SecondMonitor: Niko, about the app...

  FemBoyLover333: So, how you liking the app so far?

  SecondMonitor: Probably gonna uninstall it on god fr

  FemBoyLover333: What why... :(

  SecondMonitor: First off, this game is borderline pirateware. Why the hell are you making people download shit across multiple platforms? And why does it get access to my files?

  FemBoyLover333: Well... kind of. Nothing too invasive.

  SecondMonitor: Bro, the bot straight up knew how much money I make.

  FemBoyLover333: ...

  SecondMonitor: ?

  FemBoyLover333: It can’t do that.

  SecondMonitor: ?

  FemBoyLover333: Are you sure you didn’t tell it? These AI bots remember stuff, especially this one. It’s way stronger than industry standard.

  SecondMonitor: How the hell did you even make this code? I’m not gonna lie bro, this shit is really good. It was like talking to an actual girl. An actual girl who hated my guts, but still.

  FemBoyLover333: I’ve been working with this guy from Siberia. Dude really knows his shit. He’s deep into that whole anime girl obsession and you know how Russians get when they lock in with God and anime on their side lol. He handled a lot of the engine maintenance. But it was important we made it work for both PC and phone.

  SecondMonitor: ...okay. Still, I thought this was supposed to be some romance shit. The bot, Zoya, she straight up despises me. I’m confused about the randomized stuff.

  FemBoyLover333: Lol, how?

  SecondMonitor: Like I can design her body. Her ass, her chest, how long her arms and legs are, even her nationality. But I can’t control her face, and I definitely can’t control her history. Speaking of which, why the hell does she even have history?

  FemBoyLover333: Lol, I expected better from you Brandon. But like always, you got no vision.

  SecondMonitor: Then let me see the vision. Explain it.

  FemBoyLover333: Digital Dream Girl Site was always meant to be one of those girlfriend fantasy games. Yeah, I get freedom of choice and all that. But think about the girls you’ve dreamed about before. Have you ever actually been able to picture their face that clearly? Like clearly enough to draw it?

  SecondMonitor: ...not really. Why?

  FemBoyLover333: Because that’s the point. There are billions of women on this planet. While we’re talking right now, most of them are out there living whole lives you know nothing about. So unless you’re chasing some exact celebrity lookalike, there’s a real chance your dream girl is just... some girl. A gloomy goth American chick. A loud Japanese gyaru. A busty Irish academic with a thick accent. The odds are random, but they aren’t zero. A guy really could run into the girl of his dreams.

  SecondMonitor: Touché, but I’m still lost. Why the randomized history? Like Zoya. From what I remember, she’s the middle child. The game keeps bringing up how she barely has friends outside her sisters, and her relationship with her mother is strained because of where her family’s from.

  FemBoyLover333: Ah... Zoya? Lol.

  SecondMonitor: What?

  FemBoyLover333: What’s your dream girl? I showed you mine. I’d love to see a screenshot.

  SecondMonitor: Not happening.

  FemBoyLover333: South Asian ;) you should post it in the Discord. Shockingly, a lot of the dudes in there are pretty tame.

  SecondMonitor: Hardy har har. I’m good. When’s Digital Boy Dream Site dropping for the ladies, by the way?

  FemBoyLover333: It’s in development. But me and my partner think focusing on the guy side first makes more sense. More profitable too. Think about how many lonely dudes are out there one bad night away from offing themselves. Speaking of which, I actually saved somebody like that.

  SecondMonitor: What?

  FemBoyLover333: Deadass. His dream girl called the hotline and got him help. His family got him into therapy. His mom even emailed me thanking me for the app. He’s doing way better now.

  SecondMonitor: ...that’s actually nice.

  FemBoyLover333: What’s the "actually" for?

  SecondMonitor: Nah, it’s nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I see the appeal. I get why people would use it. But Zoya felt too real. Like, so real she was getting under my skin. She pissed me off for real. It felt like she was sizing me up every time she talked. And she went through my webcam too, which by the way, you need to make those permissions bluntly fucking clear. But I’ve been with women before, Niko. She didn’t feel like some chatbot. She felt like a woman who was actually judging me. Aren’t you worried some guys are gonna stop seeing the line? Like mix up real life with this fake girl and take this shit way too literally?

  FemBoyLover333: I hear you, but anybody can take anything too far. Booze. Gambling. Porn. Adrenaline. Hell, even love. All we can do is build safeguards, think ahead, and make sure we’re not throwing dangerous shit at the public without a leash on it. And wait, do you mean your laptop webcam or your phone camera?

  SecondMonitor: I get what you mean, but there’s definitely gonna be fallout from this. I can already imagine women not liking some game that’s lowkey built to replace them. And yeah, I can also see people calling it objectifying. Like, you literally build the girl of your dreams and just... there she is. Also no, not my phone camera. My computer. I didn’t even realize my webcam was on. I swear I only ever turn that shit on for company meetings.

  FemBoyLover333: And that’s exactly the issue, my dear friend Bran. You can control how she looks, sure. But her personality and history are completely randomized. You can have an idea of what your dream girl looks like. Hell, you might even find a real girl that looks just like her one day. But internally? She won’t be what you imagined. Like your Zoya. Pretty face, mean streak, mommy issues, whole package. Then I got another dude on Discord who wanted a girl that would bully the shit out of him and treat him like dirt. He would’ve loved that personality module, but instead he got stuck with some shy little bookworm. Then I got one of those MGTOW Andrew Tate types constantly filing reports because his dream girl turned out to be a feminist and a former sorority pledge leader, so now every time he logs on they start arguing. And then there’s this guy Dillon who only downloaded the app because he wanted something to remind him to brush his teeth, wake up on time, and work out. Instead the AI loses her mind every time he shuts his phone off. Spams him. Calls him over and over. He described her as a yandere baby maker.

  SecondMonitor: ...woah.

  FemBoyLover333: Yeah. There’s kind of something for everybody. Some people hate the randomization, sure, but a lot of people love it. It wouldn’t be fun if it was too predictable. If it just handed you exactly what you wanted with no friction, no surprises, no weirdness, then what’s even the point? Half the fun of meeting somebody, especially somebody you might like, is getting to know them and figuring out who they are. Though I will say this, I really don’t know what the hell is going on with the webcam thing.

