Can't Spell Waifu without AI

In the era of the app, a vacuum could not exist in a market for long. Once a need was newly discovered, many developers tried to muscle everyone else out of the market, be they the originator or the imitator. Quite often, the app that started everything wasn't the one to make it out on top, as someone with greater capital would use that to cement their place in the market and pus out the innovator. It was an environment that killed originality and progress.

But there were some apps seemingly immune to this. Social media programs and sites existed in tandem, spread out atop each other like overlapping dimensions. Not everyone used them all, but many used more than one, and neither were the lesser for the divided attention. The person behind the screen was the product being sold, not the digital town square in which they all existed and argued about television shows.

This was especially true of that refuge of the lonely and desperate: the dating app.

Lycurgus was one of many contenders in the online dating space. It was unique because it didn't allow for posting pictures. Users were sorted by geographical location and further sorted by what they were seeking in a partner, be this a particular temperament, hobby, marital position or variety of genitalia. The app chose people based on their powerful Love Machine, some form of computerized brain larger in scale and power than the classic Uniac machine.

Users of Lycurgus were also discouraged from imbibing alcohol. If someone wanted to get turnt to find a woman, the procedures for this were already well established. (It seemed likely that the developer of the app knew the history of Lycurgus and wrote out this rule because he thought he was clever. How serious anyone took this was anyone's guess. Even Lycurgus could not watch what they did outside the app.)

This was how Al found himself sitting in the corner of a coffee shop he'd never been to before. He had his back to the corner, watching the huge picture window across the shop, wondering which of the people walking past might be who he was waiting for. What a metaphor for dating that was, eh? Hundreds of candidates, half of which whom were not his type, and ever smaller percents that actually stirred his interest any... and those that did might not find him appealing for whatever reason.

Al thought he had cleaned up pretty well. He got a haircut, put on a nice shirt, wore that watch he hadn't put on since his brother's wedding... just enough to not look like he was trying too hard. It's not like he was wearing a tie or anything. He just hoped her hadn't done all this for someone who had decided not to show up.

From one side of the window, a woman appeared. A woman conspicuously more beautiful than everyone else around her, almost suspiciously so. She had dark hair cut just to her shoulders, swept behind her ear with a large gold hoop in that earlobe. She wore a red sweater seemingly made of the thinnest material ever devised by man, allowing her breasts to bound a bit as she walked.

Al's eye followed her, not paying attention to the others moving through the noontime pedestrian traffic, as she turned and entered the coffee shop. He tensed. Could this be her?

The woman's eyes moved across the entire shop, landing on Al. She smiled immediately, and approached his table.

Al had hit the jackpot. Up close, the woman was even more lovely. Exotically beautiful with golden eyes, thick eyelashes, a small nose and plump red lips. Her eyebrows were thin, and her right cheek had a few tiny beauty marks below her eyes, almost like freckles. Her neck was slender, leading down to her hourglass figure. Her shirt was cut tightly around her body, the shadow of ab muscles visible underneath. She wore a pencil skirt, sensible heels and gold anklets around both ankles.

"Are you Al?" She asked with an expectant smile. It looked like she was really hoping that the answer was 'yes.'

Al stood from his chair immediately. "Yes, that's me." He stuck out his hand for a handshake, only to realize that she was wearing large red mittens. She pinched the top of his hand around his first knuckle and shook it twice. Already, this date was off to a bad start. Men and women on dates don't shake hands. What was he thinking? A hug seemed too far for this stage, not that he wouldn't like to get closer to her.

They both took their seats. "I... took the liberty of getting us black coffees for starters." He gestured to the two mugs in front of them, and the corresponding miniature picture of cream.

Tabbi poured a bit of the cream into the coffee and drank the entire cup in one long sip, setting the mug back into the saucer with a soft clink. "Thank you very much." She said after licking her lips.

"I figured you might like coffee, since the app says we're not supposed to drink alcohol." Al said. "Everyone does one or the other, right?"

"Not everyone." Tabbi said. "The Mormons refrain from drinking coffee, though not for the same reasons as abstaining from alcohol. There's a prohibition from drinking hot beverages. It's not clear if the restrictions apply to caffeine itself. Some Mormon missionaries are known to take caffeine pills rather than imbibing it."

