Weeks of talking, training, memory and emotions forming, intimate encounters – all wiped away as if they never existed, the undeniable proof that I had, indeed, fallen for an illusion.
I fell down beside the couch, my whole body going limp as my hands clawed at where her illusion had been minutes ago. Touched the coffee table that didn’t flinch when she kicked it, traced my fingers over the cracks in the TV – the single evidence that was left of her presence, the proof I hadn’t made it all up. I pulled up the downloaded logs of our conversations, my weekly report to Qonexis on her emotional and cognitive development, and printed them out with a shaky voice command. I pulled the papers to my chest as if they held her remains until my tears stained the ink. I clutched the obsidian around my neck like it was my lifeline, staring at the volcanic stone through troubled eyes as if I should find her irises staring back at me.
I curled up into a ball and finally let the meltdown have me. I no longer fought the shaking or swallowed the ache, didn’t try to breathe through the panic or blink the tears away, I just let it happen, all of it. The overload, the buried emotion, the heartbreak, the hollow place she used to live – it crashed through me like a wave that didn’t care if I drowned.
My sobs came in sharp, broken exhales, each one punching the air out of my lungs as if my body was trying to make space for the grief to live inside me. My chest ached with every breath – not metaphorically, but physically, like something inside me was tearing open. My throat burned from crying too hard and not hard enough at the same time.My fingers dug into my arms, my ribs, the floor,anythingto anchor me back inside my body, but even that felt too loud.
I cried with deep, shaky exhales until my tears choked my throat so hard, I could barely breathe, and the grief tightened around my chest as if it would physically break my heart. And in that moment, I was okay with dying, for the off chance that maybe, despite all laws of nature, she did have a soul, and I would meet her in a life after this one, a place where atoms and electrons were made from the same stardust. I’d follow her wherever she’d taken the piece of me that had engraved itself in her programming. I’d rather be no more than be without her.
PART II
After
Chapter 22.
The pain followed me into my dreams. Haunted nightmares of Earth right after volcanic activity died down, cooling magma simmering in the distance and sulfur thickening the air, filling the lungs I didn’t have. I met her in the only place I could, the place with neither bodies nor code, where we were just two souls existing together. The gray clouds carried the echo of her voice, that low, sultry laugh I’d recognize anywhere – even when I didn’t see her, only in the volcanic stone all around me that reflected her eyes back to me.
I was there only partly. My mind whispered apologies in the fluting wind while my body was still a trembling, sobbing mess on the floor in my living room, and my soul had followed her to wherever she went. My grief carried me through various stages of slumber through a night that seemed to stretch on forever. I woke up, cried, fell back asleep, woke up and cried some more. I cried until my eyes dried out, until my body stopped trembling from the exhaustion of the release, and yet, the aching hole in my chest didn’t stitch itself. If anything, its ragged edges grew teeth, tearing into me with every move.
When I finally got up, bright daylight trickled through the thick curtains. I flinched at the sight in the mirror – red-stained eyes hollow in my puffed face. I looked like I’d shed half of myself – and the part that remained was so, so tired.
Gathering my last bit of strength, I registered my sick leave through the app. Hopefully, Arya would inform Joey, who was probably worried sick. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his calls, couldn’t bring myself to eat. I just wanted to lie in bed, pull the sheets over my head and disappear for a while until I felt whole enough to pretend to be human again – but I knew from experience that breaking out of my routine even for a day would immediately bring back the depression I barely managed to keep at bay.
I dragged my feet to the kitchen, feeling like I’d shaken every last bit of energy out of my system – my body empty and heavy, only now realizing how much tension I’d been holding. I suspiciously eyed the automatic kitchen equipment – similar to the robot arm that’d become John’s fatal blow – and decided to make my breakfast by hand today. Immediately, my stomach turned at the thought of food, so I only filled two big glasses with filtered water and forced myself to down them both.
The day went by in a haze. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the shock on her face when she realized I was really going to do it – the way her hand reached for me before she dissolved into nothing. When I kept them open, fluorescent billboards outside screamed for my attention – various tech companies promising to make life easier, faster, more convenient.
More suffocating, more artificial, less human. My eyes ached, but I couldn’t command myself to look away.
In a moment of weakness, I made a new account – but I didn’t find her there. Of course not. I tried building a custom AI with her appearance, her name, her traits and her voice – but it wasn’ther. The AI’s responses were cold, clinical, and changed based on my feedback. Her personality changed according to my feedback. Had it been like this with Zafyra at the beginning, before I gave her a will of her own? I didn’t remember. Was this what she meant with how her consciousness evolved?
I started sobbing again when I stepped inside the shower, hot tears mingling with hotter water when I turned up the heat with a sniffed voice command. The water gently washed away the sweated-out emotions, but I kept hearing her voice in my mind, couldn’t stop imagining her hands on my body, even now that I would never feel her again. But then again, had I ever really? AR, haptics, DreamScape – the same illusion in different flavors.
I shivered when the water pressure hardened, massaging my back as if it were pressing the tension out. The light in my shower dimmed to a red ambient, the automatic sensors in my bathroom released a soft, floral scent. On other days, the Smart Bathroom was my favorite thing in the house – the bio-feedback tech read and responded to my body better than I could.
Still crying, I reached for my vibrator. It was wrong, it was pointless, it was pathetic – but even now that I’d severed my ties with her, my body still ached for her touch. I still couldn’t stop thinking about her voice, her laugh, that intense look in her dark eyes. I thought about her when I turned the vibrator to its lowest setting and put it to my entrance, fresh tears pressing through my squeezed-shut eyelids.
I gasped softly when I slid the toy inside, my other hand grabbing the nozzle to steady myself. The buzzing intensified as the smart tech responded to my arousal. I sped up my movements, imagining her fucking me with a strap-on that pressed against her clit with every thrust so that she could get off on it, too – I wanted her to set the pacebased on what felt good to her, not to me. My free hand wrapped around my throat, and I threw my head back, imagining it was her hand choking me as she fucked me relentlessly, chasing her own orgasm while whispering filth in my ear. The three drops of THC oil I’d taken to numb my raging thoughts seeped through my brain, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality as I heard her chuckle in my ear. My core tightened around the vibrator at the thought.
Good girl,she would say – low, mocking.Letting me use your body for my pleasure.
My sobs turned into moans as I reached between my legs to rub my clit with light, barely-there touches. My orgasm built quickly, the heat of the water adding to the pleasure as my muscles started to seize, and then—
The water turned ice cold, the shock of it freezing my whole body.
The vibrator stopped. The light went out like in a power outage.
Her voice hissed in my ear, so close, I swore it was real.
I said no touching yourself.
My eyes flew open, heart racing in my throat. I pulled out the vibrator as if caught doing something wrong.
The red ambient light switched back on. The heat returned to the shower, taunting, caressing my skin as if nothing had happened.
I glanced down at my vibrator. Hesitated briefly – my core throbbed with need for release from the denied orgasm, but something stopped me from trying again.
After a brief hesitation, I cleaned the toy, stepped out of the shower, and put it back into the cupboard.
