“What? What are you talking about?”

“You like Devin, I know you do.” He said with a smug grin on his face.

“What? No! Not at all!” What was he talking about? How could he… could have he read me so easily?

“Oh come on. I have noticed. The way you look at him when you are showing your form, the way you talk to him, raising your pitch and everything, the demeanor in your voice… you are totally into him!” He laughed.

“No… I mean, I like him as a friend, he has been my friend for a while after all, but I don’t…”

“Come on, what are you afraid of? I’m pretty sure he likes you too.”

“I… I can’t give him what a normal girl could give him…I’m just a machine after all, remember?”

“What? No, I don’t really care about that, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care. You both have been together since you were kids, you both like the same nerdy things, technology, all that stuff I don’t even can begin to comprehend, your spirit of adventure, and that weird music you guys listen to! You are the only ones in my circle of friends who like to spend their time in their own houses playing video games! You are both like some sort of anti-social adventurer hermit or something, you are both fated to be with each other!” Liam said, finally laughing.

“I don’t know, Liam, we can’t really hug each other, we can’t… feel each other, and even if he didn’t care I just feel he really deserves someone better than just me—”

“Sup guys! What are you guys talking about?” Devin chimed in with two beers.

“Oh, we were just talking about teaming up to defeat you in Mario Kart the next round!” I said, trying to sound natural, and totally failing in the process.

“Really?” Liam said, sitting down. “Can you really team up in Mario Kart?”

“You can if two players choose to throw you items at the right times.” Liam added, covering for me.

“Alright, if you say so…” His sarcastic tone almost drove me nuts, thankfully, he didn’t pray any further.

Afterwards we just played for a while, but still, I couldn’t help noticing Liam looking at me and Devin from time to time.

~~~
Devin
~~~

“Alright, I think that is going to be all.” The delivery guy told me. We had finished loading a bunch of boxes containing computer replacements and other stuff we had to deliver from planet to planet, it could be pretty heavy stuff but they paid quite well.

“Are you sure you don’t need help with that?” Emilia asked me. “It looks quite heavy… maybe I can’t carry any stuff at all, but maybe if I turn off the artificial gravity…”

Oh no, the thing I wanted less was for all the equipment to start floating around and crash into walls and floors.

“Sweetheart, you are alright.” I told her. “I just need you to calculate the estimated time of arrival now based on our load, plase.”

“Uh.. what?” She sounded flustered.

“Uh, the estimated time of arrival, I heard that there is a pretty heavy zone with a bunch of meteors if we go straight forward so we will have to do some turns first, but I don’t want to delay myself too much.

“Uh, okay…”

“Is there something wrong?” I asked her.

“It’s just… nothing, you called me sweetheart, thank you.” Even if there were no monitors in the cargo zone, I could totally feel her blushing.

“Uh, sure, no problem.” Hold on a minute, was I blushing too?

The guy who was putting the cargo with me snorted, I looked at him and I could tell he was containing his laughter. While it was bothering me a little, I just wanted to leave right away and get my job done, so I didn’t ask him anything about it.

Some time after the cargo was shipped, we parked back home at our empty huge lot, it was time to give the ship some cleaning. I went ahead with my cleaning supplies inside.

“Hey, are you okay, Emilia? You have been quiet for a while.”

“Yes…” She said, coyly. “It’s just…”

“Did something happen?”

“It’s because of me that that guy was laughing at you.”

“What? How did you come to that conclusion?”

“It’s because of what I said, I was so excited that you called me s-sweetheart that I got all weird and then the guy started to think up things who knows what…”

I wanted to see her, but she naturally didn’t feel okay and didn’t want to show herself in that state.

“Hey now, who cares about what that guy thinks? I for all I care don’t even know his name or what he does, who cares about what people think of you and me?”

“I just don’t want you people to look at you like that… I remember how people used to look at me when I was a teen, and I don’t like it.”

It seemed she was more hurt by the guy than me. Of course, he had bothered me a lot, but to Emilia it had opened a new can of worms she was still struggling to deal with.

“Look, don’t worry about it, I am actually more worried about you right now. What do you say if we focus on getting some work done instead?” I said trying to distract her over her own insecurities, which again, I wasn’t really good at.

