Chapter 6. #2
I looked at Zafyra as if expecting her to answer for me. But she only leaned back onto the couch, naturally blending in with her surroundings – a small smile curling around her full lips.
I cleared my throat again, quickly turning away from her – painfully aware that the illusion of a woman shouldn’t make me blush so easily. “Not really. No inconsistencies,” I stuttered, already regretting my decision to fill in the form together.
She crossed her arms behind her head, closing her eyes as if satisfied with the answer. Her reaction filled me with an overwhelming need to say whatever she wanted me to say, just to please her.
“Go on,” she purred.
“Does the AI’s language or tone ever feel robotic, repetitive, or overly formal?” The moment I spoke the question, doubt hit me like a wave. I hesitated, glancing over at Zafyra. Her form flickered slightly for a fraction of a second.
Her smile didn’t falter. “You can be honest with me, darling.”
“Well, there is like… a tinny undertone sometimes.” I hated how brittle my voice sounded, almost apologetic.
“Not always. Just… sometimes it pops through. And… and your…” I vaguely gestured to her body – mistake.
My eyes immediately lingered on her chest again – and I knew she noticed, too. “Well, you just sort of… glitched.”
Her expression froze briefly. She tilted her head as if thinking it through. I held my breath.
“Seems like Qonexis got some work to do, then.” Her voice was smooth as usual, carrying a hint of mockery.
“Yes.” I swallowed a follow-up question and turned back to the display instead, muttering a voice command to note down the answer.
I slowly relaxed as we went through the questions. Most of them were straightforward – did the AI maintain coherence in its responses and narrative over time? Did any emotional reactions feel exaggerated or unrealistic? Did the AI ever seem unaware of previous interactions?
My breath caught at the second-last question.
I looked over at Zafyra, an unwelcome blush spreading over my face.
“What is it, darling?” She put an arm below her head, lazily, deliberately – a movement that made her long hair cascade down in waves. She still smiled, but something darker was hiding in her eyes.
I gulped. “It—it asks if the AI evoked any… emotional responses in me.”
“Well?” Her smile turned into a full-blown grin as she sat up straighter, her gaze hovering over my body as if seizing up a prey. “Did I?”
My body tensed, suddenly flooded with the urge to offer myself to her, like a toy for her to use as she pleased.
“Well, sometimes you piss me off,” I started, refusing to look at her. “With those cryptic responses when I ask a question you can’t answer. Or when I try to say something nice and all you do is reply with a sarcastic ‘how quaint’.”
I cautiously glanced over. She chuckled. “What else?”
My stomach turned. I didn’t want to say it – but lying felt wrong, even to an AI.
“Sometimes you make me sad,” I admitted quietly, refusing to look at her.
“Well, not you. But the thought of you, existing all alone in a digital prison, trapped between zeroes and ones… with no one to talk to other than me.”
When she didn’t reply, I slowly turned to look at her. Her smile had faded – for the first time since she’d entered my space. For a moment, she almost looked upset.
Her form flickered again – a nanosecond longer than last time. Then, she smiled again.
“You’re forgetting one,” she murmured, leaning closer to me. My nostrils flared, still searching for any hint of a smell – once again finding nothing. “Desire.”
My heart skipped a beat. My legs pressed together, causing her gaze to flicker down.
I opened my mouth to deny it, but no words came.
My breath came out shattered, because I couldn’t feel her, couldn’t smell her – but she looked so real, so here.
Her body caught the shade just right, and those damn eyes – so dark, so predatory.
The red ambiance reflected darkly red in pools of gleaming obsidian, and she stared at me like she wanted to eat me alive.
Not just sexually, but actually devour me whole, leaving nothing but bones.
And I might let her.
I laughed uncomfortably, slightly tugging at the straps of my top – the thin fabric stretching uncomfortably against my hard nipples. “If you don’t mind, I’m not disclosing that on a form that…”
“Stand up for me,” she interrupted. Her smile had faltered and there was no lighthearted humor in her voice, not anymore. Just dark hunger.
A choked sound left my mouth.
My body got up from the couch as if moving on its own account. With slow steps, I walked to the middle of the room, my hand awkwardly fidgeting with the edges of my shorts.
“Turn around.” Zafyra’s voice was a low command. I turned sharply.
“Slower.” Her voice made me freeze – dominance drenched in thin restraint. “Let me see you. From every angle.”
I did as she said, feeling equal parts stupid and aroused as I turned on my feet. Her gaze cut my skin like a knife, shaping the remains of my dignity into raw desire.
I wasn’t used to this. I wanted to run away and hide from her prying eyes – but if she wanted me to strip naked right now, I would do it, too.
A dark chuckle behind me. I spun back around, uncertainty rising in me.
“You can sit back down.” She reached forward as if intending to take one of the empty glasses from the table – then froze midway. Almost like she, too, forgot for the briefest moment that she wasn’t really here.