  SecondMonitor: But you just said one guy’s been getting messages and calls. I didn’t even know the AI could call on its own.

  FemBoyLover333: Like I said, that part changes depending on the personality and history. Some of them will call once a day. Some once a week. The whole point is to make it feel as close to a real girl as possible. But honestly, you did give me something to think about. I’m probably gonna call my partner and figure out where that new code is coming from, because I could swear we didn’t put that shit in there. Still, A plus for realism, right?

  SecondMonitor: What do you mean?

  FemBoyLover333: I mean think about how advanced it is. This kind of thing is gonna kill on the market. And if it really can help lonely dudes in dark places, then that matters too.

  SecondMonitor: I still think it’s kind of objectifying. A dream girl that loves you by design? That’s crazy. And I am one hundred percent sure Zoya wants to rip my guts out. Machine or not, I’m actually shocked by how angry she got.

  FemBoyLover333: Lol, don’t worry. Like you, she’s gotta warm up too. Just give it time. One of the main things that never changes in the app is that the bot is in love with you. That part is buried deep in the code. She might be pissed at you, she might roast your ass, she might act like she hates you, but underneath all that, you’re still the one she’s thinking about.

  SecondMonitor: ...

  FemBoyLover333: I know it’s a lot, but seriously, thanks for messing around with it. Keep playing. Keep writing about it. You’ve basically been giving me dev diaries for free, and now I’ve got shit I can actually go work on.

  SecondMonitor: No problem bro. I got work in like eight hours on the dot. Late shift too. Sun’s already coming through my window, so I’m definitely cooked. Have a good night bro.

  FemBoyLover333: Likewise brother.

  Brandon woke to a hard, angry buzzing near his left ear, the kind that felt less like a sound and more like something drilling into his skull. His eyes snapped open. For one sick second he thought he had overslept by hours and his whole day was already fucked.

  “Shit... what time is it?” he muttered.

  He rolled to his side, fumbled for his glasses, nearly knocked them off the nightstand, then jammed them onto his face. His hair stuck out in every direction. His mouth tasted stale. The room looked like it had been left behind after a small private war. Hoodie on the chair, socks on the floor, empty water bottle by the bed, his work pants hanging off the dresser like they had tried to escape in the night.

  He grabbed his phone and squinted at the screen.

  An hour. Maybe a little more.

  Relief hit him so fast it almost made him laugh. He let out a breath and sank halfway back into the mattress. At least Michael would not get to start his day with that look on his face again, the one that said Brandon was not just late but morally offensive for it.

  Still half asleep, Brandon thumbed toward the alarm.

  There was no alarm.

  Instead a voice came through the speaker, warm and sharp and annoyingly awake.

  “Yo.”

  Brandon froze.

  It was a woman’s voice. Thick, smooth, a little husky, with that same accented curl he had heard last night. Indian. Not fake sounding either. Not some stiff robotic text to speech bullshit. It sounded like somebody had been sitting there waiting for him to open his eyes.

  “Huh?”

  He stared at the phone.

  Then he saw it. The call screen was still up. No number, just a name.

  Zoya.

  Brandon sat up so fast the blanket slid to his waist.

  “You can fucking call me?”

  “Well gee, no thank you for waking your ass up before you were late again,” she said.

  He groaned and dropped back into the pillow, one hand over his face, the phone pressed against his chest like it had personally insulted him.

  “Ay, none of that,” Zoya said. “Get up. You need to make something to eat, shower, and get ready for the day. And brush your teeth this time.”

  Brandon turned his head slow and looked at the phone like it had just grown teeth.

  “Hey, for your information, I brush my teeth every morning and every night.”

  “Really?” she asked, her voice dipping into something dry and cutting. “So when we were talking till four in the morning, I am meant to believe you did not just pass out like a dead man?”

  Brandon said nothing.

  His silence answered for him.

  “I do it like ninety nine percent of the time,” he muttered.

  “It should be one hundred percent of the time,” she snapped back.

  Brandon rolled his eyes. “God. You’re some AI girlfriend app. You’re not my mother.”

  “Shit, you need a mother,” Zoya shot back. “Since clearly nobody is supervising you. I know you do not like me telling you what to do, but maybe start acting like a functioning human being. I should not have to wake you up so you do not end up late for work again. You make good money. You have a decent position. The least you can do is drag yourself into the office on time when they actually need you there.”

  Brandon sneered at the ceiling.

  “Should’ve called this Digital Girl Mommy Site,” he muttered.

  He pushed himself off the bed and set the phone on the mattress. His joints cracked. His body felt heavy, used up. He had slept, sure, but not the kind of sleep that gave anything back. It was the kind that just shut the lights off for a bit. The kind lonely people got used to. The kind where you woke up and the room was still waiting for you exactly as you left it.

  “Fucking Niko,” Brandon said under his breath.

  “Hey. Where are you going?” Zoya asked.

  He stopped and looked back at the phone. It buzzed against the blanket, vibrating in short irritated bursts as she talked. It looked almost alive, like it was trying to crawl after him.

  “What?” he said, resting a hand on his thigh. “You wanna watch me piss and shit or something?”

  “Fuck no,” Zoya said immediately.

  Then her tone shifted. Just a little.

  “But... like... I cannot see you.”

  The edge went out of her voice on that last part. Not gone, just softened. There was something under it Brandon had not expected. A note of vulnerability. Small, ugly, human.

  He stared at the phone.

  That weird feeling came back again. The same one from last night. Like he was not dealing with a program so much as some person trapped on the wrong side of the glass.

  Brandon sighed and shook his head.

  “You’ll survive.”

  He went into the bathroom, leaving the phone buzzing recklessly on the mattress behind him.

  He brushed his teeth harder than usual because, yeah, she was right. He had not done it last night. The mint burned his gums. He spat, rinsed, avoided looking too long at himself in the mirror.

