by D. R. Rosier
Well, I’d planned to stop, but what the hell, I ordered two more Irish coffees. The bartender was actually a person, and made our drinks. I guessed he must be the owner or something, since most service jobs were not done by a human these days.
“So what do you do Aisa?” I asked, determined not to chase her away with pitiful life story.
While I waited for her answer, I wondered what other surprises were in store for me, other affects from the divorce I hadn’t taken into account. Although, I decided it was worth it, we were both miserable married, whatever it was it would be better just getting it over with. I’d have to start a new life, but I just didn’t know what it would be yet.
Aisa shrugged, “I have a lot of hobbies, haven’t really made up my mind yet what to focus on, I might not ever. I like gardening, cooking, programming, and working out. I also like swimming, and my guilty pleasure is role play video games although I don’t count that as a hobby, it isn’t… productive, just fun. What do you do?”
I raised an eyebrow, “I work on A.I. programming, for games. Recently I’ve been developing a space game, part shooter, part strategy. I also love cooking. That’s about it though, how do you find the time for all of that?”
She laughed and shrugged, “I dabble in all of it, I don’t do the nine to five thing. I still get extra credits for some of it, but that really isn’t important to me, I just like to feel… useful. I’m between work right now though, new in town as well, still looking for a place to live.”
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.
Chapter 3
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 ma
de 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.
Chapter 4
Her lips were soft and yielding, drawing me to kiss her harder. Her lips parted slightly as she sighed into my mouth and wrapped her arms around my neck. I reached up and caressed her face, as I teased her lips to open further with my tongue.
The last thing I ever wanted to think of in that moment was my ex, but it did occur to me this was the first woman I’d kissed besides Marilynn since I was eighteen, after we’d gotten married ten years ago. Luckily, the thought evaporated under the passion Aisa and I were sharing as we kissed.
Her tongue tentatively played with mine for a moment, and then I playfully nipped her bottom lip. We kissed like teenagers for a few moments, exploring, teasing, and passionately. We finally broke the kiss and backed off a little, and stared into each other’s eyes for moment.
Her fingernails felt good caressing the back of my neck, and I softly caressed her face and neck in return, and then ran my hands softly down the sides of her body and then her legs.
She smiled shyly, “I guess I’m forgiven then?”
I shook my head and said mock ste
rnly, “Only if you stay for dinner.”
She laughed, “Would you like me to cook for you too?”
I pretended to think about it, “You could help me.”
We both felt relief, I could sense she was relieved that I wasn’t mad about our not so accidental meeting. The truth was I would have been if the seduction had been a part of it, but merely looking for a job? I was pleased that’s all it had been, and that’s where my relief came from. I wanted to lean in and claim another kiss, pick her up and take her to the bedroom, but I didn’t want to rush things either.
She snickered and her eyes were lit with mischief as she said sarcastically, “I can, can I? So I made assistant programmer and assistant cook all in one day. Awesome.”
I laughed, “Exactly,” and added innocently, “What? They call that job security…”
She stuck her tongue out at me, “Just give me a minute to save, we are done for the day, right?”
I nodded, “How much longer do you think for your A.I. patch to work things out,” I was still dubious about that to be honest, but she really believed it would work, and if I was honest with myself I had to admit her code was more elegant than mine. It wouldn’t take her long to make a name for herself.
She shrugged, “A few more hours, maybe lunch tomorrow if we get an early start?”
I nodded, and then added in a more serious tone, “Oh, if the kiss wasn’t clarification enough, I feel the same about you.”
She smiled mysteriously, “So what are you going to help me cook?”
She giggled at the face I made, I guess I was just demoted.
“If you really do want to… Why don’t you surprise me? Take a look around the kitchen and pick something.”
She grinned and leaned in for a short but very thorough kiss, and then whispered in a soft sexy voice, “I really want to,” and then turned away and walked toward the kitchen.
My mind spun, and my cock twitched, as I tried to figure out if she’d still been talking about cooking with that sultry comment… or about something else entirely…