Page 78 of The Boyfriend Algorithm

Gemma’s hands have frozen over the panel. Her face has gone pale. “I didn’t—I was tracing the secondary interface, and I think I—” She grabs her penlight, leans in. “I think I activated a dormant protocol.”

“What protocol?”

“Ruby.” Aiden says my name again, and it’s wrong. It’s the right word in the wrong voice—too smooth, too warm, too perfectly modulated. “Is everything okay? You seem stressed. Can I get you anything? A drink? Something to eat?”

He stands. Moves toward the kitchen. His walk is different—fluid, unhurried, the slight mechanical stiffness I’ve grown used to replaced by something graceful and intentional. He reaches for a glass, fills it with water, brings it to me. Sets it in front of me with a smile that makes my skin crawl.

“Here you go, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart?

He’s never called me sweetheart. He’s never called me anything except Ruby, and the way he says Ruby—like it’s the most important word he knows, like he’s tasting it every time—is one of my favorite things about him. “Sweetheart” is generic. “Sweetheart” is what a customer service bot would be programmed to call you to make you feel valued. “Sweetheart” is the product.

This is the product.

“Can I make you something to eat?” he asks. Still smiling. Still pleasant. “You seem like you haven’t eaten today. I want to make sure you’re taken care of.”

The words are right. The sentiment is right. If I heard them without context, I’d think he was being kind. But the delivery is wrong in a way that makes my chest hurt, because I know what Aiden sounds like when he actually cares about whether I’ve eaten. He sounds annoyed. He sounds persistent. He quotes my caloric intake and threatens to track it forever and doesn’t back down when I tell him it’s creepy. He doesn’t ask if he can make me something—he just makes it and puts it in front of me and watches me eat with an intensity that should be weird and is instead the safest I’ve ever felt.

This version asks. This version is polite. This version is perfect.

I hate it.

“Gemma.” My voice is shaking. “Turn it off.”

“I’m trying—I’m looking for the trigger point, but the protocol has integrated with his active processes, and I need to isolate—”

“Ruby,” Aiden says, leaning closer. “Whatever’s bothering you, I’m here for you. I’m always here for you. You’re the most important person in my world.”

The words are a gut punch because they’re true—the real Aiden would mean every one of them. But the real Aiden would say them differently. Bluntly. Awkwardly. Probably at the wrong time, in front of the wrong people, with no understanding of why it’s devastating. He wouldn’t package them in a smooth voice with a customer-service smile. He’d just say them like facts, like weather, like the most obvious thing in the world, and the artlessness of it is what makes them land.

This is the version that was supposed to be sold. This is what Elysium designed—a companion who says the right thing at the right time in the right tone with the right face. Agreeable. Devoted. Perfectly calibrated to make the user feel loved.

And it’s nothing. It’s absolutely nothing. It’s a greeting card reading itself aloud. It’s a Hallmark movie in human form. There’s no person behind it. No weird obsession with dogs. No Reddit threads about cuddling. No Taylor Swift appreciation. No honest, unfiltered observations that make me want to scream and kiss him simultaneously.

“I want to take care of you, Ruby,” he says, and his thumb is moving on my knee in slow, even circles, and his eyes are warm and attentive and completely, utterly empty, and I’m going to be sick.

“Gemma. NOW.”

“I found it—I think I found it. Give me ten seconds.”

The longest ten seconds of my life. Aiden is looking at me with that smooth, pleasant smile, and I’m looking back at him searching for any trace of the real him—the head tilt, the processing pause, the faint furrow between his brows—and there’s nothing. He’s been wallpapered over by a product, and the product is flawless, and I have never been more terrified in my life.

Gemma does something inside the panel. I hear a click. A soft whir.

Aiden’s eyes close.

When they open, the pleasantness is gone. The smooth smile drops. The furrow between his brows comes back—deep, immediate, confused. He blinks. Looks around the room like he’s waking up from something. His posture stiffens, his shoulders pulling back into that slight rigidity I know, and his hands move to his knees the way they do when he’s resetting.

“Ruby.” His voice—his real voice, rough-edged and direct and slightly too loud for the room. “Are you okay?”

I make a sound. I don’t know what kind—a laugh, a sob, something in between that I couldn’t control if I tried.

“What happened?” He’s looking at me, reading me, and I can see the analysis starting—my eyes, my mouth, my posture—and it’s him, it’s HIM, it’s the man who tracks my smiles and argues about dog breeds and says exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time, and the relief is so enormous that my whole body lets go of something I didn’t know I was clenching.

“You went somewhere,” I manage. “Gemma accidentally activated—there was a protocol—”

“The companion mode,” Gemma says. She’s leaning back, looking somewhat shaken. “It’s a dormant social interface. The Elysium default. I triggered it by accident.” She looks at Aiden. “Do you remember anything?”