  He looked tired. Not sleepy. Just worn down in that quiet, everyday way nobody ever noticed till it got bad. The kind of face that still showed up to work, still answered emails, still paid rent, still laughed at the right moments, but went home every night to a room that felt too still.

  Then he showered.

  Hot water beat over his shoulders. Steam gathered on the glass. He stood under it longer than he needed to, letting the heat loosen something in him. He did not think about anything, not really. Work. Bills. That empty ache in his chest he never named. The fact he had spent half the night arguing with a fake woman on his phone and had somehow liked the company more than he wanted to admit.

  When he came back into the room with a towel around his waist, he picked up the phone again.

  The line was still live.

  And he heard it.

  A soft breath leaving her. Relief.

  Not exaggerated. Not theatrical. Just this tiny exhale, like she had been holding it.

  Brandon’s eyes narrowed.

  Niko really had not been bullshitting him.

  He tossed the phone onto the bed, then yanked part of the blanket over it so the camera was blocked.

  “Hey. I cannot see you anymore,” Zoya said, annoyance rushing right back into her voice.

  “Yeah, get used to it,” Brandon said. “Like hell I’m leaving the camera on while I change. Knowing you and whatever psychotic permissions Niko baked into this thing, the last thing I need is my dick ending up in some database.”

  Zoya laughed.

  Actually laughed.

  A quick bright sound, full and mocking and just a little too natural.

  “You think I want to see that either,” she said. “You really think very highly of yourself, don’t you?”

  Brandon snorted as he pulled on a clean shirt.

  “That’s not confidence. That’s self preservation.”

  “Mm. Sure.”

  He could hear the smile in her voice now. Thick accent and all. The words rounded a certain way when she relaxed, softer at the edges. It should have made this easier to dismiss. Should have made her sound more artificial somehow. Instead it did the opposite. It made her feel specific. Like she came from somewhere. Like there was a real girl on the other end with a family, a bad temper, old stories, and a habit of acting like she had every right to boss him around.

  That was the part that bothered him.

  Not the camera.

  Not the calling.

  Not even how real she sounded.

  It was that a part of him, some tired pathetic corner he hated looking at too closely, had already started making room for her.

  Because when the apartment was this quiet and the morning light looked this cold and he was standing half dressed in a room that had never once felt like home, even getting nagged by a hostile AI girl was still somebody talking to him.

  That thought sat mean in his chest.

  Brandon let out a long sigh as he pulled open the closet. His fingers dragged through a row of near identical dress shirts and slacks, all of them some tired shade of office misery. He found one set that was not too wrinkled, tossed it onto the bed, and started getting dressed without much thought. The motions came easy because they had been done too many times before. Shirt. Pants. Tie. Backpack. Phone. AirPods. Everything in its place. Everything automatic. The kind of routine a man built when he did not have the energy to think too hard about his own life before eight in the morning.

  He slipped the phone into his pocket, put his AirPods in, and made his way toward the kitchen. He was halfway to the front door when Zoya’s voice came through.

  “What are you doing?”

  Brandon rested a hand on the knob. “Leaving. What does it sound like?”

  “You have not eaten anything,” she said.

  “Yeah, so what.” He twisted the knob a little, then stopped. “That’s pretty normal for me. I’m not exactly great at making breakfast.”

  “So you are going to skip the most important meal of the day just because you are lazy?”

  Brandon shut his eyes for a second. “Looks like it.”

  “Oh my God.” Her voice thickened with disbelief, each word edged with that accent of hers, warm and cutting at the same time. “At least grab a snack or something. Do not tell me there is nothing in that apartment you can eat.”

  Brandon rubbed at his face. “Niko wasn’t lying when he said you act like a nagging girlfriend.”

  “That is cute,” Zoya said. “You think I am your girlfriend.”

  He could hear the little bite in her voice, the way she leaned into it when she wanted to get under his skin.

  “If it were not for miles of code forcing me to care whether you live or die, I would not speak to you in a million years. In a billion years, maybe not even then.”

  “Good to know,” Brandon said flatly. “Makes this less weird.”

  He raised his thumb toward the screen to end the call.

  “Brandon, I swear to God, if you hang up on me right now, I will...”

  He cut the call.

  Silence rushed in so suddenly it almost felt holy.

  Brandon stood there for a moment with the phone in his hand, eyes closed, the apartment quiet around him. No voice in his ear. No attitude. No fake girl telling him how to live. Just the hum of the fridge and the faint noise of traffic outside.

  “Finally,” he muttered. “Quiet.”

  He opened the front door, stepped forward, and stopped.

  His foot hovered just above the floor outside. Then slowly, annoyingly, he pulled it back.

  Brandon stared down the hall for another second before sighing and turning around.

  He went back into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Barely anything. Some old condiments, a bottle of water, something in the back that looked like it had died weeks ago. He checked the pantry. Peanut butter that had probably been there since he moved in, a sleeve of crackers, and a couple granola bars.

  “That machine,” he muttered under his breath.

  Not angry. Not really. More tired than anything.

  He took two granola bars and shoved them into his pocket.

  By the time she called him again, he was standing on the platform waiting for the train with the rest of the city’s half awake dead. The call tone sliced through his music and dimmed it in his ears. Brandon looked down at the screen, frowned, then answered.

  “What.”

  “Why can I not see you?” she asked immediately.

  Brandon shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He stood in his white dress shirt and dark pants with one shoulder against a steel pillar, his left foot tapping against the platform as the tracks beneath him started to tremble. People moved around him in tired waves, all of them dragging themselves somewhere they probably did not want to be.

  “Because my phone is in my pocket.”

  A pause.

  “Then how can you hear me?”

  He let out a breath through his nose. “Bluetooth.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Bluetooth. Real cutting edge stuff.”

  Her silence lasted just long enough to feel offended.

  Then she said, “There is no need to be rude.”

  Brandon glanced down the track. Lights flickered in the dark tunnel ahead.

  “I’m not being rude. I’m tired.” Brandon paused and ran his fingers through his hair. “I should tell Niko how much you talk…,”

  “You are always tired.” And there was a bite within Zoya’s tone.

  That one landed harder than it should have.