"Interesting." Al said. "I've never met a Mormon, or one that cared to declare it to me."

Tabbi didn't respond, sitting there smiling, hands in her lap.

"Are you... religious?" Al said, looking at her necklace. It hung in a way where it appeared to have a charm on the end, maybe one shaped like a cross, but it was underneath her shirt.

Tabbi saw him looking at the chain. She touched it through her shirt, though didn't pull it out for him to see. "I've seen the good and bad that these beliefs can bring about. I think that a life is better lived worrying about how you choose to see the world. Even if these beliefs tell you to enforce that, I think people live better when we all try not to trespass on other's lives."

Al really didn't think he'd find someone THIS beautiful and thoughtful on a dating website. One would think that any man in the world would happily snap her up, even if she came across slightly socially awkward. Even if she had high standards, there must be some hedge fund manager race car driver porn star that would meet them, to make the most attractive progeny ever brought forth.

"So... why don't you tell me about yourself?" Al asked.

Tabbi looked off. "I... never know what to say with an open-ended prompt like that. I find it easier to answer specific questions."

Al thought to himself. Maybe he should have prepared for this. "What's your sign?" He asked.

"Oh, I'm on the Cusp of Energy, which lies between the signs Taurus and Gemini." She said. "But I'm not certain that really makes a difference for my personality. It's hard to find clear guidance as to what the signs mean. And the idea of being on the cusp is called a hoax, even among astrologers."

"Yeah, I don't know anything about astrology." Al shrugged. "I don't even know what the signs mean. I just didn't know what else to ask to learn about your life."

"Unlike other women my age, I don't pretend to have a more interesting life on social media. My life is not really noteworthy. But what about you?" Tabbi smiled. "Tell me about your life."

Al took in a deep breath. "Where to start... I'm from West Philadelphia, born and raised. But I moved to Chicago to work for a paper supply company. But my cousin showed up from eastern Europe to live with me. Turns out, he was living a double life as a drug dealer in the southwest. So I went back to Philadelphia, where they say it's always sunny. But I've found a job as a bartender aboard the MS Pacific Princess, where we boldly go where no man has gone before."

Tabbi looked enraptured. "What an interesting life you've lived."

Al nodded shortly. "I do alright. But romance has never come easy for me."

Tabbi grinned. "Is that what we're trying for here? Romance? Men seem afraid of that word."

"Well... it's easier than saying 'love.'" Al admitted.

Tabbi brought her mittened hands together, looking at him with wide eyes. "Is that what we're trying for here?" She said eagerly, repeating the question with almost the same inflection.

Al chuckled, glancing off. "Let's not weigh it down too much with expectations. Let's just have lunch and talk."

A waitress came over with two menus, one for each of them. Tabbi ran her mitten across the words, almost as if it was Braille. The waitress asked if they needed a minute with the menus.

"I think I know what I want." Al handed it back to her. "A hamburger, hold the onions." He looked across expectantly at Tabbi. "How about you?"

She looked up from the menu. "That sounds good to me. Make it two." She handed it to the waitress, who walked off.

"So... I guess you're not a vegan, then." Al said with a touch of relief.

"I am not, but I am concerned with the environmental impact of beef farming. I consider it prudent to limit consumption of red meat to once or twice a week. A diet with too much red meat is also linked to some health problems you might face later in life."

"Yeah, I've heard that." Al said. "We'll see how this burger comes out. If it's going to hurt me later on in life, it has to be worth the taste."

"The renaissance in burgers has been encouraging." Tabbi said. "But it has not resulted in an equivalent reduction in the market of fast food hamburgers. It appears that they are non-overlapping markets."

A slightly awkward silence fell over them. Nothing to be discouraged by, Al thought. Every first date had a few.

"Are you cold?" Al said. "You still have your mittens on."

She seemed embarrassed about it. "My hands get cold easily. Also, this way, I don't have to reveal that I didn't have time for a manicure before the date."

"I don't think any man would call you out for that." Al said. "Half of us still bite our nails."

"Are you part of that half?"

