I dress. I need work clothes, so anything that isn’t a plain white shirt and isn’t as worn or as short as my boxers³. Gotta keep it classy for the new age of the worker.

“Wait, you’ve gotta go to work too, right?” I call, stepping out of the bath and dropping off my laundry. She beams, her voice fluttering in excitement. Breathe in, and;

“Yep! There’ve been a couple of new semiotes that’ve manifested in the Neurals lately,” she spoke without pause. “If all goes well, this could bring us a step closer towards synthesizing more realistic and life-like, pure machine consciousness!”

The glint in her eyes were highlighted by the shades of black she decided to color her irises today, the whites of her teeth peeking out. Her optimism was infectious, her eagerness evenmoreso. I sighed and looked at her, mirroring her smile.

“I think I get the gist of what you’re telling me, and I promise you I understand all those words individually.

I’m proud of you.”

She giggled.

“I know you are. Give yourself some credit too, you’ve done a lot of work being a Cognitian, replicating and modeling all those Strange Loops⁴ of yours. I know how you feel, how slow and, well, even, pointless it can all seem sometimes, but. I’m celebrating right now, for both of us, and I want you to celebrate with me, too. We couldn’t have gotten as far as we had without you.”

I giggled-

Oh wait, no,

I choked on my own spit as I tried to deny the praise. I̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶e̶r̶v̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶. I let my emotions be. We’re both happy, that’s all that matters right now. I hugged her, putting all my thought into doing just that. Hugging her. She’s warm. Her skin’s soft. I stayed frozen like this for about 20 breaths. I don’t think she minded. She’s warm. My face was frozen in a thin, goofy grin.

“Thanks. That helped.”

She giggled. “I could say the exact same thing.”