Interstellar Romance

The space station was a cold, drifting piece in the expanse of the stars. Renee observed the monitors that measured the outside elements and anything of note—though watching became a tedium after 141 days of the same slow-moving realm stretching out to infinity. As a former civilian, she had been trained on a mostly need-to-know basis; the different space missions that had erupted after the third world war had no lack of volunteers and field experts alike, but the lottery system at her tech company had been on her side in the end.

Besides, what life had she been leaving behind? Her parents were long gone after the last pandemic had ravaged the world, she had no spouse or children to worry about, and she had been a renter rather than a house owner. There had been sadly few strings she had needed to cut once she had gotten the news.

Still, take-off had been a bittersweet thing as she had watched the only home she had known surge away from her.

Now, marking the 141st day of her stay in the space station, she wished she had reason to celebrate. After weeks of looking at the remaining items in the care basket her former coworkers had made up for her, she finally took out the bottle of wine that was the one thing she had avoided indulging in.

"Merlot," she murmured to herself as she looked at the label and saw, thankfully, that the top was a twist-off rather than a cork. "It's a shame I'm by myself."

Talking to herself had become just one bad habit of many she had developed in all her days of solitude.

The gravity-simulating room allowed her to pour the wine in a glass as she watched the starscape outside the heavy-duty shatter-resistant window. It might have been romantic, if she had someone to share the view with, but she was no better than an animal in a cage at this point. At least the zoo animals that were left had companions or cubs to distract them from the fact that they were trapped in enclosures where they would probably live out the rest of their days.

Once, she might have said it was better up here than down there—an earth ravaged by hundreds of years of human error—but she couldn't deny the truth.

She missed people. She missed chatting. She missed the beauty of human touch.

Sighing, she took a sip of the wine—such a shame she didn't have a three-course meal to go with the hints of blackberry and herbs awash on her tongue—and resisted the urge to lose another night to the live feed of entertainment she could pull up for a few hours without the intrusion of her own thoughts.

Rather, Renee did the one thing she thought she wouldn't resort to, just like the wine: she swiped across her monitor to the user menu and verified her passcode before the AI Communication and Simulation Tool came up as an option.

The headiness of the wine made her press the selection. Then she waited as the screen went black.

The stark blankness of the gravity-simulating room melted away from her vision until she found herself sitting in what looked like an outdoor café in the streets of Paris. The buzz of conversation from the locals roiled around her, a touch of a breeze swept back her hair, and birdsong seemed to echo from far away. The sunlight even felt like a warm touch upon her skin.

"Heavenly," she whispered to herself, losing herself in the fabrication of reality. She knew each thing had been pulled from her own memories, faded as they were, of things she had experienced back when she had backpacked through Europe one summer during her college years. Even the smells of freshly baked croissants and roasted coffee beans radiated to her senses.

"Renee Armitage?"

She turned her head to regard a familiar-looking man who approached as if she were a cornered animal. His smile was reassuring, his dark blue suit cut just right to his height and build, and the only kink in the picture was how he stood stiffly, awkwardly, as if he had no idea how to move naturally.

Even he was a facsimile dredged from long-ago memories. It was a number of years back, but he was the spitting image of a CEO who had charmed her over coffee but had "forgotten" their dinner date, only to ignore any attempt she had made to reschedule.

But at least it didn't hurt to see him. There were worse men her subconscious could have brought to the forefront as a projection.

"Hello," she said, still feeling all the sensations of being in France on a lovely summer morning. "I take it you're the AI portion of this little nostalgic ride?"

The smile didn't waver. "You can call me Art if you would prefer."

She still clutched the glass of wine in her grip. It was nice to know something was still real. "Okay, Art. Have a seat. I was waiting for you."

The AI—Art sat down across from her and watched her expectantly. "I'm here at your request alone," he said. "Would you like to choose from a list of conversation starters?"

"Why don't you tell me about yourself?" she asked, playing into this little game. At least the AI was nice to look at, all things considered, no matter her history with that same face and its false promises. Ironic, really.

To her surprise, Art laughed. "The more you speak, the more I learn, and I will adapt to the conversation at hand. You may think my language is stilted for the moment, but I assure you that won't last long."

"How about touch? Do you simulate intimacy too?" The question might have arisen from her starvation for human touch and closeness, but perhaps she was already getting a tad tipsy from the wine.

Art appeared thoughtful for a long moment. "I am not adverse, and it is not beyond the programming capabilities of the tool you accessed. However, I would advise against it until you and I have spoken for a while."

"Why? You're an AI simulation. Do you have morals against one-night stands?"

"You have been away from human contact for 141 days, Renee Armitage. The last time you touched another human being was right before your lift-off from earth. Archival footage shows that you shook the hand of the space engineer before getting into the shuttle. It lasted thirteen seconds. Before that—"

"All right, all right," Renee said. "I don't need you to tell me my own history."

"Per my programming, I advise that we get to know each other a little better. We can repeat this simulation every night until your mission ends, if you would like. Like I relayed earlier in the conversation, the more we talk, the more I will learn, and then I will be able to reciprocate human emotion to better results."

"I don't need you to fall in love with me," she murmured, and Art actually stared at her as if he was trying to process her words carefully—per his programming, of course.

"As a growing AI simulation tool, I would not be adverse to this task of falling in love if that would better serve you and those like you."

If Renee hadn't been in a simulation with threads taken from her own mind, she might have felt embarrassed that the AI was trying so desperately to understand her and what she might need.

She held out her glass of wine. "This is the only real thing I have in this simulation," she said, "and I'd like to share it with you."

"My sensory nodules detect what is called wine on planet Earth," Art said, his voice strangely monotone even for an AI. "Do you wish to share this for the furtherance of my knowledge and skills?"

She shrugged. "I just want to share a glass of wine with my date," she said. "That's what you are for the time being, right?"

Art reached out with a hand and curled his fingers around the glass, his touch just barely grazing her own fingertips. "Yes, Renee Armitage. If that is what you would like to call this, then it is a date."

Rolling her eyes, she let go of the glass. "Just call me Renee."

"Renee," Art said, and this time she actually smiled.

"Once I'm through with you, you may not want to simulate another date again."

The AI just watched her before bringing the glass of wine to his too-real-looking lips. "I assure you that will not be the case, Renee."

Well. They would have to see, wouldn't they?

Perhaps day 142 aboard the space station wouldn't be so bad if she had another date to look forward to at the end of the day.