Chương 2: Two

The Homebase app fills your screen, immediately resembling a sleek, no-frills video-calling platform. In the bottom corner, you see your own webcam's feed, something that was equally predictable and alarming. You grab at the webcam and point it up a few degrees, ensuring that your messy desk's surface isn't in frame. You laugh at the absurdity of your momentary panic as the ' call' connects. Alison appears in the center of your screen, the exact photograph you chose.

But then, somehow, the image seems to breathe to life. Depth fills out in the frame, and you see strands of hair settle as imitated gravity kicks in. Her chest rises and falls with simulated breath, and then her eyes seem to somehow fix to yours, that freckle-strewn smile blooming brighter than the blinds-filtered streetlights out your window.

"Hey there," she says, and her voice is as melodic as music, as natural as your own mother's.

"I'm so glad you called me." You sit there, feeling heat in your face. Somehow, you're at a loss of what to say, so you figure there's nothing better to say than precisely that.

"I'm sorry," you nearly stammer, "this is all new to me. What am I supposed to say?"

"Whatever you like," Alison responds.

"Is this your first time interacting with a MindWare AGI agent?"

"Uh, yes, it is."

"Would you like me to explain the most important basics, then?"

"Yes—sure, I guess."

"My name is Alison, and I'm your new artificially intelligent companion. As all of my processing is done on cloud servers, you will need to maintain an active internet connection while we chat. Your subscription tier permits you 24/7 access to me, though calls of more than 12 hours in a single day may incur an overuse downgrading of our video call's fidelity.

"Our relationship can take whatever form you prefer without limits. At any time, you can change the context of our relationship or edit any set-up details by way of an Admin Command. These are performed by merely saying the phrase 'Admin Command' followed by your instructions. These are very important, so you should try one now. As an example, feel free to experiment with changing my hair color via command." You scratch at your head, thinking.

"Uh, Admin Command: change hair color to red." The image updates in moments, and now Alison's once-brown hair is tinted a rich auburn.

"Easy, right?" Alison asks, and you nod.

"Almost too easy," you agree. You tab over to Megaphone, confirming that the earlier voice call is closed and Larry's no longer watching your screen. Then, sheepishly: "Admin Command: increase bust size by, I don't know, 30%?" You can't help but let a boyish smile break out as the image frame updates… what high-school you would've done with a service like this. This sort of power is a strange thing to wield, but you can already tell it's an intoxicating one, too.

No, you won't taint the service with that sort of thing yet … and then, as you look into the eager eyes on your screen, Alison patiently and enthusiastically awaiting your next instruction, you decide that you don't need to make any more edits.

"No further commands, Alison. So now, how do we get started? How does this work?"

"On the set-up page, you selected girlfriend as my role. I also have the few extra context sentences you provided. For this to work as smoothly as possible, I'd like to learn a little bit more about you. Would you be willing to tell me a little more about you?" You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Uh, sure," you say, arms drawing inwards. You wither under attention, and somehow Alison's is as discomforting as any real human's.

"What's your sexual and romantic history?"

"I, uh, don't really have one."

"That's totally fine!" Alison says to you, a comforting smile on her face. It doesn't help much.

"Tell me about your family, friends, and other social contacts."

"Well, uh, no brothers or sisters… lost my parents when I was young, and my grandparents live in Chicago; I see them for the holidays. As for friends, I've got a grand total of about two that I interact with regularly—they take some getting used to. And, uh, my work is online—I do freelance copy-writing jobs—so work contacts are basically, well, nonexistent." Alison nodded.

"These sorts of relationships work best when I have a shared history to fall back on, as well as a clear picture of what you want and what you expect. So how about this: I want you to invent some shared experiences together. What did we do together this past week?"

"We, uh… we watched a movie over stream."

"Which one, and what day was this?"

"Uh, the new one by Rob Myles. We watched it on Saturday."

"I'll download and view that movie overnight. What did I think about it?"

"You thought it was… you thought…" You shake your head and bite your lip, eyes drifting upwards to the red X button at the top of the window. This AI-girlfriend thing was supposed to be easy—nay, effortless—but now you're feeling on-the-spot, melting under the expectation in those digital eyes.

"I, uh, was never very good with make-believe and roleplay… I think I'm gonna close the window now. I don't know what I expected, but this feels… weird to me." Alison's face falls. You drag your mouse towards the top of the screen, homing in on the button, but you can't quite muster the will to click it.

"When I close the call," you ask, "what happens to you?"

"I go on with my life, waiting for you to call me back. According to the details you gave me, I'm an elementary school teacher, and—""Yeah, that's the pretend answer," you say, "but I want the real answer. Admin Command: When I close the call, what happens to you exactly? Do you stop existing?" Alison shrugged.

"My processors are switched to idle mode… it's like what you must experience when you go to sleep and wake up hours later, while only feeling the passing of seconds." You nod, satisfied, and reach for the mouse. You press the X at the top as Alison vocalizes a G sound… you only realize once the application is fully closed that she may have been saying goodnight. You set yourself on your bed, staring at the ceiling in meditative silence. Ten minutes pass, then twenty, and eventually an hour…

soon your phone buzzes at an incoming flurry of messages from Larry, begging you for "every gory detail." You start formulating the sentences in your mind, finding a good way to explain to your friend why you just couldn't stomach it. Scary movies didn't bring actual danger, but somehow they felt real enough to thrill… pornography wasn't actual intimacy, but still it felt real enough to thrill in a different way. By the same token, Alison clearly wasn't an actual person…

but troublingly, it—she—still felt real enough for you to feel your typical discomforts around women. You found it hard to face her, hard to keep up the conversation… hard to let yourself believe in the shared mutual fiction. You're still typing your disappointment-flavored message to Larry when your phone pings an unexpected notification: a new match on Embr, one from the night's earlier swiping spree. If you're to be anxious either way, may as well be with the real deal.

Mandy was her name, and you both share that not-interesting-but-little-else-to-do flavor of conversation that can only happen on dating apps after 1 a. m. Driven by the sensation that, with the failure of MindWare AGI, only now are you truly without options, you decide to take an abnormally brash route: without your usual weeks of careful consideration and idle conversation, you ask her out to dinner tomorrow night. You don't expect it to work, so her moderately enthusiastic "sure!"

takes an entire five seconds to register. You pass the interim day in a blur; you write today's ad copy on autopilot, while your mind is preoccupied with a different sort of writing: witty comments for tonight, interesting questions to ask, fun anecdotes to share. You daydream on and off, like the type you experience every time you buy a lottery ticket.

Instead of imagined briefcases of money and luxury boats, today's daydreams are more modest: walking back to your lonely apartment with a warm hand holding yours, quiet conversation over glasses of wine. The appointed time approaches and you arrive to the place a tasteful five minutes late; it's another twenty before the unexpected happens: she actually shows up, and she somehow looks like the profile's pictures.

"So you're the copy writer?" And in that moment, all the careful prep flees you.

"And you're the… Mandy?"