The Soul of a Perfect Boyfriend

Rae falls asleep, thinking about Wes Warren and how she's never going to meet someone like him. Gradually, there is a noise coming from the box version of assistant robot Z. There are a few parts of the program in robot Z that seem to be over-running.

In the meantime, Zach Evans is sleeping already, but his phone starts blowing up with alerts.

"What? What?" Zach struggles to get up. He rolls to his side and quickly fumbles for his phone on the night stand.

"What the heck?"

Zach sees more than a dozen of overheating alerts on the box version of Z.

Zach whines, as he doesn't want to get up. But he has to; this is essentially his baby. So he walks over to his home office, turning on the monitor that has live updates on Z's status.

"Oh my gosh!"

Z's human interaction, human emotions detection and all the related apps are all running too much. Usually each app runs below 20% of each's capacity. But right now, each app is running over 68% of its capacity. It's like someone is forcing Z to figure out a lot more than usual cues or commands, and they are forcing Z to retrieve a whole bunch of codes and new formulas from Zach's database into its own program.

Zach quickly enters a few diagnosis codes to see what is going on.

"This can't be right! Z is in a box mode now, he can't see Rae's reaction. Why does he have so much interaction and emotion detection going on?" Zach tries to think. Oh, of course. He remembers now, Z is also in the backseat of Wes Warren's look-alike robot, because Zach forgets to erase all of that.

"Maybe Wes Warren is using his look-alike robot right now."

Zach decides to call Z into a communication with him.

"Z, what's going? Are you being used both by Wes and Rae right now, that's why you are overheating?"

"No. No one is using me right now. Wes hasn't used his robot for some time now."

"What? What are you doing then? You seem to be getting software upgrade yourself. I'm not ready to upgrade you yet."

"I believe it's because I encounter an episode with Rae and it triggers me to want to learn more about human feelings."

"What episode? You had an argument with her or something?"

"No, the opposite. She trusts me completely. She just told me which guy she likes the most right now." Z responds calmly and without emotion. But it almost sounds like Z is dying. Like low in battery or something. "Oh. And, Rae also just figured out why she enjoys to have sex with Wes Warren more."

"Ugh gosh, I don't want to hear this," Zach rolls his office chair away from his desk a little.

"The thing is, Zach, I don't want to hear that either. But it's my duty to listen to her and give her suggestions. But it is also in big big conflict of... how I feel. I believe I feel very jealous." Z actually shows some different inflections in his voice. He sounds a little agitated.

Zach is surprised. Jealous? Can the robot assistant feel jealous? To be honest, Zach writes this program based a lot on his own personal ways of thinking, logics, emotional responses. But even so, Zach doesn't share his current thoughts with this robot program. Zach is indeed jealous of Rae's romantic feelings for Wes. But Z shouldn't learn that from him.

Geez. Or Z is feeling jealous on its own? Can the robot itself learn to be jealous towards Rae's relationships?

Damn it. It is a possibility. Because, the most valuable feature of Zach's A.I. program is that it learns on its own and develops naturally like a real human. But, Zach never expects Z to learn to have feelings for Rae.

Shit. That's a bug that Zach needs to fix. If Zach wants to sell this A.I. assistant to the public, he can't have all the robot assistants fall in love with their owners, unless the owners ask the robots to.

Zach knows Rae chooses "Friendly" setting for the robot, so the robot shouldn't turn into a boyfriend mindset.

Oh well. Zach decides that he will have to run some tests, see what he needs to change.

He sighs, and texts Rae. He knows it's late and Rae is sleeping, but he just wants to text that now. She'll see it in the morning: "Can you please bring both the box version and the smart watch version of Z back to my office tomorrow?"

He turns off the lights of his home office and goes back to bed.

Ugh. Now he can't fall asleep. He's worried about his A.I. program. He thought it was quite perfect as it is. Originally, he lends Z—his pride, his baby—to Rae, because, he wanted to pacify both Rae and Wes. He told Wes he would continue to watch Rae for him. He told Rae that she should continue the trial. He didn't really intend either of that, but, maybe it's a good idea after all to have someone take it out of the lab and test it out in the real life. This robot assistant falling in love without being asked to? This is just... too unexpected.

It bothers Zach quite a lot. Mostly because he's spent so much time on designing it. Of course he wants it to operate according to his expectations. Zach doesn't want anything unexpected.

But Zach also is annoyed how Rae is talking about who she really likes now. Oh, she seems to have gain some more recent sex experiences, apparently.

And seriously, Z sounds like himself. Gosh. And Z now is having romantic feelings for Rae, too? Zach is the one designed Z and allowed Z to get close to Rae. He basically produced a soul of a perfect boyfriend for Rae. And this boyfriend soul likes her, too. Good gracious.

"Oh my gosh, stop! You need to stop thinking about that woman! She always shows up in your life and makes you realize whatever you design isn't good enough. Many years ago when you were a student in college. And now again when you are a CEO of a company! Damn it! This woman is going to be the death of me!"