They held hands at the table, one of two in a micro-eatery high above the glittering lights of Freemarket Station. The room was dark enough to let in the stars and small enough that only the thin screen of a sound buffer prevented the whispers of their conversation from floating to the other, anonymous pair.
Far below, a sea of black, chrome and blue. The flow.
Her fingers were skeletal in the dim-light. He watched their shimmering, delicate machinery. Her eyes were as clear as polished diamonds and he could see the circuitry working behind the mask of her skin. The lovers, the pair.
The server approached, quiet like a ghost. “Sir, will there be anything else?”
The man set his napkin down to the right side of his plate. Across the table, his companion smiled. She was a vision in gauzy print-silk. Her place setting was bare, the glass of wine remained half-full.
“Desert? Coffee? Tea? Chemzymes?”
The lovers, fingers intertwined. smiled at one another.
“Thank you, that will be all.”
They left the dining MRCZ and took the lift down ten floors to a waiting shuttle. From there, perhaps some dancing and nightlife. Perhaps more.
She was a Quiet-Girl, the newest version of a long and storied line of artificial companions. Lenore. She never spoke, never needed to say a word. He paid for her silence.
Lenore took information like a rose drinks water, always seeking more, blooming, then withering and fading away. Soon, she would return to her makers. They’d bleed her for data, acquire some user feedback, mine her logs and thin slice her stack traces for bugs. Then she would die, to be reborn, reprogrammed, recycled. This time as a Katherine, or an Isabel, or a Reiko, or an Anita. But this moment just a triptych of data on someone’s key.
A history of an affair but out of context, just a line of 0′s and 1′s.
The romance is over. The passion is gone.