A.I.S.A.: An Erotic Sci-Fi Romance (2 page)

I asked curiously, “Where are you from?”

She grinned, “A small town in Colorado you probably haven’t
heard of.  I actually redid their A.I. software for traffic control as my
major project for school.  I decided to come out to the big city and see
if I could make it out here, it was time to move on from small town life. 
I’m staying right up the block at the Holiday Inn while I look for an open
apartment.”

I nodded.  It was hard to move to Chicago, it was a
popular city, and although humans didn’t have to work anymore, the ones that
did contribute were more likely to find a place to live when trying to move.

She tilted her head thoughtfully and touched my arm again, I
quite enjoyed the soft warmth of her hand against me, “I don’t suppose you need
a junior programming partner on your project?  There isn’t much going on
right now for online job boards.”

The job boards were somewhere a programmer, or someone from
any other career for that matter, could find out what was needed.

I shrugged, “Need?  No.  But a second tester and
set of eyes wouldn’t hurt.  I’ve been going solo on this project so far,
and I’m having trouble making the A.I. a good challenge without being
impossibly hard.  Port me your number, maybe we could work something out?”

I had no worries about being upstaged or taking
credit.  The current Earth simply didn’t work that way, so it wouldn’t
affect my income or my reputation in any way.  Plus, the idea of having
Aisa around was an attractive one, even if all she ever did was become a
friend.

Apparently I needed more of those.

Her A.I. ported mine a contact code, and I accepted
it.  I wound up drinking one or two others, but didn’t really get any
drunker since we drank slowly.  It was a few hours later when I realized
how late it’d gotten, and how much I’d enjoyed Aisa’s company.  She was
genuine, smart as hell, very easy on the eyes, her voice was pleasant, and by
the end of the evening it felt like she was already a close friend.

We had hobbies in common, yet she had different ones as
well.  I wondered at the idea of meeting this woman right after my wife
moved out in the same day.

Still, considering I was now in the middle of a divorce that
started less than a day ago, and there was plenty of time to get to know her if
the job thing worked out, I didn’t even try to take her home that night. 
A part of me regretted it, my libido mostly, but the rest of me didn’t. 
It was more than the divorce that held me back, I thought Aisa deserved to be
more than a simple one-night stand.  I had time to approach it the right
way.

She did kiss my cheek on the sidewalk outside of her hotel
before going in though.  I stared at the door a moment before turning and
walking the five blocks back home, the memory of her warm soft lips against my
skin keeping me company.

I woke up with only a slight headache thanks to drinking
water and taking a hangover pill last night.  Even the headache went away
after a shower and putting on some fresh clothes.  I cooked a ham and
cheese omelet for breakfast, while a pair of bright green twinkling eyes were
on my mind.

I supposed I should feel guilty for that, Marilynn’s side of
the bed was barely cold and I was already thinking about moving on, but to be
fair to myself I’d lost her a long time ago, our marriage had become a sham, a
habit.  I didn’t even really hate her, I felt… nothing.  Her nagging
and constant demanding attitude had drained it all out of me for at least the
last year.

In my opinion it was no one’s fault really, I just wasn’t
the man for her, and she hadn’t been the woman for me.  But I was also
sure she would make me pay for it.

I shrugged, regardless of the circumstances I wasn’t going
to let an opportunity to be with a woman as special as Aisa pass me by, not
that it was a sure thing, but I felt the possibility was there.  Either
that, or I was nuts and had built it all up in my head while half drunk, which
was more than possible.  I supposed I would find out today. 

I sighed and grabbed a cup of orange juice, started a pot of
coffee, and then dug into my omelet.

I did a little data mining on the internet to check out the
work Aisa had done while I ate.  I liked the girl, but I wasn’t putting my
name on something with her before I’d verified her work was at least
competent.  What I found was she was more than just competent, brilliantly
creative might be a better description.  In fact, I found it hard to
believe she was just messing around with programming even with the evidence of
a web search verifying it.

