Freethinker

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)>Not exactly love at first byte. </em></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)>Simon Rayner doesn't have a lot that's real. His tech job is a hobby to bolster what he gets from Basic. His housing got assigned when he and his roommate lied about their engagement. Even his </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)>body</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)> talks to him through sensor lace and microchips. So when Simon finds part of an android in a recycling pod he's expecting the AI inside to be as artificial as everything else.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)>David is a head at the moment. He's not sure what happened to his body but he's very grateful to Simon for building him a new one. </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)>Grateful</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)> is a relative term of course. David doesn't </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)>feel</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)> emotions but he's learning how to pretend he does. And learning which ones are appropriate in context. And learning that they're a lot more nuanced than he'd predicted.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)>Simon is one pair of googly eyes away from an emotional connection to the dishwasher and he knows it. But when it comes to David his imagination is quickly running away with him. David insists he's a set of animations driven by code but Simon can't square that with the charismatic personality he's falling for. When David's emotional emulators start malfunctioning the two of them will have to decide: What does it </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)>mean</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(12 12 12 1)> to be real?</span></p>