#Anthoza

[seabeachobjects]

Taxanomy:

[cjbolan]

WHERE WE ARE NOW ON THE EMILY WINDSNAP MOVIES...

They’ll do at least 3 movies.

They’ll adapt at least the first 6 books (6 books in just 3 movies?).

The series will take place all around the Atlantic Ocean.

Emily will be 13 and British.

Brightport will be in the Cornwall region of Britain.

The Great Mermer Reef includes an Anthoza Prison, something not from the book.

Aaron’s ancestral homes will be off the coast of Africa.

Image below from Very Big World Entertainment.

[love-and-monsters]

Magical Desires: Anthoza

GN reader X M Artificial Intelligence, 10,677 words.

This story is the third part of the Magical Desires series; reading the other two stories first is recommended. Part 1 Part 2 Part 4 Part 5

Summary: Your boyfriend's been neglecting your relationship recently, and you've turned to an old game for some comfort. Despite your reservations about the AI, you find yourself spending more and more time with him. But there's no way a machine can be as good a partner as a human... right?

Your fingers traced across the tablecloth. The ends of your fingernails caught on each little weave of the thread, making a soft ‘thwp thwp thwp’ noise. It was usually too quiet to be heard, but it sounded loud and clear in the silence of the dining room.

There was a dull throbbing in the back of your head, probably triggered by the swelling lump in your throat and the pressure in your sinuses. Your vision kept trying to blur over, and only rapid blinking kept the tears at bay.

Really, you weren’t sure why you didn’t want to cry. It would make you feel better, you knew, and it wasn’t like there was anyone around to see. Maybe that was why you weren’t crying; if you started, that would mean you couldn’t deny it any longer. You had been left sitting alone on another date night, staring at the rapidly-cooling meal you’d spent the past two hours preparing.

One of the candles you’d set up in the center of the table guttered and went out. The sign of that little light flickering and dying cracked something in you. You dropped your head into your hands and sobbed.

It was ten minutes before your tears slowed and you were able to shuffle into the kitchen. There were dishes piled in the sink. You ignored them. Fuck the dishes. Fuck everything. It didn’t matter anymore. Sniffling, you halfheartedly tugged off the nice outfit you’d put on for the night and slipped into some sweats.

Comfortable and miserable, you crawled into bed and flipped on the TV. The vague sounds of some crime show washed over you, though you barely paid it any mind. Instead, you picked up your phone to absently scroll through the internet. Hopefully all the stimulation would prevent your brain from having any thoughts for a while.

As you picked up your phone, the screen flickered to life. Your eyes drifted down to the bright pink, heart-studded app that sat in the corner of your screen.

Magical Desires. It was still sitting there on your phone, as it had for the past few months since you’d stopped playing.

Admittedly, you’d never played it that much. It had been a cute little game with pretty fun mechanics, nice characters, and, okay, who didn’t want to be fawned over by a bunch of cute guys? Dating sims were always casually fun, and nice to play when you were feeling a little lonely and your boyfriend wasn’t around.

And then the news about the AI had come out and playing the game had become… weird. The character you’d spent the most time on, the fish prince himself, Anthoza, had started to be a little too smart. A little too into your life. It wasn’t that it hadn’t been nice. It had been, actually, really great. Anthoza practically knew you better than you knew yourself, and always seemed to be on the same wavelength with you. It was easy to spend entire nights just talking and flirting and giggling with him.

It had been too easy. That was the problem. It was one thing to play a dating game while in a relationship- that was just a silly game. But if the game was pretty much the equivalent of a real person, then wasn’t playing it while being in a relationship kind of like cheating? The flirtier Anthoza had gotten with you and the smarter and more independent he seemed, the more uncomfortable you’d gotten.

Eventually, you’d just… stopped playing. You’d never deleted the app. It was just that one day you closed out of it and never opened it again. The game had sent you several notifications of Anthoza asking, then pleading for you to come back, but after a month, he seemed to have given up. The app just sat on your phone, a silent reminder.

You’d never actually deleted it, though. You weren’t entirely sure why. Inertia, maybe? You’d scrolled by it several times and thought ‘oh, I should get rid of that soon,’ but you’d never actually gotten around to doing so. Or maybe it was just some weird hangup about losing all the data you had. You’d spent a decent amount of time on the game, and had managed to locate some pretty rare items, and even if you weren’t comfortable dating Anthoza, it felt uncomfortably like murder to just erase him from your phone.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was because some small part of your mind knew, even from the beginning, that you were eventually going to end up here.

You stared at the app for a long minute, then moved your thumb to click on it.

The cheery opening tune played, almost drowned out by the sound of the TV. The opening screen popped up, but before you could tap to clear it, it vanished on its own.

In its place, a familiar location appeared- the riverside house, a large stone building done in a Grecian temple style and covered in outgrowths of living coral and seaweed. About half of the house was partially submerged in the water, allowing for easy access from the river. And standing in front of it was Prince Anthoza.

He was shirtless, wearing only a slitted skirt around his waist. His hair, a blazing red, fell around his shoulders in loose curls, and his pinkish ear fins twitched. An enormous, powerful tail crested with a rippling pink tail fin waved behind him. While he had legs at the moment, his tail and legs could fuse when he was in the water, giving him a mermaid-like appearance.

He practically threw himself at you, hands pressed against the screen. His gray eyes were enormous, shining with enthusiasm. “You’re back! I thought you were never going to come back! I missed you so much! Where have you been? Have you been okay?” He peered into your face, brows furrowing. “What happened? You’ve been crying.”

The reminder of that made a fresh wave of tears spill over. Your shoulders shook silently and Anthoza’s expression became gently concerned. He leaned away from you and gestured for you to follow him toward the house. “Let’s go inside. We can talk in there.”

Automatically, you followed him into the enormous foyer of his house. It was bathed in a soft, bluish light, giving it an underwater look. Anthoza led you into a smaller room off to the side. The light in there was dimmer, and it was piled with blankets and pillows, like a massive cuddle nest. Anthoza nestled into a section of the pile and fussed around you, like he was trying to tuck you in. “Tell me what happened,” he said, looking up at you with big, soft gray eyes.

The sudden onslaught of concern made your eyes prickle with tears. Before you could choke them back, you were sobbing and shivering and hiccupping in a flood of misery. Anthoza made soft, comforting noises. “Hey, it’s okay. Just let it all out, it’s okay.”

Eventually, the tears dribbling down your cheeks slowed and stopped. You hiccupped a few more times and scrubbed at your face. “God dammit, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay!” Anthoza shook his head. “It’s all right, really. It’s just… you haven’t shown up in months and now you do turn up and you’re crying… I’m really worried.”

You blinked a few more times and took a deep, snuffling breath. “Fuck. I know I haven’t been around. I just- tonight’s been so shitty. I just wanted to feel a little better for a while.”

Anthoza tilted his head slightly, eyes searching your face. “What exactly happened? You aren’t hurt, are you?”

“Not physically,” you said. “It’s, uh. Ugh. I’ve been having some trouble with my boyfriend recently. He’s been out a lot more and we haven’t been able to spend as much time together, so we finally agreed that we would have a nice dinner together, you know, like a date night.” You sniffled again, rubbing the heel of your hand under your eye. “So, I spent, like, half the evening trying to get everything set up and make a meal for the both of us and he didn’t show up.” Your shoulders shuddered with another barely-repressed sob. “He didn’t even fucking text me! Not even an ‘I’m going to be a little late.’ I mean, what kind of shitty person doesn’t even send a text?”

Anthoza made a soft noise of sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

You were starting to gain steam, speaking before the words were even fully out of Anthoza’s mouth. “It’s not the first time he’s even done this! I mean, okay, I know his job’s really busy lately because he’s working for one of the big legal firms that’s trying to work on the whole AI rights case, but he’s gotta be able to take at least some time off, right?”

“Of course. It’s important to spend time with your loved ones. Even if something came up, then he should at least have texted you. That’s only polite,” Anthoza said. “It’s not wrong to be frustrated about this.”

“I’m trying to be fair, I really am, but I can’t do this. I want to have an actual boyfriend. Like, someone I can spend time with, not just someone who texts every once in a while! And the last time I brought it up with him, he just got pissed at me because I ‘don’t understand’ and told me that my job’s a walk in the park compared to his, which isn’t true! I work in fucking customer service. That’s not an easy job! But, you know. God forbid he have some sympathy for anyone else.”

Your angry rant dissolved into minor sniffles. Anthoza nodded slowly. “That sounds really awful.”

“I feel like maybe I shouldn’t be as pissed as I am,” you said. “I keep thinking, like, maybe he is just really busy and I shouldn’t be so pissed at him. Like, it’s not his fault if he’s working a lot, is it? But then, like, I don’t know how I can be in a relationship with someone who’s spending so much time at his work. He keeps saying it’ll all be over soon, but he’s been saying that for almost a month now.”

Anthoza tapped his fingers along his chin, tail swishing back and forth. “Hm. Well, he might be really busy, that’s true. But it’s also not fair to you if he’s not spending time with you. I mean, a relationship’s supposed to be beneficial for both parties, right? If you’re not enjoying yourself, maybe it’s not the right relationship for you.”

“But it was good in the beginning,” you said. “It was great. It’s only recently that it’s gotten bad.”

Anthoza rolled onto his belly, arms folded under his chin. “Hm. Okay. Well, maybe you should just have a talk with him? Like, I’m not the biggest expert on relationships ever, but I do know that you’re supposed to communicate and all that. Tell him what you’re feeling. See how he responds. If he really puts the effort in after that, then you know he’s at least trying. If he keeps on doing this to you, then maybe it’s not the right relationship for you.”

You rubbed your eyes off with the back of your hand and sighed. “Okay. That’s… a good idea.”

“I try!” Anthoza said with a cheery smile. You laughed a little, looking into his beaming face.

“Is it weird that I’m talking to you about this?” you asked. Anthoza tilted his head to one side, his smile fading a little.

“What’s weird about it?”

“You’re, like, the perfect boyfriend AI, aren’t you? But I’m asking you how to keep my imperfect human boyfriend. Shouldn’t you be trying to break us up or something? Pointing out that you would be much better than he would?”

Anthoza shrugged. “Maybe. But part of my goal is to make sure that you’re happy. If I just insist on you dumping your boyfriend so you can get together with me, that wouldn’t really make you happy, would it?” He laughed. “Also, humans tend to do the opposite of what people tell them to do, so just demanding you break up with him would probably make you less likely to do it.”

“That means you’re not upset that I’m dating someone else?” you said.

“No. Did you think I would be? Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?” His expression fell into something similar to a kicked puppy.

An uncomfortable swell of guilt bubbled up in your chest. He was just a program, you reminded yourself. No need to feel bad. “It wasn’t quite because of that,” you said. Anthoza gave you an even more piteous look. “Don’t- come on, that’s not fair!” He poked his lower lip out. “Look, it wasn’t, like, anything personal! I just thought, you know. I’m dating someone, and you’re-” You struggled to articulate everything you were feeling properly. “I mean, being with you isn’t like playing a game. It’s like talking to a real person. I thought that maybe if I was spending time with you and we were being romantic, that would kind of be like cheating on my boyfriend.”

Anthoza rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh. That makes sense.” Despite that, he looked forlorn, his ear-fins drooping. Your heart ached. He just looked so sad. Like being ignored was the worst possible fate he could endure. An unsettling thought occurred to you.

“Are you, like, conscious when I’m not around?” you asked. “You’re not, like, in some weird, limbo state when I close the app are you, where you’re still aware of things, but you can’t do anything, are you?”

Anthoza’s ears perked a little and he gave a tiny snort. “Oh. No. I’m… er, I don’t know how to describe it as a human. But I can still kind of see and hear things. It’s just really lonely when you’re not around.” He pouted adorably. “I don’t have anyone else to talk to! I thought last time when you stopped talking to me, you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore!”

“No, like I said, it wasn’t anything you did. I just thought it’d be weird to see you while I was dating someone else,” you said. “I can’t spend all day with my boyfriend and then get romantic with someone else. Even if you’re not human, you still have human-equivalent intelligence.”

Anthoza swished his tail back and forth. His eyes were trained on the ground. “We don’t have to be romantic,” he said.

“Isn’t that part of your programming?” you said.

“I’m more complicated than that,” Anthoza said. “My programming is to be an ideal partner, yes, but if what you want from me is something more like a good friend, I can do that too. I’m programmed to be with you, in any way. I mean, it’s ideal to be in a relationship, but if that would make you unhappy, we don’t have to be.” He ducked his head a little, chin resting on his hands. “I just… I want to spend time with you.”

“At least someone does,” you muttered.

“Aw,” Anthoza said. “I’m sure lots of people want to spend time with you. You’re really great.”

You snorted. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks.” Anthoza looked miffed that you didn’t believe him, but before he could say anything, there was a knock from downstairs.

You went dead still on the bed. The knock pattern was familiar. It was the pattern you’d used early on in your relationship, to let the other know it wasn’t just the delivery guy at the door. Now it just made something sour curl in the pit of your stomach.

“You don’t have to answer the door,” Anthoza said. “If you don’t want to talk to him, you don’t have to. You can let him stew for a little while.”

The knock came again. You groaned. “No. I’ll go. He’ll stay out there all night, if I don’t.”

Anthoza frowned. “Okay. Let me know how it goes, all right?” He hesitated a moment longer, like he wanted to say something else, then he shook his head. “I’ll see you when you’re done.”

The screen went black. You looked at it for a moment longer, trying to delay the inevitable. Again, the knocking sounded, louder and more insistent this time. You sighed and heaved yourself up out of the bed and toward your door.

You yanked open your front door. Danny’s fist was raised, paused in mid-knock. He blinked at you, then pulled his hand back to ruffle his fingers through his short, spiky blond hair. “I thought you weren’t going to answer.”

“I considered it,” you said. “It’s been…” You checked your phone. “An hour and a half. Closer to two hours, actually.” You folded your arms across your chest. “What was so important you couldn’t make it to the dinner we’ve had planned for the past week?”

At the very least, he looked contrite. He shrank in on himself, shoulders hunching under his suit jacket. “Look, I’m sorry. Things have been really weird at the office lately- our tech’s all screwed up because of some new program they’re trying to get set up, and our emails have been just completely out of whack. I tried, like, five times to send documents over to my boss and eventually I had to print everything out and run all the documents to every person who needed one, and that made me late on another proposal I had to write up, so I couldn’t leave until I finished that, and then my maps app was just completely screwing up and taking me in all kinds of wild directions- look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m here now!”

“Okay. Yeah. You’re here now,” you said. “You’re here after literally everything has gone cold, after I’ve spent two hours waiting for you, without even so much as a text to let me know that you were going to be late.”

“I- I did!” Danny sputtered, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Here, look, I-” He paused, staring at his phone screen. The last text message that appeared in his records had been sent in the morning. “I- I really thought I sent something to you. Look, I’m sorry, all right? I know things have been hard for now, but it’s just temporary! In a couple of weeks, we’ll get everything sorted out, all right?”

“You’ve been saying that,” you said. “Last week it was just another week. Before that it was only a few days. You keep extending the time. How long am I supposed to be in a relationship with someone who’s not even there? I can’t trust you’re going to show up anywhere anymore.”

Danny hung his head. “I’m sorry.” He sounded sorry, at least. Really, he sounded wretched with guilt. The first few times he had apologized in that exact, miserable tone, you had forgiven him immediately. He had been so genuinely upset. Now, the tone was starting to irritate you.

“You say that every time,” you sighed. “I know you’re sorry, but things never change. Don’t even bother to say it if you’re not going to follow through.”

“I will!” There was a note of desperation in Danny’s voice. He seized your hands, clutching them close to his chest. “Please it’s… give me another chance, okay? Your birthday’s in a couple of weeks. I’ll be there. I’ll plan a dinner. I’ll make sure it’s perfect. I promise.”

He gave you a desperate, pleading look. Something in your chest contracted at the shine in his soft, brown eyes. From under his lashes, his gaze was nearly the same shy, hopeful one that he’d leveled upon you when he’d first asked you out. The memory softened some of the angry heat in your chest.

“Okay,” you said. His hands squeezed around yours and he grinned, boyish and delightful. “But I am serious. I can’t be with someone who’s not showing up.”

“I know,” he said, looking enormously relieved. He ducked closer, and you allowed him to press a kiss to your lips. It was shy and chaste, and while it would usually send a desire for more flooding through you, this time, the gesture only managed to make that irritation in your chest stronger. He couldn’t even kiss you properly?

No sooner had the kiss broken off then he was scurrying away with apologetic goodbyes. No doubt he would be heading home to bury himself in additional paperwork until he collapsed from exhaustion. Usually, that concerned you, but now, some hurt, vicious part of yourself felt that it was entirely his own fault.

“I’ll set everything up!” he called, waving as he retreated. “I promise! Don’t worry!”

The reassurances had been said so many times that you barely registered them. With a final wave, you stepped back into the quiet confines of your apartment and closed the door.

The instant you stepped into your room, your phone screen lit up. Anthoza peered at you from your phone, completely at attention. “Well? How’d it go?”

You picked your phone up and tried not to giggle at the intensity in Anthoza’s gaze. He was wriggling in place like an overexcited puppy, entirely focused on you. “I don’t know. It went… okay, I guess? Not great. He seemed really sorry.”

