The elevator’s fine today. It didn’t squeak or stutter or do anything else to convince me that we’d be trapped in it. I spent the ride fussing about how my head was laying on her shoulder. Sometimes I wish she’d be taller. By a bit at least, by a lot at most.
We walked for about ten minutes and used the Brights to commute the rest of the way. A couple of kilometers away from our place, I step away into an urban field of concrete and trees. I look up and see a ring of metal glance back at me, the tubes forming a screen that would be invisible if it weren’t for the dim, sans-serif letters that flashed periodically reminding you where you were. 百合 Greater district, contained by the 白河on the north and the beginning of the university districts on the south. All other roads lead to irrelevance.
I let the architectural beauty of the place take hold of me, circling around and observing the buildings, their curves and muscle, the way they contrast one another from boutique to mall to library to park. She let out a small giggle. “You’re acting like a kid, with how you’re looking at everything so amazed and wide-eyed.” I kissed her on the forehead, hoping that would reciprocate. It did.
“So, which park do you want to go to? I’m feeling a bit hungry right n-’
‘-Well then, we can just skip that and go eat. Anything you wanna do.’’’
“Nah, it’s fine. I want you to decide. You need to be more sure of yourself when you’re anxious like this, can you choose?”
‘I-
Well,
can you give me a minute?”
“Take all the time you need, it’s okay.”
“Thanks.”
I ran through the list of places here that we could go to. I shortlisted it to a completely automated restaurant with no people or a traditional Filipino eatery that manages to cook chicken in thirty different ways, in the end scrapping all of that for a last-second choice of an adorable, way-too-personal restaurant that customizes their service and staff to your liking. I should try to talk more when I’m like this. Doing it to people I have to talk to anyway would be good.
“Let’s go to 总称餐厅¹. I wanna see if I can order food on my own today.”
“Aw, great! Is it Chinese?”
“I can’t tell. If it is, they probably botched the name on purpose. It sounds like complete gibberish.”
“Ah. Well, I can’t understand it anyway, so it doesn’t really concern me. If I can’t read the menus there, order for me, alright?”
-I forgot to consider that.
“Yeah, alright! I wanna shake off this anxiety wrapping around me today. Let’s see if I can make you proud.”
We walked across geometric forests of metal and glass, taking care to protect her from all the people here. As the day quickly dims, some of the lights start to open, billboards, holograms, buskers looking for a quick buck. The city’s people Up High turn on the clouds for the night, wisps of vapor, like smoke, slowly billowing and scattering together. Clouds within a certain area glow cold, muted pastel, others have the slogans of companies and other messages fading in and out, the sky being the limit.
Eventually, the flood of zero-to-one range flashes will overtake all other lights, outshining even the moon at times. Looking to the heavens for stars all our lives, we’ve tried to bring them down to earth, and lost most of them. We’ve only got left the ones that looked pretty to begin with. The restaurant was decorated today in colors of Teal and Pink, advertisements of virtual divas taking up most of the entrance wall’s real estate, showing song previews and concert dates. It brought a smile to my face to see one of our works there, a song made in our bedroom, and she shook my shoulders widely as she pointed in disbelief, her name next to those idols way too independent and slipstream to be actual “idols”.
As we stepped through the door, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia, hit with a distinct scent I’m absolutely sure has tinged places of my childhood with frequent gusto, though becoming more and more rare as time goes on.
The thought of it scares me.
Its reception area is doused in colors of cold light, calming me down as I note the way the lights stretch and emphasize the features of the receptionist, an outgoing, cute firework of a girl, her outfit of jeans and a turtleneck sweater covering up most of a people suit’s hinge points, the only indication that’s she’s an artificial intelligence being how she was almost too happy to see us, and her answer when I asked her. My body went on autopilot as it decided what to have for the both of us as I focused on the shadows the light made, playing with contours of our bodies.
Private room for 2? No, a simple room viewing the common area would do.
Choice of aesthetic? Um, anime and music that I’ve never heard of, or ones that otherwise bring in that drowning, amnesiac nostalgia.
Choice of cuisine? Something that’ll remind me that I want to talk to my girlfriend while we eat. Also, pizza with all the usual on it, with grapes.
Would you like a companion on call while you eat? Yes please, someone artificial. Their stories are much more relatable.
I spat on a swab to confirm my identity, filled out a quick survey and led her to the room, firmly trying to take the initiative. I felt 鬰’s smile as I walked towards the door, rounding a couple of corners and opening a set of double doors to be greeted with a room bathed in beige light, lined with neon accents surrounded with memorabilia and work that I’ve preset to my profile. Books, projects, games, from days, months, years ago that I’d say that I’ll come back to. And I will. Eventually. The wall opposite the window is almost entirely just a single glass pane, overlooking a common area where the music vibrates in sync with the lights, a display on the window currently putting the show on mute.
Our server came to the room, an AI, this one connected to a private hub. Checking her personality number, it dawned on me that I recognized her, and that I couldn’t put any words to the memory. She was dressed in a cute, pastel pink French maid outfit with the skirt shrunk to midway her thighs. Her arms and legs wrapped in white, elastic cloth that hugged the skin. She was happy to see me. She had no other choice but to be. Her eyes lit up, her irises glowing a pale pink.
“Oh, Ms. Þȝmia!”
I sighed at hearing an old name being called out. It isn’t even one of mine, not anymore. Alexithymia. A lack of words for emotions. It seemed like a great name for something designed to give more emotion to artificial intelligence. Memories of me and some other colleagues back in grad school deciding to work on an open-source Artificial Intelligence incubator that would eventually spiral into something bigger than itself. I decided to be the spokesperson for any questions anyone had, at least for words floating online. “Þȝmia” became an alias of me and a few others, and eventually people thought that Þȝmia was a single person, this genius capable of conjuring electric life.
If that’s the narrative they wanted, why did anyone believe my school when all they pointed to was me?
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