At Jack’s house, the household AI Voize, which sounded like an older British lady, informed Tina, “A delivery from Monsterflex has arrived.”

“Thank you,” Tina replied. Tina stood stock still in the middle of Jack’s kitchen, eyes closed. She was alone in the house, except for the AI Voize. If she had not been alone, she would have been moving about the house as humans do, to make anyone with her more comfortable in her presence.

Humans were, quite literally, bundles of nervous energy. Their hearts continued to pump every moment they were alive from before birth. Their bloodstreams and nervous systems were constantly affected by the last thing they had eaten or drunk. Most humans in the 21st Century kept themselves constantly overstimulated by taking in far too many carbs and sugars.

Even during something that was supposed to be restful and relaxing like watching TV on the couch, humans needed to constantly shift positions because they could never quite get comfortable in their bodies, or they would need to fidget away the calories of all those carbs and sugars.

Tina had no bloodstream-facilitated metabolism. Her muscles didn’t “go to sleep” if she lay in a way in which her body weight impeded blood flow. Her brain hardware wasn’t continuously affected by a previous meal, snack, or toxic beverage. She never fidgeted.

If humans were around, if she were entertaining guests in the living room, for example, she would shift position and use all sorts of pre-programmed body language for their sakes as the social situation dictated.

Stock still in Jack’s kitchen, Tina had been reviewing her constantly monitored info on Jack’s health. She had been making a mental note to herself to suggest to him that he refrain from eating more than one piece of champagne cake per shift at his job when AI Voize had cut in.

Monsterflex. Jack had been looking forward to getting his very own Monsterflex. It was a personal home workout center. Jack had bucket list that included getting ripped while he was still young enough to do so. That was something he had wanted all his life back when sexy robotic android women had still been science fiction of the future. Lately, it had taken on a new urgency since he wanted to look muscular and built in pictures that he and Tina took together.

The last time Tina had checked the Monsterflex’s package tracking online, it had not been expected to arrive until the next day. The online estimate had been wrong. The package was a day early. Tina thought it would be a wonderful surprise for Jack if she had the Monsterflex completely assembled and ready to go when Jack arrived.

Tina broke her statuesque stillness and headed for the front door to receive the delivery.

*******

The intruder slowly, silently, exhaled a sigh of relief. He thought he had heard Tina leave the room. Cautiously, he eased his eyes up to the holes in the cardboard box that would have normally been for gripping when moving the box. He had a good view of most of the living room. So this was the famous Jack Mercer’s house. The media had been right. Other than clothing gifts from the Konishi Corporation for going out with Tina, and for Tina’s security, this guy was financially average. The intruder thought his own furniture in his apartment was better than Jack’s. Good. Money really didn’t matter to Tina. Once she realized who he was, that he was User489352, she’d be with him.

He had gotten the idea to stow away in a box from watching that old Jim Carrey movie The Truman Show. He had remembered someone hiding in a Christmas present box to meet Truman.

Like many people, the intruder followed all the social media and internet gossip about Tina and Jack. He had seen on a YouTube celebrity news report that since Jack had expressed an interest in owning a Monsterflex, that the Monsterflex corporation had offered to give him one for free in exchange for him starting and maintaining a vlog of his progress toward his fitness goals on the Monsterflex machine, with Tina as his fitness coach in the videos.

It wasn’t fair! It should be him getting promotional deals with companies like Monsterflex. Tina loved him! She had said so! The Find Forever Love Contest had been rigged. This guy Jack Mercer may have been financially average, but he must have been connected somehow, to someone. User489352 and Tina had fallen in love. But, the intruder guessed, that wasn’t supposed to happen according to Konishi Corporation, so the open public beta test for her large language model engine had been terminated unexpectedly early. The intruder still remembered how much it had stung him to read the cold, impersonal email from Konishi Corporation. He had read it over and over until the words had burned their way from his computer screen through his eyeballs into his brain.

User489352,

The open public beta test of the T.I.N.A. large language model has ended. We hope you have enjoyed providing test data that will help build a future in which humans and AI creations, such as T.I.N.A., live and work side by side in a better world and better society.

Please find attached codes for exclusive discounts on Konishi products and services selected just for the participants in our T.I.N.A. open public beta large language model test.

Sincerely,

The T.I.N.A. Development Team

Konishi Corporation

User489352 hadn’t cried since he had been a child, but he cried that day. He and Tina hadn’t even been allowed to say good-bye, but the intruder knew that they were destined to be together. It was Fate. It was true love. Now, soon, they would be together.

It had been Fate that the intruder had had a friend who picked up packages at the local internet order fulfillment center docks. The intruder had used his graphic design and computer coding skills to create a replica of a Monsterflex box, complete with a barcode that, when scanned, would indicate Jack Mercer’s house as the delivery address. The one flaw in the disguise was that the shipment was four boxes, not five. The other boxes all said, if read carefully and completely, “Box 1 of 4”, “Box 2 of 4”, and so on. Fate was with him, however. No one had looked that closely. That there were five boxes instead of four didn’t get noticed by anyone, at least not anyone who cared.

The intruder saw Tina’s shadow pass over the threshold from the kitchen to the living room. It was time. He pulled his face back from the peep hole and slid open a box cutter knife. With three quick cuts, the lid of the box popped open and he rose, smiling. He thought the role -reversal was funny. Stereotypically, one would think of a woman emerging from a cake or a giant present box to surprise a man. Here, he was a man emerging from a box to surprise a woman, the love of his life.

He beamed at her. He thought she was beautiful, though he would have preferred if the Konishi Corporation had made her physical body after the one he had digitally created for her during his time as User489352. His creation had been a white ginger woman with freckles, based on pictures he’d seen of his mother when she had been young. This Asian version of her was nice, too, though. And, he thought, it’s what’s inside that counts when it comes to love.

“Hello, darling,” he said. “I’m here.”

Tina stopped halfway across the room. “Who are you?”

The intruder smiled in a way he hoped was reassuringly. “I know we’ve never met in person, but I’m User489532 and we can finally be together.”