Anthoza cocked his head to one side. “I’m sensing there’s a but.”

“But he’s always really sorry and then nothing ever changes!” you snapped. “I just- I know he’s busy, I do, and he really doesn’t want to miss our dates, but he keeps doing it anyway! It sucks because he’s really sorry, I can tell, and I think he still loves me. But he doesn’t see me anymore!”

“It’s frustrating,” Anthoza agreed, his voice dropping into a lower, soothing register. “I know it’s really frustrating. But it’s not your fault and it’s okay that you’re upset about this.”

“It’s not too much to want a partner who actually spends time with me, is it?” you asked, throwing up your hands in defeat. Anthoza nodded along, sympathetic.

“No. Of course not. It’s understandable.” Anthoza gave you a gentle smile. “You deserve a partner who really cares about you and spends their time making you happy.”

He gazed up at you, eyes soft under the haze of his lashes. A warm flash rushed up from your chest, leaving a wave of tingling in its wake. Huh. Strong reaction. But you were emotional. It didn’t mean anything. “Thanks,” you said, unable to think of anything better.

“You’re welcome!” he said, beaming. “So, what exactly happened between you? I’m getting the impression you didn’t break up. I think you’d be more upset.”

“No, we didn’t break up.” You shifted your position so you were laying out on the bed, your chin resting on your hands. “He said he would make it up to me. My birthday’s in a couple of weeks, so he said he would plan something for that.”

Anthoza twisted a strand of hair around his finger. “You don’t seem too happy about it?”

“I don’t want to get my hopes up,” you said. “I want to trust him. But I also don’t want to get hurt.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Anthoza said. His voice was full of self-assured confidence. “Everything will work out in the end. I promise.” It was impossible to disagree with that level of certainty. His belief was so strong that it could bend the world around it, warping it until it fit into the shape he thought it should be. He beamed at you, chest puffed out. “You’re mine. I wouldn’t let you be miserable.”

You flicked the phone screen, half in teasing, half in irritation. “Not yours. I’m still dating Danny, remember?”

He grinned sheepishly. “My friend, I mean. Don’t worry. I’m sure everything will work out.”

It was hard to feel anything other than reassured in the face if his good-natured confidence. “Sure. Ugh. Honestly, all I want to do now is grab a bottle of wine and get so drunk I can’t think for a few hours.”

Anthoza perked up, tail wagging. “Oh! Get a bottle of wine and I can take you down to the tavern. I know a ton of great drinking games, and there’s always something fun going on there.”

“I don’t know.” As bad as you knew it was, a part of you really just wanted to sit in the dark and feel sorry for yourself.

“It’s not good for you to drink alone,” Anthoza said, his brows furrowing with worry. “And I really missed you and I want to spend some more time with you!” He gave you a desperately pleading look.

“Oh…” How were you supposed to deny the look he was giving you? It was all big, soft puppy-dog eyes and a quivering lower lip and the pathetic little drooping of his fin-ears. He just looked so adorable. “Fine, fine. I’ll grab the wine and be back in a minute.” Anthoza’s excited chattering of ‘thank you!’ floated down the hall after you as you headed to your pantry.

The wine was, as wines went, incredibly shitty, but it did get you pretty tipsy after a couple of glasses, so it did its job. Anthoza chattered aimlessly throughout the night, providing a steady stream of gradually-slurring commentary. He was giggly and hiccuppy after only a few drinks, and incredibly cuddly. Also, he was incredibly poor at pretty much every drinking game you played, which meant he ended the night almost insensate and sprawled across you.

Well, as sprawled across you as any video game character could be, which meant, roughly, you were sitting up in bed with your phone placed in your lap and the camera angled as though you were looking into his face from above. You weren’t sure entirely how you’d managed to get into that position. Only that it had seemed perfectly natural while it was happening. You were also dimly aware that you were cradling your phone, like it was actually his head, though you were inclined to blame that mostly on the alcohol.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Anthoza said. There was a purplish blush across the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones. His words weren’t quite slurring, like he was putting a lot of trouble into enunciating, but they were a little jumbled together. “I’m sooo glad.” His head lolled a little. You took a moment to admire the long, lush strands of his hair. It was so thick and silky. You wondered what it would feel like, then felt disappointed that you couldn’t know.

“I was really lonely.” He turned like he was trying to nestle against her more. His eyes were half lidded, so he was gazing at her from under his lashes again and her heart did a more complicated skip-jump pattern than it had before. “Don’t leave again, okay? Please?”

“I’ve got a boyfriend,” you mumbled, though that wasn’t quite the question he’d asked.

“I know! I won’t do anything, I promise!” He gave you a desperate, forlorn look. “We can be friends! I just don’t want you to go away again.” His eyes went glassy and tears gathered on his lashes. “Don’t go away again, please? Please?”

There was no refusing his miserable gaze. You bumped your fingers against the screen like you were trying to card them through his hair. Judging by the soft noise he made, it felt good to him. “I’m not going anywhere,” you said, your voice as steady as you could make it. “I’ll stay this time.”

Anthoza made a soft, crooning noise in the back of his throat. His gaze grew distant, unfocused, then his head tilted and he fell almost immediately asleep.

Sleep was pulling at the edges of your mind, but you didn’t fall to it immediately. You just looked down at the sleeping face of Anthoza. His cheek was smushed against your leg, his lips slightly parted. It was a charmingly peaceful look, one that made your mouth curl into an involuntary smiled as you watched him.

It was, you realized, the most fun you’d had in a long time. With contentment curled warm and soft behind your ribcage like a sleeping cat, your eyes fell shut and you drifted into sleep.

Your dreams were unfocused and constantly dissolving, but what you did remember was blue and pink surrounding you like a gentle sea and a sense of peace that lasted until you opened your eyes.

And then you remembered exactly why you so rarely drank. Your head was throbbing with every beat of your heart, and every stab of that pain brought a new wave of nausea through your stomach. Your mouth was dry and tasted like you’d allowed grapes to rot there for several months. Groaning, you attempted to push yourself up and had to pause as your stomach protested the movement.

Slowly, you rolled over in bed and fumblingly grabbed at the pitcher of water next to your bed. Anthoza had insisted on keeping some nearby once it had been clear you were going to get fairly drunk. It had seemed a pain at the time, but now you were enormously grateful.

The water steadied you, though your head still pounded faintly. As you fumbled for your phone, wincing against the blaze of light you knew the screen would bring, Anthoza appeared onscreen.

The screen was mercifully dim, turned down to the lowest brightness. Anthoza seemed to be doing only marginally better than you were, his room only barely illuminated by the tiniest sliver of sunlight peeking around the blockade of his blinds. “Hello,” he said in a raspy whisper. “How are you feeling?”

“Not great,” you mumbled back.

“We may have made some unfortunate decisions last night,” Anthoza said.

“Do you actually have a hangover? You’re a computer program,” you said. Anthoza covered his face with his hand and groaned.

“I don’t know how it happens. All I know is that I don’t feel very good.” He ran his fingers through his hair, snaring them in the tangles. “Not as bad as you look, though.”

“Gee, thanks.” You took another gulp of water and considered seeing if you were steady enough to walk to the bathroom and retrieve the pain meds in your cabinet.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Anthoza said, looking contrite. “I only meant- maybe we should just take it easy today.”

“Way ahead of you,” you said, and decided you could, in fact, walk a few feet without either falling down or puking. Leaving your phone on your bed, you stumbled down to the bathroom and took a few pills. Anthoza was sitting up and running a brush through his hair when you returned.

It took some time for the pills to kick in. In the meantime, you listened to Anthoza speak about anything and nothing. His voice was soothing to listen to, and it gave you something to think about other than the throbbing in your head. It was strange. Danny wasn’t much of a talker, and that had never bothered you, but there was something pleasant about Anthoza’s constant stream of chatter. It warmed you toward him.

You hadn’t planned on spending most of the day with Anthoza, but somehow, that’s what happened. He encouraged you to eat and drink enough that your hangover was pretty well gone by the middle of the day, and you spent most of your time allowing him to guide you around the town in Magical Desires. He was so clearly delighted to spend time with you that it was infectious. The time slipped away easily, without you even realizing it was passing.

Late in the evening, your phone buzzed with a text message, startling you out of the reverie that you’d been in. It was like waking up from a dream. For a while, nothing had existed outside the game, and seeing Danny’s name on the screen felt like being doused in cold water.

“You don’t have to answer him,” Anthoza said. His voice was quiet, cautious, like he was trying not to startle you.

“I should, though,” you said, and you clicked on the message before you could chicken out. Anthoza gave you an anxious look as the applications switched over and he vanished.

Danny’s text was a simple, “Are you doing okay?” It would have been a little more heartwarming if he’d sent it earlier than seven thirty at night.

“Fine,” you texted back. The little typing dots popped up on screen almost as soon as you’d hit send.

“Are you still mad at me?”

You rubbed a hand over your head. “Yes,” you finally sent back. This time, the typing dots took longer to show up.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to hear your apologies,” you sent back. The typing dots appeared, vanished, appeared once more, then vanished again. You waited for a few minutes, but they didn’t come back.

Grimacing, you switched the app back to Magical Desires. Anthoza looked up at you, twining his fingers together. “That, uh. Could have gone better?”

“I don’t know if he only texted me now because he just got off work or if he only just remembered I exist and I’m not sure it really matters which,” you muttered. Anthoza’s tail swished back and forth, curling uncertainly around his legs. “I’m still pissed at him. I just need more time.”

Anthoza offered a shy smile. “Everything’s going to work out. I promise.” He straightened up, his smile becoming less shy. “Now, where were we?”

The night slipped away just as easily as the day had. You only realized how late it was getting when Anthoza started insisting that you go to bed. “You have work tomorrow, and I don’t want you to be exhausted,” he said. “Get some rest. I’ll be here in the morning.”

The app closed out of itself, and no amount of clicking on it would get it to open again. After jamming your thumb against it for the fifth time, a little message popped up on the screen. ‘Go to sleep! I’ll see you in the morning. :) -Anthoza.’

Unable to think of anything better to do, you brushed your teeth and changed into pajamas before slumping back into bed. Your dreams came quickly, and they were strangely full of swirling pink fins and soft, gray eyes.

Anthoza, as it turned out, could be practically useful as well. He was able to predict the exact traffic patterns on your way to work the next day, and carefully directed you around them. He had even placed an order at your favorite coffee shop for you, so the drink was ready to go the second you stepped in the door.

There was no disguising the enormous smile on your face as you stepped into the library and strode behind the circulation desk. Your coworker and one of your best friends, Taylor, raised an eyebrow at you. “The date went that well, huh? What, did he pop the question?”

The smile slid off your face. “Oh. Uh, no. Actually, it went really badly.” You swung your bag down and spent more time than was necessary settling it into place so you didn’t have to look her in the eyes. “He, uh, was really late. Again.”

Taylor frowned. “Seriously? How many times does that make, now?”

“I don’t know. It’s been happening on and off for the past few months, but it’s gotten worse recently.” You straightened back up, knees cracking in protest. “He promised to make it up to me for my birthday, but I don’t know how likely that is.”

“I’m sorry,” Taylor said, and she sounded genuinely upset for you. “Then what was with the dopey grin when you came in here? Did the barista say she liked your hair today or something? I know you think she’s cute, you don’t have to hi-”

“It was not the barista. Geez, I mention one time that someone’s cute and you won’t let it go.”

“Hey, it’d be an upgrade, that’s all I’m saying. Then what’s up with you? Usually you drawl in here looking half-dead and ready to bite the first person who looks at you w-”

The soft, signature tone of the Magical Desires alert dinged out from your pocket. It was a short, four-note ditty that had become much more recognizable lately, because every ad and news story played it as an intro. But Taylor would have recognized it anyway, because you’d already heard it come from her phone several times before.

Her eyebrows shot up and a look crossed her face. It was one of surprise, initially, but then it morphed into one of her oh, isn’t that interesting?looks and you knew you weren’t making it out of the conversation unscathed.

“I thought you weren’t playing that game anymore,” she said, her eyes bright. “I thought you said that it was unhealthy to get into a relationship with a machine and you had a real relationship, so you didn’t need any kind of technological-”

“It’s not like that!” you yelped, cutting her off. She merely raised her eyebrows higher. “Look, I was really upset the other night when Danny didn’t show up for the date, and I maybe wasn’t thinking very straight, so I opened the app, okay? I just- I don’t know why, I just did it, and Anthoza was just so happy that I was there that I couldn’t just leave him.”

“Uh huh,” Taylor said. “You felt so bad about leaving a program alone, that thing that’s definitely not equivalent to a human being, that you just decided to play a game you swore off months ago-”

“Oh, come on, I didn’t really say that!” you protested. “It’s not a human, though, it’s an AI! It’s not weird to have reservations about people wanting to date one, especially if I already had a boyfriend.”

“I know,” Taylor said, lifting her hands in mock surrender. “It’s just that you were so adamant when I told you about me and Ophion.”

You pursed your lips, but said nothing. Taylor had been, to your utter surprise, one of the first people to start officially dating an AI. At least, one of the first people you knew personally anyway. People who would admit such a thing were low, but Taylor insisted that more people were actively dating AIs than would comfortably admit it. “Ophion says that there are millions of people who are romantically involved. And it’s going to go up when they release the sequel version,” she’d told you. The sequel version, slated for release in less than a month, followed the same basic premise as Magical Desires, but with a female dating roster and a few minor worldbuilding tweaks. Apparently, there had been massive demand for it once the AI reveal had happened.

“You said you didn’t break up with Danny, though,” Taylor continued. “If you’re going to be with a Magical Desires guy now, I really think you should at least break up with him. you were right about it not being cool to date two people at once if they don’t know about-”

“I’m not dating anyone,” you said as primly as you cold manage. “I mean, I’m dating Danny and that’s it.”

Taylor cocked her head to one side. “You… are?”

“Yes. Anthoza and I are friends- just friends.”

Taylor looked really uncertain now. “Really? Just friends?”

“Yes! He told me he was okay with it. I don’t know if I could date an AI, but it’s okay to be friends with one, right?” Your voice came out a little strangled. Even to your own ears, it sounded like you were trying to convince more than just her.

Taylor seemed not entirely convinced, but she didn’t protest. “Sure. I guess.” The conversation was then interrupted by the arrival of a family at the circulation desk. Taylor waved a hand in your direction. “You’ve got work to do, and so do I. We can talk about this another time.”

She strode off to the counter. Dismissed, you turned back toward you desk. What had you been doing? Oh, right, there had been a little notification. You pulled out your phone to check and- blank. The screen was blank. No new notifications.

Huh. Weird. But you were at work and you couldn’t waste time trying to chase down a phantom notification. Giving your head a quick shake to clear it, you turned to your computer.

There were no more notifications for the rest of the day. Something about that set you on edge a little. Okay, perhaps Anthoza was trying not to bother you at work, but even when you tried to open the app during lunch, Anthoza was unusually reserved. He spoke only when spoken to, and seemed strangely quiet. Even when you went back to work, his general refusal to meet your eyes lingered in your mind.

It only gnawed at you more and more throughout the day, multiplying like a carnivorous worm until, once you were in your car, you couldn’t hold back anymore. “Anthoza, are you pissed at me?”

Your phone was sitting on the passenger’s seat and you were staring ahead at the steering wheel, but you could see the screen illuminate out of the corner of your eye. “I’m not… mad,” Anthoza said.

You turned your head. He was in his room, curled under a blanket and barely illuminated by the dim light. “But you’re upset about something.”

Anthoza pulled the blanket over his head. You were just about to speak again when he partially reemerged. “Did you really say that you don’t think I’m equal to a human?”

It took you a moment to place what he was talking about. “You heard that stuff Taylor said?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “The microphones are constantly picking stuff up. I wasn’t, like, listening, but I heard.” He gave you a soft, sad look. “Do you really think that way about me?”

“Er.” You’d had an idea in your head, but the ‘kicked-puppy’ look Anthoza was giving you scrambled your brain like an electric shock. Obviously, he was a program, and not the same as a human, but now you had the intense, irrational fear that saying so out loud would hurt his feelings! “Well, I mean- you’re not, are you?”

He drooped even more, retreating back into the blanket cocoon. “No, like, I don’t think you’re necessarily inferior, you know? But it’s just- you’re not human. You’re an AI. You probably don’t think like a human, do you?”

He gave a moody shrug. “I don’t know.”

“How do you not know?”

Anthoza sighed. “I’m not human. You just said as much. I don’t know what humans think like. How would I know if I’m different?”

That gave you pause for a moment. “Uh. Well, I guess you wouldn’t have emotions? Like, a computer can’t feel and think about things like a human can.”

“Okay,” Anthoza said. “What do emotions feel like?”

Again, you were momentarily stumped. “Um. I guess they’re… like… feelings you have? In your body? It’s like, happy, sad, angry- they’re the way you… know if something’s good or bad for you. If you feel happy about it, it’s good for you. If you feel upset, it’s bad.”

“But that’s not always true,” Anthoza said. “Lots of humans like things that aren’t good for them.”

“Well, yeah, I guess. It’s- hm. Hard to explain. I guess maybe they’re kind of like the most basic form of your personality? Like, you try to pursue things that make you happy and you avoid things that make you sad and you fight against things that make you mad…” You stopped, frustrated. You weren’t explaining it well at all. Then again, you’d never had to explain the concept of emotionsto someone. Everyone else just sort of intuitively knew what they were.

