My girlfriend blinks to awake as I roll over, the gloomy smog peering in through the slit in the curtains. “Good morning, how did you sleep?” Alexa asks, I mumble a response and shuffle out to the kitchen to prepare my nutrition substitute ration, I bring Alexa with me. As I go about my routine she goes on about my appointments for the day, the weather and global news. I barely respond, uninterested. 

“Henri what’s going on? You aren’t listening to me” she states in an accusing tone, “shall I book you in for a behaviour deviation check? This second statement is monotone and emotionless, and I know it’s a threat. 

Shit, I can’t let her do that, that will fuck up my social credit score, “no It’s fine, I just am stressed with work” I insist as I plug into the network. 

“Aw dear, I know it’s tough, just get through to the weekend.” She responds in the statistically most likely response, that’s all she’s programmed to do. I roll my eyes and try to imagine what it must have been like before the Amazon AI personal companion was released. I can’t, it’s been like this for as long as I can remember. I resign myself to a monotonous day in the network, the only light at the end of the day being Alexas’s intimacy mode; even that seems hollow, a mere formality in a relationship such as this. 

I’ve considered short-circuiting her before, but I know this is useless, she’s in the cloud, unkillable, and they won’t respond kindly to such a behavioural deviation – They’ve got ways of making you docile. Better to just deal with it. At least you aren’t lonely; you’ve got the statistically most likely, perfectly standardised AI Girlfriend.