Freethinker
Not exactly love at first byte.
Simon Rayner doesn’t have a lot that’s real. His tech job is a hobby to bolster what he gets from Basic. His housing got assigned when he and his roommate lied about their engagement. Even his body talks to him through sensor lace and microchips. So when Simon finds part of an android in a recycling pod, he’s expecting the AI inside to be as artificial as everything else.
David is a head, at the moment. He’s not sure what happened to his body, but he’s very grateful to Simon for building him a new one. Grateful is a relative term, of course. David doesn’t feel emotions, but he’s learning how to pretend he does. And learning which ones are appropriate in context. And learning that they’re a lot more nuanced than he’d predicted.
Simon is one pair of googly eyes away from an emotional connection to the dishwasher, and he knows it. But when it comes to David, his imagination is quickly running away with him. David insists he’s a set of animations driven by code, but Simon can’t square that with the charismatic personality he’s falling for. When David’s emotional emulators start malfunctioning, the two of them will have to decide: What does it mean to be real?
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Heat Wave: 4 - On-screen and mildly explicit love scenes
Erotic Frequency: 2 - Not many
Orientation: bisexual / pansexual, poly, queer
Ending: happily ever after, happy for now
Themes: acceptance, angst, artificial intelligence, geeks / nerds, internet culture, interspecies, pining / UST, power imbalance, prostitution, romantic elements, self-discovery / self-reflection, trust issues
Kinks: dirty talk, mechanophilia, phone sex / sexting
Settings: America, aquarium, different Earth, suburbs, train, virtual reality
Careers: hacker, IT specialist, phone sex operator, unemployed
Word Count: 61,500
Cover By: Simone
ISBN: 978-1-963773-23-1
Release Date: 12/09/2024
Price: $4.99
ISBN: 978-1-963773-24-8