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?” Hisvoice sharpened. “You’re unleashing Frankenstein’s monster on the world, for anego 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 thisthinguses.” 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.
