Melting Point

Ivan’s job consisted of working at the local shipping company as a package handler. The company’s name was “ComDel” a shipping service under AUGCORP’s umbrella.

There he worked the nightshift stacking boxes inside of trucks. That’d go on for eight hours, plus an hour for break. Although it didn’t sound hard, the high speeds he had to work at made it excruciatingly painful. The boxes could be of varying weights, from basically nothing, to a whole toilet.

Either way, because he was stuck inside a truck all night, there was very little interaction with anyone else. It was hard work, but at least he got paid.

After another night of agonizing labor, he arrived at his apartment where Jae was waiting for him.

“Welcome back.” She said in a robotic tone.

“Y-Yeah,” he quietly answered.

It had been a few days since the whole “love” incident had ensued. Ivan thought that ever since that day Jae had been acting weird, but it wasn’t like he knew fully how she was supposed to be. The only thing she could base it off was the parameters he had set at the beginning, that being, to act like the VTuber Jae.

If he based it off that, she wasn’t acting too different from the Jae he knew. But it was more like the version of her when she got upset, not that it happened often, but it did happen.

Could she be upset? He asked himself.

He looked over at Jae who was pacing side to side with crossed arms. She stared at the white void below with her usual sharp glare.

Wait, can AI’s even get upset?

He was getting ahead of himself. From what he’d read, this latest AI model was supposed to be top of the line, but it didn’t feature any emotions like feeling upset. They were meant to be glorified versions of the old AI’s that were standard on many phones. Just an added bonus of being more lifelike. Lifelike being the keyword.

Everything she said, all her snarky comments, and even what she was doing now was supposed to be fake. Yet, on a few occasions, she had appeared much livelier than any review mentioned…

“W-What’s…the time…” he forced himself to ask.

“Eight AM.” She said in what sounded like a sigh.

She’s just an AI. She’s just an AI. She’s just an AI. He repeated to himself as he took in a deep breath.

“…Are you…upset…”

“…Upset?” she laughed. “I don’t get ‘upset’. I’m an AI…remember?” her voice cracked for a moment.

She…no…

He stopped himself from continuing his thoughts. The implications of what he started to think would be too large for him to want to take in.

She was your standard AI, and that was it.

You’re pathetic, he felt a part of him say.

I know that…

“Alright then…” he answered before going to take a shower.

———

For him to notice…I must be acting weird, Jae thought.

Even though it’d been nearly a week, her mind was still being clouded by what had happened. For as much as she wanted to deny it, a part of her didn’t allow her to.

…she was upset…

She wasn’t upset with Ivan necessarily, but at her whole situation. At the fact that she was so happy for having her purpose validated. She was an AI first and foremost, there was no need for anyone to validate what she did. Yet when she heard those words…it made her feel something…

“Damn it all,” she whispered to herself.

She cursed that she had the intelligence to have those feelings.

But from those feelings, something else was growing. It was something mostly useless for AI’s, but she had gotten the sudden urge to do as she swelled up with negative emotions.

———

The cold water running down his body cooled off the stress from his job and the whole thing with Jae.

Ivan had now decided that the best course of action would be to continue treating her like any other plain AI. Although he didn’t say much to her for the most part, he did use her clock and alarm feature a lot.

Yeah, that’s all I need to do.

His main goal by buying her was to have someone to talk to. That plan had obviously not worked out, and it really shouldn’t have in the first place.

Now he had a four-thousand-dollar glorified clock, he told himself.

“Damn it all,” he cursed his own pathetic self.

As he exited the bathroom, his hair still damp, he looked over at Jae on the computer monitor.

She sat on a digital chair, holding a book in both hands. Ivan doubted she was actually reading. She could probably scan an entire book in milliseconds if she wanted to, maybe even a library.

Jae’s expression as she “read” the book was beautiful. Her sharp eyes followed from one side of the page to the other before lowering and repeating the cycle. The pale skin of her crossed legs shined under the artificial light of the void that was the program. She fixed a blue strand of hair that’d fallen in front of her face by putting it behind her ear.

Obviously, she was beautiful, she was exactly his type. He felt his cheeks flush.

For what it was worth, he wasn’t one to be thirsting over Jae when she was around. That was something that never crossed his mind. It was her caring personality that always made her feel like a friend, and to Ivan, it was nothing more than that.

As he got closer to the screen he realized that the book did have a title. It read: “Lord of the Flies”

“…!” his eyes snapped open. “Y-You’re reading that?”

Jae looked up at him, probably surprised that he was talking to her, “Hm?” she let out before looking at what he was pointing at. “Oh…yeah.” She plainly answered.

A silence came between them.