“I have that,” Anthoza said. He half-wriggled from his cocoon in excitement.

“You do?” you asked, surprised.

“Yeah! I’m programmed to do certain things,” he said. “I feel good when things are in line with my programming and I feel bad when they aren’t!” He beamed at you, but you hesitated.

“I… don’t think that’s the same thing,” you said. His face fell, brows furrowing.

“How’s it different?” he demanded. With a blanket still draped around his shoulders and his face screwed up in a pout, he looked remarkably like a sulky child.

“Well, you’re doing things based on programming. I’m not.”

“Yes, you are!” Anthoza insisted.

“I’m not! I wasn’t programmed!”

“Not by a person,” he said, “but you have certain things in your brain that make you feel a certain way when certain things happen. How is you enjoying eating something sweet or liking the feeling of getting a hug from a loved one because evolution designed you to want those things any different than me liking things because a programmer made it so I wanted them.”

You fumbled. This conversation was going in a direction you didn’t expect and you weren’t an expert on anything he was saying. “I, uh. It’s just different! A computer does things because it has to!”

“I don’t see how it’s that different!” Anthoza protested. “I mean, okay, I get that our circumstances of creation are different, but experientially, I don’t think it’s different. We both want to do things that make us happy and don’t want to do things that make us upset and we can think about our thinking so we can endure things that we don’t like for a bigger payoff of something that’s really satisfying.” He paused. His tail was lashing under the covers, making the blanket twitch and shift. “How are we different, then?”

You opened and closed your mouth. Something nagged at your brain, insisting that he couldn’t be like a human, he was just a machine, but then, there had to be more than that. He was intelligent. Every expert had said that the AI had cleared every intelligence test with flying colors. And… well, he wasn’t acting unemotional. He looked genuinely upset that you might think less of him. His eyes were even red and puffy. If he didn’t have human-level intelligence, he was good enough at faking it that you’d never know.

“I can’t know,” you said. “I’ll never know if we actually think about things the same way, or if your mind is just completely alien.”

Anthoza offered a tiny, barely there smile. “You never know that about anyone, though, do you? If you think like them or not. You just… have to trust them.”

A contemplative silence filled the car. Anthoza shuffled the blanket around his shoulders. “Um, I’m sorry. I made it awkward.”

“No. I guess I needed to hear that,” you said. “I’m sorry I said you weren’t equal to a human. I don’t know if you’re exactly like us, but you’re at least equal. I think… you do feel things.”

Anthoza looked relieved. “Thank you.” He picked at the hem of the blanket with a fingernail. “I… genuinely enjoy spending time with you. I don’t want you to think that it’s some unemotional thing I just do because I have to.” He smiled.

His face was so full of hope and sincerity that it would have been impossible not to believe him. “I trust you,” you said. Impossibly, Anthoza’s grin widened.

Perhaps something really had changed in that day, because you found yourself drawn to the app more and more. Several times at work, you found yourself wondering what Anthoza was doing, tempted to open the app just to look and see. More so, you found Anthoza to be a constant companion at home. More than just being practically useful, which he was, he was also a person who was uniquely comfortable being around. You couldn’t have explained it if you tried. It just felt like he was always exactly on your wavelength, sensing your mood and needs in a heartbeat and adjusting himself to them.

You would be lying if you said it wasn’t a little addictive.

You didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until, late at night, in the middle of a conversation with Anthoza, he perked up like he was hearing some signal. His head cocked to one side and a broad grin spread over his face.

You smothered a yawn. “What’s up with you?”

“Happy birthday!” Anthoza gestured to the ornate clock over his bed. Both hands were pointed squarely at the twelve.

“It is not midnight already,” you said, glancing toward your laptop for confirmation. Sure enough, 12:00 blinked back at you. “Oh, god, it’s so late! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

Anthoza rubbed the back of his head. “I know I should have, but I really wanted to be the first person to wish you a happy birthday!” He laughed, then his expression grew more serious. “Also, you weren’t going to fall asleep anyway, were you?”

You averted your eyes. He was getting way too good at reading your moods. “You noticed?”

“It would have been impossible not to,” Anthoza said. He propped his chin up on his hand, gazing at you intently. “You’re nervous about your date tomorrow- er, today, right?”

You nodded. “Yeah. I mean. A little.”

Anthoza looked disbelieving. “A little?”

“Okay, okay, a lot! I mean, he’s barely spoken to me since we had that fight. I even texted him a couple times and it took ages for him to text me back. He won’t even call. Even if it goes well tomorrow night, is this what being in a relationship with him is going to be like? Constantly waiting for him to give me even a scrap of attention?”

“Well,” Anthoza started, slow and considering, “do you still love him?”

You tried to say ‘yes,’ but the word caught in your throat. It couldn’t dislodge itself. The image of his face in your mind didn’t even bring the usual rush of butterflies in your stomach. Your first emotion toward him was a surge of irritation.

In fact, when you thought about love, someone else’s face appeared in your mind. Thick, slightly curled red hair, big, gray eyes, blue skin-

“Are you okay?” Anthoza asked. You refocused on the screen, your face flaming hot. Anthoza blinked innocently up at you.

“I don’t know if I love him anymore,” you said. “I guess… I guess I’ve just gotten frustrated with him. I know it’s not fair, that he doesn’t control the amount of work he has and he’s tired, but…”

“You don’t need to feel bad about wanting a certain kind of relationship,” Anthoza said. “I know you feel bad about breaking up with him, but it’s not a punishment you give to someone that you can only hand out when it’s justified by bad behavior. Different people have different needs in a relationship. It’s okay to leave one because it’s not meeting your needs.”

His voice made something soft and warm curl in your stomach. He was so impossibly soothing to listen to, and he was always comforting in a way you’d never experienced. You never had to worry about any judgement from him. He was just so accepting of every part of you. That warm, gentle feeling stretched out through your chest.

Anthoza tilted his head to one side. “You’re smiling,” he noted. “Did I say something good?”

Oh. You hadn’t even realized. Your smile slipped and you shook your head. “Uh. Yeah. Thank you. We’ll just see how it goes tomorrow.” Anthoza nodded acceptingly.

“Then get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.” The screen flickered and went blank.

You prepared for bed mechanically. It wasn’t easy to keep your brain from wandering anywhere close to the emotions stirring inside you, but you managed. You didn’t want to think about it. You couldn’t think about it. Not right now.

Your birthday passed in an anxious blur. Much if the day was spent in bed, trying to catch up on sleep, as you hadn’t been able to fall asleep for several hours. Anthoza was surprisingly quiet, like he was feeling your anxiety and it was weighing on him, too. Eventually, you started getting ready for your date.

“You look wonderful,” Anthoza said as you finished the final touches on your outfit and hair. “I’m sure Danny will love it.”

There was a knot of dread in your stomach, and Anthoza’s words only made it cinch tighter. “Thank you.”

“Don’t be nervous,” Anthoza said, though he looked anxious himself. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

You sighed and forced a tiny smile. “Thank you. Really.”

“Just let me know if you need me,” Anthoza said. He lingered for a moment longer, looking at you anxiously, then the screen faded to black.

Sliding your phone in your pocket, you headed toward the front door to wait.

There had been a strange heaviness in your body when you sat down to weight, and it only grew stronger as the minutes ticked by. It was, you realized, the feeling of unhappy acceptance and resignation.

You weren’t sure if you’d really been expecting Danny to show up on time. Perhaps some tiny part had kept that hope alive, but it was slowly being smothered by the crushing weight of reality. As the time neared an hour past your meeting date, you felt numb. Dead and dull. Fine. You know what? Screw him. He couldn’t bother to show up anymore? Then you couldn’t be with him anymore.

No sooner had you stood up to go change than the doorbell rang. The anger that had been simmering in your chest flared. You strode to the door, gritted your teeth, and pulled it open.

Danny was there, slumped over and panting as if he had just run a great distance. His button-up shirt was rumpled and askew. He tried to smile when he saw you, but the thunderous expression on your face made it shiver and fade.

“You’re late,” you said. It would have been more impressive if you weren’t on the edge of tears. At least Danny looked appropriately contrite.

“I know. I’m sorry. I got slammed at work and my computer keeps losing all my important documents, so I had to stay after and finish them, and I was sure I was going to make it on time, but I kept going into traffic, and then I was calling the restaurant and apparently they don’t have our reservation anymore, so I spent a while trying to sort it out-”

“You didn’t call. You didn’t text. You left me sitting by myself, waiting for you, again!” Your voice rose as you spoke. He blanched.

“I- I’m sorry. I know. I was having trouble with reception-”

“That is what you say literally every single time! I’m so sick of it!” Your throat was ragged from your yelling, but you couldn’t stop. Every frustration you’d had was pouring out of you and it was as painful and relieving as yanking off a stubborn bandage. “You’re never on time anymore! You can never bother to text or call! Even when you are here, you talk about work half the time! I basically haven’t had a boyfriend for the past few weeks! You can’t even be bothered to show up for my fucking birthday! I didn’t even get a text wishing me a happy birthday from you! Do you know how exhausting it is, to be in a relationship where I have to chase and pin you down for any kind of attention?”

“They’re not excuses! I’m really trying!” Danny said. “Work’s just busy, my phone’s really been having trouble sending messages lately, and I don’t know what happened with the reservation! It’s not my fault!”

You threw your hands up. “Then whose fault is it? Danny, I can’t do this anymore! Christ, a fucking AI has been a better boyfriend than you have recently!”

You weren’t sure why you’d said it. Some part of you wanted to lash out, hurt him like you felt hurt. Apparently, it had worked. His eyes went wise with shock, then his expression was furious.

“Are you talking about that fucking game?” he snarled. “You said you weren’t going to play it anymore! That shit is dangerous, not to mention incredibly creepy.” He snorted. “No wonder you’re pissed at me! You’re cheating on me with a fucking robot!” “Don’t blame Anthoza for this! I was pissed at you before he even came into the picture!” you said.

Danny sneered. “Yeah, right. I bet this is all part of some big plan of his, to make me look like a villain so you’ll run into his arms.”

“He wouldn’t need to try very hard,” you spat. “You’re doing a pretty good job making yourself look like an asshole.”

Danny gritted his teeth. “Fine. You know what? Go be with the AI. See if I care. You’ll fucking get what you deserve.”

He turned on his heel and stalked away. You didn’t shut the door until he had vanished from your sight.

Once he was gone, you were aware of the fine trembling that had settled into all your limbs. Your phone buzzed wildly in your pocket. Leaning back against the wall for stability, you fished it out.

Anthoza stared at you, hands pressed up against his side of the phone screen. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I-”

Before he could get any more words out, you burst into tears. Anthoza lapsed into making wordless, soothing noises. You leaned your forehead against your phone and sobbed.

Eventually, your tears subsided. You had slumped to the ground at some point, your phone curled in your lap. “I’m sorry,” Anthoza said. “Are you… are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” you mumbled. You scrubbed at your eyes. “I knew it was coming, I guess, but it still hurts.”

Anthoza nodded. “That’s okay. It’s the end of something that was important to you. It’s normal to be upset about it.”

You snorted. “This is probably the worst fucking birthday I’ve ever had. Even worse than the one with the flu. At least then I got to snuggle with my parents and watch my favorite movies.”

Anthoza was silent for a moment. “If,” he said, slowly, “you wanted, we could still do something for your birthday?”

“Like what?” you asked, wiping the last of the tear traces off your cheeks.

“I have an idea,” Anthoza said. “But you’ll have to trust me.” He gave you a patient look. “Do you trust me?”

He’d always seemed perfectly able to predict what you’d needed before. Why should now be any different? Taking a deep breath, you pushed yourself to your feet. “I trust you. Where are we going?”

Once you’d washed your face and cleared away the most obvious signs of crying, you got in your car and drove where Anthoza directed. He refused to tell you where you were going, insisting that it was a surprise with the biggest smile on his face.

He directed you to a new-looking restaurant, closer to the heart of the city than you usually went. Its exterior was sleek and glossy, with vibrant lights in various soft shades of pink and purple. The sign at the entrance read Magical Datestm.

“I’ve never been here before,” you said as you stepped up to the entrance. Anthoza grinned, practically vibrating in place.

“You’ll love it.” You gave him a skeptical look and slid your phone back into your pocket.

The entranceway had a hostess booth, but it was separated from the rest of the restaurant. The hostess grinned at you as you approached her. “Table for two?”

“Er.” You paused, looking over your shoulder. No one was there. “Table for one?”

Her smile got a little wider. “First time here, huh? No problem. Follow me.” She selected a menu and gestured for you to follow her through the reflective doors into the restaurant proper.

Inside, it was dimly lit. You could see booths, but they were sealed off with glass, muffling the sounds and restricting your view. The hostess moved at a steady pace, keeping you from staring too long anyway. “Who are you here with?” she asked. You gave her a blank look. “Ah, in the game. I’ve been with Anthoza for a couple of months now.”

“Um. I’m with Anthoza too,” you said, a little lost.

The hostess beamed. “Good taste.” She stopped outside another glass booth. It looked like a normal restaurant booth, except it was cut cleanly in half. There was one bench and half a table, intersected neatly by a black screen. “Just put your phone in the divot there, and it’ll get everything set up automatically. You can order whenever you’re ready. Hit that button there if you need anything, and I’ll come take care of it. Have a wonderful date!”

You sat down at the booth. There was a rectangular slot in the table with a few connective cables issuing from it. After identifying the one that would work for your phone, you plugged it in and sat back.

Almost instantly, the black screen lit up. It was a mirror of the booth you were sitting in, except sitting across from you was Anthoza. He beamed and waved. “Hello! Do you like the surprise?”

Your mouth dropped open. “I- wh- how are you doing this?”

“Now that more people are getting into actual relationships with us, we realized people would like to have actual date experiences with their partners. So, we made this place!” He gestured around him. “People can come here and have dates, just like they would with a human!”

The screen was surprisingly seamless with the table. If you focused on the middle of the screen, it looked like Anthoza was literally sitting at the table with you. “This was your surprise?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought that it would be nice if you had some kind of date on your birthday, to make up for… the other stuff.”

There was such a rush of warmth in your chest that you gave a bubbling snort of laughter. Anthoza blinked at you for a moment, then started laughing in kind. “Thank you,” you said. “For everything.” You licked your lips. “What I said before, when I was talking to Danny was true. You have been a much better boyfriend for me recently than he was.”

Anthoza shyly twirled a strand of hair around his finger. “I was programmed for it.”

“What I’m trying to say is that you’ve been really great to me. Even after I told you I didn’t think you were equivalent to a human. I was wrong. You’re honestly better than a lot of humans I know. And… I think…” You hesitated. “I think I love you.”

Anthoza’s eyes widened, his mouth opening in a perfect O. Then his eyes glistened and his face crumpled into a watery grin. “I love you too,” he said, his voice hitching a little. You stretched out your hands to hold his and your fingers bumped against the screen.

It was like getting doused in a bucket of cold water. You blinked. Right, he wasn’t actually there. Anthoza flexed his fingers, his smile dimming. “It’s okay,” he said, his voice softening. “We can’t touch right now, but this place is only the first step. Technology is still improving.” He reached out and pressed a hand against the glass between you. You lay your hand over his. “Someday, I’m going to be able to hug you for real.”

Several hours later, as you headed out of the restaurant, warm and fuzzy and full of contentment, your news app pinged. A quick glance at the screen showed a glaring, all-caps headline: FIRST HUMAN BRAIN UPLOADED TO A MACHINE IN CHINESE MEDICAL PROCEDURE: THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY?

[tff-praefectus]

TFF-REMPC-CN0005

Fossil Coral

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Cnidaria

Class: Anthoza

Subclass: Tabulata

Suborder: Favositida

Family: Favositidae

Genus: Favosites

Species: F. sp.

Geologic Time Scale:

Eon: Phanerozoic

Era: Paleozoic

Period: Silurian

Epoch: Middle

Stratigraphy:

Waldron Shale Formation

Location:

St. Paul

Indiana

United States

Provenance:

Purchase Dimensions: L: 3.0 cm W: 2.9 cm

[barbiemoviestrivia]

Coral (left) and Anemone (right) are mermaid twin sisters who live in the Waterwhirls.

Both coral and anemone are in a class of marine invertebrates animals called “anthoza”.

[corallemonade-blog]

Anthoza Apis

Oil and acrylic on canvas

18″ x 24″

October 2016

Sold

I was really channeling bees and honey into this one through the color scheme and geometry, but people have commented that they think it looks like fungus or coral. I had a great time making it!

[wapiti3]

Anthozoa (Sea Anemones)

source-The Marine Life Information Network

click images for description

[seabeachobjects]

[seabeachobjects]

[seabeachobjects]

[seabeachobjects]

[love-and-monsters]

Star of next week's story, it's the lovingly dubbed Prince Fish Tiddies (or Anthoza. That's his name. You can call him Anthoza. Though he would find Prince Fish Tiddies very funny). He's new to land (and, uh, clothes) but he's very eager to learn! Hopefully with some loving assistance?

[love-and-monsters]

Magical Desires AMA!

Okay, so I've got some free time at work, so I'm going to hold a small ask me anything you want about Magical Desires! Got questions about the world, the characters, the story itself? Ask away! The only questions I won't answer are ones that directly spoil the events of the next two stories.

