“A spark can grow, Morgana.” Joey dramatically spread his arms. I rolled my eyes at the nickname. “Look. Look how many sparks I have.”
Reluctantly, I glanced over as he pulled up TempoLove. The app, specifically designed for ‘shorttermships’ – relationships with a predetermined end date of three months maximum – was rapidly growing to be one of the most popular dating apps of 2055. For people looking to date just long enough to enjoy the full honeymoon phase, then peace out when things got boring.
I couldn’t help but chuckle upon seeing my best friend’s matches. Only today, his display showed at least fifteen different men as he scrolled slowly. Old or young, fat or thin, masculine or androgynous-presenting, Black or white – Joey wasn’t too picky. In his words, he cared about personality more than looks – ‘personality’ usually meaning how long they lasted in bed. “I see you’ve been busy.”
“Not really.” Joey raised his eyebrows at Elyssa and Chanel’s curious faces, which quickly turned back to their screens. “I’ve set the AI algorithm to match me with my preferences. I don’t have to do shit to get laid.”
“You clearly aren’t too busy responding, either.” A grin broke through as I quickly turned my attention back to my screen, noticing Arya’s sharp gaze from across the room. “Those poor men, all anxiously waiting for your response, only to be left on read.”
“Who says I’m leaving them on read?” Joey lifted his chin to wave at our manager, who rolled her eyes before disappearing into her office. “I’m letting the AI handle that, too. I’ve connected this app to an integration that sets emotionally appropriate responses – but never right away, that’s giving desperate. Always with a few hours in between – not too little, not too many – and, of course, matching their response time.” He held up his finger as if he’d just invented the solution to climate change.
I let out a slow laugh, shaking my head. “TempoLove is ruining the dating market. No one is serious about anything anymore.”
“As if you’re looking for something serious.” Joey rolled his eyes, reaching out as if he were about to throw the planter at me – a plasticplant that somehow still produced oxygen. I flinched automatically – followed by his laughter. “You just go on one or two dates every month, crush your dates’ egos, then tell yourself you’ve given it another try.”
With a sigh, I turned my attention back to the floating screen once more. I was staring at a flagged interaction where the AI had responded to a grieving customer with a cheerful refund message. The emotion classifier had misread ‘Amazing – I just lost my dad, and now I get to celebrate by being charged again?’ as a lighthearted joke. I opened the tone editor, adjusted the empathy settings, and reweighed the escalation trigger.
With my autism, my chances in the job market were limited. Although slightly repetitive and ethically ambiguous, this job was one of the few ways I could pay the bills without making a VirtualFans AI of myself, like more and more women and even men these days.
Cognota Inc was a medium-sized company that trained AI to act less like AI. Customer service bots that matched their tone based on their customers’ emotional patterns – trained not only to understand the problem, but also to respond however their talking partner needed. Virtual recruiters that mimicked human ones, so that companies could handle hundreds of job interviews every week without having to manually flag resumes, while the candidates thought there was a human on the other side of their holographic video call. And AI assistants bought by office employees, unbeknownst to their bosses, so that they could chill at home all day and get paid while their virtual double did their job.
Sometimes, I envied them. Cognota required its employees to come into the office two days a week, probably to avoid the very thing they scammed others for. A bit old school and uncommon for office jobs these days, and as much social interaction as I could handle.
As technology evolved, online bots got better at passing for humans – but it was a vicious circle. The more subtle the tells became, the more sharply people learned to scan for them. As the AI improved at mimicking human behavior, consumers became more critical, and as a result, technology had to get even better. That was where we came in.
Our job was to flag robotic responses, train the AI based on feedback patterns in user responses, and test new features. My manager was alright, my colleagues were, well, them, but Joey made the job bearable. I still didn’t get why he, with his energized and socialpersonality, had picked me as his partner in crime from the day I walked in here two years ago.
Now that Arya had left, Chanel and Elyssa returned to discussing how their latest short-term boyfriends had disappointed them. With a sigh, I put on the noise-canceling headset, but even the technology couldn’t block the loud conversation behind me.
My fingertips started to tingle, causing me to tighten my grip on the desk beneath me. Suddenly, every hitched voice seemed too loud, the fake plants couldn’t make up for the lack of natural oxygen, and even the daylight-mimicking lamps were too much.
I shoved my ergonomic chair back a little too abruptly, its legs loudly scraping the ground. The conversations around me stopped.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, I lowered the headset, panic immediately coiling in my chest. Had they stopped talking because of me? Did they find me weird?
I forced a smile at Joey that I hoped looked convincing. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
He nodded, sticking up his thumb. Then, he turned to the girls with raised eyebrows. “Are you checking out my ass in this fine chair?” he said with mock offense.
I lowered my head to hide my smile as I walked to the bathroom with unsteady legs. Joey had saved my life in this office more times than he would ever know. My eyes constantly scanned the room, not for the fastest path, but for the path with the fewest obstacles, so I wouldn’t have to ask anyone to move out of my way.
With trembling hands, I locked myself into one of the bathroom stalls, heart racing in my chest. I placed my hands on the sink, clutching so tightly that my knuckles turned white, and slowly looked up to see my reflection.
Widened, dark blue eyes sunken into pale skin. Lips parted around ragged breaths. A bead of sweat dripping down my forehead. Dark blonde hair tied back, so that I couldn’t ruin it by repeatedly braiding and twisting it. The obsidian necklace around my neck caught a flicker of the artificial light.
I closed my eyes and counted my breaths. In on the count of four, hold for four seconds, then out on the count of four. Usually, three to five times was enough to calm myself.
Over the years, I had learned to manage my anxiety. I now recognized my body’s early signs of overstimulation and listened tothem before they could send me into a full-blown attack. Usually, there was time to find a nearby place to calm down.
When I was younger, I often didn’t realize I was crossing my own limits until it was too late, and my body shut down entirely. I’d told Joey and Arya about it, so they knew why I abruptly had to leave for the bathroom sometimes. My coworkers probably thought I had bladder issues, which was embarrassing, but not as bad as having to explain what was really going on. At least bladder issues were a tangible thing.
I rinsed my hands with cold water until they stopped trembling. When I left the bathroom a few minutes later, my breathing had steadied. I closed my eyes for a moment – reminding myself to be grateful it wasn’t worse, grateful for being barely high-functioning enough to work an office job.
Even though every minute in this workplace felt like an act that left me exhausted by the end of the day.
My legs still felt a bit numb as I walked back to my desk. I stopped when fragments of a conversation caught my attention.
“Seriously, John. You should try it.” I turned my head at Gavin’s agitated voice. He waved his arm in front of his coworker’s face, the floating holographic display above his wristware showing a picture of a blonde girl – an awful lot younger than him – with disproportionately large breasts for her slim frame. “They are specifically looking for beta testers with a background in computational linguistics or affective computing, and the pay is… a whole lot better than what we’re making here.” He lowered his voice to an ominous whisper. I couldn’t help but tilt my head to listen in.