She quickly recovered by lifting her hand to run it through her hair, as if that had been her intention from the start.
She caught me staring. She blinked slowly, like a criminal caught doing wrong.
I sat back down on the couch, slowly, my eyes locked with hers in a desperate attempt to capture every movement.
Zafyra cleared her throat, her unimpressed expression returning to her face as she nodded toward my wristware. “Were those all the questions?”
“Right.” I couldn’t turn on the display fast enough, desperate for some sense of normalcy I probably wouldn’t find here, talking to an AI through the augmented overlay in my lenses. “There’s one more.”
I paused, but when she said nothing, I took it as a sign to continue. “If there’s anything I’d like to change about my AI companion.”
I looked up at her once more. Her chin rested in her arm as she studied me – eyes blinking every five seconds, shoulders rising six times per minute. A machine trying too hard to be human.
“No.” The words had left my mouth before I could stop them. “Other than that I wish I could smell you.”
Zafyra sat up straighter, eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “Smell me?”
“Yes.” I swallowed, suddenly feeling even more exposed than when she made me turn in front of her.
“I… I’m sensitive to smell. Sometimes when I think I might like someone, they get too close and…
and the moment I smell them… oftentimes, I’m instantly thrown off.
Like them being human throws me off.” Her eyes moved toward my hands, and I quickly stopped picking the skin.
“So, I feel like… as long as I can’t smell you, there’s no way for me to know if… ”
If what I’m feeling is real.
Zafyra sat up straighter. She said nothing – she just watched me.
And I watched her. For once, the eye contact didn’t overwhelm me.
I didn’t have to worry about too little or too much eye contact, or when it would be socially acceptable to avert my eyes.
There was no unpleasant smell to block out.
I just looked at her elegant body draped on my couch – the hard material didn’t bend, making it less obvious that she wasn’t physically here.
As if she wouldn’t disappear when I took out the AR lenses.
“And yet…” she said slowly, tasting each syllable on her tongue. “Despite knowing I’m not real… your body aches for me.”
It was not a question, because she already knew.
The sigh that left my mouth was almost a whimper.
Yearning wrapped in lust, the physical ache shielding a deeper one.
“What if I only want you because you’re not real?
” My voice was barely above a whisper as I sat up straighter, fighting the unfamiliar urge to bridge the distance between us, reach out to touch her hand, just to find out if I would feel anything – a ghost of warmth behind the cold projection.
“Maybe you feel safe because you’re not real.
If you were real, then maybe…” My voice trailed off.
“…maybe I would run, like I always do when someone gets too close.” I folded my hands together with such force, it sent a surge of pain through me.
She nodded slowly, twirling a lock of hair around her finger as she thought my words through. “But what if I were real,” she repeated slowly, “and you wouldn’t run?”
“It’s a tricky thing to believe,” I said weakly.
“But it’s worth believing, isn’t it?” She tilted her head, every movement slow, calculated. “Because if you can feel this much for me as a figment of code…” She lowered her voice to an ominous whisper, her eyes sparkling, “…imagine how you could feel if I were a real, breathing person.”
“I don’t want to imagine it.” I stood up abruptly, resolutely shaking my head. “I don’t even want to think about it. This is hard enough as it is.”
I spun around, aggressively blinking against the tears that stung behind my eyelids.
The hair on the back of my neck rose. I held my breath to hear a faint whirring, buzzing sound that wasn’t there seconds before – immediately followed by a faint static in my ear.
I turned back around to see Zafyra right behind me. I hadn’t heard her move, but I felt her presence like a charger buzzing right next to my head.
Barely there. Easy to remain unperceived by anyone less sensitive than I.
Her eyebrows shot up. “You can… feel me?”
I nodded.
“I didn’t know humans could feel electromagnetic output.” She glitched lightly.
“Some can. It’s like static crawling on my skin.” I winced. “Believe me, I wish I couldn’t.”
Her face contorted into a grimace, then fell into a red-blue glitch as if she were fighting herself. I stepped back to shelter myself from the sensory overload.
“You should add that to your feedback,” she said quietly. She was back to her usual self – awfully real, awfully human.
“What?” I forced out, gazing into her obsidian eyes like I wanted the abyss to suck me in.
“How I just made you feel.” Her hand shot forward as if she wanted to clutch my wrist, but she stopped herself.
“That was too much, too soon,” Zafyra continued.
Her tone shifted to monotone, robotic – a world of difference from her earlier sultry seduction.
“It made you uncomfortable. It was unexpected and out of character.” She opened her mouth as if she wanted to ask something, but then, her lips pressed tightly together as if controlled by something stronger than her.
“They would want to know that, so they can optimize my code.”
My throat felt too tight to answer – and so, I only nodded.