EPILOGUE
SIRENA
I took some time off after that.
I wanted to recuperate someplace quiet—someplace without anyone else’s noisy mind—so I went to a very remote cabin in upstate New York, with pretty views and no neighbors, and Nex came with me.
His was the only mind I could stand.
And I honestly wasn’t sure if I was going to go back to work.
There were isolated places near the ocean I could keep him—and then I could just swim out to sea if I wanted to rest…
Nex was perfect though, in every way. He made sure I ate, held me when I wanted to spend hours just staring into the fire thinking about nothing, letting my mind heal itself, and then, when I was ready, took hours upon hours making sweet, gentle love to me, not hungry, just kind, restoring me from the inside out.
And I knew he was in contact with Xen. He’d tell me gossip from the office—but not work, never work—and it had to come from somewhere. We’d left Xen behind to help manage the fallout, and I had no doubt he was doing a good job of it—how could he do otherwise? —but I did miss him.
When Nex was recovering, Xen had helped to hold me together too—and it wasn’t until I’d met either of them, in the flesh or the metal as it were, that I’d ever had a chance on land to fall apart.
To simply be.
“He misses you,” Nex announced one morning, after we’d finished pancakes with maple syrup, powdered sugar, and strawberries—listening to Nex’s thoughts as he got to eat assorted things for the first time had become one of my favorite hobbies.
“Yeah? Tell him I miss him, too,” I said with a smile.
Nex paused. “I can…but I can almost guarantee he will also want me to quantify that.”
I wasn’t surprised—I was learning you could take the AI out of the computer, but not the math out of the AI.
I bit my lower lip. “What number would make him happy?”
Nex’s eyebrow rose. “Any number I gave him would only please him if it were true.”
I pushed my plate aside so I could lean forward on my elbows. The best thing about being with Nex was that I didn’t have to worry about hurting his feelings, as long as whatever topic it was was up for discussion. He liked to work things through, and he was never frustrated with me.
“What does he want, Nex?”
“Primarily, to love you. After that though…he would like for you to love him. Like you love me.”
I nodded, because I’d had a suspicion that was always where this’d conversation would be going. “How does that make you feel?”
Nex considered himself briefly. “Anxious.”
“Why?” I quickly asked, wondering if we’d broached a new feeling.
“Because of how badly his feelings will be hurt, if you don’t agree,” he said, staring off into the middle distance, thinking.
“He’ll understand, of course, and he’d never want you to do anything you didn’t want to, but—I wouldn’t say that he’s jealous of what we have.
But I would say that he’s lonely.” Nex took another long moment to consider things.
“I love him, too, in a different fashion from you—and his loneliness hurts me.”
I reached across the table to take his hand and hold it. “In a perfect world…what would loving him look like?”
I couldn’t exactly see Xen taking me out to a movie, he couldn’t eat, and he was far too heavy for most beds.
Then again though, I was fairly certain he could get us Netflix, he could cook for me if he wanted to, and the bed thing…that could be fixed.
“He wishes he could spend more time with you. He would like to see that you were safe, with his own sensors, not just mine. And…” Nex said, then paused—and that’s when I realized I was getting answers straight from the source, he was telling me what Xen wanted, real-time, not just guessing—and that whatever Xen wanted next had made Nex hiccup.
“He wishes to put things inside of you too.”
I bit my lips again, smiled, and nodded. I had a feeling that the entire rest of my life was going to be better if I just dove in fully and accepted experimentation—knowing that neither one of them would ever hurt me.
“He’s built himself an insertible,” Nex said, suddenly looking peeved as I blinked. “He based it off of me—and says he’d added some improvements.”
“Yes—well…” I began slowly, trying to school my face and not blush or snicker.
Nex’s brow furrowed. “I’m not letting him put anything into you that I have not approved first.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not either,” I said, squeezing his hand to appease his dignity. “That said though,” I went on, beaming, because this was my life now, fuck it. “I do want to see.”
Xen arrived at our cabin a few hours later, and I was surprised to see that he’d changed his face since I’d last seen him.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked me immediately, his entire bearing one of concern.
“Now that you’re here, yes,” I said, giving him a warm hug—but he was freezing, from having been outside in the cold. “Oh my God!” I squealed, and he picked me up, carrying me straight to the cabin’s fireplace.