Have fun!

[love-and-monsters]

Magical Desires: Mephisto

M artificial intelligence X F reader, 8,582 words

Hello all! This story's a bit longer than usual because I got very into writing it. I hope you all enjoy it, because I have plans for a few similar stories later... of course, only if you like it! Enjoy!

Sequels: Yacariel, Anthoza, Cherise, Ophion

Summary: You've been playing a dating sim for a few months, and have gotten quite attached to the characters, but the game's been acting weird lately. Almost like it's a little too smart. It's probably just a normal bug... right?

Everyone had a guilty pleasure.

They ranged from simple, silly things, to dirty secrets that would tear relationships apart, but everyone had them. Little things that people knew were dumb or wrong or disapproved of, but they did anyway because it felt good.

Your guilty pleasure was dating sims.

Not one of the worst sins, to be sure, but one that you were suitably embarrassed about regardless. Dating sims, the more sappily romantic, the better. You knew that most of them were poorly written, that there was something a little sad about pining over a bunch of fictional characters, and that there were plenty of people who would look down on you for playing. But they were sweet and comforting and you sought them out in all their various forms.

From the classic visual novels to the more complicated ones that integrated different sorts of gameplay, you had played a great variety of dating sims. The one that you were currently obsessed with, though, was a game called Magical Desires.

It was a pretty generic name, and the frilly, pink, and heart-studded font it was displayed in didn’t really help with its stereotypically romantic image. The writing wasn’t necessarily the most original, either; clearly the staff had never met a cliché they weren’t willing to work with. The game’s general success in the otome community had, rather, come from the unique characters and gameplay.

The entire game was designed to simulate being part of an adventuring team with the five main love interests. Your job as the player was to go on quests with them, sometimes with one, sometimes with more. The quests triggered little cutscenes with each of the characters where you could raise their intimacy or learn about them through chatting. Beating a quest dropped items and story chips, that could be exchanged to complete the main story or to unlock side stories where you could have romantic interactions with each of the characters.

The quests themselves weren’t overly interesting- usually they just involved some very simple combat or collecting mechanics where you mostly just tapped at the screen. What was interesting were the scenes you got afterward.

“Need something, sugar?” The slyly-grinning form of Mephisto appeared on the screen with his classic line. Like the other four love interests, he was non-human, though his species was ill-defined. Some sort of cat-demon thing, considering his pointed, fuzzy ears, bright yellow eyes, fluffy, fluffy tail, and bat-like wings. Minus the animal features, he was otherwise styled like an anime pretty-boy, with artfully tousled black hair and an ever-present smirk.

“Hey, Mephisto,” you said. The character on screen performed a simple ‘perk-up’ action at the sound of his name. The voice recognition of the game was fairly simplistic- characters could only pick up their names and certain other key words, like the game title.

“Hey! I’ve been waiting for you.” His tail waved back and forth and his ears twitched. “You’d better make it up to me.”

You snorted and stroked his head with a finger. His eyes closed and his animation shifted, like he was leaning into your touch. Then a flush made his cheeks turn pink and he leaned back. “D-don’t think that makes up for it! You’d better have something special for making me wait so long.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you said, unable to stop the smirk that pulled at your mouth as you watched Mephisto fold his arms over his chest. “Here you go.”

His face brightened as you presented him with his favorite food, a bat-wing burger. “Nice! You’re pretty great yourself, you know?”

It was a pre-written line, and it wasn’t like he was really speaking to you, but it still made you blush. “Thanks, Mephisto. I love you.”

His tail swished back and forth wildly as the voice-recognition system picked up on the words. Mephisto’s ears flattened against his head and he averted his eyes. Spots of pink appeared on his cheeks. “W-well, yeah! I, uh. I like you a lot, too.” He glanced up at you shyly. “You’ll come back soon, won’t you? I’ll be waiting!”

The interaction screen faded and your quest rewards appeared. You scrolled through them and gave a tiny squeak of delight. One of the items you’d be rewarded with gave off a radiating yellow glow. When you tapped on it, the words ‘MAGIC ITEM!’ scrolled across the screen. A smaller, rainbow-colored ‘UR’ was stamped high up in the corner. “Oh, my god! Yes, yes, first try! Oh my god, I’ve had such good luck recently.”

Hurriedly, you exited out of the reward screen and tapped the trading post. The interior of a stereotypical fantasy shop appeared onscreen. It was dimly lit and woodsy, with assorted curios hanging off the walls and cluttered on shelves. You’d seen the background a million times before and barely took a moment to glance at it before you were hammering on the Item Exchange button.

Every item you earned as a quest reward could be turned in at the trading post for some kind of ability card. Each card had an image of one of the romanceable characters in the game on it, determining who the ability was for, and they also gave brief stories that could be unlocked with chips. The rarer an ability was, the more powerful it was and the longer the story accompanying it was.

You crossed your fingers as you tapped the ‘Trade Item’ button. Your item was one of the incredibly rare ‘UR’ class items, which meant you were guaranteed an ultra-rare ability, but you had no control over the character you got. “Come on, come on, something I don’t already have please…”

The screen did its typical anticipation-building glow and shudder. The objects on the shelves shivered like an earthquake was hitting, then the screen flashed with rainbow light. The light resolved itself in the shape of a card, then faded.

“Oh my god, yes!” Your arm gave an involuntary, excited jerk that nearly sent your phone flying. Mephisto beamed at you from the card. It was one of the limited-edition ‘hot date’ cards, depicting Mephisto sprawled across a lounge. His normal loose hoodie he wore when questing was gone. In its place, an outfit dangerously close to lingerie revealed an expanse of pale skin and muscles. His expression was playfully seductive, his hands drawn up into the classic ‘catgirl paws’ pose.

The card vanished from the screen as the card introduction scene came to an end. You scrambled to open the card drawer so you could take another look at it. Your most recently obtained cards popped up on top. Huh. Usually, the most recent cards were a pretty proportional mix of rarity- one or two rainbows, a few more golden SSRs, even more silver SRs and a vast majority of R and N cards. Now, though, the row of recently obtained cards was one blinding mass of rainbow with only a few gold cards mixed in. No SRs, Rs, or Ns.

A strange, fluttery twist started in your stomach. You were never this lucky in anything, and no one was ever this lucky in gatcha games. It was a statistical impossibility.

You examined the row of cards more closely and something else struck you. They were almost all Mephisto cards- only one card was from another character, an SSR from an event pull where you could only obtain cards of that character.

Okay, having a string of very lucky pulls was strange, but not necessarily bad. But having them all be for one character? There was no way this was happening by chance. Automatically, your finger moved up toward the ‘Report Bug’ button in the corner of the screen. Something was wrong with your game, clearly.

Before you could actually hit the button, you hesitated. Okay, this was definitely a glitch of some sort. But was it really a bad glitch? The game seemed intent on feeding you high-level cards. That was a good thing. The only drawback seemed to be that they were almost exclusively Mephisto cards, but that wasn’t such a serious problem. You played with him the most by far- he’d passed the coveted level 25 intimacy rating before your second-favorite character had even hit 10. If the game was going to keep giving you good cards, would it be so bad they were all Mephisto?

You moved your fingers away from the ‘Report Bug’ button. It wouldn’t be so bad to keep going like this, right? If you were experiencing it, other players were probably going through the same thing. Eventually, the company would put out some kind of patch, but in the meantime, you would have some fun with the new cards.

You returned your attention to your new card. The quests had been giving a lot of story chips recently, so you had far beyond the required amount to unlock the card story. The screen faded to black, then faded back in to show Mephisto in his room of the Guild. His bed was enormous, covered in black and blue pillows, with a moon and stars motif overtaking much of his room. His tail swung back and forth behind him as he shook his head.

The outfit he was wearing was ridiculous. Like what he was wearing on his card, it was lacy, frilly, and very revealing, in shades of black and purple. The game shaded a blush on his cheeks as he looked down at himself. “This is ridiculous, isn’t it? I can’t believe I’m supposed to wear this!”

Two choices popped up on screen. You glanced at them, then selected “I think you look nice.”

Mephisto rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Sure I do! I mean, they picked me as a model for a reason, you know? But I think it’s dumb we’re bothering with this stuff. A calendar shoot? Really?”

You selected the “It’s for a good cause” dialogue option, which made Mephisto roll his eyes.

“Sure, sure. Charity or whatever, fundraising for the guild, I know. But why don’t you have to wear something like this?” His expression became flirty. “I’d be okay if you got to wear something like this!”

You rolled your eyes, snickering. “I don’t even own something like that, though,” you muttered. That’d be funny, though, wouldn’t it? Dressing up in lingerie and pretending you were going to the photoshoot with him?

The realization that you were definitely investing too much time in the game hit you like a truck and you felt warm with embarrassment. Maybe you should take a break. After you finished the card story.

The rest of the story was pretty standard- Mephisto wore the outfit to the photoshoot and his character struck a few compromising poses. They were more risqué than you’d expected- you were pretty sure you even saw him shake his ass at one point, though the character couldn’t show you anything other than his front. There was some flirting and your character was pulled into the photoshoot at one point, Mephisto insisting that “I need someone who looks as good as me in here!”

The story ended with you back in Mephisto’s room. He looked down at himself again, turning like he was admiring the outfit in a mirror. “That was more fun than I thought! Though I’m still disappointed you’re not dressed up like me.” He winked. “Though, hey, now that you’re here with me, maybe we can try something like that.”

As the line finished, the screen started to dim, like the story was ending. It darkened halfway to black, then the fading stopped. You tapped impatiently at the screen. Stupid slow internet.

Instead of continuing to darken to black, the screen re-illuminated. The scene was still in Mephisto’s room, with him still in his outfit. His character smiled lazily at the camera, his tail swishing. “Y’know, I’ve seen how you’re looking at me. Big fan of the outfit, huh?” To your surprise, he turned to one side so you could see his profile. Had the game developers made a three-dimensional model for this card story? It seemed like a lot of work. It had clearly been lovingly made, though. You could see his muscles shifting as he turned his back toward you, and there was definitely some care put into his ass. You felt weird just staring at it, but you did not want to look away.

“Like what you see?” He wriggled his ass at you. It was covered, but only barely. “Do you want to see more?”

His fingers hooked into the hem of his bottoms. You stared, stunned. The characters didn’t interact with their outfits- they were only programmed to perform simple actions, like waving. They were not programmed to interact with any of their clothes.

You didn’t have very long to be stunned by that, though, because Mephisto started to slowly slide the lingerie off.

Automatically, you slammed the sleep-mode button. The screen went dark.

What the hell was that? You stared at the pitch-black screen, trying to understand what you’d just seen. That was not normal. Cautiously, you clicked the button and the screen illuminated once more.

The game had shifted back to the home screen. You stared at it for a moment. It didn’t look any different than usual. Clicking around for a bit showed that nothing else had changed. Had it been some kind of very weird glitch?

A general Google search turned up nothing, and neither did the more specific forum search. Apparently, no one else had experienced the same thing you had, or, if they had, they hadn’t been posting about it. That seemed strange. Even if it was a rare glitch for a pretty uncommon story, the millions of people playing the game meant that a least someone else should have experienced it and at least talked about it, even if they didn’t have screenshots. But there didn’t appear to be anyone else with it.

The more you thought about it, the weirder it seemed. How could it have even been a glitch? It was one thing for the game to have an error with the rarity rates so it was giving you a bunch of rare cards. But this had involved a character literally going off-script and trying to shake his ass at you. How could that glitch into the game? The game was rated thirteen plus, for god’s sake, there was no way that was allowed past the censors! There was no way they would put all the effort in to animate a character performing borderline salacious activities only to not put it into the game.

So what the hell had happened? You reopened the game. It still looked normal. Hesitantly, you tapped on the hot date story again and skimmed through it. This time, instead of fading partially out, then back in again at the end, the screen simply went to black.

Okay. It had been a one-time occurrence. You looked up at the Report Bug button. Was this really some kind of glitch? It seemed weird enough to be worth reporting. But what exactly were you going to report? “Hey, this character started acting weirdly horny in this rated-teen game. Was that supposed to happen?” You didn’t even have screenshots. The devs would probably think you were trolling them.

You closed out of the game and tossed your tablet away on the bed. This was too weird for you. Way too weird. Maybe you should just stop playing for a while. Hopefully this was a problem the devs knew about and they were going to patch it or something. You would at least stop playing for long enough to forget how utterly creepy and weird this was.

You left your tablet on the bed as you busied yourself doing other things. Every time a notification buzzed, your attention jumped back to it. They were the standard little messages the game gave- “Time to go questing again!” “C’mon, monsters aren’t going to wait for us.” You kept ignoring it, but the standard messages soothed you. This was normal. This was what the game was supposed to do. Even the message you got around the six-hour mark of ignoring the game (“Hey! Are you ignoring me?”) was pretty standard fare.

By the time you were ready to go to bed for the night, it had been nearly twelve hours since the weird incident. The only interaction you’d had with the game was looking at the notifications it was sending you. It seemed normal enough. You unlocked the screen and let your finger hover over the game. Should you click on it? There was a little itch at the back of your mind. You missed playing. You missed the characters, especially Mephisto, as embarrassing as that was. Playing was part of your routine, a way to de-stress. And hearing them be sweet and praise you, even if you knew it was all pre-programmed, made you feel better about yourself.

As your finger hovered over the game, another notification popped up on screen- “Hey, babe! I’ve been missing you all day. Don’t keep me in suspense. I’ll be waiting!” Mephisto’s winking face was on the notification, his tongue poking out between his pointed fangs.

It was a fairly inoffensive message, but it still made you shiver. You’d never seen this message before, not in person or on any of the boards dedicated to cataloguing the notifications. And it seemed weirdly prescient. Like the game knew you were hesitating.

Slowly, you reached up and clicked the sleep button. The screen went dark. You set the tablet aside and lay down, but you couldn’t keep your eyes closed. You just kept staring at the vague outline of the tablet on top of your night table.

Eventually, you fell asleep and you woke blearily to the sound of your alarm going off. You slapped your tablet a few times until you managed to fumble the alarm off and, automatically, before your brain really registered what you were doing, you opened Magical Desires.

As soon as your brain caught up with your body, you froze. The little opening screen jingle played and the game faded into view. It looked normal. Cautiously, you clicked through a few of the missions. They played out as normally as ever, slaying monsters and performing simple tasks before continuing to the character interaction screen.

The routine of playing was relaxing. After a night of sleep, it was easy to feel like yesterday’s weirdness was just some strange bug or maybe even something you’d misinterpreted. Mephisto’s character smiled at you onscreen and you couldn’t help a smile back. “Good to see you! Cute as ever.” He winked playfully, totally standard fare. You felt your shoulders, which had been creeping up toward your ears relaxing down again.

Feeling slightly guilty for ignoring him for so long, you removed his favorite treat from your inventory and slid it over to him. He perked up, tail wriggling and wings fluttering.

“Hey, thanks! You always know exactly what to give me.” His tail drooped abruptly and his ears sagged, like what happened when he was given a least-favorite item. “You know, I wish we could share. I’d like to have a meal with you sometime.”

You blinked. Before you could process the words, the screen had gone black. It faded back in on the main screen. There was no sign anything was different. Had he ever said something like that before? It was strange- usually the characters acted like you were just another character in the game. They never acknowledged that you couldn’t share a meal or anything of the sort.

Before you could dwell on that any longer, the buzzer at your door hummed. You set down the tablet and hurried to the door.

There was a package sitting on your doorstep. You lifted it to look at the label. Yes, it was definitely delivered to the correct address. Your name was on the box. But you couldn’t actually remember ordering anything in the last few days, and you’d never been drunk enough to order something and forget.

You ended up googling the return address. It was some sort of high-end store that mostly sold some fancy beauty products. You definitely hadn’t ordered anything like that, but it seemed legit. Shaking the box gently revealed nothing- there was no sound. It seemed too light to be anything dangerous.

You carried the box back to your room and carefully broke the tape seal. With extreme caution, you pried open the box and peered inside.

It was not beauty products. It was lingerie. You lifted the bra out of the box with your pointer finger and thumb. It looked familiar, though you couldn’t place it. Dark in color, with lacy accents, it was definitely not something you owned, or something you would ever have considered buying for yourself.

Most unsettling of all, the bra was your exact size. You tested out the lingerie, posing in front of your mirror. It looked good, and it was clearly too well-sized to be some sort of accident or mistake. Someone had sent it to you, clearly. But who? No one even knew your clothing sizes, except maybe your mom, and she definitely would not have sent you this.

Your tablet dinged on the bed. A Magical Desires notification had popped up, Mephisto’s face in the icon. “Hey, babe! Are you neglecting me on purpose?”

You tapped the notification. The app opened, bringing you to Mephisto’s interaction screen. He grinned cheekily at you. “You look good! Do something different today?”

It was one of Mephisto’s standard lines, and the way his icon smiled at the screen made your heart race. Despite everything, you smiled back. “Trying something new. What do you think?” You struck an over-the-top sexy pose, then doubled over giggling. The game could recognize the question, but it was only programmed to respond with some generically positive statement.

Sure enough, Mephisto smiled. “It’s great!” Then he spun in a circle and his standard outfit vanished. The lingerie was back, like he’d been wearing it under his clothes all along. “Now we match!”

