PrecArIous Love

The year is 2025, I'd lost her in a car accident three years ago. She was the love of my life. The unbearable grief got amplified every day, I lost my job at VirtualMind Inc. and started spending all my time making a replica of her in the form of a robot. Humanity has developed robotic citizens that have passed the Turing test. AI has advanced much faster than anticipated.

Years passed, her replica is ready. She looks perfect, yet doesn't know who I am. She has no memories of my girlfriend. She has her legal freedom rights, so I had to set her free into the city. Now she is some other person living her own life. However, I know that she waits at a bus stop every day. I go to the bus stop every day to see her. I started to admire how closely she acts like my late girlfriend. My obsession made me meet her at the bus stop one day. I introduced myself, we both got to know each other. We became friends, we meet every day at that bus stop. We play with a dog that hangs around the bus stop, our bond started to grow. The dog recognizes and gets excited when she sees us. We started meeting not only at the bus stop but also at the movies and at parks. We started to hold hands while walking and finally fell in love with each other. I loved all the moments with her that I thought will never come back.

I fell in love again, but, with an AI, and the love was real. I don't want to ruin our relationship by saying "You are a robot, we cannot be lovers". One day we were just walking arm in arm, she was happy. She asked, “When will you introduce me to your parents?”. I said, “Society will not accept us. Society will not accept an AI being in love with a human”. She was a little sad and said, “So what? Don't robots have feelings?”. Her mood was spoiled. Later that day, after she boarded her bus, I decided to go and talk to my mother about us. I went to my mother’s house, but when I was about to approach the front door, there was a dog sitting right in front of it. It was the same dog from the bus stop that we used to play with. Surprisingly it did not recognize me, it seemed like it was a robot programmed to guard the door. Was my mother spying on me with the dog? At once, the dog barked at me.

After listening to that distinct high-pitched bark, I was still in a weird sense of surprise, I felt like I got hit on the head and woke up in an instant from my sleep, realizing that it was all a dream, I looked at my girlfriend sleeping beside me, facing the other direction. I cuddled her and said, “Baby, I just had a bad dream”. Worried, she turned and I saw her beautiful robotic face that I'd made.