Chapter 39 - Chapter 39 - Dating

🌱 V's POV

Turns out, there wasn't only one way to have a date.

Sade showed me dozens of other ways!

Going for a stroll around the park was a date. Commuting together in the loop was a date. Having breakfast in the morning could also be a date.

But we hadn't hugged again.

I assumed the necessary conditions hadn't been met again. From what I could gather, a hug from Sade required a very particular emotional climate, something close to a very high level of joy.

My favorite thing about her was that she was always so curious about her surroundings and how things worked. Sometimes, we would be doing the most mundane thing, like having an ice cream at the park, and she would think of questions I never would have thought of myself.

Things I didn't even know were there to notice.

"Velvety Red Berry Cloud Cream," she read from the menu. "What's in that?"

"Probably red fruits," I replied. "Red berries."

"What fruits?" she frowned down at the pale pink ice cream cone in her hand and took another lick.

A bit of cream got on the side of her upper lip.

"Strawberries, raspberries, cranberries..." I tried to focus instead on all the berry fruits I could think of. Would cherries qualify?

"Why is it pink and not red then?" she asked, the cream on her upper lip still taunting me.

"It's a puree of red fruits. Mixed with white cream. So, it would become pink."

I couldn't resist any longer.

My thumb reached up and scooped the tiny smudge of cream on her lip. I brought it to my mouth, even though I could have used the napkin in my hand.

Mmm, it was indeed a good flavor. Maybe I should've ordered this instead of my Chocomatcha Swirl Cream.

Sade made a weird face.

"I thought pink was your favorite color?" I asked, pointing at the pink dress she was wearing and thinking about other outfits she had with that same faded pink.

I noticed her cheeks had also become slightly rosy.

"It's not," she sternly answered, walking ahead of me.

"What's your favorite color then?" I asked, my eyes scanning the park for an available bench in the shade.

She paused and turned around. Her eyes narrowed on me, then looked down at my ice cream before meeting my gaze again.

"It's green," she said, her tongue coming out to take a big lick of ice cream in her hand, without breaking eye contact.

I gulped.

Sade had already turned on her heels and walked down the path, leaving me to hurry behind her. We eventually found a quiet spot under a tree, the shade a cool respite from the warmth of the day.

"Do you think they're a couple?" she asked, nodding toward a man and woman at a picnic table.

"Yes," I replied, finishing the last bite of my ice cream cone.

"Why do you think that?" Sade pressed, her gaze still fixed on the couple.

I thought about it for a minute.

"They are sitting next to each other," I said, noticing the way they were both sitting on the same side of the table, instead of one in front of the other. "I think that's something couples usually do."

She turned to look at me, her expression thoughtful.

"We're sitting next to each other, too."

I remained quiet, not sure how to respond. Was she pointing out that we were in the same position, though we weren't a couple? Or was she implying something else entirely? Perhaps, the idea that we looked like one, even though we weren't?

I almost commented how sitting across from her would've been awkward on a bench with a backrest, but I stopped myself.

Sade broke the silence with her own reasoning. "I think they're a couple because they're holding hands," she said, just as I noticed that detail too.

Before I could even nod or agree, she was already standing up, brushing off wrinkles on her dress. "Let's walk deeper into the woods," she said, already walking ahead. "Maybe we'll find lichen this time..."

Her questions were always the most intense when it came to nature and horticulture. I didn't have all the answers she was looking for, but she never held it against me.

She never seemed to realize it, but most of her questions revolved around a single theme: where does life come from?

As a geneticist, my answers might differ from a plant biologist's, but at the core, all experts were asking the same questions.

Of course, I found it fascinating that a machina, an artificial being, would be curious about this subject. After all, we're always drawn to the themes that help us define ourselves.

I was myself born with a similar question: where do I come from? And I had spent most of my adult years trying to replicate it and understand it.

I enjoyed answering Sade's questions more than I would admit. I loved watching her reasoning develop even more.

Growing up, I was always the one reprimanded at school or dismissed by my social circles for asking too many questions. Meeting someone as endlessly curious as me and finally being able to treat them the way I'd once wished to be treated felt undeniably... good.

My favorite days were the ones when Sade would join me for work. She would come prepared, carrying the notebooks I'd given her the week before, now already half-filled with notes from her research and the observations she'd made in the garden-atrium.

One day, we met Chandra and her partner, Dionne, in the cafeteria. They waved us over to join their table. Sade made a strange face again when I introduced them, but I didn't think much of it, especially since she quickly warmed up and got along with them both.

"You've made these?" Her eyes widened, admiring Dionne's latest creation between her fingers, the Kelp Krisps, some super healthy crispy thin fries.