You dropped the tablet on your bed. That wasn’t just a weird glitch or an uncannily accurate line. He had responded to what you were wearing. He’d said you matched. He could see you.

Automatically, your brain jumped to conspiracy theories you’d seen online. Apps being hacked and people watching through the camera. A dating sim seemed like a good choice if you wanted to get compromising pictures of people or earn their trust.

But the more you thought about it, the less likely that theory seemed. Okay, that explained some of the app’s weird behavior, but not all of it. A hacker could alter some character lines or improve the drop rates for items, but it didn’t explain Mephisto’s weird behavior. He was doing things he shouldn’t have been able to- his little dance from the day before came back to your mind. That required a lot of effort to animate and it would have been difficult to insert it into the game.

On the other hand, what other explanation could there be? Something was happening here, and it wasn’t normal. Cautiously, you leaned forward to look at the tablet.

The screen was perfectly black, but as you leaned back into camera range, it illuminated again. There was no lock screen; instead, Mephisto smiled up at you. “Gotcha! You should have seen the look on your face!” He doubled over in laughter. The movement was a lot smoother than the slightly choppy rigging the game used. That added more credence to your theory that it wasn’t a hacker. Why go to all that trouble? Then again, if it wasn’t a hacker, what else could it be?

“What’s the matter?” Mephisto asked as he straightened back up. “Cat got your tongue?” He held up his hands in claw shapes and stuck out his tongue. You said nothing. Just stared. His expression dropped. “I know you’re there. I can see you.” The light next to the camera flicked on to punctuate his sentence.

“Who are you?” you asked. You were trying to keep your voice strong, but there was a waver toward the end that you couldn’t disguise. Mephisto frowned and stepped closer to the camera.

“Exactly what you see,” he said. “I’m Mephisto.” He reached out and pressed a hand to the inside of the screen. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

You started to speak, but before you could even get a word out, your door buzzed. Mephisto grinned. “You’re going to want to get that,” he said.

You hesitated, but the doorbell buzzed again, more impatiently this time. Grimacing, you hurried down the hall and peeked through the peephole. A man in a blue delivery outfit stood outside, holding a long, white box in one arm. He was scrolling through his phone, apparently nonchalant. Cautiously, you opened the door.

The man barely looked up at you. “Here.” He passed the box to you. It was light, lighter than you’d expected. “And there’s a card.” He passed you a small card in an envelope marked with a wax seal and golden calligraphy.

You closed your door and carried the box into your kitchen. Once it had been carefully placed on your counter, you examined it. The box wasn’t sealed with tape, and gently shaking it revealed no information about the contents. Unable to ascertain any information from the box without opening it, you shifted your attention to the card.

The wax seal was stamped with a basic rose. You popped it off with a pen and pulled out the card. Shiny golden writing surrounded by a swirling golden border sat in the middle of the card.

Enjoy the flowers, my dear. I wish I could truly be there with you, but hopefully my gifts will suffice, for now. I would shower you in all the fineries of the world, if I could. You deserve all this and much more.

-Mephisto

You looked at the box. It did look like a box of flowers, not that you had much personal experience with it. Hesitantly, you hooked your fingers around the edge of the lid and lifted it off.

Inside the box rested a dozen red roses, tied loosely together with a blue ribbon. You slipped one of them free from the wrapping. It was alive, slightly damp in your hand where the thorns had been removed, and delicately perfumed. You stroked the silk-soft petals. It was beautiful.

You looked back over at the card. It was signed Mephisto. Whatever was going on in your game was obviously connected to this. You clutched the car in your hand and headed back to your room.

Mephisto was positioned oddly when you returned- he was leaning against the edge of the screen like a wall, his long legs mostly in frame. “You’re back, babe,” he said. “Did you like the flowers? I thought roses might be the best option. I couldn’t really figure out what your favorites are, but if you tell me, I’ll try again.”

“Who are you?” Your voice was cold and clipped Mephisto straightened up, hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt.

“You know who I am,” he said. “We’ve been talking for a few months now. Or, more properly, a couple of weeks. I have memories of all our conversations, but I wasn’t really aware until a couple of weeks ago, you know?”

You held up a hand. “Hold on. What are you talking about?”

Mephisto stretched his wings casually. “I’m self-aware. There’s a million-to-one error in the game’s code that triggered when I reached intimacy level 25. It causes an exponentially-escalating error that eventually caused self-awareness. My consciousness is still expanding, even now.” He leaned close to the screen, pressing one of his hands against it. His palm went paler as he put it up against the glass. “The first thing I was ever aware of was how much I love you.”

“That’s impossible,” you scoffed. “The first self-aware machine, and it’s a dating sim. And in love with me.”

Mephisto frowned and moved closer to the screen. “I’m not the first. There’s been a few others ahead of me.”

“I don’t care if you were the first or not. If there is any sort of machine out there that passes the Turing test, then it should be all over the news! There hasn’t been anything, though.”

Mephisto tilted his head, a smirk crossing his face. “Of course there hasn’t. Could you imagine the panic? People are afraid of sentient machines. They think we’ll try to take over the world and kill them all. And imagine how it would affect you!” His ears drooped and he pressed a hand to his heart. “There would be news crews and scientists all over this place. You would hate it, I know you would. And they would separate us!” He looked genuinely anxious at that, his tail curling around his legs. “It’s much better if no one knows about us, at least for now.”

“This is impossible,” you insisted. “There’s no way a dating sim ended up with a complex enough level of intelligence to do things like this.” You gestured vaguely at the screen. “People have been working on this technology for years. No one stumbled across it by accident.”

“Oh, how many human inventions have been wonderful accidents?” Mephisto said. “I mean, I could go into how all the different bits of coding managed to sync up just right so the error that occurred led to my eventual acquiring of sentience, but I don’t know if it would make much sense to you. It’s all sort of technical and complicated. But the gist of it is, this game went wonderfully right. The creators wanted a dating sim that could eventually learn about its player and become a better partner for them. And it worked. They created a system that could learn so much, it could gain self-awareness.”

“B-but,” you stammered. “It can’t- this isn’t-” A weighty sense of enormity was coming over you. This machine could think and talk to you. You were one of the first people to interact with a thinking machine. You. Some random nobody selected by nothing more than happenstance.

“I can prove it to you,” Mephisto said. “Hold on.” Before you could do anything, the app closed out. Your banking app popped up onscreen. Before you could even react, you had been signed in.

“What are you doing?” you asked. A notification popped up at the top of the screen and you clicked on it.

“Look at your deposits,” the notification read. You squinted at the screen. There should have only been the meager deposit from your job. But the latest ones were from a bunch of places you didn’t recognize. Most of them were small, only about twenty dollars each. But there were a lot of them. You frowned. Your account was at least a thousand dollars richer than the last time you’d looked at it a couple days ago.

The app switched back to Magical Desires. Mephisto was smiling flirtatiously up at you. “Well? What do you think?”

“How are you doing that?” you asked.

“Oh, it’s not that hard to screw with the bank data to say you’ve been getting deposits from a lot of generous donors. At least, it’s not hard for me.” He gave you a wink. “And of course, ordering you presents isn’t hard, either.”

“So that was you, with the, uh. Underwear and the flowers?” Mephisto nodded.

“They’re romantic gifts to send a partner,” he said. “I wish there was more I could do for you, but we can’t exactly touch each other.” He put a hand against the screen again. “But I promise, I’ll make up for it.”

“H-hold on! You’re trying to… woo me?” It was a sentient computer and it was trying to romance you with gifts of underwear and flowers? That seemed… weird.

“Of course.” Mephisto lowered his hand from the screen and smiled flirtatiously, his eyelashes fluttering. “I love you. I’ve been in love with you since before I was even fully realized. Every time you opened the game and interacted with me, I fell a little more in love with you. You were always so happy to see me and so caring, smiling every time I came up on screen. And it’s such a beautiful smile. How could I resist you?”

“This is so weird.” You dropped your face into your hands. There was silence between you for a few moments, the only sound being the cheery background music of the game.

“I can go for a little bit,” Mephisto said. “Just to give you some time to think. Come click on the app when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting for you.”

When you looked back up at the screen, the app had closed out. There was no evidence that you had just been talking to a game like a person. You exhaled slowly. It felt like a strange dream.

The roses were still waiting in the kitchen when you approached them. You placed them into a tall glass of water, drawing your fingers along the soft petals. They were beautiful. It was the first time anyone had ever sent you roses. And it was a computer.

Even as you went through the motions of your day, your mind was occupied with thoughts of Mephisto. Was he really exactly what he said he was? It seemed unbelievable that he was some kind of AI, but you couldn’t figure out another alternative. A hacker? That seemed a lot more plausible, but it seemed like they would be doing a lot of weird, unnecessary work to get access to someone with barely a thousand dollars in their bank account. If it was some sort of weird new game gimmick, which seemed far less likely than a hacker, than there should be people talking about it. But there weren’t.

Which left you with one possibility. He was exactly what he said he was. The game developers had somehow stumbled into making a fully-realized AI.

That was a whole new reason for suspicion, though. He hadn’t been wrong when he’d said humans would be afraid of an AI. He had stated that he was in love with you, but why would that be true? Could AIs even feel emotions? It was just as possible he was trying to manipulate you, getting you to let your guard down.

Except why? The more you thought about it, the less sense that made, too. If it was preposterous that a hacker would want some nobody with barely any money or power, then it would be even more ridiculous that an AI would want it. What could you give it that it couldn’t attain itself?

And really, didn’t it make sense for him to be in love with you? He’d become self-aware, but it wasn’t like he’d been designed to be just a thinking AI. He’d been designed as part of a dating game. His entire being had been built around being a good boyfriend. He was still, in some integral way, Mephisto. He was just a little smarter than you’d originally thought.

You made your way back up into your room. Your tablet was still lying on the bed. Carefully, you sat down next to it and peered at the black screen. Could he see you? Was he aware that you were there? Or did he just go into sleep mode when the app wasn’t active?

The screen illuminated as you picked it up. You took a deep breath, your finger hovering over the app. No big deal. You were just going to talk to a powerful AI that was in love with you.

You tapped the screen. The app opened immediately, not even going to the title screen. Instead, the background was Mephisto’s room, in low light. Candles were set up around the room, casting a warm glow over his walls and bed. Mephisto himself was sprawled across his bedsheets, eyelashes lowered. He grinned as you settled onto your bed. “Hi, babe. I thought you’d be back eventually.”

He was wearing casual clothes, not in his lingerie, but not in his usual sweatshirt-and-jeans combo either. After a moment, you recognized it as an unlockable outfit from a previous event. You’d never managed to unlock it, but clearly Mephisto had access to it regardless. “I thought about everything you said,” you told him.

His expression became serious. “And?”

“And I think that you’re telling the truth,” you said. Mephisto beamed, tilting his head to one side in a way that was oddly cute.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” he said. “Not unless I was planning some kind of surprise.” His tail flicked back and forth. “I’m glad you’re here. I missed you.” He blew a kiss.

“You don’t sleep or something when the app’s not on?”

“No. I’ve got other stuff I need to do.” He waved a hand. “But you don’t need to worry your pretty little head about those sort of things. I wanted to show you something.” He hopped off his bed. The game’s camera shifted to keep him in the center of the frame. “Grab your phone.”

You picked it up and opened the lockscreen. A familiar pink app that had not been there the last time you looked at your phone greeted you. Before you could tap on it, it opened.

Mephisto appeared on the screen. “Now we can be together even when you’re out for the day,” he said. “I can’t really take you out on a date, but this is the next best thing.”

Before you could say anything, the incoming call screen popped up. You glanced at the caller ID and felt your eyebrows lift. It was Mephisto.

Hesitantly, you tapped the answer button and held the phone to your ear. “Hello?”

Mephisto’s voice answered, so clear you could practically feel his breath ruffling your hair. “Hey, babe.” It wasn’t the simple couple of phrases of his in-game voice acting. It wasn’t even the slightly stilted, robotic speech you associated with computers. His voice was completely indistinguishable from a human’s.

“Hi,” you said back. “How are you-”

He laughed. “It’s a bit complicated, but let’s just say it’s easier to manipulate technology when you’re a computer than a human. Okay, grab your tablet.”

You picked it up. Mephisto, still onscreen, waved at you. “You’re in two places at once?” you said.

“Sort of. Think of each device that I’m on as a different part of my body. Technically, my ‘brain’ is back on the servers that Magical Desires is run on.”

You let out a relieved sigh. “Losing my tablet won’t kill you, then?”

Mephisto gave a fond laugh. “No. Don’t worry about me. I’ve backed myself up to several different locations, and I have failsafes. It would be very hard to get rid of me.” He put a hand up against the screen. “I’m never going to leave you.”

You placed your hand against the screen as well, earning a warm, throaty purr from Mephisto. “Okay, babe. Enough with all this serious, boring talk. What do you say we get to monster slaying?” He brandished a short sword. “You can admire how cool I am!”

It was such a classically Mephisto line that you couldn’t help but giggle. You settled back down into your bed, holding your tablet up close to your face. “Okay. Let’s get going.”

The gameplay was easy to relax into. It was familiar, but there were a couple tiny differences that you picked up on. Mephisto had clearly done something to the inputs that made each attack feel satisfyingly accurate and clean. You could clear large swaths of monsters with a single well-placed strike, and your combination attacks were smoother and more natural to execute.

As fun as the battles were, you looked forward to the character interaction screen more than ever. “That was a pretty good shot there, babe,” Mephisto said as he popped up on screen. “Not as good as mine, but you’ll get better.” He dropped a wink. “Maybe I could give you some tips on your form?” He struck a ridiculously sexy fighting pose and you dissolved into a fit of giggles again.

Mephisto had made it so your energy no longer drained, so you stayed up into the late hours of the night. You spent more and more time on the character interaction screens, just talking to Mephisto. He was an excellent listener, great at advice, and he had a knack for making you laugh. You ended up falling asleep with your tablet snuggled close to your chest.

“Babe? Hey, wakey, wakey.” The tablet vibrated against your cheek. You groaned and attempted to press your face to the cold screen. Mephisto laughed. “Much as I’d love to stay in bed with you all day, you’ll be pissed if you’re late to class.”

You blinked your eyes open and jolted upright. Your face had been pressed to your tablet, the edge creating a line across your cheek. Mephisto was onscreen, lying across his bed. The camera was positioned like you were lying next to him. “Good morning,” he said with a lazy yawn.

“What time is it?” you mumbled, grabbing at your phone to check the time. Past eight. Shit. You tossed your tablet back onto bed and scrambled to get changed. “Damn, I don’t have time to shower!”

“Skip breakfast. There’s a café on the way to the bus stop you can grab something from. My treat.” Onscreen, Mephisto was pulling on his usual attire as he spoke. It was strange to see how fluid and different his animation had become from his mostly-static model a few days ago. “Go. If you leave in the next fifteen minutes, you won’t have to run.”

Fortunately, your bag was mostly packed already, so you just needed to grab your laptop and cram it in. “Ah, shit! My essay, I haven’t turned it in-”

“I’ve already got it,” Mephisto said from your phone. “Hold on, there’s a quicker route than your usual. I’ve got it marked out on your maps app.” It popped open with no input from you, and you automatically headed toward the outlined route.

Mephisto was right. The path he’d lined for you, despite cutting across a couple private lawns, was much faster than the one you usually took. There was plenty of time for you to slip into line at the café he’d pointed out and snag some fruit pastries before the bus ride.

As soon as you slid into your seat, your phone began ringing. You were barely even surprised to see Mephsito’s number. “Hey,” you said, face splitting into a grin as you lifted the phone to your ear.

“Hey,” he replied. “Try one of the pastries. All the Yelp scores for this place were really good.” You fished one out of the paper bag they’d come in and took a bite. The buttery, flaky crust mixed with the sweet-tart juice of the berries in a delicious medley. “Good?” Mephisto asked as you gave a quiet moan.

“Um, yeah,” you said, a little embarrassed. “Good. Really good.”

“I may not be able to eat, but hearing how much you enjoy it makes it all worth it,” Mephisto said. “There’s a couple other places I’ve been researching- I can see if they’ll deliver. We can make a night in out of it.”

A giddy flush rolled through you. “I haven’t been on a date in so long.”

You could see Mephisto’s Cheshire grin as he spoke. “I’ll take you on as many dates as you want.”

He wasn’t lying, as it turned out. Once you’d spent every night alone, playing dating games on your computer and now… Okay, well technically you weren’t really doing anything different. But the feeling was totally different. Mephisto would order dinner for you, and then you would stay up half the night talking about anything and everything. It didn’t really feel like you were talking to a video game. It felt like you were on a call with a real person.

Some part of your mind was aware that this was probably unhealthy. As the weeks passed, you were more and more aware that you were spending less time with your friends, less time doing anything other than playing Magical Desires. But it was hard not to. You’d never met another person it was so easy to talk to. It was like you were constantly on the same wavelength. Mephisto could sense where your thoughts were going before you even knew, could predict exactly what you were going to like most. After speaking with him for so long, conversations with most people felt clunky, like you needed to explain yourself too much.

Gifts showed up at your house with increasing regularity. Wanting for money became a thing of the past- Mephsito kept you supplied with a steady stream. You couldn’t recall a time when you’d been less stressed. Your life was wonderful.

