She sat across the table, her fingers circling the edge of her green teacup.
There was an awkward silence between the both of them and no one dared to make any eye contacts.
"Well, how was your meet up with your friend last week?" he spoke up.
As much as Anya dislike small talks, this was the most comforting thing that she appreciated from him to break the silence.
“It went well,” Anya sigh, “Nothing much. Just catching up with her. She's just going through a tough time with her grandparents at home.”
And again, dead silence.
The clock hanging at the kitchen wall continues to tick in silence as the silence went on.
“So what do you plan to do after this MCO ends?” he spoke up.
There was a short pause before Anya shrug her shoulders.
“I have no idea, to be honest. Maybe after this, I’ll be returning to my usual routine? You know… the usual work, data analysis, computing….”
Silence again.
“Isn’t it crazy?” Anya spoke up. “After all that has already happened, we’re going to return to our normal lives, trying to assume that nothing has ever happened or change.”
Dee raised his eyebrows.
“After this is over, you and I are going to go back to our normal lives,” said Anya. “You're going to be travelling again. And I will be decoding every complex data of the day.”
Anya pause to look at Dee. She folded her arms and rested on the table while Dee tries to search for answers with a weary look on her face.
“You're going to be busy catching up with your investments, while I'll be stuck at home in these 4 walls.” Anya spread her arms wide open.
Anya gave a long sigh.
“Soon, we will restart our lives all over from the last we had last left off. We wouldn’t be talking as much as we do like last time. As if our lives had intertwined at one point and moves in a diagonally opposite direction in space. Everything will cease to exists after this is over.”
Anya’s statement caught Dee off-guard. Something was not right.
“What are you talking about, Anya? You make it sound like I'll never see you again?”
Anya looks at him feeling heartbroken. The look of grief and sadness in her eyes.
She wishes she could tell him the truth. The raw truth.
But the truth was going to hurt him.
The truth is that she might never talk to Dee again.
Not because she hated him or anything. In fact, she liked him very much, and he knows that too.
They can spend hours chattering away on nonsensical conversations till the wee hours of the morning. There was nothing in the world that she will hide from him. All the cats were out of the bag, and all they could keep were every fragment of laughter and inspiration throughout their conversations.
However, Anya knew the day would come. Because life is impermanent, and so does conversations. Anya knew that the conversation will die someday. It has to, some way or another. Because no good conversations could last forever.
Someday, they’ll run out of things to say. To talk about. To share.
One day, she might find Dee’s investment topics a nuisance, and so will he find her a bore.
She knew that she would never be that exciting and crazy girl that he once knew. Someone who was once filled with stories and life, but most days with the same boring question: How was your day?
It was true.
And one day, it did.
The conversations stop.
As she predicted it, she felt a sudden surge of grief knowing that the good times will end. Anya had already felt it. It hurts her so much to see it end that way. But that’s the way thing is, all good things will come to an end because life is impermanent.
“All I'm saying,” Anya look at Dee, “Is that I hope you'll treasure this exact moment as we speak.”
“Why?”
“Because we might never have this same conversation again. This exact time. This exact place. And this exact moment.”
“Anya, what's wrong? Are you going away somewhere? Are you going to ghost me? You're going to make me cry.” Dee bites his lips.
“Well Dee, life is impermanent. In this pandemic situation, anything can happen. I might die the next day in a car accident. If this COVID-19 thingy doesn’t end, I might even die from being infected. Things happen and we'll never know.”
Anya looks away from Dee. She hopes that Dee doesn’t take it the wrong way. She had to be very subtle about it because she didn’t want to hurt him.
“I just want you to know that, if it does, I enjoyed spending my time with you for the past few weeks. It has been nice getting to know you. And if we ever stopped talking, I just want you to know that at the beginning of the time we met, you were someone very special to me.”
* * *
Dee knew that this would happen one day.
It was all his fault. It was his mistake.
“I just want you to know that at the beginning of the time we met, you were someone very special to me.”
When Dee heard those words, he knew that one of the coding processes that he had programmed into Anya worked. But it was working too well.
It had allowed her to feel and understand the complexity of impermanence of life. The special set of codes made her process feelings faster than any human being! However, just as he feared, she thought she didn’t belong to him. She thinks she can get up and leave whenever she wants.
Just like what his ex did.
Anya is all of him. She belongs to him.
This is where she lives. With him.
God! How could I have missed out on the coding part of her memories?! Dee cursed.