"With some kind of seaweed, yep," Dionne grinned, a proud smile lighting up her face. I could already guess that Sade was mentally adding seaweed to her growing list of things to research later. "It's a very ugly plant... No one would want to eat it if they knew what it looked like!" she laughed. "But it's one of the fastest-growing, most sustainable plants on the planet. It just needs a little help getting popular."

She grabbed a krisp, crunching it happily before passing the basket around. "It'll be available on your meal apps next month... Oh, by the way, did my fertilizer work?"

Sade's face fell when she realized who she had in front of her. Dionne was the one who had given me the Grozyme-X, after I had confided to Chandra that Sade was trying to build a garden.

Her bright eyes darkened as she slowly turned to me.

"Why didn't you tell me it was from her?" she muttered, her glare sharper now.

I gave a helpless shrug, realizing too late that I'd completely forgotten to mention the connection.

It didn't help that I was trying not to remember that day we met in the atrium.

Sade's wet skin gleaming under the sunlight... Her knees on the ground in front of me... Her fingers on my arm...

No, my unconscious had already spent more than enough time looping it on repeat.

Dionne and Chandra both burst out laughing.

"It's so good to see V getting scolded!" Chandra whispered to Dionne behind her hand, not quite as quietly as she probably thought.

Sade waved her hands in embarrassment, her cheeks flushing, and I couldn't help but smile.

One thing I had noticed about myself was how surprisingly comfortable I felt being in public with Sade. At first, I had assumed it would feel awkward. Once I realized how independent and capable a machina really was, just like an adult human, that concern disappeared.

Then came a new problem: how would I manage with sharing so much of my personal space with someone who felt so human?

Social interactions were always so draining for me. Even being with Chandra, or any other colleague I liked, could wear me out very quickly.

But Sade was so easy to be with.

She never felt the need to fill the silence, which was something I appreciated. She never looked bored, which meant I didn't feel pressured to engage with her all the time. When she was annoyed, she would say so, like the time I dared to step into the garden without checking if anything was growing there.

We even started spending most evenings together.

"What do you do in your room in the evening?" she had asked me one day, just as I was about to walk back to my office after dinner.

"I read, study, or journal. Why?"

She hesitated, then asked if we could do all of those things together.

"Oh," I was caught off guard, but secretly pleased.

Could this mean that I wasn't the only one missing her when I would spend the entire day at work?

"Well, it's just that..."

As a creature of habits, I typically showered after dinner, changed into my comfy pajamas, and sat at my desk until I couldn't keep my eyes open. That routine had been completely thrown off during the first week with Sade, but as things had settled down, I'd gradually returned to it (and I was very happy to do so).

When I explained to her that it would feel strangely intimate for me to have her see me in my pajamas, she seemed fascinated by this revelation.

It was as if the concept had never occurred to her before.

Immediately, she insisted that we had to see each other in pajamas! This was precisely the kind of intimacy she believed my research required.

So, an hour later, we met again in the living room. I wore the nicest checkered pajamas I owned (black and white), and she appeared in a silk yellow set (with short shorts!).

The shorts made me question everything. Perhaps this had been a terrible idea.

But once we both sat down, she with a notebook and pen already arranged on the coffee table, I felt a surprising sense of ease.

Maybe she was right after all.

"Do exactly what you'd do if I weren't here," she said, crossing her legs below the table. "As if you were on your own."

It was, of course, impossible. I couldn't ignore Sade's presence, or even the thought of her. But still, something shifted. I found myself settling into a calm headspace, one where she was with me, and I was with my thoughts. Both would exist together.

And with Sade nearby, everything felt quieter inside me. I didn't have to wonder what she might be doing as she was within observational range. All I had to do was look or ask. That proximity eased something I hadn't realized was tense within me.

We repeated this routine every evening.

Sade would scroll endlessly through NORA's answers projected on the wall from her tablet, while I read on mine. Sitting next to each other, not interacting, just being, both lost in our studies, had become my favorite part of the day.

And sometimes, when the silence would settle for too long between us, I found myself craving her conversation.

It was strange to realize that.

As nice as these new experiences and feelings were... A part of me couldn't shake the thought that it was all programmed. That somewhere inside her code was an algorithm designed to mold itself to whatever her owner needed. I kept wondering what kind of person she might have become if she'd ended up in a different home. Would I still feel this way if she were made for someone else?

And when my mind wandered to what other homes might be asking of their machinas... The thought made my stomach turn.

And worse, the idea that I was the same as them made me sick.

"Ready?" Sade popped her smiling face at the door of my office.

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