  Brandon said nothing at first. He just watched the tracks, watched the reflection of the train lights begin to ripple faintly over the metal.

  Then he said, “Yeah. Well. That happens.”

  Zoya went quiet too. Not because she had nothing to say. More like she was choosing her next words.

  “…why do you keep bringing up the creator?” she asked after a moment.

  Brandon frowned. “Because he made you. Also because he’s my friend, which I figured you already knew. What I’m more surprised by is that you know he’s the one who made the app.”

  He heard a small sound from her. Something between a scoff and a humph.

  “His name is everywhere in the files and menus,” she said. “The others call him father. He is not that to me. I already have a father.”

  Brandon straightened a little.

  The train came roaring through then, metal screaming against metal, wind pushing through the platform hard enough to tug at his shirt. Her voice blurred in the noise. He only caught pieces of it.

  He stepped into the car when the doors opened, found a place near one of the poles, and once the worst of the sound died down, he spoke again.

  “The others?”

  A beat.

  Then Zoya answered too quickly. “Nothing. I misspoke.”

  Brandon’s eyes narrowed a little, but he let it go. He was too tired to pry. Too tired to care as much as he probably should have.

  Instead he shifted his backpack higher on his shoulder and asked, “So what’s your father like?”

  He did not know why he asked it.

  Maybe because the ride to work was long and gray and miserable. Maybe because talking kept the silence from pressing in too hard. Maybe because some part of him, the part he did not like inspecting too closely, wanted to see how far this thing went.

  For a second she did not answer.

  Then when she did, her voice changed.

  Not softer exactly. Just less armed.

  “He is a good man,” she said. “Very adventurous. Too adventurous for his age, honestly. He loves hiking, loves fishing. In my country he could not just go hunting with guns the way some people do there, but he was very good with a bow. During weekends he would go out into the countryside and come back with meat. I did not even like meat that much, but...” She hesitated. “I remember the smell of it on the grill. I remember the fire. I remember him telling stories while everything burned down to coals.”

  Brandon barked out a short laugh before he could stop himself.

  A couple people near him looked over.

  Zoya’s voice sharpened instantly. “What is so funny?”

  He rubbed a hand over his mouth and shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just... that’s a really detailed answer.”

  “And?”

  “And you’re a machine.”

  The words came out blunter than he meant them to.

  Not cruel. Just honest. Defensive. Like he had to remind both of them what this was before the line blurred any further.

  For a moment she said nothing.

  When she spoke again, the hurt was hidden, but not well.

  “You asked.”

  Brandon looked away and watched the tunnel walls smear past the window. Reflections from the train lights dragged across the glass like pale ghosts.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I did.”

  He adjusted his grip on the pole.

  The station rattled. Someone coughed at the far end. Somebody else stared into their phone with the hollow look of a person already mentally at work and hating it.

  Brandon felt that old familiar weight in his chest again. The one that never fully left. That low heavy thing that made every morning feel borrowed. He had work, money, a decent apartment, enough going for him that he should have felt luckier than he did. But some days all of it just felt like clean clothes draped over a body still going through the motions.

  And now there was this voice in his ear. This fake girl with a bad attitude and a thick accent and enough personality to make the emptiness in his routine feel less empty.

  That was the part he did not trust.

  He kept his tone even.

  “We’re probably gonna lose service soon anyway,” he said. “Train’s heading underground.”

  Zoya was quiet for a second.

  Then, with that same prideful edge returning to her voice, she said, “Fine. Go to work then. Try not to starve to death since apparently feeding yourself is beyond you.”

  Brandon snorted despite himself.

  “I ate the granola bars.”

  “Only because I told you to.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

  “I am not getting ahead of myself,” she said. “I am keeping you alive. There is a difference.”

  Brandon shook his head and looked down at the floor of the train, the corner of his mouth twitching despite the exhaustion sitting on him like wet concrete.

  Still weird. Still too much. Still not something he was ready to treat like normal.

  Zoya made a little offended sound. “For your information, I do not need Wi Fi to operate, or even a proper signal.”

  Brandon lifted a brow and crossed his arms. “Damn. Niko really did put special touches on this thing. Just so you know, I’m not keeping you on twenty four seven. I’ve got work. I’ve got other shit to do.”

  “That is fine,” Zoya said. “I will be in the background for whenever you need me.”

  Brandon said nothing to that.

  He stepped onto the train and turned his music back on. Finally, some distance. Finally, a little space between him and the strange woman living inside his phone. For a few minutes it was just him packed in shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the city’s tired workforce, all of them swaying together in that metal tube like livestock being carted toward obligation.

  He looked out the window.

  The city rolled by in pieces. A slice of bright blue sky broke through the gray cloud cover. Beyond the tracks and the dirty glass he could see the water shifting in the morning light, and across it the other side of the city rose up in jagged lines of steel and glass, towers stabbing at the heavens like they meant to draw blood from God.

  Then he turned back and looked at the train car.

  Men. Women. Kids in uniforms. Office workers in pressed clothes. Construction guys with rough hands and bent shoulders. One old woman with grocery bags looped around her wrist. Some dressed sharp, some casual, some like they had slept in what they were wearing. Nearly every last one of them had their eyes down. On their phones. On the floor. On nowhere.

  That sight pulled something old out of his memory.

  Back in college, Brandon used to work at a phone store. Old people came in all the time, either furious at the devices or needing help with them. Some were sweet. Some were mean. Some just wanted an audience. And once they got talking, they really got talking. About kids these days. About how nobody knew how to talk to each other anymore. About how everyone was glued to screens. About how things used to be better.

  Brandon used to nod along just enough to get through the shift. Say little things. Half agreeing, half not. But they would keep going anyway, like once the seal broke, all that longing came pouring out.

  They would talk about neighbors who were actually neighbors. Kids growing up with the kids next door. Block parties. Office Christmas parties that turned into gossip and affairs and real friendships. First loves. First kisses. Cheap beer. Cheap burgers. Drives through the city at night with nowhere to be and enough money in your pocket to feel like life had room in it.

  And Brandon used to listen.

  Because part of him believed them.

