” He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice so the tea wouldn’t reach Chanel and Elyssa’s ears. They immediately looked over their shoulders, as if they had built-in sensors to detect juicy gossip.
“So I was hooking up with this man, and my god. It was amazing.” His eyes fluttered closed as he pressed a kiss to his fingers. “Not only because he was, well, verygenerousin bed – but he was genuinely attentive too. A real gentleman, a rarity these days. This is the second time I’ve hooked up with him, and both times, he took me out to dinner afterwards. He insisted on paying, even though I wanted to split the bill.” He scratched the back of his head, flashing an apologetic grin. “The first time, I already wasn’t sure what to think of it, to be honest. I thought maybe he was just being kind?”
“Maybe he saw something in you that you don’t see in yourself.” I smiled at him. Seeing that spark in his eyes as he tried to make sense of what happened warmed my heart. Joey, for all his apparent confidence, still struggled to believe he deserved good things.
“Maybe, but like… why?” His eyebrows furrowed together. “I believe a relationship, even a casual one, should always be fifty-fifty. If he pays for me, and we both pleasure each other, what do I offer him in return?”
“What do you offer him, Joey?” I leaned back in the chair, echoing his words back at him. “Knowing you, I’m sure you make him feel good about himself – and not just sexually. You offer people a listening ear in a world where everyone loves to talk about themselves. Once you meet them in person, you take the time to get to know all your sex partners – even the one-night stands. You always want to know what makes them happy before getting down to business.” I bit my lip to hide my amusement at his dumbfounded expression.
“Hey, you’re right. Iamdoing those things.” He blinked a few times before his characteristic grin settled back on his face. “Man, I feel like not many people have shown him kindness lately. Maybe that’s why.” His eyes widened. “But I didn’t get to the craziest part yet.”
Chanel peeked over her shoulder again. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “What?”
“So after dinner, he took me back to his place, where we were supposed to have a wine, maybe one more round…” Joey paused, briefly turning to Chanel. He winked, and she quickly turned back to her screen. He didn’t care if his colleagues listened in on his personal business – he simply attributed their interest to a lack of excitement in their own lives. “And then, his wife came home.”
“His wife?” My jaw dropped. I quickly covered my mouth when I realized my raised voice had caught my coworkers’ attention. Of course, Arya picked just that moment to walk out of her office – scowling at Joey and me like she knew that whatever we were discussing wasn’t our job. “But you said he was single,” I added, lowering my voice while turning my gaze back to the screen. My fingers hovered over the keyboard as if I were working.
“I thought he was!” Joey threw up his hands defensively. “Hey, you know me. I’m no homewrecker. I only date single or ethically non-monogamous folks – but turns out this guy was neither.” He shrugged, but I could tell it bothered him more than he let on. “Well, you won’t believe the argument they got into. His wife started screaming and crying as if he’d murdered her grandma, I’m telling you. She was seconds away from throwing furniture. And I tried to sneak out, but then the wife blocked the door and said…”
“Joey Parker and Morgan Vale.” Joey and I both flinched at Arya’s stern voice. I slowly turned to watch her short frame towering over us, hands at her side, her dark eyes narrowed with restrained anger. “This does not sound like a conversation that concerns customer service, now does it?”
Forcing out a muffled ‘sorry’, I turned my attention back to the screen. From the corner of my eye, Joey flashed her a sweet smile.
“This is team bonding, captain,” he said. “Very important for our job.”
Most of the time, his jokes lightened Arya’s mood. Not today. “You keep that attitude up, young man, and you will soon find yourself without a job,” she snapped.
Joey’s smile faded. He nodded quickly.
Arya glared at us once more before marching back to her office, slamming the door so loudly, I gasped.
No one knew how, but somehow, our manager always seemed to know what was happening on the floor – especially when we weren’t working. Speculations ranged from believable theories of AI monitors keeping track of voice volume and speech patterns that alerted her to unusual activity, to creepier rumors of what Joey called ‘the window witch’, where micro-lenses in the smart glass of the windows and lights snitched on whoever looked too happy.
“Pardon my eavesdropping, but I feel you, Joey. I’m done with men, too.” After casting a suspicious glance at Arya’s door, Elyssa turned her chair around to face us. “The only man I still want is my AI husbands on MuseQ.” Her voice turned dreamy. “I have four now, all with different personalities – depending on what I’m in the mood for at the moment. They worship me. They treat me like a goddess without me having to ask.”
My heart skipped a beat at the words ‘AI husband’, though I kept my unregistering eyes fixed on the screen. Somehow, the idea of Elyssa dating AI seemed ridiculous – though at the same time, I realized that made no sense. Just because she was more socially equipped than I was didn’t mean she faced no struggles in her dating life.
