Rustem shook his head.

“You must spend a lot of time cooped up, cracking these networks you were talking about.”

“I do, I guess. I feel like it’s all I do, these days. That and drink coffee.”

Aynur stretched. “So, it’s a joke, right? Or not exactly a joke. Someone said that people don’t really want to date other people. They don’t really want equal partnership—you know, two full people in a relationship. Two people with demands and desires and differences of opinion about everything. What they want is one-point-five people in the relationship. They want to be the complete one, the person who controls the relationship—and they want the other person to be half a person. You know, someone who gets them, but who doesn’t have their own demands. Someone who appears complete, with all these personality quirks and their own opinions and stories about the world—but not in an annoying way. Not in a way that would demand you change. So six or seven years ago, this big company in the SF-SD Axis that specializes in AI started cranking these things out. What you do is, you fill out this long questionnaire on your terminal, play a whole bunch of different simulations and puzzle games, and then they custom-produce one for you.”

“A … partner.”

“Yeah. And you would think it was stupid, or that it wouldn’t be at all satisfying, but it’s amazing. It’s like the thing you were looking for all along, but never knew it. Do you want to meet her?”

“What? Who?”

“Altyn.”

“Uh—okay. Sure.”

“Hey, Altyn,” Aynur said. “What are you up to?”

The oculus was set on a small table in the corner, aimed to project at an empty space near Aynur’s bed. There, a woman flickered into existence—just insubstantial enough that he could glimpse the shadows of objects in the room through her flesh. She was sitting at a small table eating a bowl of noodles. She was dressed in a baggy T-shirt and athletic shorts, barefoot. She held a finger up in a “wait” gesture as she slurped up the rest of a long noodle, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Hey. Didn’t expect to hear from you. Aren’t you on a date? Is it over already?”

“No, he’s still here.”

“Oh.” Altyn smirked. “And I see from the looks of things it went well. Jealous.”

“We were chatting, and he wanted to meet you.”

“Kinky.”

“Not like that. He just wanted to say hey.”

Rustem held up a hand. “Hey.”

“He’s a talker. What’s your name, chatty?”

“Rustem.”

“That’s a good name. You having fun?”

Rustem shrugged. “We—yeah, we were, I think. What about you? What are you up to?”