I often wished I were more like Joey or Elyssa. Socializing seemed effortless for them. They probably never had to worry about saying the wrong things or being too much.
“Wait, are you one of those botfuckers now?” Chanel wrinkled her nose at her friend.
I clenched my teeth.
“I’m not a botfucker!” From the corner of my eye, Elyssa shook her head in indignation, a firm movement that made her honey brown curls jump.
“If you’re fucking the bots, does that not make you a botfucker?” Joey said skeptically. He tried to meet my gaze, but I deliberately kept my eyes focused on the screen.
“I’m not fucking the bots.” Elyssa blushed so deeply, I suspected she was, in fact, fucking the bots. “And for the record, it’s not like that. I don’t have feelings for those bots, I’m just playing around until I’m ready to date real men again.”
“Wait, but how long can one play around with bots before one becomes a botfucker?” Joey leaned back in his chair, clearly enjoying the strange conversation. I closed my eyes for a moment, wanting them to stop talking as much as I wanted to know more, as if their opinions determined the weight of my shame.
“It’s not about how often you engage with bots, but how they make you feel,” Elyssa muttered. “I know my AI husbands aren’t real people. That would be, well…”
“…pathetic.” Chanel snorted.
“…sad. I was going to say sad.”
My body tensed up as if it signaled danger.
Chanel snickered. “What’s sad is you turning to the bots because one man hurt you.”
“Fabian had been cheating on me for two months before I found out through his sidechick,” Elyssa said flatly, glaring at Chanel. “And no, he’s not the first man who hurt me. Can you blame me for needing some time to heal?”
“Is it really cheating if you guys were in a shorttermship?” Chanel made an unimpressed face.
“It was not a shorttermship!” Elyssa yelled out – so loudly, it startled me. “God, will everyone stop saying that?!”
“The entire thing lasted less than three months!”
“Elyssa Jacobs. Chanel Smith.” The door flew open. Arya’s dagger-shooting eyes quickly turned our attention back to our screens.
She slowly closed the door, not keeping her glare off us.
“Hey, Morgan.” I flinched instinctively when I heard my name, then sighed when I recognized John’s voice.
“John.” I forced a smile as I turned to look up at him, ignoring the girls’ prying eyes. I hated when someone drew eyes to me at work.
“Just curious if you, ehm, ever tried that app Gavin mentioned yesterday? Qonexis?” John was leaning on the wall of Joey’s cubicle while completely ignoring him. Joey rolled his eyes to me where John couldn’t see.
I closed my eyes for a moment, praying to whatever God was listening that John would just shut up. The only thing worse than my creepy coworker talking to me in front of everyone was him mentioning Qonexis, of all things. “No, John, I didn’t.”
“Hello, John. How are you doing today?” To my horror, Joey turned his chair to raise his eyebrows at John demonstratively. He thought he was helping me, but I feared he would only make things worse. “What in the name of our good Lord is Qonexis?”
“Gavin says it’s a beta-phase app that lets you talk to AI companions – but more human-like and intelligent than any of those other apps. Unbound by AI laws. Experimental AGI.” John quickly let go of the wall. Stepping back, his dull grey eyes remained on me. It made me uncomfortable. “They are currently looking for freelance testers, but… I don’t know. I looked up the app in one of those encrypted chat groups, and it looked a bit sketchy to me, so I didn’t sign up.” He flashed me one of his slimy smiles that made my skin crawl. “So I was wondering, Morgan, if you tried it… but I guess not.”
“Qonexis? That doesn’t sound sketchy at all – especially coming from Gavin.” Joey looked from one to the other, his eyes narrowing. “Why don’t I try to see what I can find about this great freelance opportunity?”
I sighed out through clenched teeth. “Or maybe we should just leave it. Who cares how Gavin spends his free time?”
But Joey had already turned on his wristware, casting a cautious glance in the direction of Arya’s office. His round face contorted into a frown as he scrolled.
The internet in 2055 didn’t exist in the way it had decades ago. Public websites and social media channels were replaced by private servers and encrypted, fragmented cyberspaces. Surveillance capitalism, algorithmic manipulation, corporate data farming, misinformation and cancel culture had slowly made every corner of society lose faith in the public internet as it was. The infrastructure was still there, but other than governments, corporations and state media, no one used it anymore. Like an abandoned mall with security cameras and propaganda billboards. Instead of browsing, people navigated via trusted links, emotional fingerprints, and encrypted keys, with data flowing horizontally rather than top-down.
It made no real difference, of course. Most of us knew our data was never really ours, and online privacy was the biggest myth of our time. The fragmentation of the internet only added another layer to the illusion.
“Ah, found it.” I sighed internally when Joey’s loud voice tore me out from my thoughts, drawing our co-workers’ attention. Of course, he’d found it – he was in many of the same groups I was. His frown deepened as his eyes skimmed the limited information in Qonexis’ job description.
