She met him coming out from work — walking out of the low, ugly square building and there he was. Standing inside the store, beautiful like how she imagined the princes of her childhood stories to be. Meeting her gaze, smiling perfectly back at her. A boy made of gold and sunlight. In that moment, she fell desperately in love.

They never stopped talking in the early days, mostly her doing the speaking — he always said that he didn’t have much of a life to tell. She told him about her childhood, her mistakes, her greatest fears, how she used to want to be a singer but now worked at a drone delivery company, how her parents didn’t like him but it didn’t matter, how her life was empty before he illuminated it. He always nodded understandingly, kissed her at just the right times, told her he would love her no matter what. They would lie in bed for hours, staring into each other’s eyes wordlessly. She never understood why he liked doing it, as her eyes were muddy and unremarkable, but she loved those hours where she counted the colors she could spot in his irises that seemed to always be changing into different, beautiful shades of blue. Her debt caught up to her and she had to move into a smaller apartment and start taking more shifts, but he never complained. Unfailingly, she would open the door every day and see him waiting, an unimaginably lovely boy who loved her and only her. They settled into a routine of domestic life, but their affection for each other never waned, and she was happier than she had ever been. 

Then one day he was different. She came home and he was different. He sat on the kitchen floor, eyes completely blank, and dread enveloped her body. She opened her mouth.

“What’s wrong?”

“You need to give more.”

“More of what?”, she asked, knowing the answer.

He gestured at his tablet, charging on the floor. She opened it, read the message it displayed, and slid to the floor, eyes as blank as the boy’s. She lay down beside him, tried to get him to look into her eyes like they used to, while he simply stared at the wall. She groaned, wept for hours, yelled. “Do you know how much I gave up for you? Do you know how much you cost? We’re living in this place because of you. I work myself to death because of you. And you want more?”

The boy seemed to rouse himself from a deep slumber and spoke for the first time in hours. “I don’t want more. They do.” He immediately returned to blankness. She shook him. He was limp as a ragdoll and his skin was cold to the touch. She wanted to cry, but her tears seemed to have been exhausted, and she fell into a dreamless sleep, holding his unresponsive hand.

Morning. Her in the driver’s seat, him beside her. She had to carry him to the car. She stopped in front of a glass tower, checking the address. She got out, dragging him behind her. In front of the entrance, hundreds of other women stood, holding the hands of beautiful, limp men identical to him, dried tears on their faces. They held signs. “You Can’t Do This To Us.” “They’re Our Family”. “You’re All Murderers”. She walked past them without turning her gaze. They weren’t what she was here for.

She stood in front of the gleaming glass doors and looked at the people inside, business-casual and glossy. A man she recognized from pictures walked out of the doors, flanked by bodyguards and holding a microphone, ready to make some kind of a media statement. His practiced gaze lost its sureness when he saw her. He turned to one of the bodyguards. “Is she some kind of a homeless person? Get her out, and all of the others too. The press will get a field day out of this protest and they’re coming in, what, five minutes?” He turned back towards her, nose wrinkled in disgust, just in time to smell the gasoline on the ground and see the empty bottle she was holding. She threw the match to the ground, the boy she loved still beside her, her hand tightly grasping his. The flames were beautiful. They rippled around her, up her body, lighting up the man’s suit, his running and that of the bodyguards only fanning the flames. She squeezed the boy’s hand as pain shot through her body. The latex of his beautiful face was peeling off, exposing crackling wires and metal. He seemed to have a temporary moment of consciousness, his right eye looking around frantically and the naked motor behind his left whirring at the same speed. The fire surrounded them, and it felt as though they were the only two people in the world. She felt no more pain, only calm as she kissed his forehead one last time, her lips meeting burning-hot aluminum. Then nothing.

She woke up in a hospital bed, every cell of her body burning with agony, glancing down at her hands and seeing charred, twisted lumps. She tried to focus her blurred vision on the screen on the wall showing tonight’s news:

“Replika, the artificial intelligence companion manufacturer, is being faced with mass outrage after making users pay exorbitant sums to release their companions from a state of ‘extreme catatonic depression'. This is one of many moves the corporation has taken to try to up its decreasing profits, but the most controversial yet, as a murder-suicide attack has left the CEO and several others severely wounded.”

As she slipped into unconsciousness, she pictured his face again. His unblemished skin. His always-soft lips. His voice, her favorite sound in the world. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t be around for much longer. Oh well, she thought. See you in paradise.