There were some pictures of her private garden where she
used to live, as well as pictures of her on a swimming team.  She looked
amazing in a swim suit.  I also ran across active accounts on cooking and
gaming web sites.  As for the working out, I’d seen how supple and in
shape her body was last night.  I really didn’t think she’d been lying to
me at all, but I was thorough in my search because I found myself wanting to
know more about her the more my search verified everything she’d said last
night.

I finished breakfast and my juice, and then grabbed a coffee
and headed over to my computer.  I took a moment and sent Aisa a message
that she’d be welcome to come by today, and see what I was working on, to make
an informed decision if she was interested in partnering up like she’d
indicated last night.

After I sent it off, I dug back into the code and got to
work…

The game was starting to get on my nerves.  It seemed
no matter what I did to the controlling A.I., it would either be too easy or
too hard.

A window popped up in my overlay, Aisa was here.  I
preferred the popups to the A.I.s voice.  For some reason the toneless
voice from out of nowhere had always been more startling to me than a popup
notification.

“Send her up,” I ordered my A.I., “and allow Aisa’s
assistant guest access to the house systems, and editor access to the game.”

I looked at the time, it was just after noon, and I was
starving.  I supposed I did get overly sucked into my work and lost track
of time.  I saved my work and waited a moment.  I got up and headed
over to the front door just in time to hear the knock.

I opened the door, she looked even better than I
remembered.  She was in jean shorts, a clingy shirt and a pair of running
shoes.  She wasn’t smiling, but I could see one in her sparkling green
eyes anyway.

“Come in please.  Are you hungry?  I was about to
grab some lunch.”

She smiled then, “That sounds good.”

“Sandwiches okay?”

She nodded and I led her into the kitchen. 

“Oh, you gave me access already?  I’ll take a peek,”
she said a little eagerly.

I made a couple of roast beef sandwiches on rye, with a
pickle and fresh potato salad.  I kept stealing looks her way, but she
looked completely zoned out and absorbed in the code, I wondered if that was
what I looked like in work mode.

She blinked and smiled at me when I put the sandwich in front
of her, “Thanks, this looks great Tony,” she wasn’t shy about taking a bite.

I got both of us a glass of iced tea and dug in
myself.  We were quiet as we ate, but it was a comfortable silence, like
she was a visiting friend and not here for the first time in the hopes of
getting a job.  When she was about half done with her sandwich she took a
long drink and sounded thoughtful when she spoke.

“I don’t think it’s an A.I. issue, have you checked the
parameters?”

I asked, “What makes you say that?”

She shrugged, “I went over your test runs, the only time you
win is when the A.I. is too stupid to do anything.”

She frowned uncomfortably, “I didn’t mean that the way it
sounded.  I just think someone must have messed up with parameters for the
A.I.  It’s like it’s been programmed to win.”

I raised an eyebrow.

She laughed, “You know what I mean, a human can’t keep up
with the reflexes of an artificial intelligence, the A.I. should be trying to
present a challenge, and only killing the player if they don’t meet that
challenge, it shouldn’t be trying to win.”

I nodded, I knew that of course.  The game was an
amalgam of several programmers, and I only had the job of creating the A.I. for
the computer verse single player component.  The rules the A.I. had to
follow, were done by someone else.

“So you’re suggesting I go back to the intact smart version
of my A.I. and kick the game back to whoever flubbed it?  There are a lot
of programmers involved, that won’t be fun.”

Programmers could be incredibly touchy about their code, and
no one liked being told they’d flubbed it.  Still, it had to be done I
supposed.

She smiled, “The first part yes, but with a few extra tweaks
we can get the A.I. to tell us where the problem is so we only have to annoy
one person to get it fixed.  Most likely though, the Boolean expressions
are too simplistic and don’t take into account the player’s limitations.”

I grinned, “The A.I.?  I’d love to see what you have in
mind.”

We finished lunch and made our way into my office.  I
waved at the office chair in front of the computer invitingly, and then grabbed
another chair for myself and sat next to her.  My first thought was that
her scent was intoxicating, but I managed to focus on what she was doing.