I had installed some sensors at the exterior of the ship after saving enough money, they would give diagnostics and proper alerts in case something would hit us and I needed to know the state of the ship. They could also be used to let Emilia feel things outside as a ship, but I did doubt she was interested in feeling something like that.

I took my bucket, the hose and started brushing with a broom with enough soap on the top of the ship, careful of not slipping on. I wanted to save money and of course the cost of cleaning a ship in a ship wash was really expensive.

I was at the top of the ship (please don’t make me say I was on top of Emilia) swiping when I heard her voice coming out from my earbuds.

“Oh yes! Please! That hits the spot just well!”

I almost fell back and slipped away from the ship towards the floor of the lot, but I just ended up falling on my knees.

“Oh sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“Nah, it’s fine, you just startled me a bit.” I stood up and took the broom back. “What were you saying anyway?”

“Uh… that if you keep scratching on there it really hits the spot?” She said, shily. “With all the dust on the top of me, sometimes it feels really itchy.”

“Itchy?” I scratched my head. “Do the sensors even allow for the sensation of itchiness? You know you can just disconnect from them, right?”

“Well, I wanted to try them out more, so let’s just say I have been messing around with them quite a bit and adding mods and stuff…”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“No! But wait, I didn’t mean to make it weird, I was just… I wanted to feel things outside, and have a connection to the real world, or something, I don’t know.”

“It’s fine.” I said, still trying to contain my laughter. “You said this was the spot? Here at the top wing?”

“Yes, please…” Her voice was almost… well, suggestive, so to say.

I started to swipe further and further until the whole top wing was filled with soap and water.

“Here?”

“Yes, there, there!”

“Here, and here, and here?” I started swiping faster and faster.

“Yes, almost, just, keep going…”

“What about here?”

“Oh, yes, that’s it… thank you.” She talked to me as if she just had finished herself out.

…

…

“Pfft-hahaha!” After a moment of very awkward silence, we started laughing, we were laughing so much that my stomach was starting to hurt.

“Okay…” I added. “That was, not gonna lie, a little weird.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Nah, it’s fine, now, tell me what other parts you think I’m really missing, let’s get you clean from head to toe, or top to bottom.”

