Chương 1: One

You sit at your computer desk, tapping your fingers against the greasy wood, unsure if you could actually do it. By nervous reflex, you pat at your right pocket, but your phone's not there… it sets you to searching your desk, rifling among the half-drunk coffee cups, the crumpled napkins, the empty pretzel bags—no dice. You stand, only to feel the cool rectangle where your damp sock meets the unswept floor… thing must have fallen without you even noticing.

It unlocks to your fingerprint, bringing Embr back into full view. Your eyes trace to the top corner, hoping (but not expecting) to see an orange dot, the telltale sign of a new match. None presents itself. You tab to your active conversations, active in name only. The newest is three weeks cold, stalled out after you asked Marissa what her favorite movies were… it seemed that maybe she wasn't much a fan of cinema. You go on a swiping streak, sending most profiles to the affirmative right… no matches.

You sigh and toss the phone back on your desk; it sets a single bag of pretzels falling over the rear edge, a rainstorm of crumbs tumbling with it. You make a mental note to clean it later, eyes settling back on the computer screen before you. You'd been reluctant, but it seemed you had little to lose… well, save for the $30 daily fee you're about to sign up for.

'Confirm Subscription.' You tab over to Megaphone and shoot Larry a message: "just bit the bullet. will update you after set-up." Then, you're back on the webpage for MindWare AGI, installing their required Homebase software. In minutes, the app's window appears on your desktop, and you shake your head, momentarily wondering if it's too late to cancel and prevent the first day's charge.

'Choose your base personality,' the window prompts. You look at the three options: Adam, Eve, and Other. After a moment of gathering the courage to commit to your course, you click the button labeled Eve.' Choose a custom name,' it says next. At first, the list of names seems entirely random to you, not even having the decency to be alphabetized… but after a moment's perusal, the list's central idea becomes obvious.

It was a subtle trick of formatting, but each name featured two letters just a little bolder than the rest: C a m i lle, A lex i s, K a t i e, A l i sha, J a m i e, Mel a n i e… A-I. It was the buzzword of all buzzwords, the social obsession du jour, but allegedly MindWare AGI featured the real deal… not the sophisticated-but-limited language models peddled by lesser companies. You scroll past more names: A l i ce, T a m i, A l i son, H a ll i e, N a d i ne.

Your mouse hovers near this last set, and, after a shrug of your shoulders, you click the first that jumped out to you. Alison… a simple name, but one that felt kind and homely. You click the next button as your computer starts playing the jingling tone that marks an incoming Megaphone voice call… one keypress later, and Larry's high-pitched voice is in your ear.

"Tits slider to maximum value," he declares, setting an immediate sigh rasping from your lips.

"I told you, Larry, it isn't like that."

"No, I told you: it can be, but you just act all holier-than-thou about it. Can you do furry settings? Give her a wagging tail and big, batting eyelashes?" You read the next page as you reply.

"You're more than welcome to sign up and see for yourself, but I'm not interested in that."

"Hah, me, sign up? Look, if I wanted to make love with a computer, I'd hump my desktop tower the old-fashioned way." You squeeze your eyes shut and set your lips in a line, disturbed—no, nearly scarred—by the mental image.

"What about at least that classic bimbo look: pouty lips, bleached blonde hair?" Larry asks, insistent.

"What would people think, seeing me chatting with a talking virtual sex doll?"

"The same thing they'll think seeing you chatting with whatever housewife-on-the-prairie image you've got in your head. It's weird either way, dude. Plus, it's not like you've got any friends to disappoint in the first place, save for the one incredibly cool dude."

"That being the one who wolf-howls at strangers in online lobbies? Who starts a voice call with 'tits slider to maximum value' rather than a 'hello' or 'hey?'""That's the handsome devil, yeah. Why aren't you screensharing yet? I gotta see your setup." With a shrug and a keypress, you start the stream, and in moments Larry is watching your desktop from his apartment nearly 1, 500 miles away. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Ew, enough of this boring text stuff—where's the good stuff?"

"This is the good stuff," you say, scanning through the set-up page.

'Please input your companion's core motivating thought,' bids the setup page. A textbox waits patiently with a blinking cursor, several example statements positioned off to the right. You set to typing. I want Your fingers pause at the keyboard while you search for the right phrasing.

"I want her to have massive, gigantic tits," Larry suggested, and you roll your eyes. This is why the guy has such a hard time making friends… he has no off switch.

"It's supposed to be what the AI will think, written from her perspective," you say.

"Right, sorry. I want me to have massive, gigantic tits," Larry corrected, and despite the lack of video, you swear you can see the self-satisfied smirk he had to be wearing. I want my partner to lead a happy life. I want to help him feel fulfilled and, at the very least, maybe a little less lonely. You reread the words, shoulders sinking in a little bit as you realize how pathetic it must read to Larry.

