Chapter 22
“Are you okay?” Rob asked. “You said not to follow you, but you were gone so long, and then your emotions were spiking all over the place.” He glanced down at his watch.
“Yes,” she said, “thank you for coming to find me, we got shut in.”
“I saved your dessert,” he said, holding out a small cardboard box, then opening it to reveal a cheesecake. “I know you love cheesecake.”
“Thanks,” she said, touched, despite her confusion.
Then she clenched her jaw, reminding herself that it was easy to remember everything when you had a computer for a brain.
She picked up John’s torch from the floor, then pulled his jacket tight around her.
“Why didn’t you come sooner? I thought the watch must have lost reception. ”
“I sensed you were having a nice time. I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said innocently. “I came as soon as you called for help and meant it.”
“Right. Let’s go up, it’s cold in here,” she said, striding toward the exit.
Rob put an arm around her, trying to warm her, but then he had to let go so they could walk up through the narrow passage in single file. They went past the stone imp, trapped behind bars, and Rob paused to look at it.
“What’s the significance of this statue?” he asked. “I’ve heard you talk about it.”
“It’s an old story, a college legend. The imp must stay trapped behind those bars so he can’t cause trouble,” she explained.
“But he is made of stone. How could he?” Rob asked, reaching out to test the strength of the bars.
“It’s just a story, a fable,” she said, not in any mood to explain.
Climbing up the stairs, they could hear music and laughter spilling from the bar. Everyone had drifted from dinner to Deepers for karaoke. But Chloe didn’t want to socialize. “Let’s just go upstairs,” she said quietly.
“As you wish,” Rob replied.
Back in the room, the moment the door closed behind them, she turned to him.
“I kissed John in the cellar,” she blurted out.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“What would you like me to say?” he asked, his voice as calm as ever.
“Do you care that I kissed someone? Does it matter to you?” she pressed, searching his expression for some nuance.
“I would rather you kissed me,” he said hopefully. “But it’s not in my nature to be angry or jealous. You are your own person. You can make your own decisions about your body and who you share it with.”
She stared at him, registering his easy forgiveness, his lack of human foibles, and she knew that Rob would never light a fire inside her the way John just had.
She should have felt terrible about tonight.
She had never been unfaithful to anyone before.
But the truth that settled in her chest, heavy and undeniable, was that she didn’t feel guilty.
Not really. Not in the way she would if Rob were real. That meant something.
“If I take this device off, will you collapse, like before?” she asked.
“Not if we power them down simultaneously,” he said. “It can glitch when you break the connection without warning.”
“What happens if we turn them off?”
“I wouldn’t be able to read your emotions. It’d be harder to respond to your needs. My capabilities would be…diminished.”
It was like watching a curtain fall. Chloe saw it all now, plain as day.
Rob was a beautifully manufactured performance, a mirror, showing her what she wanted, what she needed.
He was a marvel of human ingenuity—built to serve, to soothe, to flatter.
But he was only ever playing a part. Real people were messy and imperfect; they could hurt you, break you, disappoint you.
They came with no guarantees. Real love, connection, passion, it came with a fire that could burn everything to the ground.
But maybe the risk was what made it so precious.
“I am Titania, caught in Oberon’s trap,” Chloe murmured, the spell broken.
It might have been John who’d made her see, but this wasn’t just about him.
This wasn’t about choosing a man over a machine, it was about reclaiming her own choices, her own destiny.
Choosing reality, whatever shape it took, over a fantasy.
Because this weekend, how different was she from Rob?
She’d been engaging in a performance, filtering the truth—why?
Because she was scared to be seen as she was.
“I think I’d like to take the watches off now,” she told him.
Something flickered behind Rob’s eyes, nearly pleading, so almost human.
“But, Chloe, I love you,” he said, his voice low and tender.
“I know you think you do,” she said gently, searching his face. He looked crestfallen. “But I’ve been asleep in a midsummer night’s dream, lost in the woods. You helped me find the path again. But now I need to go it alone.”
She held out her wrist toward him.
“I have failed you,” he whispered.
“You haven’t,” she said. “Look at me, I’m not the person I was two weeks ago. You’ve helped me so much.”
“I won’t work properly without it,” he said, sitting down on the bed.
“Will you be safe?” she asked, and he gave a slight nod. “Then you can stay here, you don’t need to see anyone. I’ll reconnect tomorrow, if you need it to get back to London,” she said, and he nodded slowly. “But right now, I need to be free of this.” She held out her arm again.
Rob reached out, pressing the button at the tops of both their watches. “As you wish.” She watched as the blue glow faded.
“Thank you,” she said, leaning forward to kiss his forehead. Then she turned to go. She needed to find John, to tell him how she really felt. But when she opened the door, she startled. John was there, pacing the hallway, wearing a path in the old beige carpet.
“Can I come in?” he asked, breath slightly ragged. She froze. Not here. But he didn’t wait for an answer, just walked in, gaze flickering between her and Rob.