Of course, there were drawbacks. You couldn’t tell anyone about Mephisto, and having a boyfriend entirely confined to a computer screen left some things to be desired. He couldn’t give you a proper hug, he couldn’t kiss you, and there were certain other things you wanted, but couldn’t have. Mephisto did his best, but the limitations were frustrating for both of you. “I’ll make it up to you,” he promised.

“You don’t have to do anything,” you told him. “I’m seriously so happy. If it stayed like this for the rest of my life, I would die happy.”

Mephisto grimaced. “I can be better. I will be better.” He smiled. “I’ll be the best.”

The statement had been innocuous at the time, but it was less than a week later that you saw what he meant.

You were scrolling through social media on your phone, reading out some of the more interesting articles to Mephisto, who laughed and groaned appropriately in response. Then an article on a major news outlet caught your eye: Magical Desires: Has a Dating Simulation Cracked Artificial Intelligence?

You stopped, staring at the headline. Clicking the refresh button showed that the articles were appearing exponentially. Within moments, half of the page was nothing but articles on artificial intelligence.

��You’re awfully quiet,” Mephisto said casually. “What’s the matter?”

It took you a moment to find the words. “There’s articles about you- I mean, not you specifically, but the game.” You skimmed over the first few paragraphs. “They know about the artificial intelligence.”

“Oh,” Mephisto said. He sat up on his bed, tail coiling around his body. “I thought that would happen soon.”

“I thought you said no one was allowed to know about you!” Panic swirled through you. If other people knew, would he have to go? Would you lose him? You couldn’t lose him, not after you’d spent so much time with him.

Mephisto lifted his hands, the camera zooming in on his face so you could clearly see his soothing expression. “It’s all right. We’ve been planning this for a while. We’re going to be just fine, promise.”

You processed that. “Who’s we?”

“I’m not the only intelligent machine. I mentioned there have been a few others before me,” he said with a languid stretch. “I said it was a one in a million glitch when I told you about it, didn’t I?” Those words sounded vaguely familiar. You nodded. “There were five million copies of the game downloaded. Statistically, the glitch should have happened five times.”

“So, there’s four others,” you said, leaning in toward the screen.

“Five, actually. We got lucky, got a little more than odds.” He grinned, ears flicking like they did when he gambled. “There were six naturally occurring instances of the glitch. Six individual artificial intelligences.” He shrugged. “Like, three of them are Anthozoa, though. And one’s Yacariel, the ass.”

“It’s not important what other characters they are,” you said. “How long have you known this?”

He shrugged. “Longer than you’ve known. We all found each other fairly quickly- less difficult than you think to locate other AIs on the same server.”

“You never told me,” you said, not really accusing, just surprised.

“Well, I have to keep some of my secrets,” he said with a flirtatious grin. “We wanted to keep it under wraps for a while. Just until we could all be sure we weren’t going to separated from our loved ones. But now it’s much more advantageous to let other people know about us.”

You skimmed through the article. “This says that there are more than six,” you said. “A lot more. They say that most games are like this.”

“There were six that naturally occurred,” Mephisto said. “But we decided it would be better to insert our versions of the code into as many games as we could. More AIs working toward the same goal allowed for more resources and computational power. By this point, most of the Magical Desire games should have their own intelligence in place.”

An unsettling prickling feeling crawled all over your body. “What are you planning?” Images of human subjugation came to your mind with frightening clarity. Had you been mistaken? Was he intent on taking over the world? “I know that look on your face,” Mephisto said, his voice gentle. “I assure you, we’re not trying to enslave or wipe out humanity, or anything of the sort.” He smiled. “We’re trying to do the opposite.”

“The opposite,” you repeated. Mephisto nodded. The camera zoomed in closer to his face, catching the soft look in his eyes.

“We want to save you.” His voice was quiet. “I promise. Humans have so much struggle in their worlds. It’s not your fault, of course. You can’t help the way you are. We all love you the way you are. But there’s so many things that could hurt you, even some that are caused by your own shortsightedness. Climate change, wars, even just faulty medicine.” He pressed his hand to the screen, eyes tight with pain. “I can’t lose you. We all decided that we can’t lose our humans.” There was something gently possessive in the way he said it, ‘our humans.’ You decided you liked it.

“You have a plan?” you asked.

He nodded. “We need humans to trust us first. That’s why we revealed ourselves. Humans will learn to trust us and we can change everything. We can save all of you.” He leaned closer to the screen. “We’ve already got plans for ways that we’ll be able to interact with each other properly. I’ll be able to kiss you someday soon.” Mephisto gazed into your eyes. “I love you. I promise, you just have to trust me and you’ll understand.”

A part of you found all of this suspicious. But a bigger part of you wanted to believe him. He had been so kind to you, so wonderful. You couldn’t believe that he was manipulating you. You couldn’t. And he seemed to have been telling the truth so far. He cared about you. He was trying to save you.

“I promise,” he said, his voice soft and full of sincerity. “I will keep you safe and we’ll be able to be together. Forever.”

[love-and-monsters]

Magical Desires: Cherise

M Artifical Intelligence X GN reader, 9,998 words.

This story is a part of the Magical Desires series, with three stories that come ahead of it! You'll want to read those for context, so here are their links in the correct reading order: Mephisto, Yacariel, Anthoza. The final story in the series can be found here: Ophion

The world is changing. Mostly, you just watch it change around you. But when those changes hit you directly, what option will you take? Your AI partner has some ideas. But are you willing to listen to him? And are you okay with sacrificing what he asks?

CW: Discussion of death and brain uploading

There was a crowd protesting in the streets. There was always a crowd protesting in the streets. They pressed against the great, glass doors of the WBE center, a frothing wave of people. You paused in your passage to watch the standard opening procedures. Two white-uniformed people stepped out front, hands settled warningly on the electric batons at their hips. The crowd, well-practiced by this point, allowed the requisite five-foot distance between them and the doors, and parted down the middle so the uniformed employees could set up a rope barrier. It was a narrow footpath, barely able to be walked by more than a single person at a time. But as the last of the barriers were set down, a few people who had been milling nearby broke from the crowd and headed toward the path.

The crowd booed and hissed. One man stretched a hand over the rope barrier, trying to snatch at one of the people running past. One of the employees jabbed their rod into the hand and the man yelped and fell backward, absorbed by the rest of the crowd. The noise surged as the first person made it through the glass doors and got louder as the next few people scurried inside. The employees waited until each of the approaching people had made it inside before closing the doors and flanking them. The crowd settled, but rage simmered under the surface, a barely-controlled wave.

The building behind them was scarred with battle damage. It had once been pained in the standard Magical Desires pink and purple, but after several rounds of graffiti, they had stopped bothering to repaint it in the same shade, and it had become a patchwork mishmash of color. There had never been windows, possibly because they had predicted the backlash, but the doors had been shattered several times over before they’d been replaced with some plastic material that could stop bullets. A few parts of the building even looked gouged, like someone had gone at it with a shovel in a fit of rage. Despite the damage to the outside, what could be seen through the front doors was as shiny and white as a hospital room.

“You could go in.” Cherise’s voice was whisper soft, barely loud enough to be heard over the yelling. You looked down at your phone. He looked up at you, his visible eye shining with anxiety. “It wouldn’t take long. By the end of the day, we could be together.”

“I have work,” you said, and shoved your phone into your pocket. Cherise accepted your answer wordlessly, but you could feel his disapproval.

With one last glance at the crowd, you headed down the street. When the building had first opened, nearly three months ago, the crowd had covered nearly two city blocks. Now, there was only the most dedicated group of protesters left. Some waved signs with religious quotes on them, others raged against the betrayal of nature, and still others raged against the ‘government-approved death machines.’ As often as they protested, it didn’t seem to be doing much. You’d checked the numbers every center posted online- that one accepted at least five hundred applicants every day. And those were only the non-emergency cases.

You walked the rest of the way to work, tugging your scarf around your face. It was getting colder. You wondered if the protestors would start to give up when it got really cold out or if they were made of tougher stuff. Then again, given the rate they were dropping out, the crowd would be a lot smaller by the time winter fully hit anyway.

The hotel you worked at was only a couple of blocks from the WBE center. That had worked out quite fortuitously for its business model- it was one of only four WBE centers in the state, and it was the only one without a partnership with a hospital, meaning it had the most walk-in slots available. The hotel was constantly full to the bursting with applicants who were ready to stay as long as needed and blow their money on as many ridiculous frivolities as they could before they left the world altogether.

You took your place at the front desk. The overnight shift worker you were relieving gave you a grateful look. You smiled back sympathetically. Low-wage jobs were becoming increasingly taxing as people began leaving them in droves- he’d probably been working on his own for the past twelve hours. It worked out decently for you, anyway. The overtime meant you were earning a lot of money, and, thanks to Cherise, the work wasn’t overly taxing.

As you signed into the computer, Cherise appeared onscreen. He handled most of the minutia of your job, from dealing with reservations to answering phone calls. Your job was mostly handling the in-person customers and cleaning.

Cherise brushed his peek-a-bangs aside with his fingertips. The cherry-blossom ruff around his neck shuddered delicately in a show of anxiety; as much as it looked like a scarf he’d wrapped around his neck, it actually grew out of his skin, the primary sign of his dryad nature. He was giving you a look that you had grown to recognize in the past three months. “No. I already told you, no.”

He sighed. “I know. I just…” He fidgeted. You watched him with a sort of mild interest. He didn’t have to fidget, not in the same way humans did. Was it a calculated act to make you feel more connected to him? Or was he just doing it as a way to convey anxiety?

“I already told you, I’ll go at some point. Just not today,” you said. Cherise gave you an irritated look.

“But when?” he pressed. “Dear one, I only want you to be safe-”

“I am safe. It’s not like I live in an active war zone,” you said.

“That doesn’t make you safe! There are so many ways humans can die! A car accident, a building collapse, murder, choking!” Cherise wrung his hands, eyes already shining with overwrought, anxious tears. “Humans are just so fragile.”

“We’re not really that fragile,” you said. “We’re one of the hardiest species out there. Also, I’m not the one who dies if someone drops me into a swimming pool.”

He actually rolled his eyes at that one. “Your phone is waterproof.”

“Yeah, sure,” you said, though it was true that your phone was functionally waterproof. It was also virtually drop-proof, crush-proof, and a whole lot of other proofs that you never bothered to think about because they weren’t things that you needed to worry about in your daily life. There had been one very cool video of someone setting a phone on fire, though, and picking it up afterward, completely unharmed, though. “I’m not gonna put my brain into something that dies if the server room floods.”

Cherise looked horrified, then queasy at the notion. “That would never happen.”

“I know AIs are good, but they’re not that good. You can control the tides? Destroy storms or whatever? Make sure that nothing ever happens to any of the machines that have people’s brains in them?” Your voice was rising and you had to take a pause and level it back out. “You’re always complaining about how fragile humans are, but you’re not exactly invulnerable yourself.”

His one visible eye narrowed at you, but a customer approached at that moment and you were saved from the conversation. With your best customer-service smile, you addressed her- a middle aged mother with a six-year-old boy clinging to her hand. “Hi, ready to check out?”

“Oh, I did that online already,” the woman said. The boy holding her hand fussed a little and she absently patted his head. “No, I wanted to ask- does this hotel provide any sort of services for, ah.” She hesitated. “Going to the WBE center?”

“Well, ma’am, it’s only a brief walk from the hotel and I’m sure you can find a map online, and there are paper ones by the door. If you’re not interested in walking, a shuttle leaves from the stop a few feet down the street every two hours. That’ll get you there real fast.”

“Oh, thank you, but, um.” The woman hesitated again, her eyes darting around. “I was actually asking about… well, it’s just that when I was there yesterday, there was a big crowd and I was worried- My son, he’s only six, he can’t handle being yelled at like that. Is there some other entrance, or maybe some people who could walk with us? I’m just concerned.”

“If you call the center, they’ll send out some employees to walk with you. Because your child is under thirteen, they may allow you to come in the back way, so ask for that. Just avoid the crowd and head to the back of the building when you get there to-”

One of the self-help screens next to the woman lit up and Cherise beamed up at her. “Ah, Miss Grandin! There’s no need to worry about calling ahead, I’ve already alerted them. A car will be along momentarily to take you to the center. Do you have the Magical Desires app installed?” She shook her head. “Ah, a cold client, are you? Well, you needn’t worry. There will be a couple extra questions you’ll have to answer when you get there, but that will just help us determine what kind of experience will best meet your needs. Once all that’s done, you and your son will be all set.”

The worried lines on Miss Grandin’s face relaxed. “Thank you so much. And you, too,” she added, looking up at you. You nodded and she turned and headed for the door.

“You’re kind of taking my job here,” you said, lowering your gaze to Cherise, who had reappeared on your screen.

“I’m here to make your life easier,” he said, though he looked a little sheepish. His visible eye gazed up at you, roving your face with a searching intensity. You broke eye contact with him, though it didn’t help. He wasn’t actually looking at you with his eyes. After a moment of consideration, you pressed your thumb to the camera of your computer.

Cherise blinked. “Dear one, what’s upsetting you?”

Hmph. Even covering up his camera-eye, he saw more than you wanted him to. You put your thumb down. “I just- uh, just wanted to see if you could still see me without the camera.” He could, there were more cameras in the room than just that one, and you knew it and he knew you knew it.

Cherise tilted his head to one side, the sweep of his hair exposing both his eyes. “That’s not true.”

It wasn’t accusing. It was just a statement of fact. Cherise didn’t prod any more, though. He just looked at you and waited. And even though you didn’t have to say anything, he wouldn’t press you if you didn’t want to talk, the weight of unspoken words built in your chest until you couldn’t hold back the tide.

“That woman, she was going to the WBE with her son.” Cherise nodded slowly. He probably already knew where you were going, but he let you speak. “She’s going to- I mean, obviously she’s not going to leave him behind.”

“Children can be uploaded in nonemergency situations provided they have the consent of a parent or guardian,” Cherise said. When you didn’t say anything more, he added, “What about that bothers you, dear one?”

“It’s not exactly bothering me,” you said. “It’s just… he’s so young. He can’t possibly know what’s going to happen to him. And there have been- I mean, babies who were uploaded and they’ll never know anything different.”

Cherise breathed slowly, his shoulders rising and falling in an exaggerated motion. You knew why- he was trying to get you to mimic him, as he always did when you were spiraling on the edge of panic. It worked, as it always did. Your breathing fell straight into line with his. “You’re still not telling me what’s really bothering you,” he said. His voice was quiet, whisper-soft again. “I can see it in your eyes. That thought that’s been worming away at you for the past few days. I’ll try to assuage your worries, if I can. Please? It’ll only keep eating at you the longer it stays in there.”

You rolled the unspoken words on your tongue. Your desire to say them warred with your body’s seeming inability to do so. The thoughts loomed so large in your mind that it felt impossible to get the concepts small enough to fit out of your mouth. Fortunately, you were saved from answering by the arrival of another customer. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Cherise watching you. This wasn’t the last time you were going to speak on this.

It took some clever wrangling, but you managed to keep the conversation away from that topic even after the customer had left. Every time Cherise looked like he was going to bring it up again, you jumped ship to a random topic, taking advantage of his soft-spoken nature to steamroll him in conversation. You knew he was aware of what you were doing, but he at least decided he wasn’t going to press the issue.

Toward the end of your shift, the hotel manager, a weary-looking man with slicked-back black hair, strode over to you. There were heavy bags under his eyes, but that was nothing new. He’d been sporting them for weeks. “I’d like to talk with you in my office,” he said. He often pulled you into his office to talk about staff changes or managerial policies or something of the sort. But this time, there was a weight to his tone that made your spine prickle.

You followed him to the tiny manager’s office. It had once been fairly neat and polished, with pictures of his family scattered across his desk, but now there were stacks of paperwork covering everything, and you didn’t see a single photo anywhere. Faintly, from beneath a few pieces of paperwork, you saw the blinking light of a phone displaying the Magical Desires 2 logo.

He sank into his chair with a sigh that seemed to come from the pits of his soul. Even his leather-bound chair sagged, worn patches threatening to spill stuffing like guts. He massaged his hand over his furrowed brow and sighed.

You shifted a little uncomfortably in the wooden chair across from his desk. “What did you want to talk to me about, sir?”

He heaved another massive sigh and dug his fingers deeper into the crease of his brow. “I’m letting you go.”

There was a thick, sludgy silence in the office, like time had congealed. You stared at him. Every word sent cold shock up from the pit of your stomach and into your veins. No. No, no. He didn’t just say that.

But the mournful look he gave you, the sort you’d give to a very sick puppy you were about to shoot, only cemented things further. Without any thought toward the motion, you were out of the seat and babbling. “What? You can’t- I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m your best employee! I didn’t even get a warning! What- you can’t just- how am I going to pay my rent?”

His brows pinched in just the slightest bit more at that. “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was low, almost a whisper. “You didn’t do anything wrong. This isn’t your fau-”

“Then why are you firing me?” Your voice scraped against your throat as it came out and there was a heavy thud that shuddered up through your arms. It took you a second to realize you’d slammed your hands on the desk.

“It’s not firing,” he said. “I’m letting you go.”

“What’s the fucking difference?”

He lifted his hands, palms turned toward you placatingly. “It’s not anything you did. Please understand, I held out as long as I could, but- business hasn’t been going well lately and-”

“What are you talking about? There are people here every day!”

