“It’s very personal. I’m the reason she left.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She tried to kiss me, and I blocked it with my hand like I was swatting away a malware pop-up. Then she flew to Sweden the next day.”
Dominic winces. “OK, when you put it like that?—”
“She finally saw what everyone else sees, eventually.” The words come out flat. Clinical. Like I’m describing a failed experiment instead of the worst moment of my life. “That I’m not wired right. That there’s something fundamentally broken in the part of me that’s supposed to know how to be human.”
“Logan. That’s not?—”
“I should go.” I pull my arm free. “I’ll talk to Bennett tomorrow about NeuraTech.”
“Logan, wait?—”
But I’m already walking toward the elevator.
“At least text me later so I know you’re not doing something weird!”
I don’t respond. Just walk toward the elevator.
The ride down is seventeen floors. Forty-three seconds. I count them because counting helps. Because numbers don’t look at you with hurt in their eyes.
She’s back. She’s at dinner with our friends—two of whom I’ve known since college—and no one thought to tell me. No one even mentioned it.
The elevator opens at my lab. My territory. The one place in this building where I actually make sense.
I badge in and the familiar hum of servers greets me. Cold air. Blue light from monitors. The soft whir of machines. I run my palm along the nearest rack, feeling the vibration through my skin—steady, predictable, sane. Here, the rules are consistent. Here, being obsessive isn’t a flaw—it’s a feature. Here, no one cares that I can’t read a room, because I can read code instead. The machines don’t need me to be charming, or normal, or good at small talk. They just need me to be right.
I’ve always been better with machines than people. Machines don’t leave. Machines don’t look at you like you’ve said something wrong. Machines don’t fly to Sweden.
I should work on the signal interference problem. That’s why I went to find Bennett in the first place. There’s actual work to do.
Instead, I sit at my desk, roll my shoulders twice—a self-soothing tic I’ve never been able to break—and open the folder I swore I’d delete. The one labeled ‘SPEECH PRACTICE’ like that’s fooling anyone, least of all me.
The chatbot interface blinks to life. A cursor. A text field. A conversation history I’m not proud of.
I start typing.
Audrey, I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but I need to explain what happened that night. I wasn’t rejecting you. I could never reject you. The truth is?—
My phone buzzes.
Dominic:
Whatever you’re typing into that AI-Audrey-Abomination, delete it.
I stare at the message. Then at the blinking cursor. Then back at the message. Then I look around the lab and wonder if he’s planted a camera somewhere.
My phone buzzes again.
Dominic:
I’m serious. Step away from the artificial Audrey.
Me:
Are you watching me?