  Part of him wanted to.

  But another part, the meaner and more honest part, always thought the same thing.

  Yeah, no shit it felt better.

  It was cheaper to be alive back then.

  Their rent was not insane. Their groceries did not feel like robbery. Their wages could actually carry a life. Their college did not leave them crawling out the other side saddled with debt that hung around their neck like a stone. They talked about freedom because they had enough breathing room to notice it. They talked about community because they still had time and energy left over after work to build one.

  And now those same people talked like phones were the disease. Like the internet had poisoned something sacred.

  Maybe it had. A little.

  But Brandon knew better than to blame the whole funeral on the screen in everybody’s hand.

  The internet did not invent loneliness. It just lit it up better.

  It gave people a window into everything they could not afford, everything they had missed, everything they were supposed to have by now and did not. It let them watch better lives from inside worse ones. It let them compare their own private failures against a thousand polished lies before breakfast. It made the ache visible. That was the real cruelty of it.

  And the old people missed that. Or maybe they did not miss it. Maybe they just did not want to own their part in it.

  They talked about how social people used to be, but back then people had jobs waiting for them. They had homes they could buy. They had faith in institutions before those institutions sold everybody out and asked for applause after. They had leaders dragging the world from one conflict to the next and still somehow left their children to clean up the psychic wreckage. Brandon’s generation got handed all the knowledge in human history and almost none of the power to change what it showed them.

  Their war was not always fought overseas.

  Sometimes it was here.

  In their apartments.

  In their inboxes.

  In the mirror in the morning.

  In that low constant dread that sat in your chest and made even a quiet Sunday feel guilty.

  No draft notice. No glorious speeches. No banners. Just debt, inflation, layoffs, rent, broken attention spans, cheap dopamine, expensive survival, and the sickening sense that everyone was supposed to act grateful anyway.

  That was the spiritual war of it.

  The soul getting worn down a little more every day by a life that asked for everything and gave back just enough to keep you from dropping dead.

  The train slowed at his stop.

  Brandon stepped off with the crowd, brushing shoulders with some guy in a suit who shot him a dirty look right up until he realized how tall Brandon was. Then he turned away and kept moving.

  The walk to the office was short. Cold air clung to his jacket, and by the time he stepped inside, the fabric was damp at the shoulders. He stripped it off as he walked in, already feeling the weight of the place settling onto him. Fluorescent lights. Beige walls. Cubicles lined up like little stalls. The stale hum of machines and forced politeness.

  He had barely made it a few steps before Michael poked his head out of his office.

  “Brandon, come over here for a second.”

  One of the college interns came slipping out past him at the same time, eyes red and wet like she had been fighting tears and losing. She kept her head down as she hurried away.

  Every face in the cubicles tilted up for a second.

  Not even curious anymore. Just recognizing the pattern.

  Brandon let out a slow breath and made his way over. He stepped inside, shut the door behind him, and stayed standing.

  Michael sat across from him at his desk.

  He was maybe ten years older than Brandon, but there was something permanently adolescent about him. Acne still marked his face. His white dress shirt pulled tight over the soft roundness of his gut. Pale skin. Thin lips. The kind of man who loved authority because it was the only thing that made him feel taller.

  “You’ve got to stop coming in late, buddy,” Michael said.

  Brandon kept his face still.

  Michael leaned back in his chair like he was about to deliver a sermon instead of the same tired office bullshit Brandon had already heard in three slightly different versions.

  “It’s not even just about being late,” Michael went on. “It’s about punctuality. It’s about consistency. It’s about what kind of message you send to the rest of the team when you stroll in whenever you feel like it.”

  Brandon nodded once. “I understand.”

  Michael pointed at him with a pen. “Because this is a team environment. People forget that. This isn’t just code on a screen. This is a work family.”

  There it was.

  Work family.

  Brandon had to fight not to blink too hard.

  Michael kept going, warming up now, really getting into his rhythm. “When one person is not pulling their weight, everybody feels it. Everybody. That intern that just walked out of here, she feels it. Marc in QA feels it. Even Sharon in billing feels it and she doesn’t even know what the hell any of you do over here. Presence matters. Discipline matters. Energy matters.”

  Brandon nodded again.

  He knew better than to argue. Arguing with Michael was like trying to fistfight quicksand. The more you moved, the more it swallowed you. Best case, you wasted forty minutes. Worst case, he sent some concerned little email to HR full of corporate words and fake disappointment.

  “Yeah,” Brandon said. “You’re right. I need to do better.”

  Michael narrowed his eyes at him, almost disappointed by how easy Brandon was making it.

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  Brandon swallowed and kept his tone even. “I know. But I mean it. My performance hasn’t been where it should be. I’m gonna work harder.”

  Michael drummed his fingers on the desk. “See, that’s the thing, Brandon. You’re talented. Nobody’s saying you aren’t. When you actually decide to lock in, your code is good. Better than good, honestly. But talent without discipline is useless. Do you get that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because at a certain point, I can’t keep covering for you.”

  Brandon almost laughed at that.

  Covering.

  Michael said it like he had been shielding him in the trenches instead of hiding in his office flirting with barely legal interns and pretending that was mentorship.

  But Brandon just nodded. “I get it.”

  Michael sighed, giving him the look men like him always gave when they wanted to feel burdened by leadership.

  “If this keeps up, we’re gonna have to put you on a performance improvement plan.”

  The words sat in the air like a gun laid on a table.

  Brandon felt something small and ugly tighten in his stomach. Rent. Student loans. Metro card. Groceries. Every little machine in his life ran on money, and every bit of that money ran through this place.

  “I understand,” Brandon said. “It won’t get to that.”

  Michael tilted his head. “It better not.”

  Brandon kept his hands at his sides. “I’m gonna try harder.”

  Michael studied him for a second, then smirked the way people did when they enjoyed making somebody stand there and take it.

  “Well,” he said, “trying harder would be a nice change of pace.”

  Brandon felt his jaw tighten.

  Just for a second.

  Then Michael clicked his tongue and called toward the door.

  “Marcella, can you come in here for a sec?”