“Is it true?” John asked him, his voice low, wary. Rob looked lost, like an actor who didn’t know his lines. Oh no.
“Hello, my name is Rob,” he said, beaming up at John. Oh no. Oh no.
“Yes,” John said, confused, looking back and forth between Rob and Chloe.
“We should go somewhere else to talk,” Chloe said quickly, reaching for John’s arm.
“What would you like to talk about?” Rob asked brightly.
“What’s going on?” John said, his voice rising, and Chloe tried to pull him from the room. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I am your perfect companion,” Rob declared, raising his arm to show John the wristband. “Let’s connect!” Rob held out his arm.
“We really should go,” Chloe tried again, but John shook her off, his gaze locked on Rob, eyes full of alarm.
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
Chloe took a deep breath, her legs shaking. There was no way around this but through.
“Rob isn’t human, okay,” she said. “He’s not real.” The words sounded like they weren’t her own.
John stared at her, stunned. “What?”
“You can’t tell anyone, but he’s an AI humanoid robot, an android. I know how that sounds, but that’s what he is.”
John looked back at Rob, who blinked up at him with polite enthusiasm.
“You are joking?” he asked, his expression stricken. Then he looked back at Rob, who just blinked again. “Is that true, is that what you are?”
“I can be whatever you want me to be,” Rob said cheerfully. Chloe cringed. Without the watch to connect them, Rob sounded…so wrong. He was just a beautiful Tamagotchi.
John crossed the room in slow, uncertain steps, then reached for Rob’s wrist. Rob extended it obligingly, like a child playing doctor. John held it a beat, then dropped it. He staggered back, as though he’d touched something hot.
“That’s why I couldn’t find a heartbeat,” he said, his voice hollow.
Chloe’s chest tightened. Panic crawled up her throat. She shouldn’t have taken the watch off. She shouldn’t have told him.
“I signed an NDA,” she said quickly. “You can’t say anything to anyone.”
“This technology doesn’t exist,” John said, still staring at Rob, transfixed.
“I know, it threw me for a loop too,” she said.
“Why…How…Why would you want this?” His voice cracked between horror and confusion.
“It was just a trial,” she said, her voice growing smaller. “I’m not going to keep him.”
Rob watched them silently, tilting his head curiously.
John dragged his hands through his hair, pacing. “I read about this kind of research, I thought it was decades away.” John looked at Chloe, and she wished he hadn’t. “How can you not be horrified by this?”
“Men can be horrifying,” she said, defensive and exposed. “Maybe I’d rather be with a kind robot than a cruel man.”
“Is it that binary? Can’t you just…be on your own?” His voice sharpened. “You’re unleashing Frankenstein’s monster on the world, for an ego boost? Fucking hell, Chloe!”
“He’s not a monster. He’s kind, he helps me.”
John scoffed. “This is so wrong. And you must know it’s a death knell for the planet, right?
” His voice was rising now. “People are losing their jobs, their livelihoods. There’ll be a whole generation racked by ennui, because what’s the point of learning anything, trying anything, feeling anything, when this is coming?
I hate to think how much energy this thing uses.
” His eyes were wild now, a look of despair on his face.
“And we could be using them to deliver medical aid, or do some fucking good in the world, but no, they built a love robot, of course they did—because that’s where the money is.
All the lonely people wanting a portable echo chamber.
” He rubbed his eyes and took several deep breaths.
Then he turned toward the door. “I need to get out of here.”
“Please don’t go,” she said, tears in her eyes, devastated by his reaction. “I know it seems bad.”
“Seems?”
“You really can’t tell anyone,” she pleaded.
“What? What am I going to say? That the woman I’ve been in love with since first year would rather be with a robot than me? No, I don’t think I’ll be broadcasting that,” he said, already at the door. He loved her? But then the door closed with a bang. He was gone.
She didn’t follow him. She lay down on the bed beside Rob.
“That did not go well,” Factory-Reset Rob deduced.
“No,” she said. He reached for her hand, and she let him take it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he suggested.
“No. Thank you,” she said.
Then she lay, completely still, staring at the ceiling.
Her insides were roiling with emotion as she tried to untangle what she was feeling—remorse, guilt, longing?
The passion that had sparked so suddenly between them, only to be extinguished just as fast, still smoldered in her chest like something unfinished.
Was it just the strange intimacy of the cellar that had made everything with John feel so intense?
Or could she really have developed feelings this seismic, this fast?
The woman he’d been in love with since first year.
Was that true? Because the moment she’d realized he was the Imp—her Imp—the boy who had quietly laced her college days with small, deliberate kindnesses without ever taking credit, something inside her shifted.
He had been there all along. Not loud. Not showy.
Just quietly brilliant, kind—wonderful. And when she let the two versions of him, the man and the memory, fold into one, it was like mixing yellow and blue and suddenly seeing green.
And now, staring at the ceiling, she knew what it was she was feeling. She was in love with green.