I would reply later, I told myself. This time, instead of ghosting, I would simply explain that I wasn’t interested. Communicate like a mature, securely attached person.
The 4D footage on the large screen couldn’t capture my focus. With a sigh, I swung my legs over the couch and walked over to the balcony, a frown forming on my face as I gazed over the skyline – my sixth-floor apartment providing a perfect view.
Lumis Nexus was one of the high-tech cities in the area that was formerly called Silicon Valley. What used to be single cities had morphed into a techno-corporate biome – strung together via privatized infrastructure and encrypted digital ecosystems. Many IT, biotech and AI multinationals had settled their headquarters here, locked in a never-ending rat race to accelerate life and increase profitability. Career opportunities were great, yes, but so was the loneliness. Everything was connected, except for the people.
Absentmindedly, I started chewing on the bitten edges of my nails.
Of course, I’d interacted with AI companions before. Anyone who said otherwise was lying. They were the world’s second most popularattempt to cure the loneliness, when shorttermships couldn’t satisfy the human need for connection and sexual relief. Apps offering AI partners and spouses had climbed in popularity over the past thirty years, and they’d become more advanced, too. Their memories had improved, their personalities increased in depth, and interaction no longer took place behind a screen – instead, AR and VR allowed them to exist in our space. Their photos and videos looked just like those of real humans – as did their voices.
Physical sexbots had been a thing for years, like blowjob machines and botpussies. The tech was still pricey, and only appealing to people who didn’t mind a warm, unblinking hole that said nothing back. Generally speaking, most women looked for emotional comfort in their AI husbands while men fulfilled their desires with robot blowjobs.
God help us if AI personalities were ever uploaded onto the physical bots.
The pleasant haze of cannabis slowly spread through my brain, smoothing its sharp edges. Without fully realizing what I was doing, I turned on the holographic interface above my wristware with a quiet voice command. Skimming through the conversations in the various private servers I was already part of, I scrolled past many messages of spyware hiding behind cryptocurrency scams, supposed horny women within five miles from me, and fake job offerings. Then, the name QONEXIS AI caught my attention.
I hesitated. My tired eyes skimmed the letters behind the blue-light-dimming screen.
QONEXIS AI is looking for freelance contributors with a background in Computational Linguistics, Affective Computing or AI-driven Neuroscience to assist in the development of next-gen adaptive companion models. Applicants will participate in short- and mid-term engagement simulations designed to assess archetype integrity, emotional coherence, and user-specific response dynamics.
Ideal candidates are familiar with real-time reward/flag feedback systems and can demonstrate sound judgment when evaluating complex human-emotional interactions. You’ll work closely with a prototype in beta phase, running on a decentralized learning protocol that allows for accelerated, user-bound psychological modeling. Your role will help inform final guardrail settings, behavioral thresholds, and emotional boundary logic for future paid-user rollout.
Discretion is critical. This project operates outside standard commercial frameworks and involves experimental environments not subject to corporate overrideor government monitoring. A quantum-chain privacy pact is required upon onboarding.
Applicants should be emotionally observant, detail-oriented, and unafraid of complexity.
I read the text over and over again until the letters blurred. Did I fit their description?
I’d started college almost ten years ago. A bachelor’s degree in Digital Behavior Analysis, followed by a master’s in Computer Linguistics. A psychology-related degree aimed at analyzing online emotional patterns, to understand how humans and machines alike processed language. I studied to help not just AI, but also myself interpret and respond to human behavior. I’d spent my whole life observing, analyzing and mimicking others anyway, so I might as well make a career out of it – so I thought.
My first job had been noble, but draining. I’d spent my days analyzing anonymous conversations between humans and their virtual assistants when the system flagged their responses, to identify potential flags for danger. People would ask which two chemical substances combined could kill a man, and I had to decide if they were researching for fiction or planning murder. They would joke about killing themselves, and I had to distinguish dark humor from silent cries for help. They created questionable sexual content, and I had to draw the line between shades of ethically gray AI couldn’t tell apart.
Sometimes, it was easy. Other times, the difference was almost impossible to tell. It kept me up at night, wondering if I’d made a wrong choice today. Jobs like that were hard for anyone, but especially for people who believe everything that ever goes wrong is their personal failure.
After the burn-out, I applied for my current job at Cognota out of desperation. Again, ethically ambiguous, but not as hard on the soul. I’d rather look at hundreds of sarcastic Karen customers a day than risk someone killing themselves because I thought they were joking.
The holographic display flickered off. The movement brought me back to the present and I waved my hand to turn it back on.
It was a bad idea, wasn’t it? Anything Gavin did couldn’t be good.
And yet, my fingers clicked the ominous link, which led me through multiple automated verification tests onto another private server.
My numbed brain went through the application process in a blissful haze. Every step was fully automated – the biometric scan, the quantum privacy pact, the disclosure of my preferred crypto wallet. I almost quit at that part – but before confirming the wallet, the interface prompted a second factor. A live signature pulse sent directly through my decentralized keyring – the same one I’d used for freelance contracts and tax filing. Secure enough to trick my nervous system into cooperation.
The last step was a background check.
I hesitated.
Physical passports had been a thing of the past for years. Identity was decentralized – a constantly updated string of cross-referenced behavioral, civic, and financial data, stored on a locked strand only you could access.
One sync, and they’d know as much about me as the government did. The interface assured me the data wouldn’t be shared with third parties.
My eyes zoned out behind trembling eyelids.
I wasn’t really going to fall for such an advanced scam, was I? A sketchy company selling an illusion to lonely folks? Gavin probably hadn’t yet figured out that his data was being scraped to train new bots, his voice morphed into a female voice to scam men, or his face used for deepfakes to blackmail him later.
My sigh came all the way from my toes.
Without entirely knowing why, my hand lifted to tap the side of my wristware, thumbprint and retinal focus syncing together. A soft green glow bloomed at the edge of the screen.