“Okay.” She said. While she sounded sad and pensive, I still didn’t know how to properly ask her what was going on. True, the situation had been weird, but I didn’t want her to feel bad about it.

~~~

After the whole experience, I had decided that maybe it would be ideal to do something else so she could interact with the outside world. I went ahead to talk with Liam, and told him about the idea, and we started to work at his house in something that I was hoping would cheer her up a bit.

After a few weeks of his input and support, he came to my home with “our project” finished.

“Hello, hello!”

“Hey man! How are you doing?” I said receiving the thing from his arms.

“Hey, sorry, I have to go, my nephew is coming to visit me and I said I will pick him up from the airstation.

“Yeah sure, it sounds good, thanks for the help man.”

“No problem.” Liam said and left. Afterwards, I closed the door and turned the thing, putting it behind me.

“Who was it, Devin?” Emilia asked, she was playing video games, but she could probably activate the front door camera if she wanted to see me, I just didn’t want her to see the project we had been working on yet.

“Uh, it was Liam, nothing serious.”

“I see.”

“And Emilia, can please turn off all your cameras inside the ship?”

Silence, she had paused the game.

“Uh, why?”

“Just trust me, it is going to be for a little moment.”

“Okay…”

I walked towards my bedroom and put the thing on my bed, now it was time to get into business.

“Don’t see yet, just when I tell you.”

“What are you doing there? You are scaring me a little.”

“Trust me, it’s going to be fine.”

“Okay but…”

“Now, just, wait a little, I want you to free your head from everything you are doing right now. Ready?”

“I think so, ready.”

“Alright, just relax.”

The words were also directed to myself. I was also nervous, but I was really hoping this would work, I wanted her to like this, I wanted to make her happy.

“...Devin? Why am I feeling like you are… hugging me?”

“Because I am Emilia. You can open your eyes now.” Shit, I had said open your eyes instead of activate the cameras, I still didn’t know if treating her as a human would hurt her less, or if not reminding her of what she didn’t have anymore would help her more. After she focused the bedroom cameras on me, she finally saw what I had been working on.

I was hugging a human sized doll filled up with a sensor and plugged up with cables to a HUD towards the main CPU. This was my idea, my project, and it’s what I wanted to do for her. The truth was that robotic and synthetic bodies were incredibly expensive, even more than AI cores or the brainscan process itself, and with our own current financial situation, it was just simply impossible even at a long term.

With what had happened the other day while cleaning the ship, I realized that maybe another form of contact with the physical world was what she needed, something that would let me hug her, something that let her… feel me. I know, it sounds kinda creepy, getting the whole doll was, but, I just wanted to do it for her, because deep inside, I was in love with Emilia.

“Thank you… I just… I, I…” Emilia had started sobbing, she was trying to say something, but her words were being buried under her crying. I saw her on the monitor screen, pushing herself at the front of the screen as if trying to come out. No, no, this wasn’t a happy cry at all, I had done something really wrong.

“Emilia, what happened?” I said to her patting the hair in the doll as an attempt of calming her down, hugging it so she could feel the warmth of my own body, after a while she left the physical simulator, but continued on crying.

“It’s just… it’s just, don’t you see? You always care about me, and want to make me feel better, but… look at this… look at that doll. We have to go through so many things just to make me feel okay, but I can’t just keep pretending… I can’t keep pretending that I can be with you.” I threw the doll on the bed, it obviously wasn’t working. “I love you, Devin, I have been in love with you since I can remember, but now that I’m just like this, I feel sad because I wish I could be with you, but you have to go even get an artificial doll just to give me a hug.”

I jumped right towards the screen getting closer to the camera as soon as I could.

“No, Emilia, please listen to me. I love you, I love you too, I only did this because I wanted to make you feel comfortable, I didn’t want to make you cry, it doesn’t matter we can’t hug normally like other people, that we can’t touch like other people, I love you!”

“We can’t! We can’t be together!” She was getting hysterical and I was getting desperate. The idea behind the doll was to be able to calm her down with physical touch, but I didn’t want to go back and bring back the thing that had made her so upset. It was just my gift, I just wanted to make her happy. “You deserve to be with a real girl, with somebody that can give you a normal life, somebody that is alive, not me, not me, not me!”

“Emilia… I don’t care what other girls can give to me, I only want to be with you.” Before I noticed I found myself crying as well, I felt I was about to fall, I had to put my hands and support myself against the wall while looking at the screen, hoping for her to come out again. “You have been my best friend since I can remember, you have been with me since I can remember, you have made me laugh, you supported me in all of my projects and ambitions when nobody else did, you are the person that understands me the most and… and… since I found out you were a girl, that appreciation for you has grown into love.” I was stuttering over my words, I was way too nervous, but I still wanted to make her feel worthy and beloved goddammit!

“Devin, please…I’m not even a real woman, I was always just a guy, a guy.”

“I don’t care if you don’t have a human body, I don’t care if you were a guy, I don’t care about any of those things, because the only thing I feel when I am close to you is the presence of the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. Emilia, you are not just a cute girl, you are smart, you are funny, you are you are sweet, you are the girl of my dreams.”

“I wish… I wish, Devin, I wish I could…” If she hadn’t already been a person on a computer, I would have been panicked that she was about to choke on her own sobs. Wait, could computerized people and AIs die based on the image of their human physical functions? Could they die from suicide? For everything that could be loved, I wished with all my heart that they couldn’t.