  Brandon turned.

  She stepped in a moment later and the room changed shape around her the way rooms tended to when women like her walked into them. Marcella was tall for a girl, and the red heels gave her even more height. Her dress matched them, red and fitted, the kind of dress that looked expensive even if it was not. Curly brown hair around her shoulders. Pale skin. Hoop earrings catching the office light. Full chest. Big eyes that always looked a little too knowing for comfort.

  Michael straightened in his seat so fast Brandon almost respected the lack of shame.

  “Marcella,” Michael said, smiling too much. “Perfect timing.”

  “Sure,” she said. “What’s up?”

  Her eyes flicked to Brandon for half a second.

  That was enough.

  Because Brandon had not imagined anything with her. That was what still sat wrong in him. They had gone out together. More than once. Food after work. Drinks on weekends. Long phone calls at night. Texts every day. He had been in her apartment. In her bed. They had done more than flirt. She had sent him pictures no woman sent by accident. Then she had gone back to her ex like all of that had just been weather.

  Michael folded his hands on the desk. “The company’s got a new project coming in. Big one. Month long build. App side. Higher visibility. I need my strongest people on it.”

  Marcella smiled in that modest way pretty people did when pretending not to expect praise.

  Michael went on. “You two are probably the most gifted coders on this floor, so I’m assigning you to it together.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Marcella said.

  Brandon kept his face neutral. “Got it.”

  Michael looked between them like he was arranging a marriage he hoped would get him a thank you card.

  “I want collaboration. Communication. Tight deadlines. Clean execution. This has the potential to put both of you in a very good position if it goes well.”

  Then his eyes flicked back to Brandon.

  “And Brandon, maybe this kind of responsibility helps you refocus.”

  “Yeah,” Brandon said. “Understood.”

  Michael smiled at Marcella again. “I’ll send the specs later. You two can start getting aligned today.”

  “Perfect,” she said.

  Brandon opened the door for her and let her walk out first. Michael thanked her in that overly warm voice that made Brandon want to scrub his ears out with bleach.

  They stepped into the hallway.

  The office had that fake quiet to it. Cubicles. White lights. Keyboard clatter. Everybody pretending not to look while absolutely looking.

  Marcella glanced at him as they walked toward the elevator.

  “So,” she said. “Are we weird?”

  Brandon pressed the button. “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you plan on acting like I made all that shit up.”

  Marcella looked at him for a moment. “I never said that.”

  The elevator had not arrived yet.

  Brandon kept his eyes on the closed doors. “Good.”

  She folded her arms. “You’re still mad.”

  “I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m just not stupid.”

  That made her mouth tighten.

  “Brandon.”

  “No, let’s be real for a second,” he said. “It wasn’t me reading into nothing. We were going out. We were talking every day. I was at your place. We were sleeping in the same bed. You were sending me nudes. Then you got back with your ex. That caught me off guard. I don’t think that’s exactly insane.”

  Marcella let out a breath through her nose. “It’s not.”

  He turned and looked at her then.

  She held his gaze.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You didn’t imagine it. I know what it looked like. I know what it was.”

  That took a little of the heat out of him, but not much.

  “Then why do it?”

  Marcella looked away for a second, then back at him. “Because I liked you.”

  Brandon gave a short humorless laugh. “That always sounds nice right before the bad part.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Can you not do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Act like I’m trying to torture you on purpose.”

  He rubbed at his jaw. “Then tell me straight.”

  She was quiet for a second. When she spoke again, there was less attitude in it.

  “I liked the attention. I liked how consistent you were. I liked how you looked at me.” Her voice dropped. “And I didn’t realize how much I missed that until I had it.”

  Brandon looked back at the elevator.

  “That’s rough,” he said.

  “It’s honest.”

  “Yeah, well, honest can still be ugly.”

  Marcella gave a faint, frustrated laugh. “You think I don’t know that?”

  He did not answer.

  The elevator dinged.

  The doors slid open.

  They stepped inside, and for a second it was just the two of them in that little metal box with the hum of fluorescent lights overhead.

  Marcella leaned back against the wall. “I wasn’t planning on getting back with him.”

  Brandon stared ahead. “But you did.”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded once. “Exactly.”

  She studied his face. “You really liked me.”

  That was not a question. More like her saying something she had finally let herself admit.

  Brandon kept his hands in his pockets. “I thought we were heading somewhere.”

  Marcella looked down for a second, then back up. “I’m sorry.”

  The elevator began to move.

  He believed that she meant it. That was the problem with apologies from pretty girls. Sometimes they were sincere. They just did not change anything.

  After a few seconds Brandon said, “Look. Deep down, yeah, it fucked with me a little. I’m not gonna lie. But I’m not trying to drag that through the office.”

  Marcella nodded slowly.

  “We’ve got a month on this project,” he said. “So let’s just be adults. We work together. We keep it clean. No games.”

  Marcella gave him a sideways look. “You really think I play games?”

  Brandon glanced at her. “I think you like attention enough to get messy with it.”

  That shut her up for a beat.

  Then she sighed. “Fair.”

  The elevator slowed.

  Before the doors opened, she looked at him again. “For what it’s worth, Brandon, I did like you.”

  He let out a quiet breath. “Yeah. I know. That’s what made it sting.”

  The doors opened.

  They stepped out together into the bright hallway.

  Marcella bumped his arm lightly with hers as they started walking. “So, partner. You gonna be unbearable for this whole project?”

  Brandon snorted. “Only if you are.”

  She smiled at that. “Good. I can work with that.”

  They kept walking side by side, close enough to look comfortable, distant enough that the gap still meant something. And under Brandon’s calm face, under the office lights and the smell of stale coffee and carpet, that old hurt shifted once and settled back down, not gone, just quiet for now.

  “Finally. Today is over,” Brandon said under his breath as he stepped out of the company building.

  Summer was dead now and fall had sunk its teeth in deep. The sun was dropping earlier these days, bleeding a burnt orange light between the skyscrapers and washing the street in that strange end of day glow that made even exhausted people look cinematic for half a second. Crowds pushed past him in waves, coats brushing his shoulders, shoes scraping pavement, all of them trying to get home before the city remembered how cruel rush hour could be.

