The view from their balcony on the Mandarin stretched for miles over the Atlantic. The azure water approached the bone white shore from the horizon forming hues of blue that Ronie never imagined they’d live to see. An enby from Iowa, Ronie had glued themself to a computer screen the first time they were bullied in high school. Now, Miami braced itself for another day at their feet as the noises of traffic began to reach the top floor of the resort. 

The only way their dead self would recognize them now is through the nervous smoking habit that resurfaced with the final few million lines of code they read of the Rawls Machine. The Rawls Project, the business Aashvi had curated over her adult life, was a facade meant to cover the slow process of gathering data from the world to feed the machine she built all by herself. 

Her true purpose had been to usher in the sentient being that would help humanity save it from itself. There, as the sun rose over Miami, Ronie considered how lucky it was that they had fallen in love together over the past few months.

 It was only now, the morning after pulling an all-nighter to finish reading her code, that Ronie understood just how badly they were needed to complete the project. Writing code was Aashvi’s speciality but she was nearly clueless when it came to moving people to act and think differently. Ronie knew that within the month, the company could begin implementing global changes. Funds disbursed where they were most needed, more users entered by the day, and less people suffered as a result. They had the people’s trust.

Months ago, they put some of the pieces together-- the collected data, the demand for profit, and the mysterious implementation phase for which Aashvi personally recruited Ronie. Was it at the entrepreneur conference years ago that Aashvi had noted Ronie? Or was it upon receiving Ronie’s investment? Ronie had attempted to leverage their funds to achieve proximity to Aashvi. By now, it was clear Ronie was the one who was leveraged.  

Ronie pulled from the last cigarette in the pack and exhaled at the now burgeoning sun. Soon, they would wake Aashvi for the day, if she wasn’t already awake on the king bed in the penthouse suite. It was rare for Ronie to be up before Aashvi but the party the previous night had taken a lot out of Aashvi and Ronie hadn’t finished reading the code until moments before walking out onto the patio. 

Aashvi was handing the power to reach nearly a billion users to Ronie without a second thought. The suggestions from the Rawls Machine needed to be implemented in the minds of the user base which would become the mechanism by which the world might survive the impending apocalypse. 

Ronie had suggested months ago they foster a sense of inclusion among users. They would all become shepherds to a new world and could find camaraderie with their shared goal. The Rawls Project instituted hundreds of meet-ups across the globe. Aashvi earned notoriety as a business mogul and was now in Miami to meet with a group of environmental activists hoping to use the data collected by The Rawls Project to avert climate catastrophe in their beloved city. 

She was the headline grabbing immigrant whose rise to power and celebrity was well-documented, but little was known about her past. If some users joined to gain some of the money earned from their data collection, they stayed when they learned about Aashvi’s desire to change the world. If Aashvi was the engineer of the coming world, then Ronie was her architect. 

  With the last of their cigarettes finished, Ronie moved inside through the sliding door of the balcony. The white interior showed orange as the rising sun entered and Ronie was met with the smell of coffee. After stumbling in at 2 in the morning, she still is up before the sun, Ronie thought to themself.

 Ronie walked past the kitchenette when they saw Aashvi wasn’t there and into the main bedroom. The bed was already made, a habit Ronie had teased Aashvi for in the beginning of the relationship before she disclosed that her mother had taught her to always make the bed in case a raid on their childhood home occurred. 

Ronie peeked into the bathroom and still could not find Aashvi, so they headed back out onto the patio to call her. Phone in hand, Ronie looked over the balcony’s edge and tried to imagine the feeling of tumbling over and plummeting to the ground. The morbid thought made them shiver and they backed off the edge to calm their nerves. Aashvi’s phone went straight to voicemail and Ronie frowned. 

Now a bit worried, Ronie called Morgan, the only other person who Aashvi might have talked to this morning. Ronie was initially wary of Morgan, especially after finding out she had briefly dated Aashvi, but soon learned to trust her with everything relating to the business. She was a one-woman army of productivity and insight and saw why Aashvi kept her around. 

“Hello? Ronie?” Morgan sounded tired and confused on the phone. 

“Hey! I can’t find Aashvi anywhere and I was wondering if she called or texted you this morning?” Ronie wanted to keep the conversation brief in case Aashvi returned from wherever she was hiding. 

“No, I can’t say that she has,” Morgan sounded more alert now and slightly annoyed, “But you do know her meeting is in two hours right?” From hundreds of miles away, Morgan still had Aashvi’s schedule memorized. 

“Yes, I know and that’s why I’m calling you,” Ronie’s voice cracked under the pressure of a missing CEO and the progression of the testosterone treatments. 

“Ok, I’ll try calling her now and update you if she answers. If you find her first, let me know,” and Morgan abruptly ended the call. 

Ronie desperately needed another cigarette but felt that they couldn’t leave until the mystery was solved. They were about to sit in a balcony chair when they heard a scream come from the street far below. Ronie looked and it seemed that a small crowd had gathered near the base of the building. The resort staff filed out of the building and moved people away from the developing scene. From Ronie’s privileged position, they could see a lifeless body the size of an ant sitting in a growing pool of blood. They heard the sirens come and they knew instinctively that they were witnessing the recovery of their lover's body.