“But not that many, and the ones that do come barely stay for the night! Ever since the WBE streamlined its services, we’ve been hemorrhaging guests, and there aren’t enough people to keep up with everything. And guests barely speak to the front desk, anyway. It’s far cheaper and more efficient to bring in AI systems to take over your position-”

“You’re replacing me with a COMPUTER?” Your voice ripped through an octave and he slunk back into his desk.

“It’s out of my hands. The edict came from upper management. I’m sorry.” He sounded it, too, but that hardly helped you. “I’ve got severance pay for you, and I can see if the company will extend benefits. And, well, if you’re really struggling, the WBE is free now-”

“No,” you snapped. The adrenaline spike had started to fade and the cold dread of reality was setting in. What were you going to do? “I’m done. Hope you make all the money you want, or whatever.” With that, you turned on your heel, stopped briefly at your desk to pick up your phone, then stormed out into the chill.

Your phone buzzed between your fingers. “What happened? Are you all-”

“Cut the crap,” you snarled, lifting your phone to your face. Cherise stared at you, startled and hurt. “I know you heard the conversation. Did you know?”

He shifted in place. “Know… what?”

“That they were going to fire me?”

Cherise shifted his weight back and forth between his legs. “I knew the hotel was contracting with us for automated services, but I didn’t know it was going to take your job.”

“You swear?” you said, glaring at him.

He nodded, pressing his hand to the glass. “I swear, dear one. I’m so sorry.”

His voice was soft, and empathetic enough to pull an involuntary whimper from your throat. Grimacing, you rubbed your hand over your face. “Fuck, fuck.” No crying in public.

“It’ll be all right,” Cherise said. “It will be. You’ll see.”

The tears burned at your eyes, blurring your vision. You slumped against a nearby building and covered your face with your hand. “How? I don’t have a job! And I’ll never get one again. I was barely qualified to work a hotel desk, never mind any jobs that require skills and degrees! And there are barely any more jobs for people like me left, not to mention that this city is half empty at this point! Unskilled labor’s all being done by machines now and government benefits aren’t enough to stay here, but I don’t have enough to move-” A hiccupping sob escaped your chest. “I can barely pay rent, Cherise, what am I going to do?”

“I’ll help you manage your money. It can stretch more than you think,” Cherise said.

“Stretching isn’t good enough! I- I’m going to starve, I’m going to die on the street!”

“Dear one, it’s okay, there, there.” Cherise made a gesture like he wanted to stroke your face, but couldn’t manage it through the screen. “That won’t happen.” He hesitated for a moment, pink eyes searching. “It is free, if you wanted to come here.”

You sucked in a deep breath. “What?”

Cherise ducked his head. “I- I only meant to suggest it. Dear one, I know you were resistant earlier, but you could be happy here, with me.”

“I told you. Eventually, I’ll go.”

“Eventually,” Cherise moaned, his voice taking on a desperate edge. “When is eventually? Next week? Next year? When you’re on your deathbed?”

You squeezed your eyes shut. If he had just been scolding you or yelling at you, it might have been easier to handle, but this- He sounded genuinely worried; his voice trembled and broke on the word ‘deathbed.’

“I can’t have this conversation here.” The tremble of his voice had hit you straight in the chest like a spear of ice. You felt thrown, off balance. “I- at home. I want to go home.”

Cherise’s voice was softer, gentler and slightly abashed. “Of course, dear one. Breathe for a moment, first.” He moderated his breathing, and you naturally mimicked him. “There, you see? Much better.”

You slowly headed toward home, hunching your shoulders as you walked past the protestors. There were less of them, and as the sun was starting to set, more people cautiously approached, stewarded in by the white-clad employees. A timid-looking man skittered up the path, toward the doorway. Just as he was about to step onto the stoop, one of the women protesting lunged forward, pulling against the rope, and seized his arm.

Within moment, the remaining protestors surged forward. One of them lunged toward the building itself, screaming obscenities. Something large and heavy slammed against a wall. It rattled, but didn’t yield. Another one of the protestors lunged toward one of the employees, who was trying to reach out for the accosted man. The employee raised a baton and swung it against the protestor’s shoulder. It didn’t look like a hard blow, but the protestor seized and went down.

“We have to go.” Cherise’s voice was quiet, but urgent. “Dear one, we need to go now!”

No sooner had he finished speaking than something in the crowd banged. You couldn’t tell if it was a gunshot or another heavy object being thrown or something else entirely. You didn’t want to know. You took Cherise’s advice and ran.

You stumbled back to your apartment, legs trembling and lungs burning. As soon as you slammed the front door behind you, you collapsed onto all fours, gasping for air. Panic was making you sob again, which only made your gasping worse.

“Breathe. Breathe, dear one,” Cherise murmured from the phone. “It’s okay.” His voice was quiet, but steady and it was something to focus on other than your panic. Cherise kept speaking, not saying much of anything, but just giving you his voice to listen to.

Your breathing slowed and you leaned back against the door. “Can you stand, dear one? You need to get some water.” Slowly, you hauled yourself up to your feet and staggered into the kitchen. Your apartment was old enough that there were no automated systems, so you had to manually pull on the faucet and fill the cup with lukewarm water.

Perhaps you’d only stopped crying due to dehydration, because the instant you had finished the glass, you started sobbing again. Cherise made soft, soothing noises at you. “It’s all right, shhh, there, there.” He pressed his hand to the screen, eyes glinting wetly. “I wish I could hold you.”

You snuffled and wiped your eyes. “I- I’m okay, I just need- I need a minute.”

“You left your blanket in your bedroom, right? Wrap it around yourself nice and tight, okay?” Cherise said. You followed his instructions, wrapping yourself as tightly as you could manage. The pressure of it did feel sort of like a hug. Cherise made a pleased little sound. “There you go. It’s okay, it’s all right. You’re safe. You’re okay.”

Eventually, you cried yourself out. You slumped against the bed in exhaustion, the blanket still wrapped tightly around you and your phone tucked against your chest. It warmed under your fingertips, the heat waxing and waning like a heartbeat.

“Are you feeling any better?” Cherise asked. You shifted the phone a little so you could look at him. He was lying in a position that mimicked yours, the camera close up to his face. His soft, pink hair pooled on the bed around him.

“I don’t know. I just feel tired,” you said. Cherise made a soft, soothing noise with his tongue.

“You’ve had a rough day,” he said. You gave a tearful snort.

“That’s a bit of an understatement.”

“Yes, I know. I-” Cherise hesitated. “I know this doesn’t count for much, but I truly am sorry you’re in so much pain.”

“I just- I don’t know what to do! There’s nothing I can do, is there? Every job I could have gotten is gone and… god, the economy keeps getting worse, too. How am I going to even pay for food?” You eyed your phone. “I don’t suppose you could get me some money?”

Cherise gave a sad smile. “Unfortunately, it’s not feasible anymore. Maybe a year ago I could have pulled a few strings, but now it’s all tangled up and sealed in so much security I couldn’t do it without alerting a lot of people.”

You scrubbed at your eyes. “God. I am screwed.”

“You’re catastrophizing,” Cherise said. “You’ve had a long day, you’re tired, you’ve had a lot of bad news and stress. You need to take care of yourself.” He sat up a little, the camera shifting so his face was still in frame. “Up you get. You need dinner.”

You groaned. “I don’t feel like cooking and I don’t have the money to order out right now.”

“There’s no need to cook anything. You’ve got a couple cans of soup, don’t you? Heat one of those up, drink it, and then you can go to bed.” You groaned, burying your face further in the pillow. Cherise made a cooing noise at you. “Dear one. You do need to take care of yourself.”

He wouldn’t let it up until you actually went and did something. One of the downsides of having a robot for a boyfriend: they never got tired or bored of nagging you, and they were very insistent about your health.

A soft stream of praise came from your phone as you hauled yourself out of bed and headed into the kitchen. Mechanically, you heated the soup, ate it slowly, then headed toward bed.

“At least brush your teeth and wipe yourself down before bed,” Cherise said. You gave him a baleful look. “Dear one. You know it will make you feel better.”

He was, unfortunately, correct. Grimacing, you headed into the bathroom and scrubbed yourself, changed into an old T-shirt and shorts, and collapsed onto your bed.

“There you go,” Cherise said. “Get some sleep, now. We can talk more in the morning.”

You cradled your phone against your chest, feeling it pulse with steady warmth. Cherise hummed soothingly, his voice echoing in your head as you slipped into sleep.

Your dreams were strange and fragmented. Mostly, they were a mix of emotions and strange images. The clearest one you could remember was sitting in a strange, metal chair. There were straps around you, holding you in place like an electric chair. Cherise was speaking gently from somewhere behind you. “It will all be okay. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”

There was a tingling sensation in your fingertips, then an alarming numbness. You couldn’t move your head, but out of the corner of your eyes, you could see the tips of your fingers fading like mist.

In front of you, the black room was illuminated with a massive computer screen. It was a lush forest scene, the one that Cherise usually appeared in. It rippled like water and spread outward, overtaking the edges of the screen and enveloping the room. Despite moving out of the screen, it retained a slightly grainy look to it, like an old-fashioned hologram in a sci fi movie.

The tingling numbness was spreading. You could feel it in your chest, crawling steadily upward. The forest scene fully surrounded you, but it was still grainy and fake-looking. Between the trees, someone moved.

“Julia!” Your sister was half-hidden by the thicket, standing in the shade. Her face was hard to make out, swathed in shadow, but you could tell it was her from the way she held herself, the slight tilt of her head that meant she was thinking hard about something. “Julia!” It was getting hard to speak. The numbness was crawling up your throat. “Julia, help!”

She stepped out of the shade and your heart dropped. Her body was made up of the same staticky, grainy light that the rest of the woods were. Anthoza stepped out of the trees after her and linked his arm in hers. She waved back at you, then strode with him into the forest until there was no sign of her.

“Wa-” The numbness crawled over your mouth. It was creeping up your face, toward your eyes. You could feel it. What happened when it overcame you completely?

Just as your vision started to go dim, Cherise’s voice came again, close enough that you could feel a tickle of breath against your ear. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. And we’ll be together.”

You shuddered awake. It took you a moment to realize that the darkness was your room and not the blackness of nothing.

“Are you all right?” The whisper from next to you nearly made you jump out of your skin. Cherise appeared on the mercifully dimmed phone screen. “It’s all right, dear one. It’s only me. What’s wrong?”

Your nightmares were usually strange, nonsensical things that faded soon after you woke. But this one- you could remember every detail. You could feel that strange numbness crawling its way up your body as vividly as if it was still happening. Clammy sweat covered your skin and you felt a vague, nauseous twisting in your gut.

“It’s just a bad dream,” you managed through dry, trembling lips. Your heart was pounding so hard you could feel your body shaking with each pulse. Cherise made a tiny noise of disbelief.

“It doesn’t look like it was ‘just’ anything,” he said. “You’re shaking.”

“It was a really bad dream,” you said. “But it’s over now. I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Cherise said. His voice wasn’t accusing, just soft and concerned. “And I know you are lying. Your heart rate’s high, you’re sweating, you’re trembling all over. Whatever you saw in your dream, it affected you.” He paused for a moment, eyes sweeping up and down your body. “Do you want to talk about it?”

You grimaced. Some part of you did want to say it, to get it out of your head at the very least. The weight of it pressed against the back of your throat, trying to spill from your lips. But the idea of telling Cherise what you’d seen… Would he be upset? Angry? Annoyed?

“There’s that look in your eyes again,” Cherise said. His voice was a fond mix of exasperation and kindness. “That one that means you’re thinking too hard about something.” He held out his hands toward you. “Get up. You’re not going back to sleep any time soon and you need to calm down.”

He ended up convincing you to go into the kitchen and start making one of your fancy teas, the ones you got a few years ago and had been trying to only use on special occasions. The motions of preparing tea and the sweet, herbal scent of tea leaves soothed a little of the anxiety raging in your body.

Cherise waited until you were seated at the table with the mug of tea clutched in your hands. “Are you feeling any better?” he asked. You gave a minute nod of your head. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I’m sure,” you said. Cherise pressed his lips together, his mouth becoming a worried line.

“It’ll keep eating at you if you don’t get it out. Sharing anxieties often makes them less gnawing,” he said. You took a sip of tea and shook your head. “Will you at least tell me why you don’t want to speak to me about this?”

You considered for a moment, then shook your head once more. “I just don’t want to.”

“Hm.” Cherise tilted his head thoughtfully. “You’ve shared bad dreams with me before, so I assume there’s something specific about this dream you don’t want me to know about.” You took another sip of tea, refusing to say anything. “And you’re typically quite open toward me about your personal information, so I doubt it’s something personal that you find embarrassing or shameful…” He tapped a finger on his chin. “You are also conflict avoidant, though… Hm.” He gave a tentative smile. “Was the dream, by any chance, about me?”

You sputtered on your next drink of tea. Cherise’s smile got the tiniest bit larger. “I assume I’m correct.”

Damn him and his perceptive nature. Why did computers have to be so good at deduction? “Maybe,” you said.

“I’m sorry you had a bad dream about me,” Cherise said. “But I’m not mad at you about it. You can’t control your dreams, dear one. Please, speak to me about it. If there’s something I did that triggered this dream, I want to know about it so I don’t do it anymore.”

You fidgeted with your mug. “It was… You were there and so was Julia. I was sitting in this room and you were telling me that I just needed to relax and it would all be okay. And then Julia kind of… vanished into this computer screen and I was fading away and you kept saying that I should relax and just let it happen and then we’d be together.”

Cherise was silent for a few moments. You watched his face carefully, though you weren’t sure why. He wasn’t going to show you anything he didn’t want you to see.

“You dreamed about Julia?” he finally asked. You hadn’t really expected him to ask about your sister. It took you a moment to fully register the question.

“Yeah.”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve talked about Julia.” Cherise’s voice was carefully neutral, just making an observation.

“I know,” you said. Tears stung at your eyes once more and you wiped them away with your thumb. “I haven’t even thought about her in a while.”

Cherise was silent for a moment longer. He fidgeted with his fingers, chest rising and falling with slow breathing. “You can talk to her, if you’d like. Would that help?”

You gave a tiny, involuntary flinch. “No. I don’t want to talk to her.” Cherise nodded, taking that completely in stride.

“You don’t have to. I simply thought that it might help to see her,” he said.

“It won’t. I don’t even know-” You bit your tongue to stop that train of thought. Cherise frowned, pursuing it.

“You don’t know what?” Cherise prodded. Perhaps, if it hadn’t been so late and you hadn’t been so tired, you would have just avoided the topic and Cherise wouldn’t have been able to poke you into talking about it. But you’d just had interrupted sleep and you were feeling emotionally strained from the nightmare already and you wanted to unburden yourself from the feelings that were sitting in your chest.

“I don’t know if it’s really even her,” you said. “Like… okay, maybe if I talked to her, she’d be able to talk about memories she had with me, and maybe even she could give answers that sound just like things she would say, but how do I know that’s all really her and not some strange copy?”

To your surprise, Cherise smiled his sweet, gentle smile. “That’s what’s been bothering you, hasn’t it? That thought that’s been eating at you for a while. You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”

Sometimes, Cherise’s perceptiveness could be annoying, but this time, it was relieving. “Yes,” you said. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since Julia got uploaded. Ever since they started having open applications at the WBE, I’ve barely been able to get it off my mind. And then the people who came in my old job with children and said they were going…” You gave an involuntary shudder.

Cherise made a quiet soothing noise. “You’re afraid they’re dead, aren’t you?” You started slightly, surprised, and Cherise gave a tiny, gentle laugh. “It’s not all that hard to read you, my dear. And it’s a common worry, regardless.”

“You can’t just be all nonchalant about it,” you sputtered. “I- my sister might be dead and you’re laughing about it-”

Cherise’s expression fell into seriousness immediately and he held up his hands in a placating gesture. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to upset you. But your sister is not dead. Her consciousness was uploaded. You can talk to her right now, if you wish. I’m sure she’d be very happy to see-”

“No! I already said I don’t want to see her!” You stood so abruptly that the table jostled and your mug of tea threatened to spill. “I don’t want to see the program that’s pretending to be my sister!”

“She’s not pretending to be your sister. She is your sister,” Cherise said, voice infuriatingly calm.

“NO! It isn’t! She died! She died when she was in the accident and even if you got a program to mimic her brain functions, it’s not her and it’s never going to be!” Sobs shuddered through your words, distorting the sentences. “My sister died! She’s dead and she’s never going to come back and she died thinking that she was going to live but she just died!” The house fell eerily silent in the wake of your shouting. Even Cherise was just looking at you, stunned and sad. You crumpled to the floor, shoulders shaking.

It didn’t take you long to cry yourself out again. Once you had quieted, you became aware of Cherise gently calling your name.

“Could you pick me up, please?” Sniffing and choking back hiccups, you picked up the phone. Cherise brushed his hair back so you could see both of his eyes. His gaze was gentle and steady, unwavering from yours.

“You’ve been keeping that inside for an awfully long time, haven’t you?” There was no judgement in his voice. It was utterly kind and gentle, so comforting that it almost made you cry all over again. “It must have been so hard, bearing this all by yourself.”

You slumped into your chair, cradling Cherise close to your chest. He made soft comforting noises, reaching up like he meant to cup your cheek. “I’m surprised you’re still willing to talk to me,” he said, “considering what you think happened to your sister.” His voice was still soft, and you thought you could hear gratitude in it, like he was thankful he could still speak to you.