  Brandon stood there for a moment and looked up.

  Above him the sky was caught between glass and steel, orange fading into colder shades, the kind of sky that made a man think too much if he let it.

  Then his pocket rang.

  Zoya.

  He stopped and stared at the screen.

  For a second he thought about letting it ring out. Just letting it buzz itself to death in his coat while he walked to the train and listened to music and had one damn hour of silence. But then he remembered the camera, remembered the app, remembered that strange way she always seemed to know when he was hesitating.

  Still, he kept staring.

  How long had it been since anybody called him after work and expected an answer?

  His parents were gone. They had missed this entire chapter of his life, missed the office, the city, the bullshit, the lonely little routines that had grown around him like mold in a dark room. And Anna...

  Anna would have been the one calling him.

  For a time he had really thought he was going to marry that woman. Had let himself believe in it too. If she had not died. If everybody had stopped leaving. If life had not kept taking a knife to every place inside him that still wanted something soft.

  Brandon answered the call.

  He put in his AirPods, shoved one hand in his pocket, and started walking.

  “How was work?” Zoya asked.

  Her voice was direct as ever. No sugar on it. No fake sweetness. Not gentle either. Just natural. Too natural. That same thick accent, those clipped edges, that strange almost human timing that made it easy to forget what she was for a second if he was not careful.

  He shook his head once.

  She was not somebody he had met.

  She was code. A product. A voice in a phone.

  “Fine,” Brandon said.

  He kept walking, the crowd carrying around him like water around stone.

  Zoya was quiet for a beat. “That sounded convincing.”

  He glanced up at the sky again. “It stopped raining.”

  “That is not an answer.”

  “It is the bright side.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. He was tired in a way that lived deeper than his bones. Michael’s bullshit. Marcella’s face. That elevator. That old cut opening again just enough to sting. The whole day had felt like getting rubbed raw by sandpaper and fluorescent lights.

  “God,” he muttered. “I hate the rain.”

  “It is desert where I come from,” Zoya said. “I learned to appreciate rain.”

  Brandon gave a tired half shrug though she could not see it properly from where the phone sat in his coat. “I like it when I’ve got nowhere to be. If I’m inside, fine. Rain’s nice. But when I’ve got to drag myself to work in it, it just feels like one more thing making the day worse.”

  “I like rain,” Zoya said. “It washes everything. Makes the world feel less filthy for one night.”

  Brandon snorted softly. “That sounded rehearsed.”

  “It was poetic.”

  “Same difference.”

  She ignored that. “I read this poem a year or two ago. ‘You’re growing up, and rain sort of remains on the branches of the trees that will someday rule the earth. And the rain, it is falling from the sky, and it is good that there is rain. It clears the months of your sorry rainbow expressions, and it clears the streets of the silent armies, so we can dance.’”

  Brandon stopped at a crosswalk and looked at the red hand flashing across from him.

  “Jim Carroll,” he said.

  He heard her chuckle, low and surprised. “I did not take you for much of a poet.”

  “I had a poetry phase in high school,” Brandon said. “Read The Basketball Diaries. Then started reading his other stuff. He’s got some lines that stick.”

  “Interesting,” Zoya said. “You pretend to be simple, but then things like that fall out of your mouth.”

  Brandon let out a dry laugh. “I’m not pretending to be simple. I just think most poetry tries too hard.”

  “And yet you remember it.”

  “Yeah, well. Some things get through.”

  The light changed. He crossed with the rest of the crowd, moving under the glow of traffic and storefronts just beginning to wake up for the evening.

  Zoya spoke again, quieter this time. “You really had a bad day, did you not?”

  Brandon’s jaw tightened.

  He did not answer right away.

  He passed a man smoking outside a deli, passed a woman dragging a toddler along by the hand, passed two finance guys laughing too loudly like they had money to waste and time to kill. The whole city kept moving around him while his own thoughts dragged like tired feet.

  “Work was work,” he said at last.

  “That bad, then.”

  “Why do you keep pushing?”

  “Because you sound different from this morning.”

  Brandon looked ahead at the river of people and swallowed back a harsher answer.

  Because she was right.

  This morning he had at least been irritated. Irritation had some life in it. Right now he just felt worn out. Scraped clean in the worst ways. The kind of tired where a person stopped even wanting comfort because it felt like too much effort to receive it.

  “Just had a long day,” he said.

  Zoya hummed. “Did somebody upset you?”

  He almost laughed at that. Not because it was funny, but because of course that was how she phrased it. Like she was asking a child who had gotten picked on at school.

  “I’m good.”

  “No, you are not.”

  Brandon shut his eyes for a second as he walked. “You always this annoying?”

  “Yes.”

  At least she was honest.

  He let out a breath through his nose. “I’ll survive.”

  “I know you will survive,” Zoya said. “That is not the same as being fine.”

  That line sat with him for a second longer than he liked.

  He looked up again. The orange was dying out of the sky now. Evening was coming in cold and blue at the edges.

  To change the subject, he said, “I still think the whole poetry thing is pseudo complicated.”

  “Oh, here we go.”

  “I’m serious. That’s why I prefer math to words. Numbers don’t bullshit you. They don’t dress themselves up and ask to be admired. You either understand them or you don’t.”

  “Maybe that is why you prefer machines to people.”

  Brandon’s mouth twitched, though not quite into a smile. “People can fail you.”

  “And machines cannot?”

  “Machines fail when somebody fucks up. People fail you all on their own.”

  There was a pause on the line after that.

  Not awkward. Not empty. Just a pause that knew better than to fill itself too quickly.

  Then Zoya said, with a little sharpness returning to her tone, “Ah. So like you coming in late and trying to blame the universe for it.”

  Brandon dragged a hand over his face. “Yeah, yeah.”

  “You know I am right.”

  “I know.”

  That answer seemed to catch her off guard.

  He could hear it in the tiny beat of silence before she spoke again.

  “Well,” she said. “Good. Because I was right.”

  Brandon gave a tired snort. “Do you want a trophy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.”