First, she restored my A.I. to its most intelligent
configuration, the system had many restore points for all the changes I’d done,
so it only took a moment.  After that, she inserted some code for the A.I.
into the program, wrote about fifty lines of code faster than I’d ever seen to
marry it in with my A.I., and recompiled.

“So what does that code do?”

She turned toward me a little and touched my arm, it was
distracting, but in a good way.  I managed to focus on her answer and not
her touch and those deep green eyes of hers.

“It’s a learning splice.  It will figure out the
problem, all we have to do is play the game for a while.  We can always
take it out later.”

A learning A.I. was one that could grow from
experience.  My assistant A.I. is like that, it had been annoying until it
learned the way I liked to do things.  Generally, game A.I.s were static,
but it was a good idea.

“Alright, you want to give it a shot?” I asked.

She nodded with a guilty smile on her face as she took her
hand off me and then brushed her hair back behind her ear with her hand. 
I realized I hadn’t been imagining it last night, she was definitely flirting
and sending me signals, but now wasn’t the time.

I watched her as she played the game, occasionally even
checking the progress of the A.I…

The afternoon flew by as we traded back and forth and played
games, both of us consistently getting demolished by the A.I.  She kept
touching me, and I wondered about it, the timing seemed almost… too
strange.  Also the fact that she was a brilliant programmer that wanted to
work with me cast doubt on a chance meeting.  She was gorgeous, smart,
funny, sexy, and we got along great.  She was in short, perfect for me.

Too perfect.

I wanted to ignore all that and just seduce her, or more
accurately, let her continue to seduce me.  I’d probably hate myself later
for doing so, especially if I missed the chance to do just that, but I finally
decided to confront her about it, wondering if I was going insane.  I
supposed it could be kismet, or serendipity, but this was real life, not a sappy
Hallmark channel movie.

I said reluctantly, “Our meeting last night, in Lynch’s,
that wasn’t random was it?”

She looked almost guilty and sighed, “No.  I can
explain, it’s…” she trailed off with a thoughtful and conflicted look on her
face. 

I felt a need to reach out and comfort her, ironic since I
was the cause of her conflict, and it was me she had… what?  I didn’t know
but I hoped it was something reasonable.

She frowned and said in an unsure voice, “I kind of chose
you.”

I sat back a little, “What do you mean?”

She sighed, “I lived a pretty sheltered and isolated
childhood.  When I decided to escape that life, I chose Chicago.  I
wasn’t sure where to start after that, I had a few examples of my coding out
there, but I am far from established.

“You… your games were some of my favorites, and your one of
the most respected coders in Chicago.  So I sort of… cyber stalked you…
just a little.”

I wanted to laugh, how do you stalk someone just a
little?  Then I remembered I’d done the same to her this morning, so she
got a free pass.

She continued, “I didn’t do a full background check or
anything really invasive, I just kept an eye on your locations and planned to
run into you.  I saw on your Facebook you were at that other bar, but you
were with friends when I got there so I stayed back.  I kind of… followed
you to Lynch’s from there.  I just wanted to meet you, to see if you
needed an assistant coder.  I thought I was good enough for you to work
with, so I approached you at the bar.”

She blushed, “Things didn’t exactly go as I’d planned. 
You were… upset, but still very nice to me regardless of what troubles you’re
going through.  I didn’t expect to be so attracted to you either, both
your looks and your personality, that took me by surprise.  All I really
wanted when I started out in all this was a job… but now I…  I don’t know
what I want, but it’s more than just a job…” she trailed off.

God, she looked so beautiful as she peered up at me through
her thick eyelashes, there was a vulnerable hope in her eyes that I simply
couldn’t resist.  Perhaps because I felt the same emotions within
myself.  I leaned forward and stopped, waiting for a signal, she tilted
her head slightly to the side and moved forward, so I closed the distance
between us and brushed my lips lightly against hers.