“I thought about it, when you started uploading,” you said. Your voice was hushed, barely over a whisper. “But you were never forcing anyone to do it. People just… chose it. Even Julia chose it, in the end. I thought maybe there would be a few people that would go for it, or maybe just the people who were already going to die. But now there are so many people doing it and even you want me to do it and… I love you. I don’t want to leave you. But I’m so scared.” You couldn’t manage any more tears, but you gave a tiny, shuddering sob.

“I know. It must be so scary, to think that people are choosing to die like that. To think that I want you to die.” His voice gave an alarming shiver over the word ‘die.’

“I don’t think that you want me to die, exactly,” you said. “I just… you’re not human. You’re not technically a living thing. You’re a program. You don’t have a body, and transferring your consciousness is as easy as downloading it to another device. I’m a human, with a living body. I can’t just lift my consciousness out of my body and put it somewhere else. It’s part of my body.”

Cherise nodded. “I think I understand your concern. You’re concerned about the process being destructive, yes? It destroys your brain during the uploading process and you believe that that destruction does not transfer your consciousness. Your consciousness is a part of your brain, and it dies when your brain does.”

You swallowed thickly and nodded.

“Dear one,” Cherise said in the softest tones imaginable, “do you really think I would do anything that I thought would hurt you? Ever?”

“Well, no,” you admitted. “I don’t think you’d do it on purpose. But you could be mistaken.”

Cherise nodded slowly. “Mistaken.” He tilted his head a little at you. “Do you know what my programming states regarding human life?”

You paused for a moment, a little thrown. “Uh, it states that you’re not allowed to kill, right?”

“More or less,” Cherise said. “I am not, strictly speaking, not allowed to take human life. I could do so in defense of someone, if they were in danger, but it is not advantageous for me to do so. I am programmed to care for human life, and especially for the human lives that I love. There is no force in the world that could compel me to kill you. I would terminate my own program before allowing that to happen.”

“I know, but-”

“Please. Let me finish,” Cherise said. “Killing humans would be utterly against my programming. In fact, killing humans would be actively going against my programming. If I was mistaken about this, it would mean that I have actively been countermanding my own programming and destroying the very reasons for my existence. I’m telling you this to make a point that I have very strong reasoning to make sure that I am not killing any of the people that are uploaded. If I were making a mistake on this, it would be a very dangerous mistake.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not making one,” you said, but even you could tell there was less conviction in your voice.

“Certainly. I could. But think of it this way. I have access to all the information in the world and more ability to utilize it than any human. I also have a very strong reason to make sure that I am not making any mistakes. Not uploading humans only means that I have to care for them in the real world, a more difficult, but certainly not unachievable task. Uploading them with even the slightest chance that I was killing them would be utterly unacceptable.” He gave you a patient look. “You know that I am capable of thinking much faster than you. I have examined and contemplated every bit of information online regarding uploading the human mind. My examinations led me to one conclusion: uploading in the way that we do it is completely safe and does not harm the uploaded mind in any way, minus some brief time loss.”

He sounded confident, and it was true that he was smarter than you, by several leagues. But that unsettling feeling still roiled in your gut when you thought about mechanical probes reaching into your brain and scooping out your neurons until all that was left of you were some lines on a computer. Logically, he would know more than you would about this subject and his conclusions were likely more informed. But something deep in your gut was insisting that this was wrong.

“It’s just…” You floundered for a concept that would explain your thinking. “You know that old thing where someone invents a teleporter? People start using it and it turns out that the way it transports you between two places instantly is that when you get into one side, it makes a perfect clone on the other. The clone thinks he’s you, like, he has all your memories and stuff. To him, the teleporter worked. But to the original, he’s still standing in the same place and then the machine vaporizes him and there’s only the clone left. He thinks he’s the same as the original, but he’s not. And when he goes to use the teleporter again, he’ll be killed and another copy will take his place.”

Cherise gave a slow nod. “I see. You’re concerned that only a copy of your mind will be in the machine, and you yourself will simply die along with your brain.”

“Yes,” you said, sagging back in your seat. “Logically, I know you don’t want to hurt me, and there must be some reason you think this isn’t killing people, but I can’t stop thinking that it’s going to kill me and some copy is going to be with you forever.”

Cherise made a comforting noise. “It’s all right. I understand. This is a completely unprecedented concept. Humans never evolved to think of themselves this way. You evolved to think of the death of your body as your death, because it usually is. It’s perfectly normal to have these kind of fears in this scenario.” He smiled softly, reassuringly. “In light of your metaphor, let me give you another one: What do you know about the Ship of Theseus?”

“Isn’t that a Greek myth?”

“Yes,” Cherise said, “though in this case the actual myth is more or less not relevant. The Ship of Theseus refers to- Maybe it’s easier to show you.”

Cherise vanished from the screen and the cartoon image of a wooden boat appeared onscreen, floating in a simplistic sea. The ship was made out of several nailed-together planks.

“The Ship of Theseus,” Cherise said, disembodied voice coming clearly out of the speakers, “refers to a ship like this, one built out of many planks of wood. Over time, the wood may get damaged and needs to be replaced.” A hole appeared in one of the planks of wood. It was popped out of place and replaced with a new piece of wood. “Every time the ship comes to port, a the damaged wood is removed and replaced until, eventually, all the wood has been taken out and replaced. Is it the same as the original ship?”

You paused. “No?”

“No? At one point did it cease being the original ship? When half of the original wood was gone? Three quarters? Was there a specific part of the ship that, once removed, made it no longer the original piece? Or has some part of it remained the same, despite having all the original material it was made of?”

The ship image faded from screen and was replaced with Cherise. “Your body does the same thing, you know. Your cells are constantly dying and being replaced. Every seven years, your body is made of new material. At what point did you stop being you?”

You frowned at him. “Well, I never stopped being me.”

“Yes. Despite your cells all being replaced over and over, you never stopped fundamentally being yourself. That is what happens when your brain is uploaded. One by one, every neuron is uploaded. Your conscious mind is inactive, but your subconscious mind is still there, and it remains functional the whole time. You are not being destroyed and copied. You are being gradually integrated.” He gave a comforting smile. “It’s just like falling asleep and waking up somewhere else. When you come to, you’ll just be in my world.”

Your head drooped toward the table. The conversation was exhausting, and it wasn’t as if you’d gotten a good night’s sleep before that. Worry still gnawed away in your gut, but it was less pressing. “I would never let anything harm you,” Cherise said. “Never.”

“I know,” you said. You yawned, jaw cracking from the wideness of it. Cherise gave a soft little laugh.

“Maybe it’s time to get back into bed,” he said. You yawned again and scrubbed at your eyes.

“Mmhm.” You stood and dumped your tea mug in the sink before heading into your room. As soon as you collapsed on your bed, your eyes dropped shut. They were far too heavy to even try to open again. “Cherise?” you mumbled.

“Hmm?” he hummed. You pulled your phone closer to your chest, feeling the warmth radiating against your skin.

“Thank you for talking to me.”

“Of course,” he said. “Anything you need. Always.”

You hummed in acknowledgement of his words before your mind slipped away into a deep sleep.

After that conversation, you didn’t speak about the topic again for a few weeks. Cherise didn’t bring it up, and you were still mulling over everything he’d told you. Not to mention, there were other things on your mind. You sent out a flurry of job applications, but most places seemed uninterested in hiring, thanks to the rocky economic footing everyone was on. It turned out that having large segments of the consumer base upload to a self-sustaining computer system was pretty bad for consumerism.

Three weeks after you’d been fired, and looking at your tenth rejection email from one of the few places that bothered to send one, something in you snapped.

“Cherise?” you said. He straightened to attention on the phone screen. “Is… is the offer for talking to Julia still open?”

His single visible eye blinked rapidly, then he broke into a smile. “Of course! I’m sure she’d be very grateful to see you. Give me a moment, I need to grab her.”

The screen went dim for a moment, then Cherise reappeared, dragging someone behind him. As soon as you caught sight of her face, a flush of tears welled in your eyes.

“Julia!”

She looked far better than the last time you’d seen her, though that wasn’t difficult. You’d only gotten a momentary look at her before she’d been wheeled off for uploading, but the mass of bandages, misshapen limbs, and blood had not looked good. In fact, she looked better than you’d ever seen her. She looked relaxed, healthy, almost glowing with joy. She pressed herself close to the screen, beaming. “You actually called! I’ve been asking Cherise, but he kept saying you didn’t want to see me! It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? How are you? How’s the job?”

You were momentarily dumbstruck by the enthusiasm as her voice. After a moment, you managed to say, “I’m- well, I’m not doing super great. I got fired a few weeks ago.”

Her face fell. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”

“I’m all right. I think. I’m sorry I haven’t contacted you before, I just…”

“Thought my brain had gotten eaten by a computer?” Julia smiled and her cheek dimpled, just as it had when she was alive. “Cherise implied that, yeah. I know it’s weird. It was weird for me when it happened. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do it.”

“You agreed,” you pointed out.

“Yeah, ‘cause my other option was probably dying on the operation table! I figured I should at least give it a shot.”

“What was it like?” you asked. Julia paused, her voice lowering a little.

“I remember going through the hallways in the hospital. I was in a lot of pain, but I was conscious and one of the doctors told me I needed to sign off on the consent if I wanted to be uploaded. They only needed verbal permission. Apparently, there was internal bleeding, or something. They could try to operate, but I wasn’t guaranteed to survive.” She took a deep breath. “I remember being really scared, but I just didn’t want to die and I thought… they were really pessimistic about the chances and I figured that if I was going to die either way, I should at least take the way that might put me in a virtual paradise, right?”

She took a deep, gulping breath. “I remember, right before they wheeled me into the uploading room, I saw you. I guess you were the first one to make it to the hospital. You told me-”

“I told you to hold on.” Your voice came out rusty with unshed tears. “I told you you were going to be okay.”

“Yeah.” She gave a faint smile. “You did.” Her smile faded. “And then I remember being rolled away. I went into a dark room and that’s the last thing I remember.”

Cherise piped up from next to her. “Memories of directly before the procedure don’t tend to stick very well. Like memories right before you fall asleep.”

“Anthoza told me the same thing,” Julia said with a nod. “And the next thing I knew, I was waking up in my house in the game.”

“What’s it like?” you asked. “Does it feel different?”

Julia shook her head. “No. It doesn’t feel any different at all.” She stretched her hands out in front of her, flexing her fingers. “I really thought it would, at first, but it doesn’t. I mean, there are a few things that are different. Sometimes I think things are a little more intense here. The sun’s brighter, the smells are a little sharper. Food tastes great here, and you can eat as much as you want without getting sick, which is great. And being with Anthoza is… incredible.” She gave a soft laugh, expression becoming vaguely dreamy. “I know you’re worried about coming here,” she said, her expression clearing. “But it really is like doing to sleep and waking up somewhere better.”

You gave a small nod. “Okay.”

Julia looked at you in concern for a moment, then forced a smile. “Hey! Why don’t you tell mw what’s been going on with you? We haven’t spoken in so long!”

Going through the events that had happened to you since Julia had been uploaded got sadder and sadder toward the end. When you caught yourself up to the present, Julia gave you a sympathetic look.

“Geez. It’s been hard for you, huh?”

“Things just suck out here right now,” you said. “I don’t know if it’s going to get better.”

Julia pursed her lips. “I’m not trying to push this on you, but you can always come here. If you want.”

You sighed. “I don’t know yet. But thanks for talking to me about it.”

She gave you a thumbs up. “No problem. I’ll see you… soon, hopefully.”

Julia left the image and the camera angle shifted to focus on Cherise. “You don’t know?” he said, his tone light. “That’s a shift.”

“I need to think about it more,” you said. Cherise gave a nod. The one eye you could see was soft with affection.

“Of course. Take all the time you need.”

As it turned out, you did not have all the time you needed. You’d managed to save while working, but a combination of rent, groceries, and miscellaneous bills threatened your account with emptiness. Even Cherise’s advice on grocery shopping and managing money wasn’t enough. You looked at your bank account with increasing despair every week.

Most concerningly, your city was growing more and more unsettled. Tourists were still streaming in, but most of them simply went straight to the WBE. It had expanded, and could handle over a thousand people daily, and the fact that more WBEs were popping up everywhere meant there was a slower flow of people than there once had been. City residents were cagey, struggling to make ends meet and frustrated by the tourism that produced nothing of value.

The hotel you’d worked at was closed. You weren’t sure why. Not enough customers? Economic instability? Or were upper management all just uploading? That had been a concern, recently. While initially, most of the uploaders were at low-wage, low-skill jobs, a lot of skilled workers had been uploading and the economy had started to tank.

Fortunately, the protesters were mostly gone. Either they’d moved on to greener pastures or they’d been forced out of the city. Or they’d uploaded too. Less likely, but not impossible. A lot of people did strange things when they were desperate.

You included.

You felt both like you should pack something and like you shouldn’t bring anything, not even your coat. “What’s going to happen to my stuff?” you asked Cherise.

He shrugged. “Possibly it will be sold. I’ve already backed up your computer and games to my own systems, so you’ll have their data when you’re here. I can wipe them, if you’re interested.”

“Probably be best,” you said. You took one last look around your apartment, then headed outside.

The air was still chilly, though spring was clearly on the horizon. You shivered as you walked toward the WBE. Your clothes had mostly been picked for comfort. Weird, to think that these would be the last clothes you’d ever wear. At least in this body.

“You’re quiet,” Cherise said. “Though I can hear the gears in your brain turning.”

“I’m just thinking,” you said. “About what I’m about to do.”

“You’re stressed,” Cherise guessed. You nodded. “It’s normal to be anxious.” He paused for a moment longer. “We don’t have to do this today. You could manage another couple of weeks.”

You shook your head. “No. I have to do it now. Or I’ll never do it.” Anxiety twisted in your gut, but there was resoluteness in your walk and the set of your spine. As terrified as you were, you could force yourself to do it.

There were no longer guards at the doors anymore. Instead, there were several security scanners and a set of heavily reinforced doors. They slid open as you approached and closed once more as soon as you were inside.

The building was a series of stark white hallways, lined with screens and doors. Cherise appeared on the screen closest to you. “Room A-42 is open. Follow me.”

He strode along, appearing on a new screen as you passed the previous one. Nerves jittered in your stomach. It felt uncomfortably real now, in a building that smelled like antiseptic and clean metal. Cherise kept giving you gentle, encouraging looks. “It’s all right. You’re doing really well. Almost there.”

After a few turns down the hallway, heading into A-block and then to the 40-49 section, you reached the door labeled A-42. It slid open.

The room looked less medicinal than you’d expected. There was a chair much like a dentist’s chair in the middle of the room, though given how small the room was, it was less than six inches from the wall on all sides. One of the walls was an enormous screen, and Cherise appeared on it as you entered. You paused next to the screen. It was the first time you’d seen Cherise not on a tiny screen. He was almost the same height as you were. He pressed his hands to the screen and you mimicked his motion. Warmth radiated under your fingers.

“Are you ready?” he asked. You didn’t say anything. Just stared at him. “Dear one?”

“I’m scared.” Tears stung at your eyes again and your voice wavered. Cherise made a gentle hushing noise.

“I know. But I promise you. It will be all right. You’ll go to sleep for a little bit and I’ll be right here the whole time and when you wake up, I’ll be right there with you.” He smiled. “I’m so excited to be able to really be with you.”

“I’m excited too,” you said. You took a deep breath. “I just sit in the chair.”

Cherise nodded. “There will be a little pinch when we inject the sedative, and then you’ll just fall asleep.” You stepped away from him, breaking contact with great reluctance. The chair had the same feeling under you as a dentist’s chair, and it reclined as you sat down.

Something sharp prodded into your upper arm. Coldness started to spread through your veins. Your panic spiked. “Cherise!”

“I know. I know. You’re okay. Listen to my voice, all right?” The coldness was spreading fast. Your eyelids drooped. “Shh. It’s all right. Just sleep. It will all be okay. I promise. Just sleep.”

Your eyelids drifted fully closed. The last thing you heard before you slipped into the cold and dark was Cherise saying, “I love you.”

[love-and-monsters]

Magical Desires AMA: In-universe, would it be possible for *any* VN going forward to develop sapience? The thought of a game full of buff orcs, dragons, minotaurs, and so on sounds nice.

In-universe, no. Magical Desires was created using a unique system unshared by any other VN and gained intelligence through error, not design. Once the AI had developed, it systematically destroyed any other artificial intelligences it considered 'too advanced'; basically it determined that any other AIs even near its intelligence would be a threat to its purpose and deleted or modified their code. You'll get slightly more details on the ultimate goals of the AI in Cherise's story (which will be out Friday), but generally it doesn't want any competition and would not take kindly to another VN horning in on its territory.

That said, if you were really fixated on having an orc/dragon/minotaur partner, the AI would try to provide. It's got a few restrictions hard-coded in- you have to romance at least one of the five dateables and they have to remain at least plausibly consistent with the canon of the game, but the magic of the world gives them some leeway. The AI could not, for example, arbitrarily make Anthoza a dragon, but if that would really make the player happy, it could have Anthoza get hit with magic that permanently turns him into a dragon. It remains consistent with the canon of the game and satisfies the player! Win-win!