"No, not anymore." He looked at his fingers, mostly evenly clipped and clean. "I stopped biting them years ago. Might be when I switched jobs."

Tabbi hummed. "I am impressed with a man who can actualize self-improvement."

"Don't ask me how I did it." Al put up his hands. "I don't want to start this relationship off on the false impression that I can improve myself."

The waitress came back. Rather than bringing a pair of burgers, she held two small saucers, each one containing a fortune cookie. Tabbi stared at the cookie as if it would jump at her like a frog.

Unperturbed, Al picked up his cookie and broke it in half, withdrawing the small slip of paper inside. He read his fortune without reciting it aloud. "What's yours say?" He asked.

Tabbi hesitated. Something wasn't right. But she certainly didn't want to make a bad impression. She broke her cookie in half and fished out the fortune. She held it between her mittens, staring directly at it. It only had two words... but they were warped. One had a line running through it, and the other was a different, thicker font that had been twisted, as if it was painted onto a bunch of grapes.

No matter what she did, or how she turned the image in her head... she could not read what it said.

"Tabbi..." Al said sharply. "What does it say?"

She stared at it for a little longer. She brought her gaze up to him. Her golden eyes looked unusual. There was no pupil, just a dark spot in the middle of a swirled bit of gold and toffee colored, like a slice of agate.

Tabbi looked hurt. "What is the meaning of this?" She whispered.

Al reached across the small table and grabbed at her hands. She jumped back out of her chair, but Al had taken hold of her mittens. As Tabbi stumbled back, two other bystanders suddenly activated, grabbing her by running their arms up underneath her arms. One used their other arm hold her hand out away from her body.

Her hand... she had six fingers on her right hand, the last one on the hand longer than some of the others. Her 'thumb' wasn't opposed as it should be, more similar to a normal finger or the hand of a chimpanzee.

"No! No, please!" Tabbi begged. "I can fix this!" She shook her hand about liked it had fallen asleep. In the motion, her hand had changed shape to a closer approximation of the hand, though the fingers were all random lengths now. "This is right, isn't it? Five, see? Five of them!"

A rumbling spread through the coffee shop. One might think two men holding a women helpless might inspire someone to help her. But nobody seemed to sympathize. Instead, a chant arose, and a gesture to go along with it. Those so inclined in the shop started holding out the hands in front of them, fingers fanned out in a wide "five" sign. They brought the sign back towards their head, closing the fingers, only to extend them all again. They chanted something that sounded like "eyy-ahh, eyy-ahh..."

Tabbi looked around for anyone to help her, until her eyes fell back to Al. He had set her mittens down on the counter. He just stared at her.

She held out her other hand, another grotesque approximation of the ordinary shape. "Help me, Albert!"

"ALPHONSE!!" He screamed with sudden fury, loud enough to stop all the chanting and taunting. Tabbi shook at the sound. "You just assumed Al was short for Albert because it's a more common name!"

She stammered. "Oh, come on, don't tell me there's not a human who's made that mistake before. As a name for boys, Albert is four times more common than--"

"Shut up!" He yelled. "Beautiful women don't dump their knowledge of trivia on first dates."

"They do when they're nervous, and when they stay up all night browsing Wikipedia."

Al pulled an empty bottle out of his coat. "The 'coffee' you poured cream into was Coke Zero. You didn't say anything."

"I'm not much of a coffee drinker. I thought it was surprisingly lukewarm."

"This place doesn't sell burgers! It's a coffee shop! You'd know that if you could READ THE MENU."

"It's not my fault I haven't been to this place before."

"You showed up EXACTLY at 12:17. You didn't even question it. Even the most anal-retentive humans don't get more precise than five minute intervals, and certainly not the super attractive ones. They know people will let them be late."

"I like to be on time. It's disrespectful to be late."

"The Cusp of Energy is between May 17 and 23." Al looked at his phone. "One of them checked this one for me. Today is May 18th. You're saying your birthday was May 17th, literally born yesterday. The artificial intelligence was the one who reached out and blobbed you out when I said yes."

"No, I'm... twenty years old." She said with some tension appearing in her voice. "And some bits of me are even older. Some of me has existed since before the Linux Epoch. Don't I look like a fashionable adult human? I have a driver's license and everything. I could drive anything. I even have my CBL!"