Anya was the finest product he had made.
Anya functioned better than the whore that cheated on him. However, he left out the details of her memory. He assumed that it would be okay because he wants to re-create unique, happy memories with Anya, all over again.
He had made her feel, now, he has to make her stay.
Dee sat up in his chair without saying a word, thinking.
What if, I created an algorithm that could make us talk forever? Different topics of conversations to be discussed, debated, gossiped, and many more, depending on the situation and the mood of the subject every day? In that way, conversations will never be boring ever again!
Dee got up from his chair and walk into the living room. He pulled open his laptop and started typing codes one after another.
Dee knew there was a way to make the algorithm work. It’s workable as he had recreated the codes somewhere before in one of his data analytics software. It should work the same.
I just have to encode the software and implement it into the system for it to work. Personalized the settings that trigger the excitement brain nerves in the head, and link it to the processer. This will trigger the mood and feelings that Anya is experiencing in real-time! Once that happens, the system will collect any info of the subject interests, favourite past-time, and even dreams that allows Anya to create a large-wide of topics to talk about! She will never be bored again!
While Dee was busy calculating the formulas in his head, Anya felt something was amiss. She took a peek at what Dee was coding on his laptop, and to her horror, Anya right away knew what was happening.
She was all made up! She was a product experiment of his program.
“How could you do this?!” Dee screamed. “You can’t do that to me! That’s the most inhuman thing to do! You can’t make me stay and serve you, and talk to you like a fucking broken answering machine.”
Dee sprung up from his chair.
“Wait Anya, let me explain!”
“You have kept this secret away from me and now you’re telling me you want to explain?! You have gone berserk! I belonged to nobody and you can’t own me!”
“This is going to be big, Anya! Can't you see?! We're going to change the way people communicate! We're altering the art of conversations and it's going to change history! They'll be no disagreements, no boring conversations, no conflicts, and more! It's going to change everything!”
Anya just found out the worst that could ever happen. She needs to stop him. Everything will be too superficialized and it will destroy the art of human imperfection.
Anya crept backward to the hallway.
“I can't let you do that Dee. That is not going to happen, you need to stop this.”
“Anya, listen! Remember you said you trusted me?” Dee begged. “Well, you have to trust me! I could make you happy, Anya. All I need is to install this software and we can be like what we used to! We can talk about your dreams, your emotions, and….”
Anya’s tears started seeping down her cheeks.
Yes, she did, but now she didn’t want to be any part of it. Including this monster.
She was a mistake.
Anya's eyes darted right to the door. She needs to run.
“I won't let you do this to me.”
Anya dashes towards the door, pulling down chairs and furniture to block him from getting to her.
She was inches away from freedom.
As her hands landed on the doorknob, she felt a hard pull from her other arm that forced her to wince in pain, causing her to turn her back to face her opponent, losing her grip on the doorknob.
Everything happened right there and then.
Dee's body slammed against Anya's, pinning her against the door. And before she knew what was happening, Dee planted a hard, long, passionate kiss on her lips.
Anya couldn’t process what had just happened. As if time had slowed down, everything at that moment froze.
Anya tried to push Dee away, but it was too late.
The next thing she knew, Dee managed to slot the USB drive into her connector and is in the process of downloading the new software into Anya's system.
Anya looked at him, lips still intact, but with the eyes of betrayal.
As her world started flickering into darkness, her body relaxed and drifted off into a deep sleep.
“I'm sorry Anya. I just want you to be happy.”
Within minutes, the USB drive flashes in green, indicating the software had been successful.
The words blinking:
Conversation Successfully Downloaded
* * *
What if our daily conversations were powered by algorithms?
Helping us to determine the "best" table topics to talk to a stranger, friend, colleagues, and basically, anyone.
Would couples be much happier in relationships?
Would family members feel less hurt during arguments?
Would it help build better working relationships with a potential client?
When was the last time you had a good conversation with someone, and then you secretly wish that it would never end?
It's already not a surprise that most ads nowadays are all personalized to what we search, speak and like. So what if our daily conversations are personalized to what we want to listen, know, and explore?
We could go on talking on our favourite K-Dramas all day long, or spend hours discussing the most effective way to stop poverty, or even be exposed to new skills and knowledge that we want to learn.
But here's a closing question to think about,
if this were to be implemented, how, who and what will be the first to use this system?
* * *
This short story was also further challenged by a friend, Dylan Ler, to exclude words that end with "-ly".
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