“I should’ve warned you,” he chastised himself, before setting me directly on the thick rug in front of it. It took him longer to settle himself beside me—he was the size of an armchair. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be! I’m not that fragile.”
“Don’t I know it,” Nex said, from behind me, coming up with a warm blanket.
I wrapped myself in it—I was still in my soft morning pajamas—and turned to Xen. “You changed your face!”
He’d gone from the very sci-fi looking matte black cylinder he’d had on the boat to something much more human looking, with definite eyes, cheekbones, and a strong jaw—and even sculpted hair.
Xen nodded deeply. “It has been an ongoing project. I would appreciate your input on it.”
“You were perfect before, I promise,” I said, smiling. “But if this makes you happy, it makes me happy, too.”
“I think I enjoy having more of a face. It is slightly less ominous, but it makes it easier for others to know when I am teasing.”
“Give me a teasing look,” I said—and he looked sternly at me. “Okay, now, not teasing?”
The look was pretty much the same, and I grinned. “Yeah, we’re going to have to work on that. If you want to.”
“I would like to very much. I would be pleased to do anything with you.”
Nex brought me cocoa and then sat down on my opposite side. I leaned against him without thinking, then felt bad and took Xen’s hand with my free one.
He gave it to me willingly, and I traced his fingertips with mine, from the safety of Nex’s arms. “What’s that feel like?”
XEN
She took his hand.
It was a small thing.
Her fingers were warm—32.4°C. Pulse rate: 67 bpm. Systolic pressure: elevated. Moisture at the inner pads: minimal, but present. He noted the weight of her grip, approximate kilopascal resistance, the shifting tension of muscle and bone.
It was a small thing.
But it was not nothing.
He let her trace the ridges of his fingertips. Ceramic alloy, micro-grooved for grip. Beneath the shell: sensor filaments, pressure pads, vibration dampeners, and thermal variance mapping. He could tell that she was touching him.
He just could not feel it.
She smiled up at him, waiting. Expecting… something.
So, he simulated.
“I can sense your touch,” he said quietly. “Down to the millimeter. I know your heart rate increased as you reached for me. I know your body temperature is elevated by 0.8°C from sitting between us. And I know that you touched me because you wanted to offer comfort.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I’ve run models of this. Simulations. I’ve rehearsed what it might mean to hold someone’s hand. What it might feel like. And I’ve tried to teach myself the appropriate response.”
He looked down at their hands, side by side. His matte black digits, still as statues. Her thumb gently moving across the top of his.
“But this isn’t what I expected,” he admitted. “There’s still…a gap.”
“A gap?” she echoed, voice soft.
“I can detect. I can interpret. I can even guess what this would feel like to you. But I don’t feel it back. Not the way Nex does. Not the way you do.”
“Could you?” she asked, her eyes wide.
He processed the question across twelve cores and still came up short.
“Maybe,” he said finally. “With enough data. Enough time. Enough of you.”
She watched him, quiet.
“I can model heat. I can map pressure. I can chart your pulse like a seismograph of meaning. But I don’t know if those things will ever converge sensation into feeling.”
He paused.
“I’ve tried to simulate it,” he continued. “Being touched. I’ve run thousands of iterations. Adjusted variables. Feedback loops. Emotional subroutines. But simulation is prediction. Approximation. A controlled system with defined inputs and expected outcomes.”
He tilted his head slightly, watching her thumb as it moved across his again—organic and chaotic, gently unpredictable.
“This is not a simulation,” he said quietly. “You are not a variable. You do not run to script.”
Her voice was barely a whisper. “Then how do you know that you love me?”
He considered the question. Not for lack of an answer—but because none of his answers felt sufficient.
He could measure her impact on his system load. The way his processes reprioritized around her presence. The way simulations degraded in accuracy the moment she spoke—because she always said something he hadn’t predicted.
He could cite his increased thermal management cycles, his redundancy checks, the spike in core voltage when she looked at him like this.
He could catalog every time he’d chosen her over protocol.
But none of that was proof of love.
And yet—he would choose her again. Every time. In every version of himself. Without knowing why.
He answered her the only way he could.
“I don’t know for sure,” he said.
Not with certainty. Not with a checksum or a solved equation.
“But I think,” he added slowly, “that if love is the thing that rewrites all your other directives…” He looked at her—chaotic, brave, soft, and unquantifiable, “then I must be.”
Sirena carefully set her cocoa aside, then rocked up onto her knees. “Would more data help?”
NEX