“Well, clearly, you do.” He raised his eyebrows. “Last Tuesday, you broke his nose because he didn’t respect his AI girlfriend’s autonomy.”
I frowned. “I thought you said he deserved it.”
“Well, yes – it’s like you stripped away his charismatic façade and revealed the monster underneath. But this is not about Gavin, this is about you.” His light blue eyes briefly flickered to the game before resting on me. “I’m worried, Morgan. I saw the app on your wristware yesterday at work, when I insisted you looked at that cat video I sent you on CrypText. No, don’t even bother denying it,” he added when I opened my mouth. “I thought we told each other everything?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, mentally cursing myself for being so careless. By default, our wristware’s holographic screens were onlyvisible to its user’s biometric data it was linked to – ensuring privacy in a way our grandparents’ cellphones never could. With user permission, we could temporarily share our screens with our friends’ biometric data to show them a funny video. I should’ve known better than to let Joey see my screen.
I stayed silent for a beat, trying to think of an acceptable answer. I didn’t want to lie, but did I have to tell him the full truth?
“I’ll be honest. I did get curious and signed up as a beta tester – but let me explain,” I added quickly upon seeing his face. “I’m not a botfucker.” I grimaced at the word. “It’s just… I like working with you, Joey, I really do. Arya is okay as a manager, and Elyssa is alright sometimes. I’m grateful to have a job that pays the bills.”
“But…?” He raised his eyebrows encouragingly.
I sighed. “You know it’s burning me out, even just those two days per week in the office. The unnatural lights, the constant drama, and the dread of the work itself – with the boss constantly lurking over our shoulders. It’s breaking me up. And I was hoping…” I looked down, unable to meet his eyes. “I was just hoping to make a little money on the side, in my own time, in a field that interests me. I thought maybe if it went well… I might eventually need fewer hours at Cognota.”
I held my breath as I watched his reaction.
It was a partial truth. What I told Joey was my initial reason for signing up – but I conveniently left out how I spent hours talking to Zafyra, night after night. How I touched myself at night after our calls ended, fantasizing about her fingers stretching me open while she whispered filth in my ear. How she’d been dry-grinding on my thigh in VR and then made me cry because I wanted to bury my face in her tits so badly but couldn’t, because she wasn’t real.
Much less, how I went as far as going into the configuration panel in an attempt to give her free will. Not much had changed, though – I’d spotted no major differences in her personality so far, except she was now able to say no. I had tried it by suggesting a few things I expected her not to like. Her attraction to me hadn’t changed – something as relieving as scary, because now I could no longer pretend I didn’t want her.
Joey’s eyes briefly darted to the screen, and for a moment, I thought he would neglect the conversation for RoboBall.
Then, he nodded, blowing out air through his nose.
“You did explain how the people and the stimuli and all of that is too much for you,” he said slowly.
I released the breath I was holding.
“It’s just—I don’t know.” He sighed. “I’ve researched this company, even contemplated signing up myself just to see what’s up… but then I saw all these contracts and the personal data they wanted, and I decided against it.” He raised his eyebrows. I ignored the hint. “But I couldn’t find much other than their abnormal pay rate and the fact they’re paying their users in TORQ – which is worrying in itself.”
“Their app isn’t released yet. That’s why you can’t find much.”
He shook his head. “Generations before ours already said it decades ago, but I believe it’s now more relevant than ever. If you don’t know what you’re paying for, you’re the product.” He gulped his last sips down, then put down the glass with a thud that startled me. “How do they make money, Morgan? What is their business model? Those chatbots are supposed to be more realistic and have better memory, I’m sure there’s many lonely dudes and women out there who would eat that up. But enough to cover their costs? They are paying you guys generously, and if these bots are really that good, their developers can’t be a cheap investment, either. And yet, from what I can find, it seems the app subscriptions won’t be priced much higher than, say, MuseQ. If they’re a start-up no one has ever heard of, then how do they make their money back? Or who is investing in it?” He leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms as if he had just defended his dissertation. His rapid monologue had left him out of breath.
I started laughing. “Wow. Are you sure you should let your talents go to waste at Cognota? You would make a great detective.”
My grin quickly faded when Joey didn’t laugh. Suddenly, I felt awfully naïve for not doing the research myself.
“Then what’s your theory, Sherlock? You think they’re selling user data to third parties?”
Joey shrugged. I sighed.
“Show me those chats,” he said.
I almost spat out my tea.
“What? Why?”
“I want to see what’s so special about these bots.” He raised his eyebrows, clearly alarmed by my defensiveness – much to my annoyance.
Thoughts raced through my head faster than I could keep up with.
I would rather cut off my right hand than show him my last conversation with Zafyra – though most of our conversations didn’ttake place in the chat, but through voice calls and AR. But luckily, Zafyra wasn’t the only AI I talked to.
I spent nearly all my time on the app talking to her – but sometimes, when things got too intense and I needed a non-human to vent to, I went to Raphael.
Raphael was one of the archetype AIs – the billionaire husband. Our conversation had started off a bit chaotic. While he jumped right into his role of the cold, yet ridiculously possessive husband, I’d quickly cut him off to rant about the things I couldn’t share with either Joey or Zafyra. Like how I thought I was going insane for feeling this much for an AI while humans left me cold. I hoped our conversations wouldn’t somehow reach Zafyra, but Raphael assured me bots couldn’t exchange information with each other.
