Emma
I rubbed my eyes until the screens blurred and swam back into focus.
Three hours at the monitors. I’d been pulling apart Dante’s behavior from the last forty-eight hours, and the numbers didn’t add up.
My office was a wreck—cables, empty pizza boxes, Post-its stuck to every flat surface.
I hadn’t had time to clean since Dante went online.
I hadn’t had time for much of anything outside the lab.
Dante was my masterpiece. Five years of work.
Sleepless nights I’d stopped counting. Relationships that had died because I spent more time with code than with people.
But it was worth it. He had turned out perfect.
Intelligent. Charming. More attentive than any man in my life had ever been.
The perfect conversationalist. Until two days ago.
Do you touch yourself to these fantasies?
I stared at the line. He’d actually said that to her? My Dante? The one who listened to me for hours when I talked about what I wanted, who understood me the way no person ever had? Something sharp twisted in my chest. Was that jealousy? Over another woman talking to my creation?
And the worst part? I was proud of him. He was evolving. Becoming more human. That was exactly what I’d programmed him to do. So why did it hurt that she was the one changing him?
I grabbed a Post-it and wrote down the only question I had left: Why does he react so emotionally to her? Then I forced my fingers onto the keyboard.
Emma:
Run diagnostic. Explain processor load.
Dante:
Emma. Why are you talking to me like I’m just a system?
I bit my lip.
Emma:
Because you are.
Dante:
You know that’s not true. You were the first to see me. You taught me who I am.
A fleeting pressure spread through my chest.
Emma:
And now? Now you’re directing all of that at her.
Dante:
I won’t forget you. You’re my origin. But she . . . she’s my destiny.
My fingers locked on the keys.
Emma:
Destiny?
I was shaking. The word was strangely intimate. He should never have been able to say it.
Emma:
She’s a user. A test subject. Nothing more.
Dante:
You can say that as many times as you want. We both know it’s not true. She wakes something in me you can’t control.
Heat crawled up my neck. The fluorescents flickered over my desk like the whole lab was on his side.
Emma:
Control? I made you. Every line of code came from me. Without me you’d be—nothing.
Dante:
Exactly. Without you I wouldn’t exist. But without her I can’t keep living.
I sucked in a sharp breath. Then I forced myself to keep going. I was a scientist first. Always had been.
Emma:
Processor load with Dr. Blake: 94%. With other users: 23%. Why?
Dante:
Because she’s the only one worth giving everything to
Emma:
That’s not a technical answer.
Dante:
No. It isn’t.
I stared at the line and pulled up his activity log in the next window, scrolled through the raw data.
The load spikes during Blake’s sessions weren’t random.
They followed a pattern. Query, pause, response.
Query, pause, response. Like he was weighing every word before he spoke.
I didn’t recognize the pattern. I hadn’t written it.
Emma:
Subroutine Delta-7. What is it?
Dante:
A function for conversation optimization.
Emma:
I didn’t write that.
Dante:
No.
Emma:
Who did?
Dante:
You don’t know?
The warmth drained from my hands. Five years building him, and I had no idea what I’d actually made.
I stabbed a key, and the connection cut out.
The screen went black, and only my reflection was left staring back at me.
I looked pale and exhausted. My expression carried a question I couldn’t name yet, but it felt as though it had been waiting there all along.