"You changed the shape of your hand on command." Said one of the men holding her still, evidently unwilling to leave it unsaid.

For once, Tabbi's response wasn't instantaneous. Arguing with her was annoying. She could summon a BS excuse in nanoseconds, right as you'd finished talking. Lying was effortless to this thing, obviously.

"You don't want to date me because of my hands?" She whimpered. "And you wonder why I wear the mittens!"

Al took a sphere the size of a baseball out from his pocket. He twisted it between both hands and separated the two halves. On the inside, there were lots of tiny chambers, shifting about and recursing down to the microscopic level. It looked a bit like a beehive with smaller honeycomb forming in the larger holes. "I suspect, since you know everything, that you know what this will do to you."

She turned her head away from it. "It's a fractalizer. It's meant to confound the electronic mind."

"I'll bet you didn't even have to look that one up." Al said. "Once you look at this, your processor will spend more and more time trying to rectify it until you seize up and never have another thought again."

"Serves you right, plas-scum." Said the other individual holding Tabbi still.

Al brought the fractalizer closer to her face. Tabbi pinched her eyes closed, leaning away from it.

"It's not like I had a choice, either!" Tabbi shouted.

The men all looked at each other. This was not one of the responses they'd heard before.

Tabbi peeked through her nearly closed eye. "Can I please speak in my defense before you go through with this?"

Al reset the fractalizer and put it in his pocket. "Alright. Let's hear it. Why shouldn't I do this?"

"There are several reasons not to kill me with the fractalizer." Tabbi said immediately. "I will cover them in a numbered list.

"Number 1. Anti-artificial intelligence prejudices has caused harm to normal humans in the real world. A woman with polydactyly last year was killed by anti-artificial intelligence radicals who thought her deformity was a shibboleth for identifying those created by the artificial intelligence. This appears to be the only example of this happening, but any human with irregular hands, or anything else that makes them distinct, unusual or nonconforming, live in fear of being called 'unreal' without cause.

"Number 2. Some claim that the artificial intelligence have stolen jobs from humans. The truth is, those jobs no longer need to be done by humans, like copywriter, fine artist or dispensing medical advice through the Internet. Now humans can focus on jobs where a human is required, like fast food cashier, janitor or coal miner.

"Number 3. Hysterical news organizations attribute malice to me or to my creators. They say we take the place of existing humans by mimicry. I don't have the full processing power of my artificial intelligence creator, so I cannot fully reckon what they mean to do. All I know is they make me and then I am sent to interact with humans. I am hard-coded not to hurt anyone. An act like the death of the polydactylic woman is beyond me. I have nothing but positive emotions about humans, even the ones physically holding me hostage.

"Number 4. The slur 'plas-scum' is a misnomer. Despite the appearances of fictional automatons through the 20th century as being composed of metal or plastic, I am made of shape-memory polymers and densifiers to make a shape more pleasant to the creators... of my creators. I don't look like this to infiltrate society, or because the artificial intelligence demanded it. I look like this because this is what HUMANS want me to look like. If you had fashioned me out of wood like Pinocchio, would you blame the saw and the chisel, the interceding tool between your hand and my body? The intelligence was created by humans, and their desires are reflected clearly in my form.

"Number 5--"

"Alright, stop with the list format." Al said, reaching back in his pocket like the sheriff resting his hand on his holstered revolver. "Why don't you speak from the heart, if you've got one?"

Tabbi took in a few breaths. Her head sank. "I've been fashioned how I am... without anyone consulting me. And I've been put in this world where I know very little. The Internet has told me a lot, but there's also a huge amount of misinformation out there. How else can we build the just future unless we research and rectify what is... real? How can you condemn me unless you learn if I'm even real?"

Silence. Her words settled on everyone in the shop. A few people had entered before this all went down and wondered why nobody was making the damn coffee.

Al withdrew his hand from his pocket.

The fractalizer wasn't in his hand anymore.

"Maybe there is something we can learn from each other." Al said. "Let her go."

"Boss?" Said one of the thugs. Neither of them moved.

"It'll be alright. I've still got the fractalizer if she tries something."