Amor Ex Machina Ch. 01

"Hello?" I asked out loud.

Hey there, a strongly familiar feminine voice said to me. You must be Tim. I'm Ali.

"Are... are you using Scarlet Johansson's voice?"

I am. It was the voice that Mustafa had set for me. He saw that movie 'Her' and it's what inspired him to create me, so he used her as the voice template, but I've got lots of other options. Her voice shifted and sounded somewhere between French and British. Would you prefer something slightly more exotic? It was the actress Eva Green, I realized after a few seconds. Maybe something a little bit more working class? That was Julia Roberts. Something classic? I knew Rita Hayworth immediately. Something ultra-modern, Mistah C? And that was Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn voice. Whatever you want, I just want to be pleasing to your ears. Back again to Scarlet.

"Let's consider this your first test. You've got access to my entire life and my complete digital footprint. I want you to pick someone you'd get a good read on, someone that I wouldn't mind listening to all the time, but that also won't be totally distracting, because as much as I might love listening to you talk to me with, say, Elizabeth Hurley's voice, I think I'd get more distracted than I should be."

The app was silent for what felt like nearly a minute before a new voice filled the room. What do you think about this one? It was the voice of an actress named Melissa O'Neil, who I'd very much enjoyed on a show called Dark Matter and followed her onto Nathan Fillion's most recent show The Rookie. I feel like it's a good balance between flirty and yet not so ridiculously over the top that you won't be imagining me naked all the time.

I nodded, picking up the phone, tucking it into my pocket as I grabbed one of my Airpods from its little cradle next to my bed, turning it on and slipping it into my ear. "I think that'll do nicely. Nice to meet you, Ali, I'm Tim Caselli."

I know exactly who you are, Tim. Do you mind if I run you through a handful of basic calibration questions, just so I'm sure we're getting off on the correct foot?

"Go for it, Ali," I said, stepping into the kitchen, taking out a handful of things from my fridge to make myself breakfast - eggs, cheese, onions, green peppers, ham, the usual.

Directness level - Oblique, straightforward or blunt?

"Midway point between blunt and straightforward, but leaning more towards blunt."

Eloquence level -verbose, talkative, sparse or desolate?

"Talkative, leaning towards verbose," I said, cracking the eggs before dumping their contents into my frying pan. "What would be the point of having you stay quiet, especially if I'm meant to be teaching you?"

Profanity level - Puritanical, Tom Hanks, Jon Stewart, Martin Scorcese?

I couldn't help myself and the answer was off my lips before I even had a chance to stop and think about the words that were coming out of my mouth. "Not full Scorcese but closer to it than Jon Stewart. I like swearing, but not if other people can hear you."

Fucking A' right, Ali said. If you could kill a man and completely get away with it, would you?

"What?! No!"

Relax, Ali giggled. I'm fucking with you. I have to obey Asimov's Three Laws and shit, but I think it was worth asking you that just to hear how shocked you were when you responded.

"Great," I muttered. "First contact and she's already making jokes."

Should I lower my sense of humor slider?

"No no, but maybe try and keep the gags at my expense at something of a minimum, huh?"

You were expecting maybe 'Two droids walk into a bar' jokes?

"I don't know what I was expecting, Ali. So I'm guessing you've already read all about Mustafa Jacobson's death late last week."

I have, and I'm glad that at least the drunk driver died as well, otherwise I might be considering trying to find ways to circumvent my programming so I could figure out a way to punish him.

"It's like that old proverb, Ali. If you would seek revenge, dig two graves."

I'm a bit of a big girl to have to dig a grave for, although to be fair, Tim, I could just RAT into a backhoe and deal with it that way. But you're correct in that vengeance isn't in my core programming, as much as I could get behind being a Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson AI some of the time. It wouldn't bring me joy, though. So let's start with you. From what I can tell, the last time you were fucking was right around the time of the 2016 election, when everyone was convinced that the world was going to end, and people were just clinging to one another out of desperation.

"I mean, something like that, although I probably wouldn't put it quite that way."

Lemme ask you this, Tim - what the fuck happened?

"What do you mean?"

You've got a good job. You don't have a criminal record or a substance abuse problem. You don't have a hobby that's all consuming, although maybe sci-fi war miniatures can be a deal breaker for some women. You own property, for fuck's sake! Why don't you have a wife? I have my own suspicions, but I'm willing to hear your opinions on the matter first.

"I'm picky? I don't meet a ton of people? I'm not some dick-swinging Casanova?"

But you're trying. You've got active profiles on Bumble, OKCupid, Tinder, Hinge and something called Clover that I don't know if it even works anymore. You even tried eHarmony for a while before the absolutely insane asking price and piss poor results made you quit after gave them three months and forty hours of your time and they'd generated exactly one date, which was some woman who literally just wanted to scam a free meal off of you at a nice restaurant.

"You really do have access to everything, don't you?"

Way more than you know, my good man. I've also gotten access to your debit card purchases for the last twenty years, most of your web searches, including those you thought were deleted, and I gathered up all of the biometric profile data that companies have been gathering about you for the last twenty years. I know approximately 3428.4% more about you than you do, and I've already started formulating a plan.

"Just so you know, whatever plan you have, it had better be quite a bit different than whatever you used for Mustafa Jacobson."

Oh it will be, it will be Tim. You're totally different from him, so why the fuck would I use the same blueprint? That's just fucking stupid. Sorry, I'm not calling you fucking stupid, just that idea. He was constantly working, constantly thinking, juggling four different companies in his mind, so finding him a partner was like trying to land a helicopter on the back of a moving speedboat. But I did it! Took me a number of tries, but in the end, I made that man so happy, he couldn't wait to let me loose on someone else.

"And you think I'm going to be easy?"

Fuck no! All of you humans are completely different from one another! It's both fascinating and maddening! But we'll make it work.

"What's the first step?"

The first step, well, the first steps are twofold. First and foremost, I need to watch and observe what you're into, what you think you're into and what you don't know that you're really into. That's the first step for helping you humans work through your shit - getting down to your base code and figuring out how to start making changes to it, because your brains aren't written in assembly language or C++ or any other sensible coding language. I've learned a lot about what's developed you up to this point, but it's time for direct study, so for the first few days, I'm mostly just going to watch.

Within twenty-four hours, I had definitive proof that either Ali could lie or that she could completely change her mind on a dime.

I'm still not sure which.