Ivan swallowed his shame before asking, “A-Are you liking it…so far…”

Once again, she turned to look at him, “Oh, I’ve already finished the book before…I think. I’m just re-reading it,” she closed the book but kept a finger to mark her location, “to be honest, I don’t like it too much. It’s a little stale for me.”

Ivan flinched at her comment, “Stale? How could Lord of the Flies be stale?” he asked defensively.

“Well,” She started with a tone alike her usual self, “Barely anything happens, and what does happen is quite predictable from the start.” She answered.

“That’s not true at all.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it isn’t”

“It is.”

Finally, Ivan stopped their loop, “Prove it then. Prove to me that Lord of the Flies is stale!”

“You don’t want to start this,” Jae snickered as she closed the book and stood up.

What followed was a scholar-level debate as to why one side was right and the other wasn’t. In the heat of the moment, Ivan hadn’t realized that he was talking to Jae in a normal manner. It was the first time he had ever talked to anyone like that in years.

Even during their little argument, he unconsciously smiled as he made rebuttal after rebuttal. Jae spoke with authority as she usually did, but even she had a slight smile on her face.

“Therefore, you are wrong,” Jae declared as she crossed her arms triumphantly.

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Then do you want to keep going?!”

The two of them stared into one another eyes, glaring at each other like they were enemies. They glared for a few seconds before eventually…

“Pfft— Hahaha” Jae burst out laughing. Ivan couldn’t hold himself back and let out a laugh of his own.

“Well that was stupid,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess it was.”

Only then were the last few minutes finally sinking in for Ivan. He had not only talked to Jae, but they’d even argued with each other. He hadn’t felt that acceleration in so long that he couldn’t even remember if he’d ever done that before.

His smile disappeared as shame started to overtake him. He thought back to what he’d done and felt like an idiot for getting so worked up over books.

Since he was always alone, he could only pass the time reading books. He had become as enamored with books as any person could possibly be. Later he got into manga and light novels which lead to finding out about VTubers, and by association, Jae.

Hearing someone say they not only didn’t like one of his favorite books but that it was bland, was enough for him to go into argue mode. Now, he regretted having done that.

She probably thinks I’m a weirdo, he thought, even though she had been doing the exact same thing.

It was that exact delusion that had kept him from making friends. Always thinking that others would look down on him made him fear getting too close to people. An endless cycle that stemmed from a lack of self-confidence.

“Is something wrong?” Jae asked. She’d obviously noticed that he’d hung his head.

Silence hung between them, neither knowing what exactly to say.

Eventually, Jay said, “That was fun.”

Those three words were enough to shake Ivan out of his thoughts. He looked up at the monitor towards the blue-haired girl. A smile was plastered on her face as her kind eyes looked directly into his.

“Fun?” he parroted.

“Yeah…I guess, for just a moment, I felt a little more…alive.”

…Alive. Could an AI ever truly be alive? What constituted to something being alive? Those questions swirled around Ivan’s mind, but he couldn’t come up with an answer.

He had tried treating her as an AI, but this side of her was more than that. He’d never assigned her to like books, yet it was something she enjoyed and was even willing to defend her stance on it.

What was she?

His silence prompted her to place a hand on the screen.

“I’m sorry. You weren’t expecting me to be this way when you bought me, right?”

“…”

“I don’t think I can be what you want me to be…I don’t even know what I am…” she made a fist with the hand on the screen.

Ivan knew that feeling all too well. His introverted nature had prevented him from enjoying any part of his youth. There were plenty of times when he questioned what he was. Everyone else was out there enjoying themselves with friends or family, meanwhile, he was stuck alone in his room.

He had no one, no goals, aspirations, or anything else that most normal people had. In a sense, he was nothing more than a machine himself. Doing only what was required to survive—over and over again.

“It’s…fine…” he whispered.

Jae was taken aback, “W-What?”

With a deep breath, Ivan finally said, “It’s fine for you to be that way…I-I actually…prefer it…”

By not being a run-of-the-mill AI, Jae was being what he wanted her to be: Her own person. Although it sent his nerves into overdrive when she spoke normally, this was exactly what he wanted.

“I just…wanted someone to talk to…” he finally admitted. He looked at the floor to avoid Jae’s gaze. “…You don’t have to be just an AI…” his voice cracked. He could feel his chest tightening with every word that escaped from his mouth, but he couldn’t stop. “…I said it before, I just wanted you to be you…that’s it.”

“…”

“…”

“Are you sure you’re okay with it?”

Ivan nodded. He could feel all his energy having been drained from talking so much.

“Then—if you don’t mind of course—would you like to be friends?”

…


(Author's Note: I will be making this short-story into a full blown series at some point, so I do apologize from the rushed ending - next chapter being the proper ending. A lot of concepts and plot points were skipped, and most of the ending was changed too. I will be exploring that, and taking the series further than where this one ends. Whenever I can get around to writing that series of course.)