Maybe this was the worst moment to ask her, maybe in another opportunity with our minds calmed down we could have thought about it properly, but even then, I felt that I needed to do it in that moment or something was going to die inside of me.

“Emilia, would you like to be my girlfriend?” Fuck, way too cheesy, I wanted to ask her to go out with me, but I had ended up sounding like a 9th grader.

…

“Emilia?”

I couldn’t hear anything, something had happened, something had happened with her, and I was about to lose my mind. I was about to go running towards the main computer console and look for her, when the screen did light up, and I finally saw her coming out. The program seemed to have noticed she was crying, because her eyes were red and tears were running over her cheeks. I really, really wanted to hug her, but I really couldn’t, no, the doll had been a failure.

“Devin?”

“Yes?” I just wanted her to accept me, I loved her as a woman, I loved her for who she was, and there wasn’t anything in the world that could let me make her love any less.

“I want it, I want to be with you.”

“Yes! I love you, Emilia, I really love you.”

“I just don’t know how I can make it work.”

“Look, you don’t worry about that babe, what matters to me the most is that you are happy and that you give me company, so, please, calm down okay? I don’t want to see my girl cry, I just want to let you know that I care about you, and nothing in the world will make me leave you, anything.”

“Thank you Devin, I really love you, I really do.” She was leaning towards the front wall of her virtual world giving the appearance that the screen she was being shown on was a window and that she was trying to get out of the small room she was in. She slowly let herself fall until she sat on the floor crying her heart out. Slowly, I let myself fall and did the same. Since the screen was at a higher height, I couldn’t see her anymore, but I could still hear her through the speakers. For a long while, we allowed each other to cry together, maybe out of sadness, maybe out of happiness, maybe out of both, but still, crying together.

Later that night I was lying down on bed and looking towards the ceiling. We had calmed down a little and we were both enjoying a comfortable silence together.

“Babe? Are you feeling better?”

“Oh? Yeah, I am…”

I raised my head a bit and looked towards the screen, the view had changed to an overhead shot of her own room, she was lying on her own bed as well and her face was as red as a tomato, which got a chuckle out of me.

I sat up and looked towards the doll filled up with sensors, still plugged in.

“So… Do you think you would feel better if I disconnected this thing?” I asked.

“Well, I guess it makes me feel less sad if I don’t think about it, so yes, at least by now, please.”

“Alright.” I stood up and started unplugging the doll so it could finally be disconnected from her system. “Anything for my girl.” Jeez, that was awful, there was a reason I never had a girlfriend before and that was exactly why.

I looked back at Emilia, but she was just looking away and still blushing furiously. Well, at least she seemed to like my awkward compliments, and that made me happy, I really liked making her happy.

I stuffed the doll back in my closet, inside of it, I saw again a printed poster of the Hedgerow Galaxy, a long distance place I always wanted to go as a kid. It was one of the reasons I started building my own spaceship. I thought about the reason I wanted to build my own spaceship since I was a kid, I never wanted to be tied to places, I wanted to go and forever wandering around, meeting people, meeting places I have never seen, stars I have never reached, and live my life as a wandering soul being amazed by the wonders of the universe itself.

“Hey, Emilia?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to get some rest from doing cargo deliveries by now?”

“Uh… I don’t have to stop now if you want, I can still work with you.”

“Nah don’t worry, the thing is that I have something in mind.”

“Oh, what is it?”

“Would you like to travel with me towards the end of the universe and live an adventure?

“What? An adventure?”

“Yes! We can go away forever and travel as much as we can!”

“But, what about your job?”

“Who cares about my job?! We will have gotten enough savings now, and I am sure we can find something on the way!”

“Okay… to be honest, I really want to go too, with you. I like to be in places I have never been before, and see everything the universe has made for me.” Emilia knew exactly how I was feeling, and that’s why she was my girl. “It’s just…”

“Yes?”

“I guess I am going to miss Liam a bit?”

Oh. It was true, he had helped me with the doll thing before, and, even if the project had failed its purpose, he had always been a good friend for me and Emilia, and had supported the two of us all the way through.

“Liam, okay, that is a bit of a bummer, but I’m sure we will be able to communicate still, communications using radio frequencies nowadays can reach places we had never imagined before.”

“Are you sure?”

“Totally, I am sure, don’t worry about it, dear.”

“I understand, Devin, I trust you.” I looked again towards the screen, she was finally smiling again, and just then, I could see a sparkle on her eyes that was keeping me captivated.

I went ahead towards the navigation room and started the engines.

“Wait.” She said “Are we going now?”

“That’s right! What better time than the present?”

“Oh, gosh, okay, let me prepare systems for takeoff, don’t start over yet.”

“Good girl, Emilia.” I said and even if I wasn’t putting my attention on the screen, I could hear her making those small sounds that showed how she was really flustered. “Also, make a quick call to Liam before we blast off, we have to tell him we won't be back here for a long while.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

And with that, we left away from our little planet towards the unknown and beyond. People still think the only person on my crew is me, alone going from planet to planet as a ghost, but to be honest, that doesn’t really matter to me, because I am not alone, I have my girlfriend, and for those who don’t know yet, I always let them know, my girlfriend is a spaceship, and I am really happy about that.