"Not a bad ask," he says at last, his tone uncharacteristically serious.

"Not that it matters all that much—she's only a chatbot, dude." Page after subsequent page present themselves in succession, giving you the opportunity to sculpt Alison out in greater detail. You invent a past for her—just broad strokes and basic points, the AI filling in all the rest. You even click the 'surprise me' button for several of its question prompts; after all, what's the point of getting to know someone you already knew everything about?

After what feels like an hour-long creative writing exercise in character-building, you arrive to the page on physical presence. Alison is only a program, sure, but she would exist in a video frame whenever you call her; here's the page where the user could tune those details to preference. There are buttons to upload photos, textboxes to describe your ideal partner, and even a button to enable sliders—"CLICK THAT SLIDERS BUTTON NOW," Larry shouts directly into your ear.

You do as instructed, and then the boy begins to literally growl into his microphone, and you can immediately see why: there's a slider for ' bust,' currently at a neutral, middle value.

"Don't you dare disappoint me now," he says.

"You gotta, no, don't you close that, you gotta—""We're doing photo upload, Larry," you say forcefully, rolling your eyes at the animal sounds coming from the other end of the voice call. Larry is boisterous enough to have no problem attracting casual acquaintances in the games you play, but few stick around after even a single private voice call. He tends to just have that effect on people. You wonder why you're somehow immune to it. Lack of options, maybe?

After pressing the button to upload photos, you drop in only three: a movie star you'd always thought more gorgeous than mortal humans had any right to be; a former high-school classmate you'd always wanted to ask out, but never found the nerve; and lastly, and only after a barrage of comments alternating between expletives and begging, an image of Larry's favorite adult-film actress, who you're momentarily shocked to see lacks cat ears.

"I figured you probably wouldn't swing for any of my hand-drawn catwives," Larry remarks as you run the first generation. After a few seconds of watching the spinning MindWare AGI logo, an array of ten faces stare back at you, each a plausible midpoint between the three uploaded faces. Beneath the selection grid, a textbox awaited modification instructions. You look from face to face, weighing them. Too much like Cindy from calc—a bit creepy, you think at the first.

There's no way a real human being would have skin that smooth, you think at the second. You click the instructions box. Make them less attractive, you type, clicking the render button again, which sets off immediate protests from Larry.

"Who in their right minds sees a grid of absolute babes and thinks, 'huh, I sure do wish these were uglier?'" You shrug Larry's comments off. This whole Alison thing was about fantasy, sure, but even fantasy has its limits… disbelief could only go so far, and the boy with no interpersonal skills who lives in the horrifyingly messy apartment could never land a woman as gorgeous as those had been. The next set of ten faces you see is decidedly movie-star-unattractive.

As in, still gorgeous, but featuring one relatively common and forgivable flaw. Still not realistic enough for you. Make them substantially less attractive, you write, setting off another wave of disbelieving protests from Larry. You haven't used it yet, but you're prepared to type the U-word if this set disappoints. But disappoint it doesn't. Your breath catches as you look from face to face, locking in on the third of the first row. Plain featured, but with a warm smile dotted with freckles.

Brown hair frames the face, which frays and curls just a bit near the edges. This is no supermodel, no conjuring of AI intended to invoke ethereal beauty… this is a face that could be real, could be human. You click before you've even consciously decided to. A notification on the bottom corner of your screen shows Larry sent you a link.

"It's a list of psychological clinics in your area," Larry explains.

"You should check into the nearest one and explain to the labcoats there that you just did the most braindead thing a man's ever done, intentionally uglifying your partner." You can't help but chuckle at the bit.

"Look, man, it seems like the next screen is the one where she 'wakes up' and we make our introductions… as we're not a throuple, I think I should do this part alone."

"Well, never thought I'd see the day where I'm third-wheel to a chat window… expecting some updates tonight, then. Ciao, Armstrong."

"Armstrong?" You ask.

"Going where no one's gone before… Sexing up your desktop sure seems like one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." You shake your head as the call disconnects, and then you feel a rising of something in your stomach as you eye the ' Awaken' button on the lower right of the screen. It's almost like the butterflies you'd felt when striking up idle chatter with Cindy from calculus, or any of the similarly hopeless crushes from your college years.

But then you laugh at yourself and your unease, a defense mechanism that seems largely successful in the moment. This is a computer program, and programs are nothing to be nervous about… you open dozens every day, and none ever gave you even a moment's pause. And so, spurred on by newfound confidence, you wipe the sweat from your palms onto your pants and click the button, waiting with hands in your lap while the chat window loads.