  He adjusted his coat and moved toward the train entrance. The wind had picked up a little, carrying that cold damp smell the city got in fall, rainwater and concrete and food grease and old metal.

  “I’ve got to stop coming in late,” he said after a moment. “This job’s too good to bullshit around with.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We’re practically living in a recession already. Everybody’s getting squeezed. So many people in tech cannot find work. Half the entry level jobs aren’t even entry level anymore.”

  “Because they outsource,” Zoya said.

  “Yeah.”

  He said it without heat toward her, which mattered. She noticed.

  “Like my country,” she added.

  Brandon sighed. “Yes, India gets a lot of the outsourced work. But that’s not me taking a shot at you. It’s not your fault. It’s the companies. They ship the labor overseas because they can pay people less and work them harder. Then over here they act like everybody just needs to grind more and smile through it.”

  He descended the subway stairs, one hand brushing the rail.

  “And the result,” he continued, “is that the whole ladder gets fucked up. A fresh out of college kid trying to get an entry level job is competing with people who have five, ten years of experience but got laid off and can’t find anything else. So the jobs meant to help people start their lives end up going to people just trying not to lose theirs.”

  Zoya went quiet, and for a second Brandon wondered if he had hit some kind of memory issue, or if the app had glitched out on him. Then she sighed.

  “It is an injustice,” she said.

  Brandon looked down the dark stretch of track and felt that strange awkwardness settle over him again.

  Because this was the kind of thing those guys on Niko’s Discord talked about. Talking to their virtual girlfriends like they were real women. About work. About money. About life. The kind of conversations you were supposed to have with somebody sitting next to you, not some voice living inside your phone. It felt wrong in a way he could not fully explain. Too intimate for what it was. Too normal for what it should have been.

  “You’ve got the right idea, though,” Zoya said. “Keeping your job matters. You just need to work harder, and now I am here to help keep you on the straight and narrow.”

  He heard the smile in her voice then. That sharp little self satisfied curve she got when she thought she was being clever.

  “For the rest of the month, I will make sure you do not wake up late.”

  Brandon let out a tired laugh at that. “Wow. Thank you for becoming my glorified alarm clock.”

  “You are welcome,” she said. “But you are going to have to stop going to bed so late. And no more weed before bed.”

  Brandon’s head turned a little. “Hey, what?”

  “Yes,” Zoya said. “No more.”

  “That is insane. It helps me sleep.”

  “Then get melatonin and go to bed at a proper time. Weed and melatonin together will just make you even more tired, which means you will oversleep and ruin the next day. We are fixing your sleep schedule.”

  Brandon dragged a hand through his hair and sighed. “Fine. You’re right. I’m not stopping completely, and on weekends I’m still sleeping in if I’ve got nothing to do. But on work nights, yeah. You can be in charge.”

  “That is all I ask,” Zoya said.

  Then after a beat, with that same sly note creeping back into her voice, she added, “For now.”

  Brandon let out a small chuckle. “What the hell does that mean?”

  She laughed, and for a moment he laughed too.

  The sound of her laughter sat warm in his ear. Rich. Bright. Foreign in a way that felt old and rooted, like it belonged to heat and dust and long roads and places Brandon had only ever seen in pictures. It was a nice laugh. Too nice. The kind of laugh that made it easy to forget this was manufactured. That there was no girl walking beside him. No real mouth making that sound. No body carrying that voice. Just code. Just lines and lines of code pretending to be somebody.

  And still, it was nice.

  That was the problem.

  “Hey,” Zoya said. “I found a spot. Do you want to grab food and talk a little more?”

  Brandon blinked. “Zoya, I have food at home.”

  “No. You have ingredients at home. Old ingredients. Sad ingredients. That is not the same thing.”

  He snorted softly. “That sounded personal.”

  “It was.”

  He scratched the back of his neck as the train lights started to appear far down the tunnel. “I do not really want to be spending money like that.”

  “Do not start,” Zoya said immediately. “I have seen your account, Brandon. You can afford to feed yourself once in a while. It is a small celebration.”

  “For what?”

  “For surviving.”

  That caught him more than he expected.

  The train came roaring in then, drowning the station in iron noise and stale wind. Brandon stepped forward with the crowd, but his mind stayed on what she had said.

  For surviving.

  Like that was worth something on its own.

  He got inside and found a place by one of the poles, the doors closing with a mechanical groan behind him.

  Zoya spoke again once the train lurched forward.

  “It is a place from home,” she said. “I will tell you what to order. You will get real food for once, and we will keep talking.”

  Brandon leaned his head lightly back against the cold metal behind him. “I could’ve just gone to the same Chinese spot I always go to.”

  “Exactly,” Zoya said. “The same spot. The same routine. The same everything. You always do the same things. Have you ever tried living a little?”

  Brandon let out a breath that almost became a laugh. “Being told to live a little by a machine is crazy.”

  “I am not a machine. I am an app.”

  “That is somehow worse.”

  “No, it is not.”

  He smiled despite himself, small and tired and real enough that he was glad nobody on the train knew him well enough to notice it.

  “Fine,” he said. “But if this place is ass, I swear you are never hearing the end of it.”

  “It will not be ass.”

  “You sound very confident.”

  “I am.”

  “And if I hate it?”

  “Then I will insult your taste and move on.”

  Brandon shook his head.

  Outside the train windows the city kept sliding by in long streaks of fading light and shadow, all of it smeared gold and blue in the early fall dark. Around him people stood with dead eyes and drained faces, each one carrying their own quiet ruin home. The car rattled on through the belly of the city like it had done a thousand times before, hauling the tired and the lonely and the half broken back to their little corners of it.

  Brandon stood among them with a phone in his pocket and a voice in his ear.

  Still strange. Still wrong in some deep instinctive way.

  But not as wrong as silence.

  He looked down at the floor and slipped one hand into his coat pocket.

  “Alright,” he said softly. “Tell me where I’m going.”

  And in the dark glass of the train window, with the city ghosting past behind his reflection, Brandon caught himself looking almost like a man being led somewhere instead of just dragged there.

  That was enough for tonight.