Then There Were Two

Steven leans his head back as Jaqueline continues to cry. The crying has become sporadic. He can feel her gain her composure then to lose it again. Steven tries to process everything that just happened as the car pulls up to their destination. Steven releases his hold on Jaqueline and she sits up. He opens the door, gets out, and holds it as Jaqueline composes herself and climbs out of the car.

"I am so sorry about how this day turned out." Steven was thinking about how he thrust himself into her life just a few hours ago. He regretted the decision now. "It really was not my place and it could have been handled more appropriately."

"You could have softened your approach." She responded in what Steven took as a reprimand.

Steven nodded his head gave her his best smile with no attempt to justify his behavior, hoping that it would start him down the road of forgiveness.

Jaqueline continued when she saw that he was not going to argue with her or run away. "Would you like to come up? I need to talk this out with someone. I am not ready to share this with anyone else at the moment."

"Are you going to start punching me?" Steven quipped, hoping it was not too soon.

"I can't guarantee anything, but as you saw, my punches are ineffective."

"Yes, I will help you work through this. It is the least I can do."

As they walked through the building and up the elevator to the 54th floor. Jaqueline greeted anyone they passed and most of them seemed to know her. Steven was surprised at how calm she was, given that a few minutes ago she was crying in his arms.

She let them in to her apartment. As she closed the door she kicked off her heels on to a shoe mat next to the barely closed door. She told Steven to find a place to relax in the front room while she headed down the hall untucking her white blouse. She made the left turn into a room as she was unzipping her pencil skirt. Steven caught himself picturing the skirt falling to the floor when he realized it was not Sam that was leaving him slightly stimulated.

As the thought of Sam crossed his mind. The flood of confusion rushed over him. He had fallen in love with a robot. But, that robot was an exact replica of a woman that he is currently with. He wondered how Jaqueline was going to be different than the Sam he knows. That made Steven wonder if Sam's AI was her own or if it was part of a central repository and every robot could be replaced by another one since they all had access to the same data. Steven was still standing where she had left him thinking about the technological problems of both options when Jaqueline came back out of the room. She was in a loose fitting white t-shirt and sweat pants that were relaxed but tight enough to show her curves.

"Whoa, there buddy. You looked like you were a million miles away. You are here to solve my problem, I need you to focus here. Can I get you something to drink?"

Steven started laughing. "Sam asked that same thing. I don't drink, or at least I didn't. Still not much into it. I am in this surreal place where I expect you to know so much about me, but in reality you know nothing about me."

"You are right I know nothing about you. Let's start there. Tell me the whole story."

Steven started in to the whole story about how he and Matthew had met and how Sam ended up working for him. He tried to minimize how much he had fallen in love with Sam as a way to protect his heart. It took most of an hour to provide a curated story that tried to focus less on Jaqueline and Sam and more on the insanity of it all.

"So, if you left the robot in the airplane after landing in New York, how did it get to manufacturing plant?"

"Good question. Did she get there herself? Did Matthew pick her up?" Steven wondered out loud. Steven thought about the URL that Matthew had sent him. He got his phone out and unlocked the screen. It was still on the screen he left it on. Without much consideration about what he was doing, Steven pressed the activate button. At this point he could not tell what was real and what was fake. Or, more specifically, what was natural and what was man made.

"What are you doing?"

"The URL Matthew sent me."

"Oh. Did you just push the button?"

"Yeah."

"What do you expect to happen?"

"Nothing. The test is over. It passed. It is time to take it to market now. Right?"

"Over my dead body."

"Hahaha. I have seen some of the work these guys do. That might be exactly what they have in mind."

"You don't think they would kill me do you?"

"Yes, they damn near killed Sam throwing her out of a car. Wait. They new they were kidnapping and torturing a robot. I was the only one who didn't know that it was real. No humans were in danger." Steven's voice faded as he finished the sentence. He could feel his fury rising again.

"What about Sam?"

"What about her?"

"Did she think it was real?"

"Um. Yes…" Before Steven could finish his thought his phone started ringing. He looked at the number. The caller ID said DataArt. "It is from DataArt. Now what the hell does Matthew want?" He said to Jaqueline.

"Haven't you tortured us enough today?" Steven spoke into the phone?

"Steven! I am scared. I don't know where I am. I am in an empty office building. I am naked. I don't know how I got here. And the weirdest part is there was an army of naked mannequins that look just like me in the room I woke up in. I think I have been kidnapped again. Where are you? Please come find me. Please, Steven. I am so scared."

"Sam. You are going to be okay. I will come to you right now. I am only 20 minutes away. You have not been kidnapped. Don't hang up the phone." Steven pulled the phone away from his face. "Do you have a car?" He asked Jaqueline.

"This is New York. Of course I don't have a car." Jaqueline said.

"Who are you talking to?" Sam asked

At that moment Steven paused long enough to acknowledge how similar their voices were. This was going to get complicated.